The Multiverse: Jesus, What a Racket!

With a healthy dose of disdain, we enter the multiverse via the Marvel movie Deadpool and Wolverine and the Oscar-winning movie Everything Everywhere all at Once.

Sagi talks about the hollow nostalgia of the cameo, and the way that the characters become something of a Heideggerian standing-reserve for more scenes, more plots, and more revenue. Is Sagi finally doing Marx Grudge?

Andy wishes that the multiverse would remain solely a video game construct, ruing the day when Mickey Mouse and Wolverine show up together in the same movie. He also introduces the Oikodicy, as a way to describe how profits justify all the silly games and narrative tricks we keep getting sold.

Jake links the multiverse to the fantasy of the Internet as a perfectly connected hypertextual universe. He introduces Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of this fantasy, and asks whether the void-inducing everything bagel in Everything Everywhere all at Once is an anti-Semitic reference to the way the Jew gets in the way of Christian presence. He also reads from Leibniz's Theodicy.

Jack kicks us off with some heavy-hitting take downs of the quality of Everything Everywhere All at Once, and makes sure we see the capitalist cynicism of both films, at every turn.