‘Daredevil’ and What We Want From Our Superheroes
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This episode is brought to you by Metro by T-Mobile. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is worse than settling for less. And we all do it to ourselves, whether it's sitting through a bad date or staying in a relationship that didn't meet our standards. Well, I think we deserve better, and so does Metro. They believe that instead of settling, you should get great deals on 5G devices from top brands like Samsung with no contracts, no credit checks, no exploding bills, and nada, yada, yada.

Yada. That's wireless without the gotcha. Stop by your neighborhood Metro store or visit mbytmo.com slash stores and find out about their amazing offers. This episode is brought to you by Lincoln. There's something buzzy in the air. Spring is coming. The mood is shifting and new journeys are beginning. Say goodbye to the winter blues and experience the revitalizing qualities of driving a Lincoln. Everything about a Lincoln is designed to invigorate our senses. In the Lincoln Spring Sales Event, it's happening.

Step outside and visit your local Lincoln retailer or lincoln.com to find some seriously mood-enhancing offers on current and past Lincoln models. Learn more at lincoln.com. Hello, welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson, and joining me today is not Molly Rubin, but three of my favorite dudes are here. Wow, two and a half men. It takes three.

of the ringers finest to fill in for one Mallory Rubin Chris Ryan Van Lathan Sean Fennessey

Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Welcome to House of R. I never would have guessed that this would be what we were going to talk about when this group got together on House of R. What would we talk about? I don't know, but Daredevil born again is not the thing that I would have guessed if you had asked me that three years ago. Yeah, I thought it was something weighty that needs the perspective of all of us, like it's forming together. Well, actually, it is. This is the Illuminati. Are you implying that Daredevil born again is not a weighty and profoundly impactful piece of culture? No, it's not.

It's not, but it's still a very important superhero story, even like what's behind the show. That's right. Why did you invite us here? Thanks so much for asking. Why are we here? So we're here ostensibly to talk about episode four of Daredevil Born Again, but really as like a test case for what's going on with superhero storytelling. And also I thought in the next episode,

oh, hour and a half or so, we might look back at, oh, the last 25 years of superhero movies and television and solve for what are we looking for from superhero storytelling? Because coming off of

Captain America, which was not what a lot of people wanted from that Captain America movie. And Daredevil, which is landing medium positive, but not a banger. I feel like we're in a real uncertain space. There are some projects on the horizon. Your Fantastic Fours, your Supermans. But the question is sort of... A24 Thunderbolts, as Sean is really looking forward to. Absolutely. Very important. I got a co-EP title on that now. I'm really excited. From the host editor of...

Executive produced by Ari Aster. From the podcaster who likes to talk about A24 movies. It's Thunderbolts. So all of that stuff is coming and I just kind of wanted to figure out if we're, what are we wanting from our superhero storytelling right now? And I think Daredevil is a really good sort of test case for that, especially what you were talking about, Van, in terms of this is a show that was something

And then Marvel looked at it and said, oh, no, that's not what we want to do. And then they made a bunch of changes, brought a new creative team. And what we're left with is the vestigial remains of what they thought might work and something new. And this episode in particular had it all. But like it has airdropped into the middle of it.

This Daredevil Punisher scene, which is something that they shot later and they just sort of dropped into this episode as like clearly thinking, hey, this is what people really want. And I think given the reaction to the show, they were right that we're in an era where it's like play the hits. Don't give us something weird and experimental and new. Or you might disagree with me. So quick part of your reminders before we get into all of that. Let's hear it.

House of R, we're covering Yellow Jackets and Daredevil. That's what we're doing. What season? Is it season eight of Yellow Jackets? It's just season three, man. Season three. What's going on? They released an incredible Survivor Yellow Jackets crossover ad where Probst is in with the Yellow Jackets girls. Oh, because it's on Paramount+. What is Yellow Jackets about? What?

We don't have time. Okay. Girls in the woods lost, but then when they grow up, they rethink about what happened in the woods. Yeah, very van-coded. Oh, I was about to say, I've seen that before. The Midnight Boys are trying to step on the watch and prestige territory. They're covering the severance.

finale next week. The fans demanded it. Who are these fans? The fans, the Reddit fans, they want to hear the Midnight Boys talk about anything other than superheroes. Can I ask you, did your vitamin pack just hit? Because the way you said that.

The way you said that had a little bit of an edge. We have a Punisher and an animal pack today. I love that. It's very exciting. And then the spoiler alert for this episode is just sort of every superhero thing ever that has ever existed. You're grownups. Everybody who comes to House of R comes with a PhD in this stuff. I don't think we have to

We don't have to walk them to water. You're wrong, but, you know, we do our best to warn them what's coming. Episode four is Sixth Semper Systema, written by David Feige and Jess Wicato. Is that Kev's cousin? No relation. No relation. Really? No relation.

You consider a name change there. That's a little dicey. Actually, it's pronounced Feej. Yes, Feejay. Directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff. So I just want to start with the Daredevil as a character because this is a character that hit on the Netflix shows and Marvel's like,

We want some of that. We want that Charlie Cox, Matt Murdock, Wilson Fisk. We want all of it. What is it about Daredevil that hits specifically? What do we want from it specifically? Sean Fantasy, knowing that he was coming on House of R...

Did some reading. Yeah, I did a lot of preparation in part because I pre-recorded an episode of The Big Picture this week. So I didn't have to record it this week. I went back and reread the Frank Miller runs. There were ultimately three runs, I think, but one really long run in the late 70s and early 80s. I went back and looked at 45 minutes of the Ben Affleck movie. I looked at a couple of episodes of the Netflix series. And then I'm up to speed. I'm up to date with the first four episodes of Born Again. Yeah.

I think I'm the only person on this panel that hasn't talked about this show at all. I was very curious to know what you think about it so far. I think it is not good at all. Oh, okay. And I know that I've been trying to make an effort to be more open-minded about this storytelling this year. Notoriously, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that there was like a real miscalculation, which is that they're trying to make Dick Wolf's Daredevil, and that makes no sense. That has nothing to do with what makes this a compelling character. And...

I can see that they've obviously, like, they realized the error of their ways and they went back and they reshot things and they reframed it and they cut the season in half. And I see all the moves that they made. And some of that stuff is cool. I got a kick seeing Frank Castle. That was very exciting. But Daredevil is, like, an incredibly emotionally sophisticated character. Much more so than many of the, like, down-the-middle Stan Lee Marvel classics. And that story is a story about faith, disability, love.

Like, it's really a weird configuration and very noir. Obligation, destiny. Yeah, and it's super, super, super grounded in a time when most of these stories are not very grounded. The series itself is not...

It's not awful. Like, I don't want to overstate. It just like it's very clunky to me the way it's been designed thus far. And even though I like everybody involved and I had some fondness for the original Netflix version of this series, what would I want from a Daredevil is like maybe a different conversation that we could all participate in. But I was hoping that this would bring some of the pop appeal that the best Marvel stuff has with that groundedness. And it's kind of neither fish nor fowl for me so far.

Van, where are you sitting with that? The last episode was a slow realization that the show isn't really working.

On the Midnight Boys, I said I likened it to watching a Premier League match for me, which is what's happening on there is good and entertaining, but I don't care about any of it because I don't know any of the players or the culture or anything. I feel like I'm watching a perpetual away game. It's something that's very foreign to me. And that's kind of where the show is for me right now. I have such a nostalgic tie to the old Netflix show, and it was such an achievement, and it really was an achievement.

It was one of the most faithful recreations of comic book intensity to the screen that's ever existed. And they took so much time with it. And it was so human and so accessible. All the attention was palpable and all the story beats were executed so well. This is just spiritually not the same thing.

they're just doing stuff. Yeah. And the stuff that they're doing doesn't repel you in the way that some shows that we've watched have, you know, you're not looking at it going, Oh my God, this is terrible. I'm not into it, but you are going just like, why? Like what's happening? How do I invest? What's my end point? And I'll go back to even the decision to kill foggy. They're assuming that we cared about that. But when it happened,

We kind of didn't care because we needed a refresher on this relationship and we needed a little bit more meat on the bone there. So they're just assuming a lot of things and none of it's really working. It's weirdly empty calories TV for a show from before that had no empty calories. The show was almost too much protein. Right. And does it feel all the emptier because we know how good it can be? Look.

This is how I feel about superhero stuff in general. Ready? Yeah. You just cut me off. You just drove like. No, no, no. Let's get to it. Nobody needs to hear me talk about this show yet. No, no, no. So I don't think we ever throw away our toys. There's always this point where you throw away your toys. I don't think we ever throw away our toys. We just get different toys.

Right. You start off and you have a Batman figurine. Then you get a basketball or a baseball or whatever. Like you just get different toys. Then you get an iPhone. Then you get a car. Your whole life is about figuring out how you love your toys. Marvel does not know how to make different toys. Like after you're done with the first toy that they give you.

The action figure that they give you, they have not figured out how to take that, how to take my Castle Grayskull and turn it into a baseball bat or turn it into a basketball or turn it into some of the other stuff that I fell in love with. They can't mature this stuff. They can't give us the next iteration of this stuff. And the aimlessness of Daredevil Born Again right now just shows that. Like they can't take this story. They don't want to do the old thing, but they just can't do the new thing.

And it's at this point, I'm wondering if they will ever figure it out with any of these characters moving forward at all. Yeah, I think that you're getting to something that I really wanted to talk to you guys about, which was this idea of whether or not the television model is at all suitable for the kind of storytelling that the MCU specifically wants to do. Not necessarily Marvel Comics, because I do think television would actually be the perfect medium for a straight adaptation of Marvel comic book storylines.

if budget were never a concern and you could just build sentinels and have Egyptian gods coming out of pyramids and stuff like that. But Daredevil is the best possible candidate for that. So I don't like the show for the very reason Sean doesn't, which is I like Law & Order. So I don't mind Matt Murdock's case of the week with some overstory about like, well, Punisher and Fisk and everything else. Like,

tonally, visually, a lot of other things. It's a car crash. But for some reason, like a lot of car crashes, I'm kind of like, wait, did anybody get out of that thing? There's parts of it where I'm like, how is fiddle faddle and probation arguments? I can't believe you said fiddle faddle when I just heard them say it 200 times. I honestly had forgotten and then I listened to Midnight Boys and I'm like, should I get this tattooed on my neck? How is the fiddle faddle stuff happening in the same space?

episode as two men just screaming at each other for five minutes like in the Punisher Matt Murdock scene and then on top of that like the Wire season two like let's redevelop the ports and make Hell's Kitchen great again stuff going on there's all these little bits I'm like I like kind of like that wait no I kind of like that wait this is stupid but I can't look away yeah when it comes together you get to the end and you're like what the fuck was that

fuck was that but then kind of like I I've dropped some of these series I'm just like no I'm out I know I'm kind of still like you're in lassoed in enough to check it out next week that's so interesting I think something that I've been struggling with at least is that you know Mallory and I rewatched all of the Netflix show and then we did an episode where we sort of identified the

the best moments from those three seasons. And in doing so did sort of a diagram anatomy of what this storytelling, why the storytelling works for us. And it has to do with, um, the religious themes or the noir visuals or all these sorts of things. This is the soul of daredevil. Um, and it's,

By design of the premise, intentionally missing from this series because the whole point of where we're finding Matt Murdock here is that he is trying not to be himself. So he's trying to be foggy and work inside of a system. And so by design, this show is like, we're going to take you out of Hell's Kitchen. We're going to not show you the suit after the first CGI, terrible CGI fight scene. We're going to do this, that, and the other thing.

And conceptually, that's interesting, but the execution is not nourishing me enough to make me not long for all the things that worked before. To strip away Karen and Foggy, to strip away him going into a confessional, to strip away all that stuff is, in theory, a good idea. And an execution...

stuff for me, you know? Even furthermore, they've taken... He's not Daredevil in this series so far, except for this one bravura opening sequence of the show. So we're not seeing him in the suit and he's not in action. The genius of the first series was rather than go in a post-Matrix filmmaking style, which is what the Ben Affleck movie is, it's post-The Raid, right? Like that's the style of combat that you're seeing. It's like very Korean new wave in the style of filmmaking and in the fight action. And...

And not having any of that stuff, taking Bullseye off the board completely, making Fisk a reputable figure in the storyline. There's no juice. There's just no juice. Now, obviously, it's going to change. He's going to come back. We see Frank Castle. But to make you sit for five hours until making it a chair down. And I know. I have no patience for that. I really have no patience for that. Can I say something about that?

When the Netflix series comes out, the awesome thing about the first season is that it is a season-long origin story to where you only get him actually as Daredevil in the last episode. You had all the episodes at once, didn't you? Yeah, but that means something. But what I'm saying is this. It still works perfectly because...

of the intrigue of the things happening in the other characters' lives. It's not just that, but also even when he's in the sort of like black ninja getup, that's still Daredevil enough to be Daredevil, you know? It is for everyone else, but not for me, right? Because, so because remember I'm watching, it is for everyone else that watched the show, but for me, I'm watching the show going, cause they're like, Kalika's watching the show and she doesn't know that that's not Daredevil. I'm like, that's not how he looks. Yeah.

relax. But like, for what I'm saying is the show itself, Hell's Kitchen was a character that meant so much to that. Matt's trauma is a characteristic comes into the show. There's so much daredevilness going on that by the time you see him in the suit, you don't feel like that you've missed him in the suit. You feel triumphant that he's gotten to the end of that journey. You don't even miss Daredevil in the suit in this show to me because he's

It's not even the same show. I don't even know what he would be doing. I don't know who he would be fighting. I don't know what would be going on. There's no sense of intensity to the show whatsoever. By the way,

I'm like you. I'm enjoying it, but I'm watching it just because it's Daredevil. I would say there's no intensity except for this Frank Castle scene, which is airdropped out of nowhere, basically ported over from another TV show entirely into this. It's like basically pulled out of Daredevil season two and dropped into Daredevil Born Again. And Sierra, I mean, I want to hear what you want to say about what Vanja said, but I also want, of course, your Jon Bernthal thoughts. All right.

it's, it's very, it's very incongruent with the rest of the episode where we're talking about like the Latvian heritage day celebration and union busting and red hook. Uh, is this really the show? Like that's really the decision they made to make the show. Here's the problem, right? It's like warmed over. This is where I think this is where there were like three or four different versions of this show made. I think somebody pitched, uh,

let's make the wire, but with Daredevil at the center of it as a defense attorney. Someone was like, no, we have to go back to the original recipe of brooding guys screaming at each other and

just beating the shit out of bad guys. That's another version of it. And then there is a kind of like, they've talked about this or there's been rumors about like, there's like six episodes of it kind of being like She-Hulk where it's like a comic banter with the prosecutor. Like I was looking for like who played the prosecutor and I don't think she's going to show up again or something because I couldn't find her on IMDB. It was like Stephanie or whoever's the, I'm like, oh, that's his love interest, right? Like this is poppin'.

And it was like, no, she's not in the show. She was just in one scene or whatever. But I think that it's indicative of there is not a single author of... And listen to you guys talk about Daredevil. It's clear that probably what these projects need is a... You know what? We're going to go down with the ship, but this is the guardian of what...

this character means this person is the dave filoni of daredevil the dave filoni of captain america whatever and he might not be for everybody they might not love not everybody might be not be like that's not as good as andor but he is going to respect certain core values because you talk about like marvel can't iterate on these toys it doesn't sound like you really want them to because you're talking about a conception of a character from the 1970s or 1980s

Like, do you really want... Maybe you just want it to be like the original version of it. It just needs its Christopher Nolan. I mean, the closest analog to Batman in the Marvel character story is Daredevil. It's a street-level story with a person who has powers, but they're not like...

lasers flying out of his eyes. And Frank Miller is the person who, like, he didn't fully conceive Daredevil, but he evolved that character the same way he evolved Batman, which is what Nolan took inspiration from. So I think you're right that it needs somebody who, like, loves this part of the character, loves this kind of, like, duty versus faith. You named a film director, not a TV showrunner. On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, the original Netflix series had three different showrunners, a different showrunner every single season. And even the first season had, like, kind of two. Like a changing of the guard. So I think...

That's not the only thing that could fix it, but it certainly would... You know, you're basically saying we need a Tony Gilroy for this. Well, you just need... I think you just need somebody who's like... Obviously, they had so many different showrunners involved in this. I think the actors had a lot of power because they had the leverage of like, we are now as big as these characters and people want to see Charlie Cox. Bernthal walked away because he's like, I don't like what you're doing, Punisher. When he comes on the screen...

He almost breaks the wheel because he's like, now it's a different show. Right. Yeah. You know, and granted, that may have supposed to happen in episode six. And they were like, we cannot hold Bernthal for six weeks or something. But when he comes on, you're kind of like the rest of the show does not matter. So I'll say something else about if we go back and look at the Netflix era, it wasn't just Daredevil that worked. Luke Cage worked. Jessica Jones worked.

So there was an approach to these characters. Not you, Iron Fist? No. Not you, Iron Fist. I never watched The Defenders. How did that turn out? Please don't. It was okay. No. It really was okay. Please don't. I was going back and forth. I haven't seen everything with Daredevil in it because I haven't seen that. The only thing that held The Defenders back, in my opinion, was just the fact that Iron Fist is just like unwatchable in the way that they just weird decisions that they decided. Just like an abominable misuse of Sigourney Weaver. Bizarre. But

But those shows, like not just Daredevil, the whole Netflix MCU experiment was working. Like Purple Man in the first season of Jessica Jones was just an intense, sinister, terrifying villain.

Everything that they were doing on Luke Cage with Mahershala Ali, all of this stuff was working because there was a clear vision of the New York, of the type of characterization and the arcs and everything that they were trying to do. MCU television just don't have that. They do not have that.

They don't give you the version of the character that you know. They don't give you a version of the character that you can connect with. They just mutate the character and then vomit it onto you. Like Moon Knight and all of this different stuff that this is really not at all what you have in mind when you sign up for these shows. And to me...

Once again, with Daredevil Born Again, you could come back and just do Daredevil versus Punisher.

Just do a whole thing. I mean, I think the reason that that is both appealing to people and this scene works so well and all of that is that they brought in the Punisher showrunner to take over in this new Daredevil revamp. Is that Dario Scarpa? So he's like, of course it's going to start working when Punisher comes on the scene because he's the Punisher guy. And so I think that like,

I agree with you entirely. And I think what's interesting listening to the director of this episode talk about it, it was originally supposed to be a day in the life for both Matt and Fisk. The reason we're on fiddle faddle beat and all the rest and the like minutiae of, you know, bargaining about the probation sentence and the minutiae of the red tape and the we built this city moments and stuff like that is to show sort of like the mundanity, I guess. That sounds like electric television. Yeah.

of what it's like to try to operate inside of the system. But like it was going, it was intended to be, and there's still sort of like some remaining moments of it

where the camera just continuously follows characters from morning to night. We start with like everyone coming out of the club at the break of dawn and we go directly through a cab across the street to Fiddle Faddle. And then we go from there and the camera was supposed to like never stop going. So it was this like kind of high concept idea for an episode. And they were just sort of like, nope, we're going to chop it all up and drop Frank Castle.

hassle in there in a way that makes no sense. You know, the wire would do stuff like that to where they would just get you caught up on things that you didn't know that you cared about. They get you caught up on who was going to do paperwork or small little things. The wire could focus on one little thing, but they would orient a human experience around that. So you would be like, Oh my God, this little morality play can be like oriented around one stupid thing.

or one place, or the ring, or whatever. Like, they would do that. But you have to have clarity of story there. You have to know what you... I don't give a fuck about the fiddle faddle motherfucker. To me...

Throw them in the bing. Like, you stole five boxes of fiddle faddle after you've been arrested 11 times. Like, what am I supposed to get from that? I can't believe I gave you another platform to get your conservative anti-fiddle faddle takes out. It's not conservative. This is respectability politics if I've ever heard it. How do you feel about this show being ACAB? This episode is brought to you by Metro by T-Mobile. Nothing.

And I mean nothing is worse than settling for less. And we all do it to ourselves, whether it's sitting through a bad date or staying in a relationship that didn't meet our standards. Well, I think we deserve better, and so does Metro. They believe that instead of settling, you should get great deals on 5G devices from top brands like Samsung with no contracts, no credit checks, no exploding bills, and nada, yada, yada. That's wireless without the gotcha.

Stop by your neighborhood Metro store or visit mbytmo.com slash stores and find out about their amazing offers. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company, non-alcoholic brews. The other day I was golfing with some of the guys. They're like, hey, you want anything? I was like, I'm an adult. I got stuff to do tonight. I'm not doing one of these like semi-retired deals, 18 holes and see how it goes. Luckily, I'm not doing any of that.

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If you know how the lineage of the white tiger goes, who got fucked over in this show, right? We know that there's a new white tiger that's kind of introduced in this episode. Yes. The lady. Yeah. The niece. Yeah. Meaningless. Okay. It doesn't mean anything. Well, it's just waving to the audience that knows, here's something you might get but probably won't.

And to me, that's like a big problem with this entire season. This entire season is just like leaning you towards where we're going. And maybe we will get there in season two, but it's my problem with all television, as you guys know, but particularly comic book storytelling on television, which is it's only interested in setup and it's not interested in payoff. And the best TV is great at payoff. And so I don't really understand like what's appealing about what

what you were describing, that sort of like day in the life of a New York City politician as told by not expert human-like storytellers. Like no one goes to Daredevil. Like if you open a Daredevil comic book,

by the 8th or 12th panel, he's like doing a flip and punching a guy in the face. That's what Daredevil is. It is like a meditation on faith. There's some storylines that concentrate a little bit more on Murdoch. But it's a very physical book. It's very much oriented around his ability to fight. And so to remove that entirely just feels like completely misunderstanding why we're here. Well, I think it feeds into Marvel's

long-standing idea of what if we took genres we liked but they're superhero you know we're going to talk about winter soldier as always in a little bit that's the example we always use what if we use 70s paranoia thriller but it's you know steve rogers and so were they citing the wire and shows like that as the inspiration i'm serious like did they note that in in this season of the show yeah they talked about this as a legal procedural

is sort of something that they want to do. We have so many of those. Why do we need that? You know, they give us She-Hulk and they're like, what if Ally McBeal, but it's She-Hulk? You know what I mean? And yeah, what if a legal procedural, but it's Matt Murdock? We've got a lawyer, superhero, why don't we do a legal procedural? Maybe that's something we'll do. And, um,

You know, similarly, like Loki is what if Doctor Who, but Loki, you know what I mean? That's what they've been doing. It doesn't always work and it's not working here, especially, I think, because they did not recast the character and we have this other model to hold it up to. Right, right. You know? Don't you guys think it can work to apply that thinking? Yeah.

If you just give us both, because the whole idea of Daredevil is he's a lawyer who's obsessed with the rule of law, who is also a vigilante who breaks the law. Like that is the entire conceit of the character. The fact that he can't see, but he sees better than anyone. Like the contradiction of the character is the whole intent. But to only give us one side of that on a TV show. Would you have cared? Would you have watched, I guess, but some of this is packaging. So would you have cared if it was called Daredevil?

Matt Murdock attorney at law and it was about like daredevil trying to like interesting question trying to like shake off the vigilante side of his better call Matt I think if it was written by someone who's incredible at that yeah but if it was just like Marvel Studios you know the only thing that I would ask is like

I would ask, why are you doing that? You know, I would be interested in it. Like, you know, listen to a four hour lore video on Yoda last night. But like. At 1X or did you speed it up? Nah, baby. You just want 1X? Nah. I'm going to listen again at 1X. I'm sitting down. At a certain point, the TV is going, no sound.

Why did you ask a question about this? And then I turned the TV off. I commit to the Yoda video. You were screened it though for a while. For a while. I was just watching. And then I just started talking about Yoda and Palpatine. A four hour Yoda video. And then in another hours of the force and like whatever. You're very special. Sean's like, I watched four whole hours of television for you. And you're second screener in Yoda video. But no, so I probably would have tried it out, but

The thing is, if you're going to reinvent the wheel, the wheel has to turn. It has to be functional. It has to be the same thing. The problem with the show and the problem with a lot of this stuff is that's cool. She-Hulk, Ally McBeal is fine. Ally McBeal is not like why we go to She-Hulk, though. The procedural aspect of Daredevil is not why we approach him. So you essentially have to make your...

making your, you're lowering your margin for error. It has to be perfect now. We also might be feeling the long-term ripple effects of the change in policy that's happened over the course of the daredevil television experiment. So multiple times they have tried to turn the boat where at one point it was like, TV is TV.

people who can watch these TV shows, they're not going to impact the movies. Right. And then it gave that the TV shows a sort of like junior varsity feel because it was like, I doesn't really need to watch agents of shield. This is not going to affect. Not only that, but it was like almost counter-programming. Right. Right. Then with Disney plus, they were like, Oh, you have to watch because you never know when somebody in the fifth episode might jump out and be like scrolls. And, um,

But even in that, you have to do that. Guys, all of this is worth it for me to watch Chris go scroll through multiple seasons of this shit. And we were like, wait a second, this doesn't matter at all. Like it doesn't matter. Like it doesn't matter at all. And now the problem is, is that they've kind of tried to be like, no, actually you don't need to know anything about anything. Right. You can just watch this. Like you watch law and order, but it would help be helpful if you knew who Punisher was like, let me ask you guys a question. Since you've watched all of these shows, um,

I feel like it might be a tonnage issue for me. Oh, yeah. Like, I watched the first two episodes of Adolescence last night. I haven't finished it. Please don't spoil it. But I had a sense of satisfaction. You make Soul Punisher shows up. It's sad. Yeah, it'll be exciting. But I had a sense of satisfaction and this feeling of momentum watching that show because I knew it would be over soon. Yes. And with Daredevil, I think this idea that they're pursuing, which will make whatever I've said so far in this conversation moot when he puts the suit back on in one more episode or two more episodes, is...

If they had just compressed that and made this a four or five episode thing, wouldn't that have made more sense? If they just applied the Sherlock methodology of the movie to these characters and they were like, we're going to make three 90-minute episodes and then we'll come back nine months later and do another two or something. But there is...

The only reason why this is two nine-episode seasons that are going to be released pretty close to one another is because it helps their quarters. It helps, like, whatever. That's all corporate. They had an idea and the idea blew up. But I'll say something else is that they've done that.

They've given you the six hour, the eight hour experience. And then those fucking suck. Right. They've they've they've attempted what's the secret invasion, secret invasion. That's what they do all the time. They all they all the time. They give you six episodes. They give you eight episodes. They've done that. Right. They've what they don't have. Again, I'm shooting for like four hours.

hours. What they don't have with the original Netflix show had... One yoga lore video. There you go. What they don't have with the original show had was a sense of purpose in character and tone. That show was saying, hey, I'm going to drop you into this place with all of these competing motivations. We talk about the arc of Daredevil. The arc of Fisk

Like, learning about Fisk. By the end of that show, you are so intimately acquainted with the character of Wilson Fisk that you're not sure it's not his show. So they... And you're saying... D'Onofrio's not sure either. And you're saying...

Mr. and Mrs. Smith-esque marriage counseling scenes is not doing the same work for you? It's just not the same thing. What the fuck is that stuff? Why? Is that seriously important to this story? I skip. You skip? I skip that. You skip. Yeah.

CR coming out of antitherapy. Okay. Wow. Just give me an animal pack of vitamins. That's all you need. Can I just say one thing about Fisk? Of course. Two points. One, shout out to Michael Gandolfini. He's actually a really fun actor. He's good. And his character is one of the reasons why I'm watching this show because I'm like, what's up with this guy? This is like little Steve Bannon of Staten Island. Yeah. Little Steve. But he has a real arc. He has a real important scene. He's also like a little bit good and a little bit bad.

But he's also not acting like he's in like a Ken Loach movie or something. Like he's having fun, which is part of the problem with the show is that it's not that much fun to watch these people be very upset with their lives for four hours. I think that Sean might like a three to four episode short season, like in and out. Van would probably take a 22 episode season if he thought like it was good. Right.

What we're probably all going to arrive at when we start, and we can start, it's your show. I just want a one special presentation werewolf by night. That's what I want. That's the thing. That was super cool. Did you always cool about that? I did. I loved it. That was awesome. Yes. But what has been the thing across all of our pods for the movies, for the shows, for what are we like kind of like agitating about right now?

It's been this crisis of competence. It's just been this like, well, you know, the scripts weren't done and we decided midway through we were going to make a completely different show. But obviously Bernthal's schedule didn't permit for certain things or he didn't want to do it. So like now we're doing something else. Yeah. You know what? We're going to put it up.

And then they want, like, that's why we are where we are. There's too many missing pieces at the bottom of the Jenga tower now. And they can't afford to stop pulling pieces. And it's just, well, it's just content churn. That is when I feel like. Meaning your quarterly. And that is when, excuse me, I didn't mean to. Yeah, no, no, no. But that is when I feel like they're holding me hostage with my childhood. Yes. Because I'll come back. I'm serious. Because I'll come back and I'll come back. Yeah. Like.

You bring up Nolan. Nolan looked at Batman and Nolan went, okay, well, Schumacher fucked Batman by making Batman a living comic book. It doesn't really work that way, right? Well, let me strip Batman down, bring in the best actors I can, and tell a slow-burning story of a man trying to save his city and then also access who his father was. Let me do that over and over and over again, and he'll get more broken. Did Batman have a thing with his dad? He had a thing. Yeah.

So he does that entire thing and it works, but that's like, that's a new toy. That's like a different, that's a different thing. That's a different way. And to me, that's,

it doesn't seem like Marvel has any interest in making that type of stuff with filmmakers can get, take their own takes on these characters. I'm not asking for people to lose their jobs. I'm, I'm not legitimately curious how we were getting to the place though, where they're like, yeah, we've delayed brave new world for quite some time. And now the version that we want to put out is the version where we staple Giancarlo Esposito into it, but,

but pulling out two thirds of the way through the movie. And I think we're like, why is that arrived at? Like, this is a pretty normal thing to have happen is just in a triage era of, of Marvel where they just sort of like overreach massively overreach due to corporate mandate. We've talked about this over and over again on all of our pods, right. That like, that due to the streaming wars and due to the fact that people aren't going to the cinema anymore and due to COVID and due to all these other things, they,

They have to make all of these shows and it has just stretched them way too thin. And now they're making less stuff. And this is maybe Wonder Man. We'll see what happens with Wonder Man. But this is sort of, to my view, the last project that's of the triage era. We're just deep in the pit doing the best we can with like what exists.

and then we're headed into Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four which are allegedly from a more assured we're focusing on fewer things era we haven't heard stories of like massive reshoots or troubles on set and stuff like that around Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four so I'm not promising that those things are going to be perfect unless you have and you want to say no I think that there's been several writers on those I mean like these are big projects Armageddon had 17 writers I'm not saying like I'm not naive about that but it looked

like a Michael Bay movie the entire time, you know, like, and so I think part of the issue here for me is like,

whether we're talking about the electric state or we're talking about Daredevil or we're talking about Captain America, Brave New World or like anything where you're just like, what happened here? Why did, like you guys are like Hollywood and- You have so much money, so much- This is supposed to be the best. So many resources. It's supposed to be you guys, like at the end of the day, you're supposed to, if you're spending this much money on it, wouldn't you want to make the best possible thing? And I think with Marvel especially-

And then I want to roll on to another segment. But I think with Marvel especially, because they were so good at it for so long. And not that many people in the sort of like creative lineup at the core of it have changed. They've had a few people leave. Sure. But not, you know, like majority still there. So why are they making this shoddy stuff when they made such good monoculture stuff?

grip on you even if you don't like a fucking superhero you have to know what's going on in the MCU storytelling and that's sort of what I wanted to get at the heart of here in this podcast today I think that you're right you guys have probably recorded hundreds more hours about this than I have in my life but I think the sort of like miracle that you chronicled in your book of the first Avengers movie set them up for like an eight year window where we all were just magically ensorcelled by the finality of that story

And ever since that moment when they closed that story in a way that I thought was wonderful, they have just not been able to get us interested in what is the overarching theme. There have been a variety of reasons for that. Issues with actors, issues with story, certain movies failing that they didn't think were going to fail, etc., etc. But there's not any forward momentum in one direction.

around it and so now every project that comes up is more susceptible to the hole poking that it was very easy to do when Thor the Dark World came out no shots to Mallory but like

That's a deeply flawed, messy movie that you could do the same thing for that we just did for Daredevil Born Again or that we could do when Thunderbolts comes out and it's like pretty good but maybe not as good as we hoped and you can see some of the seams. It's just that there was this overarching feeling like we're going somewhere. Maybe even somewhere we've never been before as fans of this stuff. No one feels that way anymore. Now everyone is like I need to go

back to how I felt in 2019. That's why we're bringing back Robert Downey Jr. That's why everyone thinks Chris Evans is coming back, even if he says he is not, because it's not, it's,

It's not about what's in the future. It's about what we used to feel like and how can we try to get to that place again. What can we reclaim, yeah. So the reason I've assembled this panel, not just because I adore you guys and it's so nice to see all of you, but also like CR is our TV expert, Sean Fennessey, our film expert, Van Lathan, our nerd expert. And I think together there is this sort of like

How can we diagram what has worked in superhero storytelling? Come together as some kind of gauntlet, maybe? You know what's so funny? Were the stones in the gauntlet? I was like going to make a corny Avengers assemblage. Which stone are you? He's the TV stone, man. The funny thing about the way that you just set the three of us up is that you were actually all three of those things all in one person. But like on a more shallow level than I think all of you guys are. No, no, no. Everyone knows us. She's got to destroy us. She's got to destroy us.

No one listening is like, yeah, she is more shallow. The watch big picture boy. But I think that like,

What I wanted to, we just sort of talked about what's not working for us in Daredevil. I wanted us to talk about superhero storytelling that we've loved and maybe try to consider what has worked. And I just arbitrarily picked the last 25 years, perhaps inspired by the Big Picks current project of rolling through the best films the last 25 years that you and Amanda are doing. It's going to be actually 24 consecutive superhero movies, which I'm really excited about. Cannot wait for the Madame Web episode. So let's start with TV. Sure.

Chris Ryan, what is the best superhero television show of the last 25 years? It's The Watchmen. I think it's... Personally, I don't think it's super close. But I'm judging that as a piece of television and not a piece of superhero...

right? Like, so that's obviously based on one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved pieces of comic book writing ever with the Watchmen. But what Lindelof did with that and the way he cast it and the way he made it feel applicable to contemporary times. And I think that's,

maybe he would have wanted to do more, but it felt like a very complete statement to Sean's point about feeling like it's not constantly just being like, hey, there's a stinger, so stick around because who knows where Dr. Manhattan goes next. It felt very complete and very moving. And also, I know we're going to talk a little bit about the idea of superheroes losing their grip on the monoculture, but within the bubble of my friends and I, it felt like

a really important two months in TV where we're just like every, every Monday, we're just talking about this so glowingly and talking about the ideas and it transcended off the page into the real world in a way that I thought was pretty unique and wonderful. There were people who hadn't heard, and this is a statement on so many different things that hadn't heard of the Tulsa race massacre until that show came out. Yeah. Yeah. And, and,

If you talk to, obviously we all have different people, but I remember I made Tommy, that's how I met Kourt. I was like, Tommy, I want to meet the guy who wrote that one episode. He does not talk about anything that has to do with superheroes when he's talking about

how he came up with that and how he wrote, to me, the single best episode of superhero television that I've ever seen. Let's talk about anything about it. He talks about the themes and the story and then how he could weave them and use those characters to tell it. And, I mean, that's what that show was. That show was examining so many different things through the lens. For us Watchmen fans...

The fucking shit didn't even make sense at first. Like I was, Jeremy iron stuff. You're like, what the fuck is happening? Like, like where's vice? Like what's like, what's, what's going on. And I'm sitting there like, and, and I'm watching it with Kalika. And she was like,

What's going on? I'm having trouble connecting to this because I've read and reread and reread and reread this over and over and over again and watched cartoons on it and watched Zach's overhated movie on it. And they're not appropriately hit. And they're not giving me the candy. And she's like, why don't you just let go? Just watch this.

And like, once you got into it, it made the same points as the original, almost in a lot better and more contemporary way. I agree. Sean fantasy. Oh no, no. Van Latham. What's the best superhero TV show the last 25 years? TV show. Yeah. So I'm on a TV show. I'm going to go to the original daredevil Netflix show. It, to me, it was that established to me,

And Netflix was in its we're prestigy era. Like here we're coming, like House of Cards is right back here. Like we're starting to dominate. It was such a cultural moment to take that type of character and really get into the guts and the weeds of it.

the brutality in terms of what the characters are being asked to do, the action of the show, the weight and feel of the force of it. It just, it was appointment television. You could not take your eyes away. Like a brand new star, obviously had been in what, Boardwalk Empire or something like that. But like a brand new star, like to me, just brutal.

It was perfectly executed. And it was very meaningful. Like it was, we're going to take Daredevil seriously. And it was a reinvention of Daredevil because the Ben Affleck Daredevil was like so cartoony a little bit. So I thought it was an outstanding achievement. And it bore fruit. Punisher, Jessica Jones, all of these shows, it bore fruit. So I thought that was not just the best, but the most important show. Sean Fennessey?

It's kind of a cheat. I mean, I still think that the first four episodes of WandaVision is the most interesting thing that they've ever tried to do on television and was like a seemed like a real vision and not white vision. Chris's favorite character and formally compelling.

an attempt to kind of like make us a little uncomfortable with what is actually going on inside the heads of some of these characters, which is something that I find the movies really struggle to do, was beautiful at times. I thought it really lost the plot when it was like,

don't forget, we're in a Marvel property and there needs to be a battle. They have to fight above town. Yeah, I was like, this is way so far afield from what was cool about this. But the other thing I'll say is just for the sake of television, in terms of like what a good TV show can accomplish, I think Smallville is like maybe a little underappreciated in this way because...

TV in that like 22 episode format that like I'm with my friends and it makes me feel at home. I grew up watching Lois and Clark, which I really, really liked and was an interesting version, I think, of what Daredevil Born Again would like to be. It's a newspaper show. Yes. Yeah. Which has a little bit of Superman in it. Yeah. And Smallville was more of a Superman show than that, but it was like smaller stakes. I didn't watch every episode of Smallville or anything, but when I would watch it, I would be like,

This is Dawson's Creek for Superman. You couldn't watch every episode of Smallville. Yeah, there was like six, four episodes. Yeah, but when it first came, there was something very novel about it when it first came around. To me, though, that just kind of speaks to my relative disinterest in TV. Sure. That I can't really, even like, Loki was very, very acclaimed.

And loved, especially in certain corners of the ringer. And I liked it just fine. But I never felt that feeling of like, I got to find out what happens on Loki next. You know, I just, I couldn't get interested in the storytelling the same way as I could the way I could read through a comic book in 19 minutes. Or I could finish a movie in two hours and nine minutes. So it's just not the perfect suitcase for all my stuff. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

I, you guys have all picked my top three choices. I'm serious. Like WandaVision, Daredevil and Watchmen. I think it's Watchmen for me, but, but Daredevil season one, especially. And I was, when Mal and I were talking about the rewatch that we did and I told her, and she was like quite surprised, but I told her that the hallway fight, the beginning of Daredevil season one is like a top superhero ever moment for me. Just a guy. Me too.

battling his way down a hallway. And there's something visually iconic about it and emotionally iconic about it, the way it connects to the rest of that episode, which is a flashback to his dad battling Jack, like all that sort of stuff. I think about it all the time. Watchmen as a whole, I think about all the time. That's like, and the way that it's the perfect example, I love that Van was talking earlier about

the idea of your toys, David Lindelof as like a, a Watchmen fan boy. And then did that interesting thing with it rather than try to recreate it faithfully or, um, or,

Or go in another direction just to prove that he could. He wound up sort of weaving something new into the old in a way that is just really responsible fanboying. You know what I mean? In a way that a lot of people, I would say, playing with the Star Wars toys these days are incapable of doing. And then WandaVision, the way that WandaVision was like, not only I thought a great television series that I think about all the time, but like,

A love letter to television, an incredible calling card from Marvel into the Disney Plus era that did not wind up panning out. But like the way that both Watchmen and all three of those shows broke out from the core superhero Stan audience into the, you know, like getting Emmy nominations, Emmy wins. You know, people were like, what is this Daredevil thing on Netflix? It really...

was an, they were ambassadors for this kind of storytelling in the best possible way. And I do, I think it's what we should always be striving for. Yeah, absolutely. Do you think that, do you think with your concerns, because I'm trying to like kind of connect the two things that you two were saying, but do you think that part of it would be a statement of intent in the beginning of a series of television? Like if Loki was just

Doctor Who and it was like on for 20 weeks of the year and it was just they were flying around the TVA and visiting Ren Fairs and stuff like that that that would be you probably would you say like I don't want to watch this anyway it's easy it would be easy for me to ignore I mean I think they've created a lot of things that you shouldn't you can't ignore if you want to be up to speed with the movie universe which they have clearly indicated to us is more important

Yeah. Than the TV shows. Yeah. So, but if they were just like, this is a separate, it's like the what if show, which I think is cool. I'm glad it exists. I've watched a bunch of episodes of it, but I never watch it thinking like, well, this is really going to explain something that's coming in the future. I can enjoy it on its own terms. And so it could be 22 episodes. It could be five episodes. But if it was something that was disconnected entirely, and part of what was compelling about WandaVision was like,

This doesn't really even feel super synced up. It's happening inside of somebody's head. I mean, the thing about WandaVision, and they haven't, the MCU hasn't gotten close to what they were able to do right in WandaVision. Correct. They haven't even gotten in the same ballpark of it. Wanda, you already knew. You already knew Wanda. You already knew Vision. What you didn't know was what was happening to them.

And why? No fucking clue. Like this major huge event had just happened, which was Endgame. But you don't know where they are. You don't know what's happening to them. You're paying attention to every aspect of the show. You're pouring over it. What does this commercial mean? What's happening to her? Who's doing this to her? Like, what's the deal? They made you care about her. Her brother died. And that was a distant memory.

in terms of what was happening to her inside of that place. And they have not really been able to do that. Save Loki. Loki was kind of the same thing. Loki is a very close second for me. And I know mileage may vary, but I really liked Agatha all along. I enjoyed it too, but she's just not a character that anybody gives a fuck about. But I enjoyed it. I did. The thing I will say about... Because she's a woman, is that what you're saying? Get out of here. The thing I will say about WandaVision is that it was...

Jack Schafer, who went on to do Agatha All Along, and Matt Shackman, who had directed a million episodes of It's Always Sunny, as well as Game of Thrones, etc. These were people who know how to do television. And they were clearly doing television. And Marvel, that was the rarest case of head writer and head director working together in that weird Marvel Disney Plus era where they were like, we don't believe in TV showrunners anymore.

And they have allegedly moved away from that. But, you know, that's part of why there is this, I love them, but there was this arrogance of we know what we're doing better than the people who've been making TV for so long. And we can disrupt that model and do it the Marvel way. And they simply couldn't, you know? And so I think in terms of what you guys were asking for before, which is like a clear creative vision,

That's what a fucking showrunner is. I'm sure they show through creative visions a lot, but I think that they fall victim to like, it would be really great is to get the next tiger in here. You know what I mean? Just to give like a little bit of a... You know what I mean? And the same thing would happen, I think, towards the...

Towards the end of WandaVision was there was just like it got subsumed by like, is that who's the doctor waiting around the corner? And who's like, is Mephisto here? And I think I was partially responsible for that. But there was a lot of like signaling and a lot of like, OK, so like now what's really why was I really watching this? Maybe we're getting to the idea that like.

These are two fundamentally different experiences. They have been for most of the history of popular culture and they can't be treated the same necessarily. Let me ask you a question. If WandaVision had ended in...

In a slightly different kind of way. In the way that, the way it was sort of setting us up for, which was in a more Twilight Zone fashion. Yeah. With like a kind of cleverness, but then also a closed loop where it was not about pushing us forward into the storytelling, but was more just like. Into multiverse of madness and everything that followed. If it was just this happened inside of Wanda's mind. Yeah. And they found a clever way to close that. Would the show have been more acclaimed or less acclaimed?

Would it have been a better Samara? I think it would have been more acclaimed. It might have been more rejected on a fan. I think that's what, yeah, that's the trade-off. And so they were afraid of that. Well, you, I mean, they're not afraid of it. You can't do it. The thing has to lead into the next thing. They know that because 13 year olds are actually not watching this stuff. They're actually checking out like spoilers and being like, oh, does this person show up? Who's responsible for that? Kevin, but if the thing doesn't lead into the next thing, especially the way that we're going right now,

One of the biggest complaints from the fans right now is that this thing doesn't have...

any place in the overall MCU story. And that's, that's my preference for, like I said, an Agatha all along or a werewolf by night, where it's just sort of like, here's this story that we're telling Agatha all along is launching a young Avenger character, but like, but here's the thing. This is the deal. This is the deal. And this is part of this stuff. And I'm about to blame the one group of people that never wants to be blamed for anything. The fans, the,

The Eternals come out and it's like, okay, the Eternals, I know these characters. And then the fans go, well, fuck, where were the Eternals at when Thanos was attacking the whole earth? Where they at? How are we really doing? And then Marvel goes, okay, we have to come up with why the Eternals didn't fucking help out with Thanos. And the fans, okay, so the aerospace engineers, not Reed Richards, okay, where's Reed Richards? Okay, those characters from Werewolf by Night?

People are going to be like, where are they at? Where are the monsters? Why aren't people getting abducted and all of that? The fans pour over this stuff and raise the expectations and raise the threshold for this stuff so high that no one can believe it. Welcome back to House of R. We're here to get alienated in our

I'm just being paranoid. I mean, this is the definition of an NMP for me. This is not my problem. And part of the reason why I have kind of cut bait on a lot of this is because that became the prevailing sentiment. But

It wasn't only that always. It's because the height of success looked like that. Like the height of the- It was the interconnected. Yes. Yeah. It's like heroin, honestly. Yes. They got addicted to it. They got addicted to it. Yes. Oh my God. It was this thing that they did to innovate superhero storytelling is they're like, all of our movies are connected. And we're like, what? And then every movie becomes a must-see movie and you've got to see it because we're all building up to Endgame, a film that I agree is like a massive success, obviously, by every metric. And then they're like,

okay, we're going to keep going, but it becomes too burdensome, especially when you add the TV component, to account for the whereabouts of every single person all the time inside this universe, which is partially why the multiverse is here. I'm remembering right now going to see Brave New World with Sean and Amanda, and at points it was so boring that Amanda was actually just looking at me, not to get my attention or to make me feel uncomfortable, but she was like, you're more interesting than what's the eighth minute of this fight, right?

And I was like, this is actually, she's right. Like I, I thought it'd be weird if we were looking at each other, but like, I was like, this is a pretty strange, this is a pretty boring film. And yet still,

He and I were like, stay in your seat. We have to wait. We have to wait for the post-credit sequence, which was the epitome of like, why don't you punch me in the dick? That post-credit sequence where he was like, what does he say? The multiverse or something. And I was just like, you got to be kidding me. No, he's like, the others are coming, right? Isn't that what he says? Yeah. God bless Tim Blake Nelson.

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There's this guy that's been making trouble, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's his calling card. And it's like, oh my God, I want to show up to the next movie because the Joker is coming. I didn't care if Batman Begins ruled. That's the thing. If the movie's good enough, if the show is good enough, you don't need the stinger. I understand that. But what I'm saying is there are very few comic book stories that don't lead to another comic book story.

It's very true. And Marvel was able to perfect that, which is why the MCU worked so well. When it did. When it did. The one differentiation, which I'm sure has been picked over, but having just read a bunch of comic books in the last two days, is that comic books...

are leading to the next issue featuring the same characters. They're not leading you unless you are at one of these, you know, culminating events, which happens, you know, I guess more frequently now. But when I was a kid, once every three to five years maybe, when a Secret Wars would come along. Well, it depends on the book. Like, you would have the X-Men that would have their deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you'd have, and they would cross over it with the characters in their world. But not common. Not huge. I mean, in the Daredevil run that I was reading, like,

It's seven characters, and then the occasional big bad who would show up, who you'd be like, I've never seen this person before, or they're kind of reintroducing a voice. Every once in a while, there'd be an asterisk at the bottom of the pages, like, go back to issue 402, find out why this guy's mad. Yes, but once Elektra comes into that run, she's just a huge part of that run for a year. And we're constantly like, what's up with Daredevil and Elektra? We're not like, hey, I wonder what...

I wonder what Thor is doing right now. It's like, no, we're in Hell's Kitchen. We're not thinking about Thor. He's not a part of this story and he's maybe never going to be a part of this story. And we were content with that. So the fact that that is basically, not only is it over, it's like not possible. But you were so jazzed if Thor showed up in the book though.

If Thor showed up out of nowhere, you were so fucking jazzed. I wasn't if Spider-Man was. A team up, there was nothing better than a fucking team up. Like, dude, you were so jazzed if you were reading that book and out of nowhere, Jack of Hearts is in that bitch. It needed to make sense, though. It needed to fit. No, you're not wrong. It needed to fit with the tone of the book that you were reading. But it also was just like a three-issue swing through.

You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is that like the material that's within any given frame of a comic book might cost $28 million to render on screen. Yeah. But you can be like...

and turn the page. You know what I mean? Comic book runs, even if I get an anthology, I was thinking about some of the ones that I was reading in the early 2000s, and Age of Apocalypse was the one that I loved the most. But I would zone out for pages on end or skip ahead a little bit. You could have a much more passive relationship with it, whereas this has not only conditioned us to be addicted to what's the next leak, what's the next rumor, what's the next spoiler, what's the next stinger, but it also feels like you don't

really understand what's going on if you haven't seen like you wouldn't understand Brave New World if you hadn't watched the Falcon show right you know like there is like a kind of almost a flaw in the storytelling mechanism now right and it's the other side of the thing that works so well for them is now people feel alienated like there's too much homework I remember my sister who like is not a huge comic book superhero person at all but she loves Spider-Man and she went to go see the first Tom Holland Spider-Man she's like what the fuck I need to have

another movie in order to understand this first Spider-Man movie with a new Spider-Man? What's going on? Let's talk about movies even more than we already have. Chris Ryan, what's the... Well, to your point... Yeah. Okay.

I think you can watch Logan, which is my favorite superhero movie of the last 25 years. I think Logan for me, like I think Dark Knight is like superior cinematically or whatever. And it's obviously stood the test of time. But I think Logan is a perfect superhero movie. I think it's the perfect performance of a character. It's probably my favorite superhero character, Wolverine. I think it's an incredible like beginning, middle end story that was just

until Deadpool and Wolverine ruined it. And then I just think Tonally had like just enough like there's a little bit of spaghetti western in this. There's a little bit of samurai movie in this. Yeah. But it's basically like a superhero movie and I just thought totally totally nailed it. And I think also in something like Logan like

Charles Xavier is there, like, you know, Patrick Stewart is there, but you don't need to even have watched all of the X-Men films in order to feel that movie. No. Absolutely. Van? It's Winter Soldier for me. And I'll tell you why. It's watching Winter Soldier with someone who didn't know about the comics. Right. And I realized that we were watching the movie for two different reasons. Right.

Right. Like Buck's thing comes off and it shows his face and the person I'm with goes, oh, that's his friend. Oh, my God. And I'm like, yeah, it's the one. And I'm like, oh, wait, you don't you don't get you don't know that. Like you did. You didn't put that together. Like you're not initiated. The story is working.

Like when, when that happens, you go, Oh my God, that's his friend. I'm like, yeah, this character has been around for years and years. The story is working. And when you look deeper into that, it,

is a completely different version of Steve Rogers than you get in the first movie, and they establish it right away, through story. Dive into water. Get out. Fuck everyone up on boat. Confident, clear in what he's supposed to do. Has been through it. He now gets what being Captain America is, and he's thrust into the situation where he's forced to

to question every single thing that the MCU has now made us believe. Like all of the stuff that they've set up, now he has to like litigate in his mind whether or not this is the right thing to do, which is the last thing that Captain America is supposed to, he always does the right thing. So putting him in a situation where he doesn't know what the right thing to do is or who the right people, so he has to question everything was just unbelievably compelling. And it took a character to be honest with you,

People never gave a fuck about, really, and made him into a legitimate movie icon. And so when I go back and think, what's the highest level of superhero storytelling? Dark Knight is better movie storytelling. Logan is definitely better movie storytelling. But superhero storytelling is probably Winter Soldier for me. Sean Fennessey.

I mean, I've watched The Dark Knight more than any of these movies for sure. And the most... I always say the most... I feel like all of us are like, let's not pick the obvious one. Yeah. Yeah. But I do want to acknowledge that the most hair standing up on my arms feeling is watching The Dark Knight. And a lot of it is oriented around Heath Ledger. But a lot of it is because of the great baggage we bring to the table with Joker and watching him become a different kind of Joker that then becomes the idea of that character in your head forever. Yeah. So...

I will say that the one, the movie that is similar to Logan, that is similar to Winter Soldier, that is similar to The Dark Knight, that I think is probably the best at this. Ray Lantern. Hancock? No, it's Spider-Man 2, which is not an origin story. You're close. It's a sequel. Like all of these other movies are sequels. You bring with it this understanding of where the character is. It feels the most like reading a comic book where you're reading a comic book

and a new character is introduced, a new villain is introduced, and you're like, oh shit, everything is different now. And the introduction of Doc Ock in that movie, the Alfred Molina performance, honestly, the way that the action works in a movie that was made in 2002, um,

is so far ahead of you know it is that like Spielbergian the mechanics of the filmmaking is incredible Tobey Maguire is perfectly cast he's not just Peter learning how to put on the suit the same way Daredevil is wearing like the black robes in the first you know he is Spider-Man at that point obviously I'm a big Raimi nerd so that's

part of what's influencing the decision. But, like, that movie holds up and still looks good and feels fun and doesn't feel weighed down by everything that we just spent 40 minutes complaining about. Yeah. You know, like, certainly, Toby showed up in future Spider-Man movies in the MCU, but...

that those movies can still stand on their own without any regret about where they took the characters even though Spider-Man 3 kind of sucks nevertheless I was about to say I can't believe you're defending Spider-Man 3 on on this podcast I'm not really um great picks uh I like I want to to add it to the mix I will say Avengers Endgame just as it's really Winter Soldier for me and I might talk about why for a second but like Avengers Endgame has like

an absolute singular accomplishment of years of filmmaking, of franchise building, of, um,

The way in which they got us to care about so many characters and brought it all together. And there's no way that should have worked. There's no way that, you know, people, again, people who aren't dialed all the way into superhero storytelling were invested in Avengers Endgame. Everyone went to go see Avengers Endgame because it was just the story of our time for several years. And I guess to wrap Winter Soldier, the thing about Winter Soldier is,

You mentioned that's his friend. I've heard you tell that story before. I love that story. Like the friendship, the love between Steve and Bucky in that movie, the character emotion forward thrust of the MCU at its best is

you know, the found family stuff, all the stuff that Mal and I love to cry over. Like that, that was a priority for Marvel beyond even like spectacle and all the other things that they had to get right. They were trying to tell the story of Tony Stark, a broken man, or, you know, Steve Rogers, a guy just trying to do right in the world and, and help his,

friend. And so that emotional buy-in that we got, it wasn't just sort of like the shock and awe of like, this looks sick or whatever. And Spider-Man 2 has it and Logan has it, right? Logan, this like broken man at the end of his life, that emotional investment we have in that. Or Spider-Man 2, I mean, we're about to, in a second, very briefly run through like some timeline stuff, but that's sort of like everyone on the subway helps the

Spider-Man in a post 9-11 New York is, is an iconic cinematic moment. And so all of these things exist. They're all different flavors though. They're all different flavors. They hit at different times, all the movies that we picked. And I guess my question is talking about all the things that we celebrate and

Coming off the back of like the biggest movie of this year so far is Captain America Brave New World. By a wide margin. That is the biggest box office success of the year. Do you know what the number three highest grossing movie in America is this year? What is it? One of Them Days. Wow. That's a good movie. It is a good movie, but that's interesting. Yeah. So the question is like,

I guess the reason I want to sort of get to the bottom of what is good superhero storytelling or how do we fix it is that maybe that like nostalgia thing that the MCU is pulling on right now. How do we get back to these? Will we ever get back to? To me, it's... These make comic book movies great again? Is that... You said it, not me. No, no, no. But like,

But like what is the monoculture? What are we looking for? Is it Landman? Is it Traders? I don't even know. Like is it TikTok? Like is it Severance? Like what is it, you know? I have a terrible answer, but I can't escape it is that politics is the monoculture now. Okay. And that that is the thing that like if you were going into a room and you were going to think of one topic that at least everyone would have an opinion on or have an experience with. I think the opposite is true for many people right now.

I think many people are working very hard to not get it. I think maybe it has the biggest mind share of anything that exists in the world right now, that you could get the most people to talk about it. Okay, let me rephrase it. No, I think you can rephrase it and, you know, retreat from your take. But I think it's inescapably true. If you walk in anywhere right now, like, I don't know that people don't want to talk about it, but you cannot escape discussing it.

you can't you are in a way that like when I'm trying to think of something else like okay the Kendrick Lamar Drake battle we got monoculturally on that we got a little we did we got it got there Super Bowl that halftime show yeah we got yeah that's the bar right there we got there on it but like

every single place that at least I go, and maybe people know this, know who, hey, what you think that Trump, we talk about Trump, we talk about the Democrats, we talk about Tesla, we talk about Elon Musk. It's so funny. This is not my experience. And it's because I think

Everything has folded into politics. Politics has captured Hollywood. Politics has captured music. But you're on CNN talking about this. They know you and they know what your interests are. I wasn't trying to make up blankets. I know that you are like, I can't do the Department of Education every day. Not only can I not, I feel like the people who are at a similar station in my life, the parents I run into dropping my kid off at school, they do not want to talk about that. Because they're not going to.

that. If you bring that up, I genuinely think there's fear that you might stumble into someone who disagrees with you and find yourself having a conversation. Yeah, I think people don't want that. I wasn't going to retreat. I was going to reshape it by saying, I think that's getting such a disproportionate amount of coverage and also whether it's your personal experience, my personal experience, a lot of people are like, I'm not

I'm always sub-tutaneously aware of what is going on in that way. That the idea of being like, so what's up with Thanos? Is he still out there? I don't think it's a one-to-one, but I do think that there was a moment where like,

We would do 10 pods a week about this. And now I don't know. There's definitely been a sea change. When I talk about Miss, I don't know that politics is going to be my answer, though. I think it's not a bad answer, though. I've had the experience that Sean has had of people are just like, I can't talk about it right now. Like, I'm still grieving. I'll get to it eventually. You know what I mean? Sort of thing.

But like I think that what I miss about the monoculture, which is all but evaporated, is like the ability to talk to people about Game of Thrones every week or whatever. Like that common cause that we could find around silly things. But story matters to me. Like all of that has washed away definitely.

until we're just siloed into these two sides in this ideological battle. And so we don't have these other things that unite us as like, we all love whatever the biggest show on TV is right now. That's not happening anymore. And I think we're worse off for that. Because even, we talk about Yellowstone. I would watch Yellowstone and I would get into Yellowstone, right? There were people who didn't like Yellowstone

for philosophical reasons because of what they felt like Taylor Sharon is trying to say to America. We talked about this a little bit about Lioness and we laugh about it, right? We laugh about some of the times that he injects his politics into the show a little bit. But to me, it's about badass CIA chicks kicking ass. And there's nothing political about it.

about it. You know what I'm saying? It's about the shit that I like. Chicks doing coups. You know what I'm saying? So to me, I don't feel like, yeah, I had to listen to a three-minute monologue on George W. Bush, but it was worth it. So I think a lot of this stuff is changing, but in terms of the MCU, I will say this.

If anything has the opportunity to... Unite a nation. It's that. And I'll tell you why. It's because we're going to get some version of our heroes for as long as we're here. We're going to get some version of...

These movies aren't about superheroes. They're about human beings who are super. And if you approach the storytelling from that standpoint, you will win. If you approach this storytelling, God's first, people last, you will lose.

And Marvel, to me, got into a situation where they started doing that. God's first. When they started going God's first. Shouldn't have ever gone to space. Like, to me, if you do it that way, that's when you lose the character. What do you think it is? Or do you have like a prescription for the monoculture thing?

I think both Taylor Swift and the NFL are significantly by orders of magnitude bigger than the MCU and politics. I think there are other things in the culture that are bigger and more easily understood. And I think also, even though I am as guilty of this as anybody alive, using the box office to kind of indicate what the monoculture could be. I mean, we're talking – the box office represents like –

8% of America now? Like, it is such, relative to 50 years ago. Can I say one thing about Taylor Swift and the NFL real quick, though? I was in a room of people watching the Super Bowl, right? And it was a room full of people who were Eagles fans. No one loves the Eagles. Do you know why they were rooting against the Eagles? Because they hate Taylor Swift. Because they think that the Chiefs were magnets.

Oh. They were cheering for the Eagles. Excuse me, they were cheering for the Eagles. They were cheering for the Eagles. I think that's a little bit more complicated, though. But what I'm telling you is politics has heavily infected. This is a different conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. And that's been true in the NFL for 10 years. Like, post-Kaepernick. Given my lack of access to the core of the NFL, my apologies to you and to Bill and to Ringer. I will say that Taylor Swift, as like an example of... Oh, here we go.

Yeah. Girlhood. No. People going to the Eros tour and just like having... Or Beyonce's tour and just like having this like incredible time, this bonding over friendship bracelets and lyrics knowing and singing together and all that sort of stuff and not having a conversation about, you know, do you like Trump or not? Like there were... That was Sean at the Eros tour going around. I did not attend. I mean, obviously...

Obviously, Taylor Swift, well, you'll be at the next one, right? The next tour as a girl band. I might be. I mean, and that's sort of my point is that that is also very generationally powerful. Right. Yeah. The way that some movies used to be. Now it's that. That's the sort of thing. I use both examples for a reason, though, because they're kind of the polarity of experience. Like one, a very masculine thing that has now drawn in a lot of women and one, a very historically feminine thing that has drawn in a lot of men. Sure.

Okay. It is, but it's true. It is, but it's true. No, no, no. I agree with you. I know because I look at consumption data on podcasts at this company. Like if you look at demographics, those things matter. And so when you're thinking about what represents a mono, a single, there's pretty much nothing that appeals to all white, black,

Asian, across the whole spectrum, plus men and women, plus ages up and down, nine to 85. There isn't anything, but the truth is, there never was. There was never a thing that appealed to everybody. We look back on Madonna and Prince and U2 and Bruce Springsteen, and we think, oh yeah, music used to be one thing. It never was. You know what it feels like, though? It feels like, every time we talk about this, I talk about Terminator 2, Judgment Day, because it felt like

That movie, when it was coming out, was all-encompassing. You were watching on TV. You were passing a billboard, and it was Arnold Schwarzenegger. You were watching Arnold Schwarzenegger on the thing. You were watching MTV, and it was You Will Be Mine. And it was everywhere. And you just got to a point to where you went, I have to see it.

I must see it because everyone is talking about the exact same movie. And the movie is everywhere. Titanic. You go to McDonald's, it's in the cup and it's the whole deal. And it seemed like everybody was talking about the same thing. And I can't think of things that are like that anymore. Now, Endgame was different because... Endgame and Thrones feels like the end of it. It's the same time. Yeah. Endgame and Game of Thrones ending, that's...

It for the monoculture. I guess the two things that those had in common were an incredibly rabid pre-existing fan base. Correct. Right. Build up over time through the books and the early seasons of the show or the early movies of the MCU that then...

like, it went through and harvested normies into caring. Either converted them into hardcore fans or had the, like, it says endgame, so I'm sure something important's going to happen, so I'm going to go. Also, both of those stories were told over a 10-year period. We could all cling to them. A lot of what we're talking about is durational. Yeah, but we're not building anything. Biggest movie of the year came out six weeks ago or whatever. Feels like it didn't happen. Exactly. I know. And I think...

The one thing that I'll add to politics to Taylor Swift in the NFL is, of course, like social media, TikTok reels, however you choose to consume it. But I watched a reel of a TikTok or whatever this morning where kids were being asked to fill in the blanks of in the way that we used to do with movie quotes with like famous TikTok audio. It was just like they would stop the TikTok audio in the middle. And it's like, how does this end? And they all knew all of it.

You know what I mean? So that's the thing. That's a great uniter as well as the meme-ification. We talk about this when we talk about White Lotus, the way that White Lotus has weaponized not only the whodunit and the character studies, but also the memes. And if you see something memed enough, if something has like a fun dance, you know, salt burn or whatever the case may be, you got to understand the memes. So you have to watch the thing. To me, that's what monoculture really is. It's really...

like cultural FOMO peer pressure yeah it's like you don't want to be left out I post the white lotus just Sam's face on there

And there are people in the comments that are going, laugh, I can't believe this, I can't believe that. And then there are other people that are going, yo, what show is this? Like, what are y'all talking about? And then they start to freak out. People did that with Lioness with us too. That was me. What is this, guys? Can I watch it too? Yeah, it was kicking ass. Okay, so let's wrap up and say there's...

The era that we're in right now of superhero storytelling is what I'm calling Trump 2.0. Great stuff. Here we go. What are we looking for? Are we looking for optimistic escape or grim, dark reality or some combination of the two? So Captain America Brave New World is a film that came out this year. I don't know if you remember that. James Gunn is taking on DC, right? Downey's returning to the MCU.

New beginnings for Marvel with Fantastic Four and Thunderbolts. On TV, we have The Penguin, which hit. Ferrell's just scooping up awards for it, you know? Hit outside of the core audience. Agatha, mixed. Daredevil, mixed. Upcoming, we've got

The return of David Lindelof, Lanterns, is coming. I'm paying attention to that. Close attention. Can't miss. I will be so surprised. I am monitoring that situation very closely. I've always liked Green Lantern. I love the casting so far. That's the rare comic book thing where I'm like, I will devote all 10 hours that I need to to that show. To your question of like,

We don't watch things that don't feed into the next thing. I mean, not to like constantly praise Damon Lindelof, but the way in which Watchmen universally praise and he's like, I'm not doing a season two. And they just like, let it be. And now they're coming back and doing his different thing, different same, same different, but like, it's great. Yeah.

There's a Waller show, Booster Gold show, Paradise Lost. Like this is what's on DC's mind. Marvel, they got to dump. I lied. There's one more triage project and it's Ironheart, which has been on the shelf for literally years that they have to dump on Hulu one weekend at some point. They're not dumped that system.

They dumped Echo. Yeah, well, we'll talk about that later. They did dump Echo. They forgot about Echo. They did dump, yeah. They dumped Echo. Yeah. And Wonder Man's coming, Vision Quest. Vision Quest, yeah. And a Punisher special presentation. Written by Burnfall, right? Co-written, at least. Yeah. It's going to be so violent. It is exciting. So, yeah, of all these things, is it Lanterns? What are we most excited for that is upcoming? Thunderbolts.

Thunderbolts to me, first of all, a really interesting character in this century, like super interesting character and a more contemporary character, a character that probably has a little bit more, uh,

uh, unformed real estate because people are going to be, people are going to think that, you know, they don't have any history with the century. So they're going to think that he maybe was invented for the movie or whatever, you know, there holds a dichotomy between the century and his alter ego and all that stuff. I think that's going to be really interesting. Lewis Pullman season. Yeah. Okay. Love them. Um,

Reminds me of his dad. Yeah. That's when the Netbo stuff works. I'm like, oh, look at Lone Star. He has like very different energy, but similar features. That's how I feel about Jack Quaid. I was informed on a podcast that he's dating Kaia Gerber.

which is certainly news. She's a big reader. Yeah. Big reader? Yeah. She has a book club. This is House of R. But because of that and because of the ragtag bunch of characters and really the commitment to the movie, they're committing to the tone of this movie. Yeah. I think if it works...

then that to me will prove that the MCU knows how to do storytelling. And talking about, I mean, we were saying, we were saying broadly, so little has worked post end game. Jelena Belova has worked. That's worked, you know, and Bucky continues to work, you know, and then we'll talk about. He's really kind of, he's the, he's the constant character right now. That's kind of holding down the MCU. They, they want it to be. Yeah. It's so funny that that worked out that way.

It worked out in the complete opposite way. One guy said, I can't do any more of this superhero stuff. It's because of what Sean talked about with Sebastian Stan is he's gone out and done such good work outside of it that weirdly his stock has risen within the MCU itself. I'm probably...

I've been hurt too many times. So if I'm being honest, I want the big heartbreak and I'm sticking around for X-Men. And it's way down the line. Sadie Sink didn't deny that she was Jean Grey. You're right. And so I feel like they're starting to get going with that. It's my favorite comic book by far. It's my favorite characters by far. It's the reason why I ever got into this stuff in the first place. So I will be...

attending class until then. Do you want to put that on? Mallory will get mad at me that I didn't mention. Trump 3.0? There is a Spider-Man movie coming also, allegedly. Sean Fetsey. I think Spider, excuse me, I think Superman is the most important movie of the year, maybe the most important movie of the decade for the movie industry. I think it is potentially

potentially the swing pivot moment for all comic book storytelling because it allows it to be something that isn't Marvel going forward. If it does not work, the results are like pretty catastrophic for a studio that is now clearly hinging its at least short-term future on DC and James Gunn. And Dune. Just kidding. And Dune. But Dune in theory is probably, if not over, sort of over in 18 months. Yeah.

But that's the thing, you know? Do you think that Marvel wants Superman to work? A hundred percent. I think so too. He has talked about this and I believe him. I believe him. Like he, when Wonder Woman hits,

And everyone's like, oh, DC got a female-led superhero movie out before Marvel. And Spikey's like, this is good for my business. 100%. Yeah. I think it really benefits them because it renews interest in that kind of storytelling. Right. And that kind of storytelling has never been at a lower flow than it is right now since whatever, probably since Captain America, the first Avenger. So, you know, in addition to that, I just really like James Gunn and I like all of his movies and I want him to succeed however complicated you feel about him and the way that he communicates online. Yeah.

I think he's like tremendously creative and he comes from the kind of background and does the kind of thing that I was advocating for earlier. He is a one-stop shop.

visionary person who has a very clear tone, who really understands the characters and cares about them, and also wants to be a little inventive, wants to give you something a little new every time he does something. So Fantastic Four might be great. Thunderbolts might be great. If they're great, that's great. I'll be happy to sing their praises on pods. But if Superman bricks and everyone's like... It's fucked. Yeah, it's fucked. It's kind of dark. You know who's going to save cinema? Nick Holtz.

Nicole's is Lex Luthor. Believe. You're Cuck Daddy. You know. Cuck Daddy? He's trying to hurt my feelings. Oh my lord. For months now by calling. Oh, Nosferatu? Oh, Nosferatu. Nosferatu, juror number two. Yeah, that's right. And then what was his third Cuck performance? I mean, obviously Fury Road, one of the ultimate Cucks. The menu.

The menu? Cucked? Oh, he cucked the fuck out of that one. I will say that the warm bodies? Cuck? Stop. Stop. Stop. Beast? Beast is a fucking cuck. Stop. Wait a minute. He's the premier cuck in American cinema. He's a war boy. Come on. He's a cuck. He's from the Skins? The anti-cuck. Yeah, seriously. I haven't seen that program. I never saw that. Thank you to the expert Chris Cullen. Okay.

I was just going to say that Gunn's framing of the production of Superman, which I know has had some are we sure it's going to be good kind of stuff going. His whole we need a script idea

I'm not shooting this until like, I know what it's going to be that we've got that part dialed is the thing that people need to worry more about them making parallax view references in and stuff like that. Like now that I've seen the movie that I made, it kind of reminds me a little bit of three days of the condor. Like, does it, sir? That's fine. But like,

rather than say that in advance and be like, what it's, it's kind of like, you know, cheers meets, you know, like it should be, we actually wrote. Cheers meets what? I want to hear this. What's your pitch? Cheers. Yeah. Cheers meets what? Cheers meets fire walk with me. No. No.

Wait, why is that actually happening? That was the Thunderbolts runway. That was perfect for that. Homer is a bartender forever. What was I saying? Write good scripts and make sure they're finished before you shoot them. Yeah, okay. So make good shows, make good films, and we'll watch them. So in summation... What's for you? What's for you? What's weird to me is looking at this, I have been...

I mean, the next The Batman movie, obviously, is the Matt Reeves Batman movie. Do you feel like that's a closed thing, though? Yeah. Because if it doesn't work, if it is less good than The Batman, that's kind of okay, right? They can just move on. But that's the thing you're most looking forward to. What's interesting to me, in The Batman, Lanterns, Superman, question mark,

Thunderbolt's definitely... It's more DC stuff than it is Marvel stuff for me right now. And I've been in the Marvel camp for so long. DC has more wonder, more untapped territory. I just think that... I think lanterns is hugely important for comic book storytelling on TV. And I think, to Sean's point, save cinema, see Superman. Can I say something about the Batman, though? Yeah. For as good as the Batman was...

And I've come to appreciate the movie. I know. I love that you've turned around on it. I have. We did a big pick about it, the three of us. We loved it. That was a tough pot. Yeah.

Sometimes it only takes me watching something 10 times before I can enjoy it. I was like, how are you not all in on this? It was like when we went to go see Nope, and I was like, what the fuck, dude? I need you. I need you on this. Nah, man. The Batman, to me, just is a lot of brooding. I don't like brooding, motherfuckers. I don't like pluck. I don't like brooding. Okay? You're saving the city. Let's be happy about it. Get your ass up. All right. Now, look. So, like...

As if Matt Murdock and Daredevil Netflix doesn't brood the shit out of that. You know what he does? What?

He gets some bitches, though. He flirts. So he's getting pleasure in his life. And he honestly respects Latvian heritage. Yeah, he's getting pleasure in his life. Honey cakes. Yeah, like your Batman was all over the place. But I'm saying, though, the movie for his- Selina Kyle? Yeah, she was hot. The movie for as important as what it was, strangely insignificant. You don't think so? Because when we talk about films- You mentioned the penguin. And I feel like the penguin-

is as important. Yes. It's like super important to the Batman. It's like they're equally weighted, which is bizarre, but true. But it's a Batman movie about probably... Not the penguin inside the movie. I think the penguin TV show and the Batman film are like... Right. The penguin actually made the Batman... More important. Yeah, more important. But I'm saying like,

That movie, to me, I'm still shocked. I don't know if people know how to approach that version of Batman quite yet. Because I'm not sure if people are glomming on to it. They want the second movie. That movie is more akin to Batman Begins to where people were kind of like... Because Batman Begins is not like a huge box office hit. But people were still kind of like, hmm, new Batman, what are they doing? Hmm.

So I'm wondering if they take too long to follow up with it, if the movie can maintain the interest from people. I see it the same way that Chris describes Superman, which is I think that Reeves is a perfectionist and very intent on control and was not going to make the movie until he felt like he was ready to make the movie. And so I don't think you can wait too long

On things like Batman. Yeah. I think on Thunderbolts you could have waited too long. If you were like, hey, you guys, did you remember Taskmaster? You know, your favorite character? Yeah. Like we don't know who these people are, but Batman is Batman. Batman's always going to be Batman. And it's Robert Pattinson. So. Yeah. I think the only thing that I'm worried about with the Batman is like Gunn's other Batman plans muddying the waters in some way. They should wait. They really should. They should wait. Okay.

So I think we solved superhero storytelling in under two hours. I have more Taylor Swift takes if you want. Anytime. Come back to House of R for your Taylor Swift takes. I like her. I'm just saying. I didn't used to. I didn't used to, man. But I like her, man. Yeah. Yeah, I like her. Yeah. Were you suspicious of her because she was white? Yeah, for sure. That starts everything. You guys have been able to bypass that throughout the years.

It's been years. Oh, it took a while.

It's been years. No. It took, oh, not me and you. Yeah. I'm talking about these two. Taylor? No. You're white privilege. My white privilege. That Van had to get over. We've had to connect on different things. Like the central intelligence agency. We connected on this. And then me and Sean have connected on several different movie disagreements. That's true. I've been present for them. That's always really pleasant. We are a philosophical construct. Thank you for coming to this episode of The Watch. Yes.

You said you wanted a more freewheeling pod for me. Big picture. And House of R. I even own my laptop. That's how freeform this was. But you did all the research and I'm so proud of you for that. I really wanted you to be in the Rogan's O where you're like, Steve, put that up there. What did the CIA, did they have female assassins?

Google that. Yeah. Joanna Robson and Joe Rogan, the Venn diagram. So thanks to Steve Allman, as mentioned. Thanks to our junior Rick Wapow. Thanks to Joe Mia Dinara on social. Thanks to John Richter. Thanks to you. Thanks. Nice job today. Great job. Thanks for coming. Thank you for having us. Thanks to Molly Rubin in absentia. And we'll see you next week for Yellow Jackets and more Daredevil. Bye.