‘Superman’ Is Here to Save the Day. Are We Saved?

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I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Duffins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Superman. There is a new Superman movie in the world directed by James Gunn.

We will talk about it on this episode before we get into our conversation about the movie, which we just seen last night. There was a small bit of movie news, which is that Dune Part 3 is real. It is happening. It is not called Dune Messiah.

It is called Dune colon Part 3. Timothy Chalamet is in the movie. It's starting production, and it has been dated officially for December 16, 2026. This is notable because it is the same day as Avengers Doomsday, which is after Fantastic Four, The First Steps, the next Marvel movie.

There will be an 18-month gap between Marvel movies. And these two movies, which are both huge in their own way, are going toe-to-toe. For now. This is a real, like you can't, this is corporate spreadsheets, and that's fine.

And it's our job, I guess, to pay attention to their press releases. But yeah, this is 18 months away. I would imagine that there will be some synergies or best opportunities. If you had to guess, one of the movies moves.

Which one moves? Avengers. I agree. Yeah, because...

But can it afford to move? Can they go two years without a movie? Oh, and you don't think it'll be done in time? You don't think they can move it up to November?

Oh, well, there was a report this week that there is no third act in the movie right now, which is in production. What's different is what I would say. That is the problem. That is the problem.

Of course it's the problem, but it hasn't stopped ever releasing every other movie. That is our elegant segue to Superman, because James Gunn made some news in a Rolling Stone interview a couple of weeks ago, in which he said that the problem with most comic book movies these days is that they go into production without a finished script. That's not something he wants to do with what he's doing at DC movies. He wants to have a completed script that he wants to shoot, or that he'll have another filmmaker shoot.

Twice a day, I am a stop clock. I agree with James Gunn, I guess. Maybe once. But if we're doing military time, sure.

Yeah, I think it's a good idea to go to make a movie with a finished script. Just writ large. It doesn't seem like a good idea. I actually don't know enough about the Marvel process of this one.

I have to assume someone submits something that is completed, but then everyone agrees they're not happy with, but is good enough to begin filming. Welcome aboard V-Rail. Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sit, play, post, takes, view, and enjoy.

V-Rail, love the way. So let's just talk about Superman. Superman has been described as the most important movie of the summer, maybe the most important movie of the year, certainly the most important movie, at least for now, for the comic book movie industrial complex. We've been doing this for nigh 25 years, since Spider-Man in 2000, 2002, and this has been in some ways the lifeblood of American movies, and in other ways the bane of American movies.

It's been a fairly dark five to ten years. Superman is written and directed by Gunn, his seventh feature film, clearly very inspired by All-Star Superman, which is a Grant Morrison run of the comic book from about 20 years ago. It is the first film in the DCU, now that they have shuttered the DCEU, which is the extended universe that Zack Snyder was somewhat responsible for. It stars David Korn-Sweat as Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Holt as Lex Luthor, Eddie the Fee, Anthony Kerrigan, Nathan Fillion, Isabel Merced.

The logline of the movie is this. When Superman gets thrown into conflicts at home and abroad, his actions are questioned, giving technically an air Lex Luthor the opportunity to get the man to steal out of the way for good. Will intrepid reporter Lois Lane and Superman's four-legged companion, Crypto, be able to help him before it's too late? What did you think of Superman?

It works. It works. And honestly, half of the movie I was pleasantly surprised by. The other half, I am famously and committedly allergic to James Gunn's brand of filmmaking and certainly most of his sensibilities.

And I think some of that was my allergic... Some of what doesn't work is my allergic reaction, and some of what doesn't work is choices that I don't think pan out that perhaps mean I'm right, but that's fine. But I think he is great, she is great. Nicholas Holt is wonderful, you know, despite whatever's going on with that character.

And so if you get the three main leads and you get the chemistry, I think, for me at least, the rest falls into place around it. Yeah, I think it's a great movie. I don't know if it's a perfect movie. It's not a perfect movie.

I do think it is a really great Superman movie, and those are really hard to do, which we've seen. I think you could make the case that there has not been a great Superman movie since Richard Donner's Superman. I'm very fond of Superman 2, particularly Donner's cut of Superman 2, and the 1980 movie, which you and I both watched this week, or 78 movie, I should say, cast a very long shadow over Superman at the movies. And I give them a lot of credit for finding ways to echo and parallel the success of that movie and replicating really none of it.

That this has the feel, because of the John Williams score, a typical iconography of the suit and the hopefulness of the character. But the way that the story is told, the way that it looks, the performance style, the writing, and the desire to, I think, reflect the real world for better or worse, makes this a completely different kind of comic book movie. And there are a lot of things that he attempts to do that I feel comfortable saying do not work, but I'm really fascinated and interested, and in many ways rooting for the fact that he did do them. And how we unpack that would be probably a big part of this conversation, but I came away just really impressed with his willingness to try a lot of things inside of what is typically considered a very boring container of Superman.

I think what he does with Superman character and how he pays homage to the 1978, and more broadly to the idea of Superman in our minds, but also updates him for 2025. That is a good, smart decision. And he does something with the sincerity and almost like the dullness of the character, where that's the danger, right? If you don't figure out how to make Superman compelling, he solves it.

And it is, I mean, it's sentimental in the right way. Like, I think the way he positions him against both Lex Luthor and the various villains, but also just the world and Superman himself is smart. And I completely know that's a really hard thing to do. So I agree with you in that sense.

Like, he makes the most important decisions, the right most important decisions. Yeah. I think, let's talk about the very specific decisions. You know, I made a list of all the things I think this movie does right, and all the things this movie I don't think does very well.

I'd like to talk through most of them with you. In general, I think this is pretty thrilling, a good setup for the future of these movies. I want to enjoy it as a standalone experience. Well, yes, and I would argue that some of the you in DCU creeping in throughout this movie, in like all the various ways that that takes shape, is what is frustrating about it to me.

Not even frustrating, but when I checked out, when I was like, oh, you're doing this now, okay. And also, notably, when the movie gets away from Superman, and from Lois, and from Lex Luthor, who I thought were great. So part of my notes, the first thing that it does well, and we will be spoiling this movie. This is one of the biggest movies of the year.

If you like a movie podcast, I presume you're at least someone interested in Superman. Maybe you'll see it. If you don't, that's okay. You can listen to this conversation anyway.

Movie jumps in need to rest. There is no real backstory in this movie. There's no origin. There is a title card.

There's so much text. And I am not, I'm a visual learner, except for the title cards explaining like the rogue setups of superhero and sci-fi movies. And I said to you, oh, no, but I did my best. I sat there and I was like, I'm going to absorb every word.

I felt this was styled in like three centuries, three. Three centuries ago, this happened. Yes. Three decades ago, this happened.

Right. So, but, you know, I liked the repetitive structure. There's almost like something for me to hold on to framework wise to remember what was going on. But I was nervous about the amount of information that was being conveyed to me by a type in a short amount of time.

So to me, I was relieved by that because it was a takeout. It was a suggestion that you were going to get a Star Wars-esque scroll. But in fact, like it actually operates in the same way. The same way that Star Wars kind of just thrusts you into the world.

And in the first Star Wars film, you're just on a ship with Darth Vader and we're off in the middle of the story. This movie operates very similarly. There is a great amount of history around metahumans and a Kryptonian who has arrived on this planet. Right.

But the movie more or less assumes you know all that. And so where we start is Superman has just lost a battle. Yeah. Which is unfathomable in general because he's Superman.

Right. And by the time you get to the end of that title sequence, it's like three minutes ago. Yes. It's three centuries, three decades, three years, three months.

And then when it goes on, you realize like, okay, like maybe I'm not going to have to have every bit of this memorized. But I did feel that very familiar MCU comic book, like homework panic. I'm like, oh God, like I got to, I have to. And, and it does effectively communicate by the end of the sequence.

Like, oh no, you don't actually have to remember the names of both big countries. Yes. Gunn has talked very openly about not wanting to do this. And that he doesn't feel that we need to see the pearls thrown across the street in the Batman origin story.

We don't need to see, you know, all these images that come with superhero origins. He wants them more or less dispensed with images. Now I wouldn't say he's subverting them. He is still working in more or less canonical mode of Superman.

Lex Luthor is an evil billionaire who wants to destroy Superman. Lois Lane is a daily planet reporter who, you know, is a fiercely independent woman who also can't help but fall in love with Clark slash Superman. Jen Yeltsin is the sidekick in the office. There's a fun dog.

Like it is all still Superman. And also speaking like canonically, you do within five minutes after that, you know, Superman, after the title sequence, you see a very like a familiar image like recreated for this movie with a funny cameo that speaks to the lore and the origin story of this. So it's like, it's still using the portrait solitude in this movie, for example. So all that stuff is there.

The way that it's framed is slightly different from the Donner version, for example, in that it's very pop. It's very colorful. It's silly at times. But I would argue maybe like a little bit less internet meme and a little bit more goofball sense of humor, which is kind of guns home.

Yes, it's definitely goofy. And that comes like really, really quickly in the movie. You find right away with the introduction of Crypto, the dog and the way that Superman interacts with his dog, that this is, this has been said, this is not an original plot, but this is a two hour Saturday morning cartoon. And if that is interesting to you as a framework and a tonal choice for this movie, I think you will love this movie.

If you liked Saturday morning cartoons as a kid in that it's like, it's dangerous, but not violent. It's epic, but not stuffy. It's colorful and not washed out or overly serious. And it kind of moves and it's episodic.

There's a villain. The villain needs to be dispensed with. There will be another adventure tomorrow. And it's just a good choice.

It's just a good choice for Superman. It's a good choice to feel like comic books. It's a good choice to feel like cartoons. Not everybody does, but the MCU actually never really felt like a comic book.

The way that it was serialized feels like comic book storytelling, but watching the movies, I didn't feel like I was reading a comic. This feels like reading a comic or watching a cartoon. And I give a breath for that. That's not easy to replicate.

It's a unique experience watching that stuff and consuming that stuff. To me, a person who occasionally watched Saturday morning cartoons, doesn't really read comic books, has lived in the last 20 years of this pop culture moment. I guess I wouldn't say it stand to me as a Saturday morning cartoon, but it felt familiar If that makes any sense of trying to restructure and recreate, it's definitely someone who's lived in the muck of this stuff and has an idea of it and does think it's also really fun. And then to your point about it being pop and being colorful, I do think half of the visual choices that are made in creating this world are excellent.

And I mean, it's obviously both stylistically and technologically very, very different from Richard Donner in 1978, but there's a sense that Superman is operating in a real place for most of the time, even if it's in a made-up town. And that kind of leaps off the screen, pun intended or non-intended, I guess. It's just more real. Yeah, and sets up a contrast with the other half of the film.

Yeah, we'll get there. I think my single favorite choice in the movie is the characterization of Superman. This is a very contemporary way to frame this character, who can be considered boring. Superman, you know, his origins are from Jewish creators.

It's an alien story. It's a story about being an outsider. It's about failure to fit in. It's about an aspiration to goodness that is, in theory, inside all people, but that he kind of represents, he kind of externalizes the potential of the human experience.

This Superman is kind of like that, but also a Superman of himself. And this is an emo Superman. He never really had this kind of Superman before. And you see it very early on in the film, after that first series of exchanges in Antarctica, when Clark comes back, he's been recharged, and he conducts an interview with Lois Lane in her apartment.

Right. And he conducts an interview as Superman, and they're together, and she knows he's Superman. So we've kind of defended the whole, yes, all of that is gone. Which I thought was a good choice, so that we don't have to go through the, like, will they, won't they, will she, won't she realize what's going on here stuff.

But watching them talk, watching his kind of angst, his nervousness, his frustration with the way that he's perceived in the world. And then, this is something you wouldn't know if you didn't do what I did, but last night I was looking for a song on the soundtrack, and I found the official Spotify playlist. And this probably would annoy you to no end, but James Gunn made a specific playlist for every single character. And I looked at the songs that he chose as, like, Clark songs.

And they're all, like, early 2000s emo and pop-punk. And that kind of perfectly made the character sense to me. This is a Superman who listens to All Time Low. And, you know, he's the dashboard confessional Superman.

It's in the text. They're arguing about, like, you know. They're having a punk rock conversation. Exactly.

And Clark thinks that he's punk, and he's definitely not. And Lois is actually, like, yelling about pants. Like, they play that on the radio. You know, and he's like, well, that means to lots of people.

That's one of the great scenes of the movie. Very charming. Like, very funny. And they have real chemistry.

But yeah, I agree. Like, the struggle is, like, is internal. As much as it is. It's mirrored both, like, who am I supposed to be to myself, but also to everybody else.

Which, in some ways, is, like, a very familiar superhero thing. Of, like, oh, do people want me to do this? Do people not want me to do this? Like, how do we, you know, what are my superpowers?

Like, how should I use them? But it is handled. It's done definitely and with a lot of, like, care in this. So you actually do believe that Superman is just, like, trying to figure things out.

You know, he's just, like, he's early 30s. He's trying to get in touch with his feelings. He has two different, like, dad figures who have taught him different ways of what to be. Like, it's very smart and very well realized.

It's a great choice. I was, as you know, I was genuinely concerned about this movie. I was really down on the first two trailers. I didn't really understand the David Korn's thing.

And now I understand it. I understand it so powerfully. He was a very good choice for this because he's not Henry Cavill. You know, he is not made of absolute iron and has, like, a lantern jaw.

That's not what the Superman is. He's still the most powerful being on Earth and is going to save the day. And it's all American handsome. Very handsome and fits the mold.

But there's something vulnerable about him. They have humanized the inhuman. That's kind of the idea of this movie. And I think it works really well.

And it is, like, it's the modern condition. You know? Sure. Everyone is just more sensitive now than they were 50 years ago.

Than they were 100 years ago when the character was created. We don't have as much of a stiff upper lip than we might imagine was, like, a character of the country or at least the American man. So I liked it. I really liked it.

It also allows Lois to be less helpless and more just more the hero. more Rachel Brosnan if Superman is having a crisis of confidence Lois knows what's up Lois is our girl but I normally mean that in a rude way and I think that she's actually a great character and performance I mean obviously the journalistic out there we should go through that at some point Amanda's journalism corner there's a lot here I also wanted to talk about her copy editing process on the ship but that's a good thing anyway journalism is done in this movie I'll have you know it is done and she also like drives you know like an iMac ship so she gets to do all sorts of things okay this is something that you might not like but I find to be a fascinating component of the movie it is related yeah no it's definitely like I see it I know what you're saying I you know it's let me say that you can quibble not that I quibble with it this movie helped me understand why I am so allergic to so much of James Gunn's output including all of his performance this is the apotheosis though of that condition so in the movie James Gunn is Superman it's unmistakable there is a plot in this movie where Superman comes under fire because a piece of his past related to his parents is unearthed by a vicious enemy who then uses the nefarious and boundless evils of internet troll armies to repeatedly misinterpret to the public the reputation and standing of quote unquote the last good man in society and this is exactly what happened at least in his perception to James Gunn in 2018 he was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy volume 3 by Disney because old tweets were on earth and he was roundly castigated and pushed out of comfortable society now I think better judgment prevailed on Disney's part he was rehired obviously the cast of that movie was furious because they love him and he also helped make their careers in some ways with those movies but this telling is simultaneously a very personal exorcism of a publicly embarrassing moment for him and also just kind of like revenge porn against Disney and I think that's fascinating like it's not happening in the biggest movie of the summer is to me if you want a tourism if you want a personal vision he did that yeah I don't disagree I think that there is just an undertone or maybe not even under of main character energy and great madness that is self-pitying that is exasperating to me and I do also now that you've isolated this plot point my issues with this actually this part of the plot are the same issues that I had with the James Gunn issue in real life which is like how did no one take care of this tape you know what I mean and now we're just magically on earth it strains all belief and it's also just such a fucking cell phone you know that I'm kind of like well this is all stupid this is really really stupid yeah I can't disagree with you that it was not a good idea for James Gunn to tweet those tweets it was not a good idea for him to not delete those tweets as he grew in stature in the industry it was not a good idea all of that is true obviously and I think him equating the naturally empathic goodness of Superman with that experience is a bit absurd now here's where I'm going to I'm really going to go for it yeah yeah yeah yeah the movie that this reminded me of the most and I thought of it about halfway through the movie is The Brutalist oh I thought you were going one more no I mean like when I said great man main character energy for a reason The Brutalist is essentially the same story about in that case a great artist who has been his experience as an artist and characterizing them and also using tremendously traumatic historical conflict as a backdrop for the story and this movie which you will get to does very much the same thing now are Superman and The Brutalist similar kinds of movie going experiences they're not but they're kind of similar filmmaking perspectives and yes I love The Brutalist I think why make a movie why direct a movie if you're not going to pour yourself into it you're not going to pour your ideas about your experience as a living person into it I think I have a natural empathy to that I'm interested in what people have to say through this medium of storytelling and so I like The Gunn to it now is it goofy it's a little goofy but it's better than just like here's Captain America 4 you're an idiot I hope you enjoy this you know what I mean I totally agree I do think that baked into both The Brutalist and this I agree with you you're going to write and direct something you know write what you know write yourself but implied in both of these takes in this filmmaking perspective and the you know the hero as the unimpeachable force who is misunderstood or blockaded by by everyone else and if you could if this person could just get final cut on life then everything would be right in the world like lol a little bit and you know why lol because I saw all the parts of the same movie made that don't work so I don't know if we can trust you with a final cut and there is something in the text that they are making about their own kind of infallibility that show their fallibility at the thing they are doing that makes me laugh that's all the dividing aspect of those two movies though I think I was a little bit more frustrated by hearing you say that about The Brutalist because I was like this is a small movie like if that part of the movie doesn't work for example that's fine like if this is something that was really important to him that he wanted to put on screen you could call it pretentious you could say it's unsuccessful but it is like from a very pure place to try to do that inside of a Superman movie which is literally like potentially a stock price moving venture is a wild act of self-regard and I don't mean that negatively so I'm fascinated by that being in the movie and by being to me so transparent now I'll suggest one other person that I thought of watching the movie yeah yeah yeah this is funny maybe it's a troll maybe it's not but I thought of Taylor Swift sure because Taylor Swift this is her iconography the most successful artist of her generation truly beloved in many ways seemingly infallible and invulnerable but also someone no doubt stricken by a kind of main character how could this happen to me energy pretty much through all the way up until like three years ago I would say he's made a tremendous amount of money on that particular identity ideology and that is what the Superman we're getting what does it say about you that when a man does it you think it's really bold and exciting and when Taylor Swift does it you're one of her greatest detractors for 15 years because I have a lot to learn I think my challenge is specifically I just don't ultimately like Taylor Swift's music that much and I do like James Gunn movies and that's really all it boils down to I enjoy Madonna if Madonna positioned herself in the same way I'd be more forgiving because I like her music more but to me this kind of framework is very common and it also applies to the real world this is how a lot of our world leaders position themselves to us they say I'm all-knowing and all-powerful and I have everything why won't everybody stop attacking me and it's just a smart way or at least it's representative of a common psyche amongst the powerful I think that's really what I'm trying to circle that is true and it is also it is like the greatest weakness of otherwise deeply powerful people is being like why don't you like me why don't you like me so I guess there is some self-knowledge in that though not I don't know I don't know whether I think it's actually self-knowledge or just I don't know either it feels unmistakable to me but I could be wrong James Gunn because I wasn't thinking of that at all it seems unlikely okay now this might be where we diverge a little bit so to me the metropolis world building and the pacing of this movie is very good this is a movie that I think looks good it is not in New York but it feels close enough it's Cleveland it's Cleveland yeah many of the locations are in Cleveland and I think it's based on Cleveland because apparently Superman also has some historic origins in Cleveland maybe the founders are from Cleveland the creators I can't recall that makes sense that's great not so far from Kansas no ideological I think metropolis looks pretty good and I think the pacing of this movie is very good this movie is under two hours we are living in the era of the two hour and 48 minute comic book movie and we've kind of whinged about it quite a bit in the last five years and this was pretty brisk why would you think I disagree with that well it's because I was unbothered by the loading of the movie I'll say that there are a lot of characters in this movie that they are kind of like very one of the only times I heard you sigh during the film was the introduction of the quote Justice Gang which is Hawkgirl Mr. Terrific and the Guy Gardner version of Green Lantern you can talk about Green Lanterns if you're interested at all but they show up on the scene to battle a kaiju with Superman and it just kind of turns into a comic book movie all of a sudden what had been a more tightly focused character study of Superman in his battle with Lex Luthor became a lot of CGI a lot of flying around and fighting a monster I thought that was the stuff that wasn't going to work when I was watching the trailers and I thought it worked really well now it does do one thing that I don't like which we can talk about in terms of getting less Superman yes but I think that those characters and the way they're framed in this world is pretty mild it's not a lot of like over-explication there's a shocking lack of exposition in this movie that's true except their job and what they have to solve is the most mumbo-jumbo exposition of the whole film so my problem with them in addition to they show up and they're just like oh great it's another superhero movie and to me we can talk about whether this does feel like a Marvel movie or whether it feels like a departure I think it can be both but you know I'm trained at this point like oh great okay so here's the spinoff for the next thing and here's what we're setting up and I just I sighed because I was tired of that the other thing that those characters well they sort of represent the engineers Mr. Terrific who's Mr.

Terrific Mr. Terrific ends up having to spend a lot of time in like another portal universe and so just the James Gunn the James Gunn sci-fi stuff like goofy sci-fi and we all have to like build up a team and like jump some portals and make up some science and have like a lot of creatures who you know look a lot like humans that I know but you know like it's not my flavor I just like I don't like it I don't I have no interest in it I didn't like Guardians of the Galaxy I know he's funny I don't I think that it looks like absolute shit especially compared with Metropolis which I think was like filmed so well so and those action sequences were very exciting so that was why I sighed it's not because of the lack of you know exposition or the lack of that I didn't understand I understood plenty I think it is a fairly understandable movie I think these movies the movie is a big chunk in the second act where Superman effectively is extradited to a black site and tortured and that's one of many real world events that he is very closely mirroring in the actions his attainment itself is clearly a nod to the practices of ICE and illegal immigrants and the idea of like taking people you know government sponsored but sort of like black shadowed exactly like license out and the American government is represented in this movie as kind of they have faces but they're just in one room doing what Lex Luthor tells them to do or not do they're bureaucratic functions yeah and they're more or less being controlled by money so we can talk about some of those aspects I do want to talk about the aspects of the movie but those aspects of the movie lead directly to this period where they enter a pocket universe which Lex has created in an effort to kind of disappear his enemies and the pocket universe is a pocket universe it's not the real world it's on the verge of a black hole and it's just kind of a CGI mess and it's like a drag in a movie that otherwise I think has a lot of invention around how it wants to look and how it wants to represent Superman existing in the pop real world of Metropolis and that's the only time when Mr. Terrific's exposition machine is going at all times he has to tell Lois everything that's happening it's just gizmos and gadgets it was definitely the sequence of the movie that I liked the least I didn't like how it looked it looks a lot like ice and there's someone it's Frank Grillo who is explaining they've contracted you out so they don't have to deal with it so you have no rights they don't apply to you because you're not a citizen yeah and then obviously I think it's what you said it is James Gunn's predilection for that kind of story stuff it is the most guardians aspect of the movie we see the most characters we see the most creatures we get introduced to Metamorpho who's a Justice League character who has the power to transform any part of his body to an element so that's how we get Kryptonite introduced to the movie I mean he couldn't transform himself into something that could get him out of the black site and get everyone else it's a very good note before we get further into the things that maybe don't work as well let's just circle the performances Corn Sweat lights out victory it's so good and he also just has a thing there are a few shots of him which you do need from Superman not that Henry Cavill didn't have that but there is something like really endearing and still also yes that's a cinema star yeah Cavill didn't play Superman with very much humor I thought he struck the absolute right kind of figure for Superman but I just think the writing kind of fell over and over I wanted to enjoy him in those movies Corn Sweat I'll be curious to see what they do with Superman in the future because I feel like he can only work with James Gunn if you let someone else write him will they be able to thread the needle of this very sensitive mega power right I don't know I don't know there are a lot of emo boys out there in like James Gunn's age groups and a lot of them are making movies now so you're not wrong about that Rachel Brosnahan one lights out once again I would like her to take me to do it she's very charming she's very appealing anything happening in the Daily Planet is very TV I don't mean that as like an insult but it's very like we're moving to the next scene here we're doing in a way like it is doing like plot exposition it's plot exposition about journalism yeah that's at least a great part of the creation of those characters it's like there's literally a character whose job it is to find out what's going on and she gets to be the detective of the story so she gets to draw the conclusion that in the film the civil conflict between Baravia and Jarnapur is oriented around Lex Luthor's participation in terms of arm stealing and that's the kind of story that a big city newspaper reporter would break so once upon a time when we had big city newspapers when we just have one what if they made Lois Lane a sub-sacker I feel like that would have been an even more resonant choice in these times I think that I actually do think that the amount of real media that the movie works into this movie is tone perfect like they got it right which is the fake Fox News it's very funny and there are references to social media and also like Superman not really understanding it and then a great joke the only funny part of the sci-fi world of the pocket universe as Lex Luthor's trolls who are all like little monkeys typing all their mean things and that is when the oh this is about you like comes on but it was still very fun Nicholas Holt now he's become a bit of a character on this show he keeps taking these parts where he's getting beta cucked well in this one he takes this part because he wasn't going to get Superman he auditioned for Superman man and he has auditioned for many superheroes and many big-time action leads over the years and he basically never gets the role and so instead what he gets is the part in Nosferatu the part in juror number two you know the part in Renfield the part in warm bodies like he's in the genre movie yeah he is the star most of the time and he's essential to selling all of the movies yes he but he is reactive yeah you know he is like he's the blood bag from Fury Road he's not driving the action now in this case he does get to drive the action yeah everything he does dictates what happens I was a little bit skeptical of this rendition of Lex all the way up until the end okay it's a big speech at the end yeah they're having a conversation yeah by a FaceTime bot no FaceTime drone is it FaceTime drone or is it when they're oh before they have a conversation and they're talking to each other when they basically have a philosophical conversation about the character yeah which is why is Lex so mad at Superman well that is my that's my actual one big note about you didn't think that explanation works no the explanation did work but it comes in at one hour and 45 minutes and everything else that they jump right into or they yada yada as the case maybe I was fine with but him just being like so big mad at Superman for and I was just like like what actually is your damage what is what's going on here yeah and I think and I don't blame Holt's performance for that I think that is just basically like that is a piece of character development that is missing from the movie until the very end of the movie it's clearly a choice that they made it wasn't to me it wasn't like a mistake yeah just like we're gonna hide the ball on revealing any of Lex Luthor's intentions and they're not just in the vein of Lex and Superman the Donner Superman like Lex and the Donner Superman is like world domination cycle I'm gonna I'm gonna set off a series of natural disasters in California so that I can take greater control of the land in this world right that that is the coin of a realm this is a different kind of character the thing is they do uh like do the they establish that plot and for a long time and what Lois is investigating is that he is an arms dealer he's funding this like this invasion of another country so that he can be like the ruler over it and also get access to oil fields not related to anything in the world at all and um and they sort of position that's like that's his motivation for a while and then you learn that the real motivation though is that he was doing all of that to try to trap Superman yes but they do actually he says a few times no I really hate Superman the most like at the very beginning in a way that undermines that feint and that's what I was confused about if they'd stuck with just the basic he's your average warlord and or not your average warlord you know he does so by the way resembles Stephen Miller in this movie um and like physically and this is a story about people yeah James Gunn is like literal literalized this in the process like one day before we came out he's like this is a movie about an immigrant and that kind of sounds like direct bullshit but it isn't this is a rare case where like when a guy's like this is a parallax view but with superheroes it is which again whether that's a good idea or not whether they handle it right not how is it about it is the thing I'm asking exactly um anyway they they undermine the feint like he's just doing this for power and land and money yeah too early on I just really really liked the way that to me this was really good gun story storytelling I don't know if you found this in Morrison or Tom King or one of the other writers but Lex saying it is envy that drives me crazy it is envy that drives me to want to destroy you because the envy that I feel locates the fact that we're all weak and that that weakness is what drives us mad and I can't live like that I can't and that is that's a very modern thing that speech and that performance was great it was just kind of where it was in the storytelling that and and other choices they made giving his motivations or not that were sort of confusing to me but like no I agree with you everything they're yelling at each other in like the the sunny ship uh and I also really liked the sunny ship like the tower bridge yes yeah but no it's fine um was was great writing it worked for me I agree that's really good that's somebody who gets those characters and has something to say I think through those characters um Eddie Kofi is like the third lead of this movie he's in more than Nicholas Holt is yeah as Mr. Terrific a character that I'm just not all that familiar with I'm not a huge DC person um I thought he was pretty good yeah I felt bad for him he had to like work with a portal for a while a lot of paper mache you know I wonder like how many times I had to like redo that you know because the like wrinkly stuff I actually like the I guess the production design and the actual um like the textures of everything well until you actually get to the black hole stuff and that's very bad but I like I will give them and that was also even that was true of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 a movie that I straight up hated but he is saddled with a lot of silliness yes he does get one badass fight sequence that lasts like one minute where he puts low they're about to get to the portal and he puts lowest in a force field bubble so he won't be injured by all these mercenaries and he dispatches them in a kind of a classic James Gunn semi-slo-mo set to a pop song right here's yes cool design uh all of the mercenaries have real like um Broadway cast member energy to their moves and like I even noticed the choreography like everyone like landing their spot and there's like you know and you can really and these are choreographed and I consider like them you know dance sequences in a lot of way but we you could see everyone knew exactly where their marks were and we're like really going for that's the one thing is like he's kind of a hokey razzmatazz guy I kind of like that about him I mean he's not stanley donning or anything but he does like that um let's slow this movie down for a moment it's like I would have I would have asked for another take from all of the I would have said let's land it a little more naturally you know like hit the mark but also make it look like you've been here before um in general I think with the exception of the big proton river pocket universe save which I really was not at all um I thought most of the other big action stuff was pretty effective I think the big showdown near the end between Ultraman and the engineer and superman was pretty cool um is that the one in the yeah that was and I think that's the cleveland stadium as well yeah um no I thought that was great is the engineer the one with the whirring things who like magically finds whatever she has I guess nanotech we'll get to it um I also thought the kaiju sequence was pretty funny yeah just like letting loose a little monster grow overnight and then becoming and the fact it wasn't like that wasn't the big conclusion to the third act of this movie it was like eight minutes in the movie just to show like introduce new characters and to do the thing which is like the movie is constantly trying to distract superman from what's really going on in the world which is itself a kind of load-bearing metaphor about how things work right now and it was funny in the in the right way like the at one point they're attacking the kaiju's eyeballs and then they cut to a woman who's like both videoing it on her phone and grossed out okay and and I think if that had been like the only you know creature-based funny james gunn thing I would have been really into it and just keeps going I will say that's like that also has one of like five different dog um moments in the in the I'm getting to that yeah yeah but I just want to identify that that's that's one of them is that crypto or is that another one I think it's great yeah okay in communities across Canada hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology learn more at about amazon.ca here's what I wrote about what doesn't work okay there is undoubtedly and if this is contradicting what I've just said for the last 45 minutes please do I contradict myself uh you know um there is an inherent tension between james gunn's joke a minute pattern kind of tension deflating dialogue with superman's strong silent iconography that superman is a representation of an ability to endure and that the movie wants to upset that expectation but I think it's still ultimately at its best when it is just sincere and when it is just lois and clark looking at each other being real and not making jokes and not being like I was doing important stuff you know like goofy lines that clark or superman is constantly being fed throughout the movie he's not star lord and i don't know how to rationalize this in a james gunn because i'm like i don't want james gunn not be james gunn but whenever superman said something like that i was like that's just that's just lame that doesn't feel right he had a couple comedic moments as clark that i did think really worked or i guess even everyone he's clark but he's superman he's dressed as clark but he's being superman and lois is like going back and forth and she's like do you think this is going well and he's like i think i'm doing a good job you know that is funny so there are moments to locate it i i didn't feel this tension as much as much as superman himself because there weren't that many instances of it as with the movie writ large and i just some of it might be that i don't think that james gunn's sense of humor is ultimately that funny or rather i think the pacing of it is really often this movie really extends all of the jokes way past where they need to go and part of me wondered whether that's a response to the kind of one-off quippy nature of marvel things i mean these are quippy but it's like quippy for a full minute and we're not gonna do it once we're gonna do it like four times yeah and there's a sequence where the lois goes to confront the justice gang trying to help her and nathan fillion who i think is pretty funny and is like a part of the troop of james gunn guys is playing a very silly version of guy gardner and everything he says is again it's like is it kind of self-attack on his own bluster yeah and it's a little tiring also just like once you have a diagram joke then you're in real trouble but you could like diagram a lot of these jokes and they're like clauses and circling back and it like just keeps going on and on and on and i honestly feels like a little condescending like yeah i get it you know yeah it's not untrue to what he's trying to accomplish it just doesn't always work in this framework for them there's a difference between the conception of the characters and the execution of the dialogue and that's the thing i think i kind of struggle with candidly the most in this movie um we did mention the kind of second act action sequence which is you know not ideal i do think the moment when superman um convinces metamorpho to create a son to help him break through here's one that i never thought i would say out loud the design of the black site itself in the uh pocket universe is i don't want to stay cool but effective and it works in that moment and i did turn to you because there's like there's an alien baby um who is i get pissed off when they create these little like cute weird creatures to put in peril to make me feel bad because i do feel bad every time that alien does not also does not look unlike my son yeah so there's something in like the size of the head compared to everything he's gonna touch your heart with his alien baby i mean so even that worked uh though like then the baby was just fine you know yeah yeah yeah yeah really in peril that's part of the reason why that's because i'm just like there's no way james is gonna kill this baby in a superman i think it's not that part doesn't really work and the last thing we might get some hate mail for this but i just thought crypto was annoying uh and i didn't really like the dog stuff used too much this is they're like five different moments you only get one dog saves the day moment see anchorman the the best one is like the last one but by then you haven't had five times you can't do that they did have to set it up so there had to be one that was like there could have been one that set it up and then the final like retrieving the drones thing the dog toys yeah i thought that was really clever and worked totally but it was yeah just like too many too much stuff um is superman in this movie enough no but i wouldn't want this movie to be two and a half hours i i know exactly how to get more superman and less junk which is to get rid of all your spin-off characters respectfully goodbye yeah you need them though you want to come up for the kaiju and then they can show up in the singer um i you need them because you need characters to save the day on the other side of the planet so you cannot have those characters it's an essential part of the conclusion of the movie do you have less of them i don't know do they spend less time with them maybe maybe i i do think that there it does feel like there are times when superman just disappears now this happens in a lot of superman movies where superman is confronted by kryptonite and he kind of leaves the movie for 10 minutes yeah because he can't move right it's a it's an old strategy yes it's a jesus 40 days in the desert type situation yes um and sometimes you just got to endure it it actually feels more explicit when you're in a comic book movie that is the right length right yeah um okay so here's like here's some of the bigger stuff okay i don't actually know if i think this is something that doesn't work but i would like to speak to you about it okay so the movie is legitimately interested as we said in referencing real world events historically significant disputes fascism the destructive power of the internet yes um most of its conclusions about those things i think are ultimately become a kind of bromide in the vein of try to be a good person right if you try if you're a good person if you're decent if you want others if you want to be treated the way others if you want to treat others you want them to treat you sure like the golden rule of character design that would solve some of these problems that we have in the world now i'm not saying that's the only way it's looking at it but superman is still ultimately a very limited character and so he can't get more he can't get deeper which would be okay if the movie was not doing all the things i'm about to share everything okay so this movie is an immigrant parable we've clearly identified that this is about a person coming from another place joining our country and trying to live his life and even impose his values onto society um there are also significant parallels to israel palestine it's undeniable that in even just the visual representation of bravia which is a militarized nation that is an ally of the united states and jarnapur which is a nation that is clearly less um advanced technologically and is full of brown people yes so you can't help but think of what we watch on the news every day while watching this it's clearly intentional there's also very clearly an aspect of russia and ukraine and in terms of the sort of rights of a sovereign nation have been impeded upon right and the characterization of the arabian leader and his relationship to lex luther who is standing in for both steven miller and elon musk yes um the fact that he is sort of like funded backed by a technically any u.s government official um that's the bald guy by the way from triangle sadness who is maroon who plays the arabian president trying to place him but yeah that makes sense um so there's a little bit putin in there for sure totally uh you know there's not really an effort in the movie to explore the nature of the conflict like is it tribal is it religious is it a border concern how far back does it go like it's not giving you anything well there's the this speech not the speech but the interview between lois and superman as clark kent which you know is i think a deaf piece of screenwriting in a lot of ways but the fact that i can't locate is he superman is he clark and i'm like he doesn't really know either and that's interesting but lois is being a quote-unquote journalist but is also espousing like the counter um narrative towards he's just like i stopped a war and like why wouldn't i stop a war and so she is she is explaining um the various like diplomatic and uh or you know geopolitical concerns that you would read about in a paper of record um but that do often uh seem mired in uh you know national service as opposed to like basic humanity uh so even there a little bit of the um it is echoing our media discourse as much as it is in a very smart way because lois is forced maybe just out of concern for being sued to represent that point of view even though as a person we know she doesn't believe that but then like one scene later lex luther leverages that concept the idea of superman breaking these treaties to do what he feels is right yeah to then gain power from the u.s government to do whatever he wants just pretty sad i agree like i honestly i thought that part of it at least um between lois and superman and lex was you know was handled well and that it worked in the movie i definitely thought about real world stuff but i wasn't like oh this doesn't work i was like huh you did that yeah yeah and i see and i see what you're doing i catch up so you know black panther is also a movie that's very much about isolation versus interventionism like that's to me that's the that's the thing that elevates that movie out of the mire of your work a day comic movie is that it really has things on its mind about national identity what what class represents to people living in america versus living overseas all this other stuff this movie has some of that on its mind too there's not a lot of other movies that get that deep into the ideas of um the nation state i couldn't tell if this movie ultimately lands on superman's kind of pollyanna every human life is valuable point of view right is trying to represent like an unrealistic obama era fallacy or what james gunn actually believes but maybe also recognizes is unsustainable given all of the structures guardrails restrictions that define global interaction you know it's like he put it on the table yeah yeah i don't think he really he doesn't solve anything he doesn't offer a solution which you know i don't have a solution either so i'm not holding that against him i think the movie does ultimately conclude like with superman is right and superman is vindicated with the help of his friends who you know as you pointed out they saved the conflict on the other end of the world so that he could i don't know i guess he's saving the universe he's got to catch the universe together i personally i understand that the like the the the world splitting is like sort of an homage to the original superman as well but i could have done without that and then maybe superman could have just a metaphor about the division amongst us you're on one side i'm on the other side of a split planet right this is a movie about wars i mean it literally is um but anyway they the the good the people who believe in good and human life save human lives and everybody what happens to everybody else do we know what do you mean by everybody else well to like to lex luther to the well lex is detained at the end of the film likely sent to a prison of some kind right he's hauled off everyone else is released and they take people all the prisoners from pocket universe are discovered and released um everything is kind of a yada yada yeah we put it all back together right which basically like what we learn is that like believing in humanity is good you see all of the people like you see all the people adjourned for cheering yeah and then and then that's it and then like good luck to you i guess yeah it doesn't mean like bravia no longer exists like this is in theory this is a centuries-old conflict and that's kind of my point it's like i think it is it's not brave at least interesting to try to represent these things in a movie like this because most people make movies like this they got interested in the subject matter because they want to get away from the problems of the world yeah they're not interested in the problems of the world they want to escape and they want to create art that's escapist right and i understand that i think that's value i like escapist fantasies as well if done well and unsignantly we didn't mention the street bender sorry i think speaking of real world stuff and and the most horrifying part of the movie yeah i mean um there is a character who is seen as the empathic human stand-in for every everyone's relationship to superman and the kind of like our desire to our innate desire to be good and to do good which is what superman is all about and he goes to superman to help him in a moment of need during big battle in the first early part of the film and then that character who is not white and not born in america presumably the street bender is then ultimately dragged into the conflict with lex luther and amidst a game of russian roulette is murdered yeah um it's the only really truly bracing violence in the movie and and done like in in wide shot and is also what insights um yeah so you know and i mean it is so upsetting that that rather than the peril of his cute alien baby son is what gets him into the next which again i like had some metamorpho not developed his character i really enjoy anthony kerrigan he's one of two actors from the tv series barry that are future prominent in this film in addition to the uh guy who's working with frank gorilla in the government i can't recall the actor's name he's a really good actor he played uh one of barry's buddies from the military um i i you know i think that that's not a hard one to understand i think the point is which is like black site torture like i'm a grave style um torture and and murder is horrible and creates like a global precedent that is terribly devastating for our ability to be a country that in theory represents profound values um i think that's a little different than saying like i'm gonna put a movie i'm gonna make a movie that looks like israel and gaza yeah and tell you that if everybody is a little bit more nice then we can solve it it's like it's kind of yeah no i mean it is i mean i guess it's it's um it's smaller and larger scale than that the movie does not really get its arms around like the modern stuff we should also say that you know the script was we are drawing things to like the present moment and also the present moment has been happening in one way or another for our entire lives but it's like the the movie isn't like looking at today's newspaper you know or even last just because of when it was made um so but like i i agree i also hesitated at the final shots just of like of everyone cheering with no follow-up and uh then just you know another white superhero flies off and it's like yay we did it and i'm gonna crack some jokes um i i do admire do i admire or am i at least impressed that he raises the questions and i frankly appreciate it it is a saturday morning cartoon that's why it's because it is like the good guys win yeah and we will go for it and there'll be another episode next saturday yeah and like i said i i don't have at least all the answers so i don't expect the movie to have them either but it does feel like if you're gonna go there then i don't know it i guess you're right it feels a bit productive at the end yeah not a bit it's not the job it's not the movie's responsibility to represent those ideas in a sophisticated way but once you introduce them you do have a responsibility to have more nuance and so i'm not i'm kind of holding against it didn't bother me no i expected it to be that way it's a comic book yeah but i've spent a lot of time thinking about this movie since we've seen it and it is something that ultimately i think holds me back from outright proclaiming this as like my perfect vision of a comic book film there could be a perfect vision of a comic book film that doesn't introduce any real world aspects you know like or at least not so overtly that we can draw conclusions and you know what a huge swath of the audience and maybe even a large portion of the audience listening to the show right now is like i didn't see any of that stuff in this movie guys and i accept that people do go to the movies to be distracted or to be taken away from these very challenging things but james is thinking about it he's thinking totally yeah so he's worked you know he had to do a lot of structural work to make all these things fit inside this movie we haven't even gotten to the point you may end up too about this being about an evil tech lord billionaire you know like amazon sponsored screening a week after jeff bezos's did we wedding yeah the screen with you last night was we go on amazon present oh i didn't i missed i missed that yeah you know it's like uh credit to james gunn for just leaning directly into it now i will say zach snyder did something very similar his lex luther was very similar to jesse eisenberg one right i mean like at this point a tech billionaire uh without much hair and with a lot of bad ideas and um uh you know self-confidence problems is not is not novel um it's probably the easiest yeah i did think i thought the way that lex luther like his tech was like pointed and interesting he's like he is using drones and it says you know when you look at the screen it's like drone three or something just so people are really aware that yes we want you to understand that these are drones and these are um two people who are uh outsourcing and not thinking about the reality or not dealing with the realities of their actions there was also like a very video game quality to the way that he was operating all of his minions well i want to talk about that too i think there's an interesting component of that which is that lex has studied all superman's actions and then this is a heavy spoiler but one of the big reveals at the end of the film is that not just that he's also cloned superman as close as he can to create ultraman which is essentially a clone that can do battle with superman and lex literally is determining the moves that he's making the fight patterns that he's creating to beat superman one of the things that went to my mind when i was watching this was sort of like the old now settled debate about sabermetrics versus the feel for the game in baseball you know where it was like you can't math your way through being on the diamond yeah you know and the movie kind of has a little bit of that like just looking at the data doesn't solve problems for you yeah you have to be a person in the world right and superman is the person and his problem solving was superior to the billionaire who wouldn't get close to the fight yeah um it's like fully thought through that part of it and then also it culminates in a speech of superman being like i'm a human and that's what makes me special and which like is like so cheesy but in the moment i was like well this is kind of working for me and then he's appealing to lexist humanity and then in that like heavily computerized like drone context that they're all and you're also definitely thinking about ai as i mean even though i don't really think there is any stated artificial intelligence like in the in the fabric of lex's like arsenal but it's it's all kind of implied i agree yeah um it's doing a lot this movie there's a lot going on yeah and frankly that's why i was like did i need a pocket universe no there needed to be a second act struggle there needed to be something in the design of a comic movie or an event movie like this i didn't love how they did it it's really the only thing that i actively didn't like yeah when superman is floating down a proton river holding a baby i was like this is the movie i want to be watching we were in metropolis that was cool i was having so much fun why can't that be in the real world why can't it be like a horrific actual and you know somewhere in the world we know there are many of them it's a great choice i mean guns partner peter saffron is the producer of this movie he's the co-president of the dc brand of the company like i presume they had a lot of autonomy to make this movie it certainly feels like it doesn't feel like a movie that's been noted to death it doesn't feel like a movie that's been hacked to pieces which is very different from a lot of superhero movies we've been seen recently it has a kind of consistent tone and it's taking a couple of chances it's not relying on mega star power it's not trying to trick you into thinking something matters because it's like a famous person like angelina jolie is an eternal so it matters somehow like it's not like that um so it is it is kind of a unique product even though it's still a very corporate product i just remember that i had a dream last night that i had a book reading and angelina was there and she performed a song anyway you were reading from your book or i was like debuting i don't remember what the book was about um novel or non-fiction i don't remember i don't know and it was like maybe not written yeah but then but angelina jolie sort of saved the book party anyway thank you her can we talk about any yes the two endings sure so the first which it should have been the ending which is uh lois and superman making out and then flying great moment wonderful and i was like oh you did it you nailed it and then we had to go we had to tack another thing on we went back to the fortress of solitude where the robots who managed that space had been repaired they were destroyed by the engineer in the film and uh oh yeah the engineer i didn't get it thanks that's my that's my take i liked it but i also didn't think the cgi i thought that was the ai component of the movie oh yes a person who's becoming subhuman and is essentially effectively being controlled oh one more thing i also just like they kept being like no the tape is real we know it's real the army doesn't get it wrong and i was like come on the tape from his parents yeah we live in like defake you know america they never did they were just like we know the thing i liked about that part of it was that in my understanding and marlon brando's reputation of his character and many other you know jor-el yeah his father is just kind of like a patrician blowhard right you know he's like kryptonians we're the best and so the idea that he would be communicating to his son yeah we should dominate these weak soy boys in america sure that's kind of funny also like the bradley cooper sun casting is is fantastic and very fun immediately as soon as i saw that i was like this is gonna be good whatever my concerns were they've been alleviated um the second ending supergirl yeah played by millie alcock who is one of the stars of was one of the stars of the first season house of the dragon right and the supergirl movie i think is the third movie maybe the second movie in the dcu i can't recall clayface is coming before it no supergirl for june 26 so a year from now we're getting a supergirl movie regardless of the success of this movie directed by craig gillespie director of um i tanya pan and tommy cruella lars and the real girl let me see how many craig gillespie movies i can remember off the top of my head uh i would say a talented but annoying director of movies incredible visual style but i'm often extremely underrated watching his movies uh i mean it's me but for james gun so and we like we figured it out yeah i just every time i'm like i know you've seen the photos like i get it like you know like the editing style the needle drops like this is like you know the movie we saw recently a couple years ago the movie about oh yeah okay sorry this this is how i feel about the supergirl thing which in addition to you know being set up and whatever millie alcock seemed funny she and and dame cornstead had you know comedic timing but then we have to sit and it's like he wants to watch the tape of his family and then it's home videos from his his kansas parents and i was like yeah yeah you're james gun you believe in family like found family we get it we get it we get it so i was annoyed by that yeah you know one of the first things i googled when i got home and i knew the answer to this but i just wanted to be sure was does james gun have kids and he doesn't have kids he doesn't and i don't i have no comment about him not having kids but the fact that he consistently returns to stories about found families i find interesting fascinating and especially because he also you know his his wife is one of the stars of the peacemaker tv series that's a very funny cameo in this movie and michael that's the john cena character who shows up um that's a really good show uh so his wife appears in his work his brother sean gun appeared in all the guardians movies and he also very briefly appears as maxwell lord in this movie who is a character that pedro pascal played in wonder woman 2 ah maxwell lord i don't know if you clocked this it's done very quickly but he is a billionaire who funds the justice gang so hawk girl and mr terrific and uh green lantern are all kind of working for lord core so james does kind of work with his family yeah and i want to be very clear that i think found families in real life are great and i just thought this was like sentimental gilding the lily at the very end i understood that that superman has a lovely scene with his dad and then his mom like back in kansas and there's like i get it you know you you have found these people and they taught you how to be a man i didn't need the the ice fortress like the what's the what's don draper's um the fortress of solitude no don draper the end of madman he gives the pitch and it's about the the slideshow thing and then he's like nostalgize the greek word for whatever it's called the carousel there we go yeah i didn't need it i got it i got you um i like to prove taylor vince and nina howell who i've never seen before played ma kent and from the james mangle movie heavy and a lot of stuff over the years great character and the choice even to make ma and pa not beautiful yeah you know like kevin costner and diane lane for ma and pa in head of steel and they look like they could have given birth to henry cavill yeah this is a normal family normal farmers in kansas and uh i think elevates like kind of like alien aspect of the story so i like that too what else anything else so you to do this we've just seen the movie the singer so we sat there like assholes i know i really thought he wasn't gonna do it i really hoped he wasn't gonna do it i thought that would have an interesting way to fully sever from the mcu era to say you know what we don't do singers we don't treat our audiences like clapping seals waiting to be fed another fish street we trust that you sat down and watch the movie and when it's over it's over but they did do a singer yeah which was mild it was just for comedy was it setting up something that i didn't understand not that i know of but it's possible i would say superman lore is not my speciality okay what is your speciality x-men okay that's it so we haven't you mean we've been doing this for like 20 years now and i haven't really lived through your well your lore special like yeah area of interest yeah i mean we haven't had those movies but they just haven't been great i mean yeah i feel like dark phoenix came out when the show was around chris and i had a very angry pot about that right um so when are the future past might have been and i would imagine 20 28 20 29 okay so i'll be dead by that um i am very curious to see how this movie performs the reviews have been pretty good pretty positive i think gun aside from the strong anti-snyder contingent which obviously that's another aspect of this experience that the film is kind of gently mirroring is the division between not my superman and very excited about the future uh i've been following some box office analysts who have been suggesting that this is one of those kinds of movies where good reviews help okay good reviews push up walk up business yeah because then all you need is i heard superman's pretty good yes exactly that's it word of mouth and again it's named superman and then it's pretty good so people are like okay i'll go you're not here mad today which i think is a big accomplishment um i was even interested in half of it yeah whether or not you're ever interested in another dcu movie is we have the list here so we've got supergirl um we've got clayface um which is coming out on september 11th uh what's that about this is actually an interesting character that might be appealing to you he it's a movie about a or it's a story about it's a batman villain who was a hollywood actor oh who uses um gosh i don't get this wrong like a special clay to transform it to other people so it's one part like launching the man of a thousand faces one part um like trying to keep your age and your beauty with you know these kinds of influencer style products and it's written by mike flanagan who's best known for his horror work and i think they're trying to make a standalone horror movie james watkins directed uh speak no evil oh who's playing clayface uh it's an actor that i have never heard of before but has done some television work i was just talking to some friends about this uh let me see if i get his name right i found this to be a really weird choice for the third movie this is not so this isn't going to be on the box office level of superman it's clearly a much smaller it probably is like a $15 million movie but in a way i'm like that's cool that's cool that they're doing this so tom reese harrys is the actor's name um handsome fellow okay he most recently appeared in the return starring refines and julie abanoche uh he was on doctor who okay cool uh so let's talk about the luca guadagnino sergeant rock thing so i i've read the headlines and i've never clicked through because i kind of don't want to acknowledge daniel craig exited daniel craig exited it's unclear if this movie is happening now listen i love luca love gritsky's i like it when they work together i you know what so what is who is sergeant rock well uh he's a military figure that was developed in i want to say the late 50s okay um and a lot of it was you know so many of these characters are responses to one another so this is not quite the dc's version of captain america that has some some strains of that it's like kind of a combination of captain america and nick fury put into one guy um it doesn't seem like this movie's gonna happen so i don't i don't want to spend too much time on it james mangold is writing directing a swamp thing movie i think that's happening okay what's up with swamp thing is a scientist who uh due to an explosion in a chemical lab transformed into a lab that is located near the swamp becomes a kind of half plant half man figure there was a west craven version of the movie in like 1982 starring adrian barbeau is very memorable to me as a child it's not a very good movie but that's a movie the brave and the bold would be a batman movie what's weird about that is that there are already batman movies and i heard that matt reeves handed in his batman 2 script and it's very good people were really really deadline shaming matt reeves how did you feel about that as an editor uh i think i think that i i felt bad for matt reeves even though you like you gotta hit your deadlines but you know and apparently it was a long time in development it seems hard to write a script it just seems like the other people needed to not be involved forgive the um comic book dork aspect of this question but gun in the rolling stone interview was like this isn't gonna happen but i'm also not saying it's not gonna happen i'm not robert pattinson's batman is not going into david corn's Superman world but maybe it is like he kind of played that game a little bit in the interview where he's like i'll never say never now the tone obviously the matt reeves batman movie and of james gunn superman are wildly different the color palette the energy the music the framework of the world doesn't they all make sense together and yet i would like to see it i would do team robert pattinson and i would like to see robert pattinson and david corn's fight in a movie together that yeah in the suits and not the suits also like shouldn't there shouldn't the tone of superman and batman independently like be very different isn't that honoring their characters and this is then you have to find someone who sees the whole board this is how you do it yeah i think they should do that now you know these are a lot of these films feel why do you know that the brave and the bold would be a batman that's the title of a batman what happens in it i can't remember um andy machete is attached to that movie he directed the flash i don't think that's gonna happen yeah okay um there's a teen titans movie there's a bane and deathstroke movie there's a wonder there will be a wonder woman movie for sure um i don't know i'm not sure about the dcu i'm glad we got this movie in the form that we did uh i think this movie's gonna make 150 million dollars the box office this weekend okay so that would be a lot and here's why here's the superman box office history batman versus superman donald justice which is your favorite superman film make 330 million dollars we're live best they do they do um that came out in 2016 that 330 million dollars is the most domestic for any superman movie okay behind it and steal 290 yeah then superman returns starring brandon routh and kevin spacey made 200 don't remember that the donner film made 134 superman 2 made 108 superman 359 and superman 4 which is now now fiasco made 15 okay you predicted 410 million domestic summer movie preview i predicted 257 now i obviously undershot i don't know how much i undershot i'm super curious to see we'll see i mean the thing is is that we still don't have last year uh wolverine and deadpool did 600 something domestic yep so we haven't had a movie like that yes yeah if this movie goes over a billion it'll be the first it'll be the first superman movie over a billion i think it'll be the first superhero movie not named deadpool wolverine since spider-man no way home to go over a billion it might be that's very rare now used to be very common right remember captain marvel just made a billion dollars even though it was trash i don't it did well that i remember but you know that's at christmas and you guys just like you go when you're underwater not christ though that's what happened um he'll never know the way of water as we know unfortunately for him someone suggested that we uh do a watch along after the way of water oh okay would you do it yeah sure i remember the whale yeah that was very beautiful and then i like when we couldn't explain what was going on but like it's cool stuff that's going on i love it yeah no it's great um i mean we just we gotta figure out the watch along logistics in a way where i can be comfortable okay um and we need snacks and stuff i took superman in the auction this week yeah which i now feel pretty good about i asked you yesterday two days ago oscars superman what about now i mean what is james gunn's history i don't think he has a single oscar nomination this like i have to be honest i we talked about mostly what is good about this and even the stuff where like we're not really sure if he landed the plane on um the real world geopolitical stuff but even even the things that don't work we talked about them in mostly positive ways there like there is a lot of space there's just straight up at least 45 minutes of garbage looking space junk and i don't know if you get that past people you know he was nominated for best adapted screenplay by the writers guild of america in 2015 for guardians you remember when guardians came out like holy shit it's actually good yeah and i think there is a faction for him that's cool but they you know the writers guild and the oscars don't always line up they definitely don't yeah they definitely don't i don't i don't think this is being nominated for best picture or anything like that but i'm kind of curious yeah maybe some of it looks good and some of it like really doesn't and so you know like if you want visual effects or whatever you still have to sit through the black hole you're right you're right about that stuff any concluding thoughts uh i you know it's good it's good i'm not mad i'm not mad yeah i can tell you're not mad less even though we did the thing where we don't speak yeah we're like we'll see you tomorrow see you in the pod room which is a bummer because we saw it in the sgb and then we could have just like gone to dinner we could have and that would have been delicious i would have been really late to be eating spicy food yeah no it's true we are too old for that if i eat spicy food after 10 p.m i will die yeah we don't eat any spicy food that's like anyone looking at you will not be surprised to learn that but yeah i do really like it yeah i really disagree at this point yeah i like i can go in i know i have more tolerance for it yeah what do you think because i'm a white man is that the issue that someone once said that we look like we don't like any spices on our food which i think is pretty rude that we both do yeah i mean i do love spices on my food i just right my stomach can't handle it yeah i my stomach can okay shout out to you thank you um superman i don't know probably not a lot of spices well as we know there's an attempt to disrupt his organs near the end of the film with uh with the nanobytes sure you know they try to infest the soul yeah it was all right i didn't really understand how he solved it but whatever he just like smashed it off i think the idea was that he was stronger than their science okay well i can't really endorse that take but you know maybe superman makes america healthier i was gonna say there it could be some raw milk in the picture and i just i don't endorse that but believe science and doctors okay um so next next week uh you're not on monday yeah that's right because you didn't trust me to be nice about this or because you just want to do lore i i think that's fine i don't think that you want to have to watch seven superman movies that was my thinking yeah totally not so next monday me and van lathan and rob mahoney will talk about the superman movie talk about the box office talk about the reception of the film in general and we'll rank every superman movie now for those listening at home that includes superman richard donner superman 2 as directed by richard lester superman 2 the donner cut a recut version with richard donner's intended outcome superman 3 superman 4 superman returns superman man of steel superman versus batman dawn of justice batman versus superman dawn of justice who got first billing and then justice league yeah and justice league the snyder cut or zach snyder's justice league is how i believe it's titled now i don't know how many of those i'm gonna revisit some of them i've already watched superman 1 and 2 so what was what's up terry lois and clark at the tv series was terry hatcher and then yes that guy so that's not in the that's not part of this nor is smallville oh yeah there's also been very recently another uh lois and clark series okay um that people were quite fond of okay but was recently canceled by max wasn't me um shift back to hbo max i feel about that fine i never deleted the original app so do i have to download a new app yeah you have to download the luther core app you have to get all his tech on your phone uh you have to accept all the cookies something that they told us all right and you have to use space id no i won't we have to use space people are using biometrics at spotify now what do you mean apparently you can log in with biometrics sure that makes sense i'm not biometrics you don't use a fingerprint on your laptop no that is a company-owned device absolutely not interesting like they have to pay me a lot more what about when you were arrested on january 6th and you were fingerprinted it's not there okay you weren't there no but i did when i worked at uh when i worked at condon ass i did i was at the world trade center so they had to fingerprint all of us so i'm i'm in but i don't you need to be like john doe from seven and start cutting off your fingerprints i'm not doing that don't you feel like the pod just started okay um thanks to our producer jack sanders for his work on this episode we will see you next week with rob and ben soccer fans your chance to witness history is here you can win tickets to the fifa world cup 2026 final thanks to visa all it takes is a vmo visa credit card to enter sign up and enter at vmo.com slash contest contest was a fight