Episode 4: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Thank you so much. I'm honored to be here. I love you guys very much, or thank you so much for asking me to come and talk about the thing that is the easiest for me to talk. He literally had to do no research for this. I was joking. I said it should be Nerdificent hosted by Hector Navarro with guests if you want to wait and Danny Fernandez for this one. You have that like encyclopedic pocket knowledge

of the Marvel universe. And yeah, I remember, even when pressed with things that might be outside of the wheelhouse, you you have a book with information like when we have that which I'm going to talk about this here because I think that no one really knows what are we talking about. Before Black Panther came out, we'd shared that tweet from our I think it was our friend. We have to talk about this. That was a great

tweet and a great question. Yeah, that was like why didn't Black Panther just destroy America after finding out about slavery and then we had this huge disclosion or that that goes further into the question of like why didn't Wakonda, with its resources historically help slavery that was happening to the rest of Africa, And then that was the movie that was before the movie. Yeah, we see they're reading, they're paying attention, but like we were asking that question.

I don't know how. I think I saw you retweeted because you were like, this is a really good question because because it's because this is great question about this alternate history of this world. Right, and the Marvel Universe is for the most part, like supposed to be our world, with certain differences here and there. Right, A guy gets the superpowered drugs during World War Two, so that's Captain America. A kid gets bitten by Spider and Queens, so that's

Spider Man, but it's still our world. Then the big difference for the world of Black Panther is this country in the middle of Africa gets this resource which makes it super developed, super quickly. And then the reason that was created and designed by mostly white writers Jewish dudes back in the sixties Stanley's Jack Kirby on all these different people that contributed to Black Panther, and even when it got to black writers, black artists and and everybody

who can contribute to that lore. It was all just to justify why somebody who was more advanced in most every way than iron Man could come from Africa and and the Western world's like idea of Africa and they came up with it's because Wakonda is the best. Well, how do we not know about Wakonda. It's because they've hidden it. And the only answer I could come up with.

So if he's talking about I looked up my encyclopedia that was scifically not just in encyclopedia, it's a Marvel atlas that's like it tours you through the Marvel world, like, Okay, here's Dr Doom's country, lat Veria, Here's you know, like all the fake countries and all the real countries, and then you get to the fake country of wakand of the fictional country, the only thing I could find in its history is like it decided to remain isolationist to

protect its resources and its people, and as we saw in the movie, and the movie then became was that the right thing to do? And it's so good and so yeah, that was that was fun to like go look that up because I was like, huh and then you know, you go find out I know that was It's cool. Yeah, it's that. It's cool. But speaking of black Panthers, speaking of everything we were just talking about. If you're listening to this now, you know that Infinity

War is about to drop. And like the basic mission statement of this podcast, a nerdy podcast for everyone, you may have started anywhere along these three phases, there's been wow. I guess we got to back it up. So the Marvel Universe, the cinematic universe has been broken up into phases and they kind of announced the quote unquote phases since the first phase, which I remember that was the first thing us nerves were hyped about, like phases. WS gonna, well,

what's happening? And um, I'm glad I pulled this up because we're gonna go down this list in a list that I found online that says, is the chronological order and looking at it, and by chronological it means like within the world and not within when they were released. And so Phase one was Captain America, the First Avenger, iron Man, Iron Man to the Incredible Hulk, Thor and Avengers. That's phase one to Phase one is all the movies

leading up to the Avenger. And we're gonna go and depth on these, so don't be like, wait, wait, I'm just breaking down the phases for you. Phase two is iron Man three, The or the Dark World, Captain America, The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume too, and Avengers, Age of Ultron and Man.

And that one's interesting because you just described a movie that's technically released in its phase three, which just came out last year in seventeen, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume two, but chronologically it only takes place a few months after the first Guardians movie, which took place in the year and there's little ways you can track that. If you watch the movie and pay attention, you're like, okay, it tells you star Lord as this age and you know

that he was picked up on Earth. You kind of do that math nerds did that math to figure out what year out in space in relation to Earth was all that stuff happening. It is a year, so a couple of years ago. So so yeah, So that's an interesting case where it's like a phase three movie. Technically bop, you plot it right, you squeeze it right into the

middle of phase two of it. By now the listeners have figured out why we brought you on this podcast because it was it was just the quickness and when you're like, ah, it was perfectly well, how do you before you go on to phase three? If how do you rank these? Then do you go off of this chronological order? Because I only look at them as their release dates because that's how we were introduced to them.

And also you can see the technology changing, uh and actors changing for some of these roles, um specifically Wholk you know, So yeah, how do you look at it? Hector?

I look at it like I just go off of I know, people love to talk about that first Captain American movie because it was set mostly in World War Two as like, hey, this is the beginning of the Marvel universe and let's start there, right, But I really do like to look at the movies in theatrical release date for the for the reasons you mentioned, but also like they were designed that way, and also like Captain America opens with the present day and it's a little

prologue and it's like, sir, we found them, and then it gives you the whole movie is technically a flashback. And even if a movie is kind of out of place chronologically, like Guardians of the Galaxy Volume two or Doctor Strange, which it's kind of unclear when Doctor Strange is happening, as opposed to if you watch Captain America Civil War, you meet two characters, Black Panther and Spider Man.

Their movies happened pretty much right after Captain America Civil War, right, we follow us by d and Queens, and then we followed to Challa in Wakonda. But Doctor Strange was that movie was released after Captain America Civil War, and it's like, well, how long was he like being trained by Tilda Swinton?

How you know? Like, so there's all these questions. So I still like to look at them in theatrical release if I'm marathoning them, if I'm watching them in order, because it also just keeps things a little fresh, because you know, as soon as you watch one movie, instead of doing like, okay, let's pop in part two, it's like, well, let's go watch a completely new character. Also, the post credit scenes are set up that way exactly, and you know, those kinds of things give you enough clues to kind

of plug stuff in order. But it doesn't have a crazy chronology. It really doesn't. It's pretty straightforward to like if you watch the movies in the order that they were theatrically released, you can pretty much follow along. And there's a couple of little things that they put on, like the Blue Rays when they came out, called one shots, those little like short films that kind of like fill in some blanks a little bit or like further explained stuff.

But it's not essential. So it's like if you want that kind of like streamlined like wood order, should I want watched it in? You can find that information. It's out there, but it's not like vital to me to enjoy, you know what I mean to and to get the movies. It's like, just watch the movies just that's why I look at it. Just for those crazies, we will have a link from the art cale I pulled this from the footnotes because they do the link. I chopped it down.

But the one that they did, they plug in the TV shows in the TV and the short films like talking about the stuff. Yeah, so Agent Carter's season one and two was actually after Captain America. That's that's where they plugged it in before iron Man. Yeah, because yeah, iron Man took place in I mean, if there's a flashback in an episode of like I don't know, like Agents of Shields season three that reveals something that happened like hundreds of years ago, people will grab that and go, okay,

let's plug it in the right order. And there's these timelines that people put together. It is intense. It's intense. So it's down to like the minute people of people

have figured I want to do something on that subculture. Okay, sorry, So Phase three the rest of this article, if you with chronological order, just the movies to the the one that will be in the footnotes will have all the shorts, like they included the shorts on the DVDs everything, but of the films Captain America, Civil War, they plugged in Doctor Strange after that, the Spider Man Homecoming and thor Ragnarok than Black Panther. Interesting. Cool Yeah, cool, that's great,

and they were caught up. And that's eighteen movies. Yeah, so far, that's been six movies for each phase. And we're not out of this phase yet. We have a couple more to go. We have the Avengers coming out, and then and then in the Wasps later this year, and then next year Captain Marvel and then Avengers four, all still technical where everybody is dead that didn't die

in the first one. Let's even um even be just fully transparent to why, because people might be wondering, Well, it seems like all of these phases are capped off by Avengers movie. The reason it's still within the same phases because originally, uh, the two Avengers movie were called Infinity Wars Part one and two, and then somewhere along the line they chose to change the titles. And I feel it has to do with what happens in this one.

I don't know what, and they won't reveal the title until after Infinity War, which means it'll be in the movie. It's apocalypse. It's this great, well probably not because of the X Men, but it's great. Here's what's going to happen on this podcast jokes. I'm going to correct it because do it. Yeah, I'll be like, well, it's but let's talk. Let's talk because I don't know if you saw my hail Mary fan theory of what's going to

happen because we can't talk about Marvel. Uh. By the way, these I just want to say that these are just us speculating. We haven't read any of the scripts. We don't know anything. So if you are really bothered by people specul lady, you might want to turn the volume down. But also we're just nerds that are geeking out. Yeah, and and this is the point to speculate. The movie's

dropping this week. You'll I'm going to speculate what might happen, but it's impossible for me to spoil it before you speculate, and I want you to. I would like to share one thing in case there are listeners that are like, oh, I don't even speculate, because it might if you guess it right, you might ruin the movie. I'll be thinking

about it. I do want to say this. I have a buddy who told me that he has a friend that worked on special effects in the film and that this friend said, nobody has guessed this one thing, and he has been on the internet looking up and down of like, you know this one kind of plot point. He's like, nobody's gotten it right. And that made me feel so good of like, Okay, there's gonna be real surprises in this thing. Woman's going to show up. Nobody has guessed across over. So let's take a second and

zoom out of you know, Marvel Studios. Marvel Studios is owned by Disney at this point. It was recently huge acquisition by Disney and merger and they just got Fox right. Oh, as far as I know that that deal is like finalizing or in discussion, but it hasn't been final it hasn't beneficial, yes, correct, So that being said, yeah, since they know this, Yeah, I was going to say, before we go into like what we think might happen with Infinity War, did you want to tackle the history of

everything first? And then at the very time the listeners on the edge of their seat and I like it, You're gonna have to wait and we will jump into it right after the break, and we're back here with Hector Navarro and if you my co host, we are going to tackle these films just basically the importance of them.

Some cool things that us stood out for us, And yeah, and you know, I know were we said we were going in chronological illied, We're going in the order of release because that just makes thing simpler, cleaner, and just with the story that we're telling about maybe some of the behind the scenes stuff, it helps put us in the mindset of like, Okay, it's two thousand six, or

it's two th eight, got it. So with that being said, it's two thousand eight, Iron Man comes out, and uh, you know, it was interesting because if I'm remembering myself correctly, no one thought this was going to lead into a huge cinematic universe. The way it was. It was just an iron Man movie, that's right. An iron Man had been like a blist cialist comic that had actually very bad sales at some point. It was just a risk

all around. Their main man was a risk casting Robert Downey Jr. Who at the time had been in prison and he had multi run ins with the law, and like granted he was working to better himself and at this time, but that was still a huge risk for this studio to bank on him. But also a fun parallel between the actor and the character, because you know, iron Man Tony Stark is a recovering alcoholic who is a troubled, you know, person of you know, tech world celebrity.

So that was kind of cool in itself. And I remember this being a big year for comebacks because I believe What Wrestler came out around this same year. And later a few months later, Robert Jenny Jr. Starred in Tropic Thunder, which got him a Best Supporting Actor nomination, and the stories on that set go that when he was on that set um he was telling Ben Stiller, Jack Black, certain people because he had filmed Iron Man, He's like, I'm going to be a huge star, and

they're like, sure thing, Robert Downey Jr. Whatever. And then sure enough Iron Man comes out and they're like, oh, he is like the biggest movie star in the world right now, we should put him in more stuff to promote Tropic Thunder, And even from Tropic Thunder, I think it was an actor justin thorow that he may have been in it that he got to uh to later write Iron Man too, I think is what it was.

But in any case, it was just a huge year for Robert Johnny Jr. And I remember at the time I would go to see every superhero movie, but this one. After I saw it once, I was like, I need to bring like my mom and dad to this because I did feel like this is something special. This feels the most like a Marvel comic book up to this point, even more than any of the Sam Rami Spider Man

movies or more than the Fox x Men films. I'm like, this is like a this is like a Marvel comic and especially because that end credits scene was mind blowing and set the gold stance at the bar for for for what was doing? Yeah for I feel like a lot of this film kind of set up the Marvel formula, like this was kind of the blueprint for its future films.

Um and in case you forgot of what happened during this so essentially Tony Stark, who was a billionaire, he builds himself a suit of armor after he's taken uh captive by a terrorist organization, and then he decides to upgrade and dawn his Iron Man's suit in order to hunt down weapons that were being sold under the table. They hired John Farrow to direct, who is still with us.

Really capitalized on that with an unfinished script. Yeah, he still plays Happy Hogan in the yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, his bodyguard. Yeah. But yeah. What's what's also great about this too, is at the time we didn't know this, but they are kind of building their poster child for the Marvel Cinematic universe. Like iron Man is that dude?

He's he like he welcomed Spider Man into the cinematic universe by being a part of Homecoming, and they used utilized him perfectly where he was in it, but he wasn't in it too much. He didn't take the spotlight, but he Like, it's crazy to see iron Man be such this huge important part of piece of this universe. And to think back that this was this risky movie that no one knew what to expect. We got people

really excited about the Sabbath song. Yeah. Well yeah, it was like when really had like rock and Roll, they started to realize they could capitalize on that. What I wanted to say though, was also the reason why they had chosen iron Man, because remember we were like, what is this This comic isn't even doing well? Was because they had done a test study um, which we can include the link to, and kids were more interested in playing with Iron Man toys over the other Marvel characters

at the time. Yeah, which I think time Captain America thor whoever they had the rights left to, because Marvel at that point was absorbing back some of the rights of these characters because they had sold out the rights to other characters like the X Men, the Fantastic Four, Spider Man, Uh, Punisher wasn't New Line, right, dared Evil was it Fox? All these characters were kind of scattered, so all they had left was, like you said, Danny,

the B and C list level characters. The funny thing is that within the fictional universe of Marvel, within that world, the Avengers are like the best the the Avengers are the characters that every everybody else in the world looks up to. Captain America is like the Patriarch, He's like the North Star, right Tony Stark, iron Man Chain ages the world, Thor as this incredible heroic god the characters like the X Men and Spider Man look up to

because they're more like the outcasts. So I think it's so fascinating that all of those characters didn't get movies. At one point, Tom Cruise was rumored to be doing an Iron Man at Paramount, like he was going to be Tony Stark. They even started kind of drawing Tony Stark to look like Tom Cruise and some of the comics because they kind of knew, like it's gonna happen,

Paramount's gonna be and then it didn't happen. But um, I think it's so funny and so perfect that the Marvel Cinematic universe, this whole franchise still treated those characters like the sort of big shots that they were, that they were the foundations of this world, because that's how

they work. In the comics, it's they have similar relationships where Spider Man is this younger guy who looks up to characters like Captain America and actually doesn't think he's sillier goofy, but thinks like, yeah, this guy was a hero back in the day. So when they had the rights to all these characters left, they looked at it and they went, we we have the Avengers technically, so we can either do an Avengers movie or we can

do an Iron Man movie. See how that does Captain and America movie a form and then kind of build up to it, and if we do a good enough job, we can convince the public audience the same way Marvel readers of comics get it that when you watch a story from this world, Tony Stark is a big deal. Captain America is a big deal. Thor is a big deal. The Avengers are you know, they're bomp bomp bottom. They're

the big show. And every other team and every other character is just kind of like they're kind of doing their own thing and they're almost in the fringes so and especially the way that they ended up treating later Captain America. And they do not think he's a joke. They're like, this is earnestly just such a good guy that yeah, we're telling you how good he is. We're showing you how good he is. We're telling you that every character thinks and knows this guy is the best,

which just helps the world. It builds it up. You know, you don't have aunt Man scoffing at Captain America. He's like, you're Captain America. Oh my god, Hi, it's great to meet you, you you know, And it's like when you hear characters say that the audience goes, oh, yeah, that's Captain America. What a big deal. And and to touch on what will be a constant theme throughout this con sation is and that's the strength and the foundation in the Marvel

movies is they let their superheroes be superheroes. You could tell there's a general passion for just comics and who they are and in a later episode, Uh, you broke. Your boys are gonna at me for this, but DC just that that is I think the overwhelming problem with their movies is it feels like the people who are making them are like, we gotta make them cool. You

don't have to make that. As a matter of fact, I think the reason that the Dark Knight trilogy was so successful is that Norton got in there and was like, Oh, he's a detective. Let's zero in on that. Let's make a a detective. Yeah, Nolan, what did I say? Said Edward Norton. No, I think you're right. I think I think it's tough to like, especially with characters like this are larger than life. You get that temptation to go, well, how do we sell this to an adult audience. Let's

make it very complex and interesting and challenging. You don't necessarily have to do that with characters that are that are like this for kids, characters like Superman and Captain America and Thor you know what I mean. Like they're like, you just gotta treat them like dudes, do go into our improv brains. You just gotta make your base reality. Stop trying to take their world and put it in our world. Making the base reality and build on that. Simple.

But let's jump over to an incredible hole. They started. He started doing it two months later. That was a fun time. So what do you consider this? I really like this movie, but it is not the same as the rest of them. When these first two movies came out, iron Man in The Incredible Hulk, I was like, I was like, they're both the same quality. They're kind of not. But to me, it feels like everything that the Iron Man movies doing for Iron Man treating him like a

great character having fun, because that character is fun. He's in the beginning, he's sleeping around, he's you know, and at the end him and him and Gwyneth Paltrow start dating, and so he's such a likable guy and he gets to have that fun. Meanwhile, Edward Norton, who I think that a really good job is Bruce Banner. He cannot even have sex with his girlfriend because if he does, he'll turn into the Hulk. Like so it's not fun to watch Bruce like suffer, like he's suffering through this,

do you know what I mean? It's that doesn't have that same escapismus want to Hulk, so you know, I mean, hey, maybe Bruce in the Streets and the Hulk, you know, yeah, we didn't get that fun until Josh Weeden was like, let me try this, and then he did the Hulk Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers, which was the most like like escapism sort of relief in such a fun moment when he's like, it's my secret cup, I'm always angry and held right there. It's so fun, We'll see fun.

I feel like this was a problem that even in the comics Hulk Cat where they just made Bruce Banner so depressing because if he was just yeah, he's this guy who has this curse and he can't fix this curse, and he's supposed to be super smart but he can't put the problems together, but he never It really is like the reason I feel Mark rough kind of took a turn on it is the problem with a lot of these bruces. They never just tried to embrace it.

They just always tried to fight it right, and then it was an undending cycle because the colt can't be beat even by the Hulk himself. Absolutely, And at least in that old seventies show Incredible Hulk with Bill Bixby and Lufer Rigno, Bill Bixby's David Banner, he was still

helping people every week. That was another difference. You know, yes he did he had a monster, but like a little kid would show up and be like, oh, you know, I'm being abused in my foster family whatever, and then Banner would help that kid and and so so I think that the Avengers got it right because it showed us a Bruce that was like I was in Calcutta, I was helping people. I was fine, and then you shield people pulled me in and did this and blah

blah blah. But um, but back to the Incredible Hulk movie, like it's it's I think it's not as bad as people. Remember. I just get white whatever c G I or whatever you call it doesn't hold up. Some shots do when it's like real far away and Hulks just running in the distance like next to a jeep. I'm like, that's a real Hulk, but it's some of it doesn't hold up. You're right, and I also think it's not the fun. I get why it's not Pople's favorite character. Yet it's

not there yet. But again, you go back two months earlier. The successive Iron Man meant that they moved a post credit scene and you could tell it was a post credit scene to the end of that movie to show us Tony Stark showing up. And that was a huge thing about The Incredible Hulk is that Tony was. They were really planting the seeds of We're crossing over, and they were putting at in the commerce and the TV commercials, Danny.

They were showing us like Tony Stark in The Incredible Hulk this weekend, and people were like, because it was in the TV commercials and only in their first second at the end, but still so we had Stanley's cameo in there as well. Did we have one in an Iron Man the first Iron Man movie. I believe he's mistaken for Larry King. Oh that one. Yeah, because an Iron Man too. It's he half turns around or maybe I'm getting no swap. Maybe he's Larry King and Iron

Man too, and he's half and whatever. But we are the Hulk. He's drinking the soda and it drops. He goes wow. Speaking speaking of Iron Man too, we are moving on to Need ten. It is set six months after Iron Man. Yeah, yeah, this was This was the golden ages of Marvel movies when you got a sequel next. You know, now you enjoy movie and your sequel. You've got three movies in front of your movie. Ye. Same with Marvel, Netflix like everyone out five other series and

then you get your sequel. Yeah, I remember before Jessica Jones, people are like, oh what we gotta wait for what? You know? It's true, Like they have not announced the release date for Black Panther two yet. Oh yeah, like what what date is it coming in here? We don't know. I feel like that's going to be a movie that's going to be bumped up to whatever they have on the drawing board, like the moment it beat Titanic, they're like, yet, let's okay. So we had Fabri returning as director, um

and uh oh. This might have been around the time. Yeah, and two thousand or around the time that Disney had bought Marvel was the year before. Yeah, this is the first like post, you know, and I forget, I can't even remember that world before they were all connected, the Marvel Star Wars Disney like Trinity thing. It was back in the day. It was all going to be at paramount, like paramount, except for the Hulk, which still had to deal with Universal, but they were all going to be

paramount movies. And I think they still were paramount up until I think even Avengers still might have the Paramount logo on it, but then they because it's just like a distribution thing or it's you know, it's it's Hollywood deals, whatever the cases. But but Disney now owns marveled like

they got it um and they'll own everything else. So I want to do a little side fact that you I believe it might have been at geakon Sundury did a Marvel movie marathon and nobody signed up for so essentially all of us hosts could sign up to watch along with the guys that heroes, which is what Hector does with Augustine Rio's and Adam Lavic to show that they had and they and all of us hosts could like sign up, and nobody signed up for Iron Man too, So I had to come in for Iron Man too,

which I didn't hate. It's an again. I don't think it's a movie as bad as people say. It's just not as good as there was a parrot there other stuff. Yeah, you had to make your work again, wrestler. I love justin Sam Rockwell. I love Sam Rockwell. That race car scene was great, but it's it's it's a it's a failure of a movie. It's all over the place. Feel the same now when you look at it's not as cohesive.

But what I have been observing is that a lot of people are doing these sort of recaps as Infinity War comes out, and people when they're revisiting Iron Man too, they're like, even when Marvel failed, it's still a success, Like it's still fine, It's still moves some of the

characters forward. We get to we get introduced to Black Widow, Natasha Romanov, Scarlett Johansson's in the mix, you know, we get a little bit more Nick Fury, we get more of the father son's stuff between Tony and his dad Howard, and yeah, I mean it's it's not great, but um, you know there's some good make your work lines in there. Yeah. I just love Sam Rockwell. It always does it for me. I would rather watch iron Man too than Thor Too,

which we'll get too. So yeah. Well, speaking of which, yeah, next movie is Thorn two thousand and eleven. And this was Man. This is when I knew Marvel could do it, because I knew Iron Man was a superhero. But I was like, people can get iron Man, people can get Iron Man, people could get the Hulk, but how are they going to get this as guardian God to fit on the silver screen with all these people and get

people to still believe that everything isn't crazy. I think in addition to that test with the kids preferring iron Man versus other characters, I think another reason is when Marvel looked at their character's iron Man Captain America Thorne, the easiest cell is iron Man. It's the easiest one because Captain America is like, Okay, he's this dude fights in World War Two, he fights Nazis, he is a shield, he's dressed in red, white and blue. His name is

Captain America. That's that's a tough sell. Thor is another tough sell. It's like Thor, the Viking god of Thunder. He is from Norse mythology. His brother's Loki. His brother's evil but kind of not his father's Odin. He comes to earth. He's a superhero. He's got you know. It's like we also adventures in babysitting and how Thor was portrayed there by Vincent Dinofrio kind of and that little kid that worshiped the Or. And so it's like it's a tough sale because it's so out there. How are

you going to do a rainbow bridge? And then they made it look cool. The by frost look dope when they're riding on it with horses, it's cool. Oh yeah. And then you had just to dip into two thousand eleven himsl That was that was a controversy because they had our man. This This was early Idris. This is fresh off the wire Atris. People who haven't had idrismania now I think I even think the people who were mad now think they're stupid for being mad about Idris

being hiped out has the crown. Now. This is early Adris. He was himed off and white people were very mad about it because there there is a thing with Viking mythology, also Viking imagery. It's very synonymous with white supremacy. It is very much so like grabbed some of that, so

you gotta be careful with Yeah. So it was a smart move on Marvel to be like, let's diversify this, but also going to make people mad because you know, even if people aren't, you know, looking to it for the white supremacy side, people have this like comic book Yeah, I don't understand that. Oh, I get it. It's a racism. It is now, That's exactly what it is. It's like, well, she can't, but there's no possible way this fictional character could be any other color race, even though they're a

fictional character. When even when you remind people comic book fans, dude bros like myself that are like, I love this stuff and have since I was a kid, when you remind them most of these characters were created sixties earlier by white dudes, and that was the audience, and that things like characters like Black Panther and then you know, ten fifteen years later Luke Cage in the seventies, and then you know, years later, these characters were the exception

to the norm um. These books and these casts of characters were not automatically diverse. Marvel did a bunch of great stuff and other companies d C at the time. They have a lot of examples of great diversity in their past, but they still have a lot of examples

where it's mostly white characters. You see things like the Flash TV show where they're like, okay, we got to cast Iris as a black woman, will make her whole family like a black family, to have that diversity, to have the representation, because most of these characters in their longevity there from the sixties or earlier. And when you explain that still to people, they still take it as well that stuff should still kind of work today. It's

like it does not. It does not represent the world, is not current world, absolutely so I think Marvel knew that. And even from Iron Man one, they're like, well, we have to have Jim Rhodes and it was played by actor Terrence Howard in that first Iron Man movie and then he was recast. But still it's like with each of these movies will have a core cast of like four or five people and it will be as kind

of diverse as we can make it. You know, Natalie Portman's Jane Foster was one of the main characters in Thor and with Thor, that character, that actor was kind of unknown at the time. Chris Hemsworth was coming off of like, oh, he played the dad in Star Trek two years before for two seconds and then died. Yeah, but he had the Hemsworth name behind. But it's a name now, it's I mean, he owns he it now.

He had because his brother with the Games was like moving up, like I'm the best Hunt and Chris was like, no, no, not watch this, give me this hammer. So like you know, these Marvel movies. And then we get to when we get to Captain America's set in World War Two, and there still took a troop of Allied soldiers fighting in the European Theater of War. And you still see a French person, a British person, a black soldier, the character Gabe Jones, you see even an Asian guy and somebody

calls him out. In that movie, Neil mcdonna's character dumped them dugins like oh, we're taking everybody now, because that's historically you know, that's a nice way to put what he how he probably would have reacted when he saw an Asian guy and the guy, you know, Jim Maritas, the character he grabs his dog tags and he goes, hey, I'm from Fresno Ace. Because they cause they still need to have that kind of representation and to show different

types of characters. Peggy Carter was like a high ranking soldier in like you know, the U S. Army, and she's like a British woman, you know so so, and then that all that did, I think was allow them to get to a point where when we zip forward to Spider Man Homecoming, Spider Man is played is Peter Parker, and he's played by Tom Holland. And Peter Parker and his aunt may are white characters, but his school that he goes to is like the most diverse high school

I've seen. It been a big black Paster movie. It's the most realistic portrayal on the screen. Absolutely. That's why it fell on Death Bears when people would get mad when Donald Glover said Spider Man could be black and all this, like he lives in New York, he lives in Queens and predominantly black neighborhood, Like you're dumb. You're dumb if you think anything. Besides, there should be more people of color in this world, so do just knock

out thor Um. In this movie, Thor, the crown Prince of Asgard, has banished to Earth and a stript of his powered after he reignites a dormant war. As his brother Loki Platza take the throne for himself, Thor must prove himself worthy and reclaim the hammerd more year. This is a big moment because Loki becomes a power player within Avengers and without really yeah, it starts to become

people's favorite villain. I feel like. And it was after watching like an early cut of Thor that Josh Weeden said, oh, he's going to be the bad guy in Avengers, because at the time Marvel had the plan that Loki was going to team up with Red Skull, the villain from Captain America, who we see at the end kind of disintegrate and we don't know what happens to be the bad guys of Avengers because they're like, well, we're gonna have we need two bad guys for six good guys,

and Whedon was like, no, no, no, it can just be Loki because Tom Hidlson did such a good job and he was right. Yeah, he was right. So yeah, we didn't actually had directed the post credit scene for this, so Kenneth Brauner had directed Thor and then Joss Sweden directed, Yeah, the post credit scene. One other thing is we got hawk eyes and another note where he's a Renner when he goes to fire an arrow but then does it.

But it was such a cute like wink to the audience where it's like, yeah, you want this, you gotta wait for the next one. Yeah, I mean the shield put this away. I think the way they shot that, that may have been one of the last things they shot. It almost feels like because he's just up in a little cream as the action in the movie's happening, and he's like you call it, call it Chief, you know, call it Colson. I'm gonna hit him. You know. It's like they could have they filmed that on a set

on a great screen. Doesn't matter because I think they were working out the negotiations of casting trailer knowing it's like, bro, we need you to be a Camy in this movie, but really be in Avengers, which don't let me forget that we need to talk about how he's not really around right now. Oh yeah, we'll get into that when we get closer to uh to our Infinity War coverage.

But moving on, I was gonna say up next. Ye. This is the movie that made me that really solidified my love for the m c U. This is when I was like, I'm in un locked in baby, because I've always been a big Captain America fans since Civil War. That's when I was sold on. Captain America was always the comics. Yeah, since Civil War. In the comics, like I would see Captain America and I'll be like, all right,

he's too cheesy. But to see him really and up for what he believes in in the Civil War crossover event, that's when I was like, this is my guy. And then it just got real cool because then Bucky got involved in it was just very like Steve Rogers, Like I was a Captain America fans, so when this movie came out, I didn't know what they're gonna do, and

then when I saw what they did, it was great. Also, this is the first movie to have Avenger in the title, So this is this movie launched type level to the max because it's called Captain America the first Avenger, which is I think a double entendre in a way because it's like the first Avenger to exist, but also the first guy, the first first first. I totally agree with you if that I had such a hard time connecting

with characters that are like Captain America or Superman. I know people don't like comparing them, but or I would go as far as say Goku anyone that's kind of like this. I don't want to say pure hearted. I mean Goku is purehearted. But but these good characters, good characters I have a really hard time connecting because I think that they're corny and and the comics, yeah, you know, I've always I like Tony, I like the Billionaire Alcoholics UM.

But but it was really interesting Tomorrow Brooks, who's a writer, she's worked on UM a bunch of things, and she's she does a lot of the stuff at Luke Crate. But she once I was on a panel with her and she said, that's our problem is our inability to either write or connect to kind characters like that us,

like you were saying, as cynical people. Either. Sometimes people will get you know, they'll be writing for these characters, and they have a hard time showing them as anything other than one dimensional, which is other than good and pure um. And that we also as readers have a hard time connecting to them because we can't fathom a world where you would act like that or where you would be like that. You had challenge. It is definitely a challenge and and so it's a testament to this.

The producers in the makers of this film, of this franchise that they were like, we cannot try to change his character too much to try to get him to fit towards modern audiences, because they knew they're like for this thing to work, for the Avengers to work. If if Captain America is a part of the Avengers, if Captain America is going to be running around with characters like Iron Man and later like we'll see you know, doctor Strange and the Guardians of the Galaxy and those

characters do cool shit, like they're super cool. Right, how do we make like what's cool about Captain America? What's cool about him? As if he starts as this skinny kid, he doesn't want to kill anybody, He just hates bullies. He doesn't care where they're from. And if you think that's a dumb idea, like, then this character is not for you, because he will still fight for what's right. He will still save your life whether you think he's

cheesy or not, you know. And and there's a there's a couple of instances where this character had to prove himself in the world and to us, and now he doesn't have to anywhere. Now he's showing up with a beard and long hair, and we like, have you've been buddy? You know. But but back then it was like the moment that happens in The Avengers is when he's wearing that silly costume and he drops down on the cars like I need to set up a perimeter as far back as in the cops, like why should I listen

to you? And then aliens show up and he just kicks a crap out of him and then turns around on the cops like we're gonna need a perimeter back from you know. It's it's again. It's the movie telling the audience like that you can listen to this guy.

He he is inspiring, he will inspire you. And in Captain America, my favorite moment might be when he's little skinny, Steve he's ninety eight pounds, and Tommy Lee Jones throws a grenade, And what a great idea to cast Tommy Lee Jones as the cynic who he gets one over by Steve Rogers. You know what I mean? That's how like again, that's just Tommy Lee Jones telling the audience like, this guy is a real deal. You're gonna listen to. You're gonna listen to Agent k Right. It's a good

judge of character. So when he throws that fake grenade and Steve Rogers jumps on it, get back, get back, and he thinks it's gonna explode, and he thinks he's going to die and he's just saving a few lives in like a training camp. You know, it's like that moment. I'm like, that's this That is the same character when you track him from two thousand eleven to two thousand eighteen, seven years of Chris Evan's playing this character, that's essentially

the same character. Today he's gonna stand up against Fanos. That's the grenade, when he's skinny, it's the same thing. So they were so smart to have moments like that and Captain America the First Adventure, I think up to this point is the most romantic Marvel movie between him and Peggy. So I know that a lot of female audiences around the world really appreciated that they actually took time to do that. And because again at the end,

when he sacrifices himself, that should be a moment. And when you see Peggy Carter crying because they had a date. And he's this character who's a good character, but not everything's gonna go his way. Steve does not have an easy life, and that's another thing that makes you root for him. It's like, man, yeah, he is such a great, great guy, but look what he has to do in Civil War, the comic book, Look what he has to do and Captain America the first Avenger. He sacrifices himself.

He wakes up in the future. Nick Fury says, you know you okay, Cap, and he goes, yeah, I had a date, and you're just heartbroken. But he's still going to keep doing what he's doing. And if you can get behind that guy, if you can have Sebastian Stands character Bucky Barnes say, I'm not following this big beefy guy I'm following the kid from Brooklyn. That's who I'm following,

you know that, Skinny Kid. And then later he meets Spider Man in Captain America Civil War and he's like, where you from, kid, And he's like Queens and he's like Brooklyn, Like it's that. You know that same moment, Like it's it's They just did such a good job of treating his character with respect that made everybody fall in love with him. And then we're ready for the Avengers. Man. Oh yeah. Just to recap for those who weren't lapped up and enthralled in Hector's wonderful speech, I love Steve.

He's one of my guys. It's his it's his origin story. It starts in present day they find this frozen body, then they smashed cuts to the past World War two, pretty much what what Hector said. Skinny Kid wants to be a Great Soldier, gets put in the Super Soldier program, Great kicks uh Red Skull into flames, he disintegrates and smash into the Avengers, which, oh boy, this was this was it. This is what we've all been waiting for. It is and we will get to it right after

the break and we're back. How is it going everyone? I hope you like that wonderful ad? Who knews what it was for? Maybe one of our wonderful house stuff work shows, or I wonder if it was for the lamb skin condoms that I think we're going to start excited to get a pack of them so I can

try them out. Yeah. Across from me Isez and with us is Hector Navarro and we're going through the Marvel Cinematic universe, you know, giving you the quick smash cut course and you know, getting into some speculation after Wait, so, um they have an event? Are you doing it? I know each year like Nurdics has the marathon. Is it

twenty four hours? Now? It must be like it's like I think I think, I don't know, they haven't put out what movies if they're going to be all of them, But it's like I think there was all of them. I don't know. I think it's like a two day event. Well, anyways, we're giving you the crash course of just you know, some important things for Remember, we're not doing a full recap of each thing, just like things that stood out

for us as we move along the way. To save you from a two day marathon, unless you want to do that, because more power to you. Yeah. So now we're in The Avengers, which it was great because you know, we saw Loki not too long ago. We know about the Tests Iract, we don't we don't the Tests Irect is this glowing blue cube of energy. We know it has immense power. The Nazis wanted it, Loki wanted it, but at this point we don't know it's an Infinity Stone.

We don't. You know, there's speculation. The hardcore fans are kind of like poking at that, but the you know, to really make the Infinity Stone, guess valid, you need a second one. And we get to that later. But right now there's the Tests Iract. The Tests React, which is the fancy word for in the comic books, was called the Cosmic Cube, which yea, was just that weapon that the Red Skull used the enemy of Captain America.

And we get to The Avengers and like you said, we saw Loki and if you stayed past the credits at the end of Thorpe, we even see Loki alive, so we know he didn't die and drop in that you know, expanse when Anthony Hopkins Odin was like, no, Loki, and then he just let go because he was sad because his dad yelled at him. But um, the Avengers, you guys, I mean, we all remember what it was

like when that movie came out. It's it really did change the world to change blockbusters that had the biggest highest like opening weekend ever for that first weekend, made over two million dollars in that on the first three days and went on to become the third highest grossing film at the time, which is nuts and I love The Avengers. Avengers is again so simple. It's just about

the characters teaming up. Tony Stark, iron Man, is doing his homework and he's learning about Steve Rogers, Captain America, who has been thought out and Nick Fury's you know, recruiting him. They're learning about Bruce Banner Hulk now played by Mark Ruffalo. They're learning about Natasha Romanov Black Widow, Clint Barton Hawkeye, the two Shield agents that are going to help this team, and um, the last person on the team after they go in get Loki is Thor.

He shows up to try to get his brother back, right, So we're getting this crossover and they spend two hours building up these characters various interactions. The Hulk freaks out on the shield Hell carrier, on their headquarters, the Hulk freaks out, the team disbands, but all it is is leading up to, like seriously, two hours into the movie, like a two and a half hour, two hour, forty minute movie of the Avengers just assembling for the first time.

Because when you get that shot, when Bruce Banner finally shows up, he says, that's my secret cap. I'm always angry and he hulkes out after you know, Iron Man says, tell him to suit up. You know, these characters are just standing next to each other as the camera does that three sixty and it has become an iconic shot. And that's the entire point of this movie. They beat up the bad guys, Hulk hulks out, Hulk smashes people wants him to do. That's what they don't realize in

the other films, is that is what Hulk does. He smashes, and you gotta let Hulk do his thing. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, and and a great moment for Tony Stark because he tries to sacrifice himself. He's willing to right after this whole movie, arguing with Steve Rogers. He's Steve Rogers is like, I don't think you'd be willing to lay down on the wire to let the other guy crawl over you. Tony Starks like I think I would

just cut the wire. Like he just can't like reason with this very heroic man, Steve Rogers that at the end, he sacrifices himself. He takes this in nuke and he sends it up into this alien portal floating above New York City and he sees these the alien ships that will see later later later, but comes back to Earth barely makes it back alive and um and yeah, so

just great moments for that character especially. And the craziest thing is at the end of this movie, you guys, a little bit into the credits, we see Fanos the Mad Titan, this character from Marvel Comics, very obscure at the time. And a little fun fact. I don't know if you guys knew this. I was working on Avengers

in post production in visual effects at the time. I was in two thousand eleven, and the day that I was just working on shots and making it into three D and doing different things, and the day that one of my co workers told me, he goes, Fanos is in this movie or like no. What he said was there's a big purple guy at the at the end of the movie. I went, huh, what are you talking about? And and so he brought me over and this is all.

We're not supposed to say anything, you know. And I see the shot with Thanos and I'm like, oh my god, they're doing it. They're actually going to go for it, like this is Thanos, this is that, this is It was as big a deal as it was for Nick Fury to say I'm putting together the Avenger's Initiative initiative Avenger Initiative in two thousand exactly when you have this character say to Thanos, you know, to challenge them is to court death, and Thanos just smiles. I'm like, holy

sh it, this is it. They're gonna go cosmic, They're gonna do whatever they want. It was incredible. So I'm gonna just pull back. I'm gonna do a lot of pool bags just for people. I want to pull back on two things. One I think is going to be quicker than the other. So I'll ask that first, why don't you explain to the audience who these aliens were. The aliens were faceless aliens that they just needed so that the superheroes could beat up bad guys in the movie, right,

you want to get geeky with it. They were called the Jatari, which is another name for an alien race are in Marvel comics that are also known as the Scrolls, except this version of the Chatari they don't shape shift, because if you read Marvel comics, you know that the Scrolls shape shift. And heck, we're still living going to see the Scrolls later in Captain Marvel in her own movie. Those are gonna be a bad guys she's going to

take on. So that's all the Chatari word, Captain March of next Year, Margin next Year, which is um Bree Larson, Bree Larson. Absolutely, yeah, So that's who they are. And then they're just working for Thanos, who is this big evil space conqueror guy who wants stuff we don't know

yet but we'll learn is the Infinity Stones. Yes, and I wanna the reason I pulled back the moment you said cosmic is because for the average they don't know the They probably don't know the significance of like cosmic Marvel. So Marvel as a comic is broken up into different levels. You have your street level heroes, which is everything you're seeing on Netflix. That's your Dare Devil, your Luke Cage,

your Iron Fist. Those are street level comics. Then you have your Avengers, which is kind of like the world level. And then cosmic is where you get to your Silver Surfers, your your in Humans, your turn as the Guardians of the Galaxy that everybody. Yeah. So that so we we were basically reaching the outer crust of the world of Marvel, which means we are getting everything that Marvel has to offer. So that's why it's a big deal to touch on something like Danos on a cosmic level, because when they

showed up in the comics, it was a big deal. True, I did want to say. So this film, the Avengers film, development actually began when Marvel Studios received a loan from Merrill Lynch back in April two thous just so crazy because we're like, there's no way they would need a loan, But that was all a risk. It was all a risk. That's so crazy. Of the crossover itself was thought of as a risk. This thing that had worked for decades in comic books, movies, and TV shows didn't get it well.

I I understand to some extent in the way that we're still seeing it now. Where it's like, in order to understand the weight of some of these films, you had to have watched some of the other ones. And that's why a lot of times they don't want to bank on a crossover because you had to watch all the other films that came before. An investment. It is

an investment. But I will say with certain origin stories and definitely what we saw with Black Panthers, a lot of people were like, I don't even follow comics or I don't even follow these films, and I love it, and so then you then what you do is you capture on that audience and a new audience to now come in momentum moving momentum. It's just frustrating because if movie studios ever want to do something like a Star Wars franchise or Harry Potter, I'm sorry, but that's an investment.

If you want Harry Potter to be a billion dollar franchise, away ended up being you have to put money and talent into it, and you can't just assume Okay, we're just gonna do one movie, and they were looking at it like, okay, we hope it does well. But you know that they were already planning part two as they were doing Part one of Harry Potter, and they knew. They're like, okay, there's seven books, so man if if

everything works out, Fingers Crossed will have seven movies. And all that does is build and build and build and build. Movie studios need to understand if you're trying to do one of these shared universes, one of these types of things, you've gotta put in the work, which can get to a point where you can have something like a Black Panther the changes the world and gets new audiences interested in all these kinds of things. But you do kind

of need to, you know. The question is like, would Black Panther or Spider Man Homecoming work if it didn't have the rest of the Marvel cinematic universe around it? With thor Ragnarok work if it didn't have the rest of the Marvel It's like, yes and no, we would. We could have had a Black Panther movie in the nineties. I would have loved it. That would have been awesome. We should have had that. We couldn't. We should have

had a wonder Woman movie. And I was about to say wonder Woman, since I do think that you can watch her and not follow the comics and not follow not have seen Batman from Superman. I mean some of the like the photograph and like some of those things don't hit as much. But definitely the point is is

that these characters wonder Woman included. I love wonder Woman, but wonder Woman is a part of a larger world and she does have relationships with characters like Batman and Superman in the Justice League, and and the way you get to a point where something like Infinity Wars coming out and everyone's like, this is it. Oh my god, you have to put in the work. You cannot just work on these little islands and kind of hope it

sort of comes together. And we could have had a Black Panther in the nineties, and I'm bummed we didn't get that, or wonder Woman or other types of superhero movies. I'm bummed that in the early two thousands, Warner Brothers was asked, Hey, are you guys gonna do any other superhero stuff? And they said, no, we're good. We have Harry Potter. That bums me out because I'm like, well, you guys did it to yourself. You know. It's it's about having that that foresight to know, like, this is

what's coming down the line. And if we invest now ten years from now, we can do something where we can put a movie together that has a bunch of characters and just including the Avengers franchise with Guardians of the Galaxy will be enough of a draw that it's like it continues to elevate, It continues to elevate, you know. And Wonder Woman has stories where it's her own story

and they're amazing. But she also has stories where like it's like end of the universe, what I mean, and she shows up and it's this moment that you're like, you want to cheer it on. And I would love to see that in a film someday. I want to see that. But that means you have to stay alone, like let's take another sidebar to just dip into that decent world. That is I think one of the main problems with movies like Justice League, you tried to rush

too many new characters on us. When you think about Avengers, how many characters in the Adventures had their own movie by the time that it came out for Exact Form, so by the time Justice League, how many of those characters have But I agree, But I do have to say that the new characters that they introduced us to, which is Cyborg and Flash, I felt like, we're two

of the best characters. So yeah, but I understand it's like, oh, they don't have as much weight or we're not as invested or whatever as these iconic, you know, the A list ones. But still I was like, well, I still think that they were some of the best introductions. Oh yeah, know that they were good introductions. The point is is that that's only two characters that are that you're invested

in first that momentum. Yes, if there was a film, if there was a Flashy, would Justice League have done better what like to kind of bank on that momentum to get I think they could have kept it the way they did where Cyborg and Flash are introduced, because they,

like Danny said, they were great introductions. But if they would have put the same amount of effort that they did in a movie like Wonder Woman to make a proper Superman and a proper Batman and not smushing into one and have them figure out that their moms have the same time, see what you mean. I just feel like, I mean, we could go down this forever because I feel like the Batman origin story has been done so

many times I don't need to see it again. And probably why they didn't, some of those characters have such unique circumstances for figuring out how to do a movie, and a great take for me is like spider Man Homecoming did not do the Origin because Spidey is the same type of guy. It's like we've seen that in

movies too many times. And but then you get to something like, you know, we can kind of rush over Iron Man three and and through the Dark World and Captain America the Winter Soldiers fantastic, But the one after that's this big risk. Guardians of the Galaxy five new characters introduced in one movie. The difference between that is that these characters were kind of genetically engineered to work with each other, as opposed to a thing like Justice

League or Avengers. They're such different kind of components that it's just like it's a different felt. Yeah, so different than the others. But like you said, Iron Man three, I'm gonna take it. We're gonna move on to iron Man three, which came out in um still made a billion dollars, still made a billion dollars. I love iron Man three. I think there's great things in it, but it how do you rank the Iron Man's mine? One

three two? Yeah? One three two one three two and I see yeah, And I love Ben Kingsley in the movie. I think it's great. And I think it was real smart for them to avoid racist caricature Mandarin and you know, so there's stuff I like, But the movie essentially had to prove to audiences can we tell stories that don't have the rest of the Avengers that people will still care about? And I think iron Man three did it. It's like, okay, here's what we do when we go

back to the solo movie. You know, can we still do it? Can Marvel still get that success? And they did. So that's iron Man three basically. Not not a whole lot happens. Tony deals with his pt Steve from the Avengers again, good follow through, and then he fixes his heart. Yeah was that too? That was three? He throws it away, He throws away his ARC reactor. Thank you for bringing that up. If he because that'll come into play later. Yeah, So what are them? What would you say the top

three main things? For iron Man three, he learns about the discovery of the Mandarin, but not really. It's not the Mandarin. He which is Trevor Slattery, an actor that was hired by Aldrich Killian who's played by Guy Pierce. The Mandarin is this terrorist and they tied they try to tie it back to like the terrorist group that

kidnapped Tony Stark in the first iron Man movie. And so there's a little flashback and you see Jansen, the character that Iron Man spends time within the cave and iron Man one, you see him right at the beginning because the movie takes place in your two thousand and it opens with I'm blue and that booty that we're right there, but you know, and that's a big thing,

and I think like if he hit it. At the end of this film, Tony Stark basically finally fixes his heart and gets rid of this arc reactor that's inside of his chest. He goes to a Chinese doctor in China, and there was an extended scene because it was like a Chinese co production. And that's the future of Hollywood

and that's what's happening there. Um, and that's and he kind of is like, I'm I am iron Man and I'm not my armors, and you know, he just has like a nice almost like a which is something he later kind of says foreshadowing to Peter Parker, like if you need the suit, then you don't deserve like if you're nothing without the suit and you don't deserve it. Thank you. Let's just skip over. Here's what happens in fourt No, Okay, well, yes, let's just go. It's released

in November or the Dark World. Just give us your top two things, then I'll give it to you right now. The Ether is introduced, which is another Infinity Stone, the red liquid e thing. And this is a very powerful artifact and I think it was the Space Stone. Whatever the case, evil generic bad guy character uses it, infects, infects Natalie Portman so that she has something to do thor saves the day. But before the end of it, he thinks that Loki sacrifices himself and it's a great

little tear jerking moment, is a good moment. But by the end of that movie, we find out that Loki didn't actually die and tricked everybody and takes over the throne of Asgard, and we don't know what he did with their father Odin, and that's pretty much it. And then the post credit scene for that one was teasing because the characters from Asgar take this very powerful artifact, the Ether, and they take it to the collector played by Benicio del Toro, who we see later in Guardians

of the Galaxy. So they're trying to sort of tie things together. But basically two main things. The Ether is introduced, we think that Loki dies. That's it, right, And then we jump into Captain America the Winter Soldiers, some of the people's favorite favorite Here's the thing people were in the seasons of people ranking lists. Someone ranked Black Panther at six on that list, and I immediately had to

negate any thoughts they had its Black Panther number one. Yeah, Black Panther just a sidebar, like has such a strong case for being a number one so easily because I think Black Panther brings such a level of sophistication to this world and and so many great questions and so many great ideas, and it's like, you know, and to go back to Winter Soldier. One of my favorite moments in that movie, because again, the Marvel universe is supposed to be our world, right, but they haven't tackled things

like societal injustice, inequality, and racism. Except when Nick Fury is driving his he's the director of Shield. He's driving his jeep in Washington, d C. And this cop car pulls up and there's these two white cops and then looking at him with shades. You know, he makes that he says this line, he goes, I want to see the lease. And it was like the first time for me a Marvel movie acknowledged. I'm like, oh, there is systemic racism in this world. It's just like he's just

like us. He has you know, he deals with bull crap whatever. Um, it should have been addressed in the first one, but yes, but you know a lot of studios would have been scared of that. And it's still Disney and it's still you know, it's like the fact that we got to to Ryan Coogler from Oakland telling the story he did in Black Panther. I love it, but it is a bummer that it took so many movies to get to it. But it's like they need maybe Marvel needed to prove like, look, man, just let

us tell like a deeper story. Let us get to a point where in Spiderman Homecoming, Zendaya can play a character who she's at the Washington Monument and the teachers like, no, do you want to go up there with your friends? She's like, now, I can't really enjoy a thing that was built by slaves. I'm sure it wasn't. And he looks over in the security guards like and he's like, Okay,

that's fine, you can go ahead. Like those little lines are like it needed to take the Marvel Cinematic universe, what like fifteen sixteen movies to just solidify like we're good and we can still, you know, include kind of stuff like this without it. It's more part of our world that exists outside of it. I did want to say, for the longest time I heard just being in the nerd world, Captain America the Winter Soldier was people's favorites.

I would hear that constantly. It's a great they try to capture that seventies political thriller Robert Redford The Man like the guy my mom's number one crush, to be like the bad guy in this movie, and it added that legitimacy, you know, and then they would later get actors and actresses like Kate Blanchet was a villain and thor and like, you know, it just as incredible time. I mean, the roster for Black Panthers insane, like the with the talent there. But um, then they got Kurt

Russell to be the bad guy and Guardians too. You know, it's like it's awesome. So your top three I would say things then for great stuff happening in Winter Soldier, like you said, it came out. We see a threat that Steve Rogers has to reconcile with this Winter Soldier assassin, but also his own government lying to him. And that's the way you treat that character. Right, He's a good guy. He's saying things like this is in freedom, this is fear.

He's you know, saying things at the end like not just Hydra is going to go down, but Shield and this is the beginning of that mean that hale Hydra because we learned that Shield has been infected by Hydra. Right, that's where it came kind of nazis this sort of thing. And at the end, Steve Rogers makes the choice to not just destroy Hydra, but all of Shield as well because it gets too powerful. And there's a beautiful moment I want to highlight where at the end he's given

out these orders. He's saying, you know, Shield has been compromised, and this is going out to every Shield agent. If you follow their orders, we're gonna end up killing innocent people, people that have been targeted by Shield for political reasons. Blah blah blah. And this this like tech guy uh is being ordered by the bad guy. You know, hey, fire that missile and he goes, I'm not doing it Captain's orders and that got a reaction from and he's just he has no powers, he has no you know

what I mean. But it's being inspired by that character, Captain America. We also are introduced to the Falcon a k a. Sam Wilson played by Anthony Mackie. Cut the check does a great job. We learned that the Winter Soldier is actually a brainwashed Bucky from World War Two. His best friend who didn't die. Steve has to deal with that. And and then at the end of the film, Shield goes down. Everything gets burned down, and Falcon and and Captain America are now choosing with the help of

Black Widow. I think after Shield goes down, she's like, we're out, um, and so is Nick Fury. That they're gonna go try to find the Winter Soldier Bucky guy to try to help him, and you know, try to find him, um. And I think those are the major things.

We were joined by the Russo Brothers, right, would go on to do Civil War and the upcoming Infinity War that's right now we jump into I want to call movies like these in a series like tinpole movies because they change what you think is possible in this world. And I believe Gardens of the Galaxy did that with creating a space opera. Huge. It was a space opera.

It had a soundtrack that went with it. People were listening to the soundtrack before they even saw the movie to get them hyped, and then it just made the movie better because it had the soundtrack that went along with it. Beautiful story, it's really great, and it was all and it was a nice I feel like it was time at a good time because it was a nice break from the superhero Yeah. Yeah, it didn't feel

like anything else. It was fun and extremely comedic. I would say humor was at the forefront, like you know, which we don't really see again. I felt like another film that felt closer to it was rag Rock, Yes, but yeah, Guardians kind of set the tone for that and just again, characters I would say ceased slash dealist characters being propelled to the forefront where they took over the Twilight Zone right at Disneyland. That is how important they are now, that's right. Oh yeah, it's so funny

because this movie made Groot and Rocket Raccoon. Who would have thought this raccoon voiced by Um Bradley Cooper would become this like household name, you know, or a tree voiced by Vin Diesel. Yeah, or that our boy Chris brad would get shredded to hell, Yeah, to hell. But it's another sort of it's just just a classic Marvel Studios movie because they took a risk on like a kind of a comedic actor you know from the TV world, another white guy named Chris. They got their third one,

Um and Um. They took a risk because these were not just B level, C level They were unknown characters and this was not connected to the rest of their avengery world. It was another like investment knowing well, they'll eventually meet up with them later. Thanos is going to be in the movie, and he was briefly, but it was more about his daughter's Gomera Nebula. They're setting that up. It was more about Ronan the accuser, one of the Cree characters, and just kind of setting up the space world.

And it was mostly about these characters through the voice of director James Gunn that ends up becoming a family. You've got rock a Raccoon, Groot, star Lord a k A. Peter Quill, go Mora and drags the Destroyer, and these characters are killers or their thieves or whatever. And they did such a good job of getting us to care about a CG raccoon and a CG tree that it just pays off. And at the end, Peter Quill we see another Infinity stone. This this time I think it

was the Power Stone, the big purple thing. We see again. Benisil Do Toro's character of the collect And by the end, when Peter saves the day and he does it in his own way, he still has a moment where he can reflect and go, I should have held my mom's hand when she was dying of cancer. Back on Earth, and that's one of the reasons he escaped Earth. And if you watch that movie a couple of times, you realize he could have gone back to Earth at any

point as soon as he sort of grew up. He could have just gotten a spaceship and came back to it, but he chose not to because it was too difficult for him. And it's so relatable even though it's all out in space, you know what I mean. So they did such a good job with opening that up, opening that world, given us great characters, and it's that that year Man gave a lot of people like their top two favorites. It was like Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy. Man,

they're so good. And then boom Shaka Laka. Here comes Avengers, Age of Ultra. Very decisive. That got a boom Shaka Laka. Yeah yeah, yeah, Okay, because I feel like, not boom Shaka Laka in like necessarily how well it did with fans, but boom Shaka and how it rocked the fan base, because I feel like this was the first film you had fans being like, it's just it's a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and it started to feel like

this Marvel formula. It's like, maybe you guys are focusing on too many characters, and maybe you guys are you know, instead of I mean, the Avengers and the comic books always did a great thing where they swapped out their roster. It was never going to be the same characters. The X Men do the same thing. It's like to mix it up. Let's bring a new characters, new characters, new characters. But those first six were so popular in that first Avengers movie, like they're all going to be here, even

if Hulk and Black Widow might not. It's like, well, what what stakes do they have with Ultron? I guess okay, we're gonna have you know, Bruce Banner and Tony Stark work on this Ultron artificial intelligence, and it was voiced and acted by James Spader, and then Ultron sort of takes over and and at the end it ends up that he like basically blows up a Eastern European fictional country called Slowcovia I think is what it was, which which later yeah, which is going to be a big

one of the coming Kia. But like it introduces three new Avengagers, Scarlett, Witch, Quicksilver and vision and one of

them dies, yeah, which Silver. Also, I feel like this was more one of the This was more suit flex than actual, like more writing, because I felt like Avengers specifically wanted to create Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver because of just the kind of tug of war they've been having with Fox and is it Sony who has X Fox Fox with the X Men, and because at this point they first Class was doing pretty successful and then they had Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver with this and they read

con that they're not related to Magneto and that mutants don't exist, that she has powers if people aren't aware. In comic books, Quicksilver in the Scarlet Witch are two characters. They're Avengers, but their father is Magneto played by Ian McKellen played by Michael Fassbender. So like there's no connection there in the Marvel Cinematic Universities because there's no Magneto, because there's no X Men, there's no Mutants, there's no etcetera, etcetera.

So they were called miracles instead of mutants, which is weird and then kind of never again, Yeah, very weird,

but we'll get into that. But yeah, pretty much that that's kind of the big event that happened is this, you know, this giant city gets destroyed, uh and Quicksilver dies that I feel like that's also there's this tug of war between Cap Bruce and um because of creating someone like Ultron, because Tony Stark's going into this big crisis of like what happens when we're not around, we need to create someone who's in and that internal conflict

rolls over into Captain America Civil War, it does. Yeah, And before we get to that, we have H's Okay, a man coming out, which was another comedy dude taking over, which I think they're so smart to do because I get I agree with like the superhero fatigue and if it's too dark and britty, like they're capitalizing on what they know well, which is what they started with their original blueprint with Robert Downey Jr. Who if we go back to Iron Man, we don't even really have a

villain until kind of the end. We the whole the whole movie is based on the chemistry of Robert Downey Junior and it works. And so what they did is that they found out, Okay, we have Peter Quill, we have star Lord with Chris Pratt and that's super funny, and Guardians of the Galaxy and we're going to bring in our man into aunt Man. Paul Rudd, the most handsome,

funniest guy. He's so charming, so damn charming. And you've got Evangeline Lily, and then you've got Michael Douglas to round out again that like that top tier actor cast and one of my favorite characters, Michael Penias. Luise. We gotta talk about Luise, We gotta talk about the t I is in the film. It's great, it's great, but it's great because this is Marvel's uh I feel like mastermind plan that they often implement where they don't make superhero movies. They choose a genre and aunt Man was

a heist movie. Yep. You may have heard me say earlier that, you know, Guardians of the Galaxy was a space opera. They choose genres for these movies, and like you said, for Winter Soldier, it was a political thriller exactly. So now we have aunt Man, which is a heist movie, and it's great and such a breath of fresh air after The Avengers, which was trying to be very serious and you know, and and especially in the case of aunt Man. Aunt Man and the Wasp are characters that

are such tough sells. And we're technically originally on the Avengers to begin with. Why weren't they in the first Avengers movie? Because it's a tough sell, you guys, that's you know, that's a difficult concept to tell people. Okay, we've got Iron Man, he builds a suit Captain America, he thaws out from World War Two. Thor'st Kyle with a hammer. He's a god, take his word for it. And then on top of that, people that can shrink. They went, no, no, no, we're gonna we already have

the growing Hulk guy. We're going to bring in two spies, but we'll save aunt Man for later because he is a tough sell. And they were working on it with Edgar Wright for like ten years apparently and figuring it out. And so I think it was so smart, like Danny said, to bring in this comedy guy to make fun of the idea as well, because it helps sell the idea to audiences so that we can buy it if the comedy guys making fun of this. But then by the end of it, he's aunt Man. Then you're like, Okay,

come in Yeah, and it was. It was great. I do want to take a second song about Michael Pinion because it was nice to have a Latin X character who is if sophisticated, he likes the finer things in life, but he's still himself and he goes into these long diet tris where he talks about these things. Yeah, you know, just go off on that, up off on that. If I love the character, he's one of my favorites. I am hoping that he gets to put on a suit of his own at some point, maybe become giant man,

maybe do the whole thing. But it's tricky because up to this point in the like the Latino the Latin X world, there's not really any representation in these movies. And even when you get to aunt man technically. This film Okay is directed by Peyton Read. Peyton Read also did Bring It On. If you haven't seen Bring It On in a couple of years, rewatch that because it is a surprisingly woke movie. It is a surprisingly aware,

socially aware of film. It's a movie about a white high school that steals cheers from a black high school. That's what it's about. That's what the movie is about. And there's an openly gay character and there's all these things happening and bring it on. You get to aunt Man, and the movie is about criminality, and it talks about some of the struggles that people that have been in jail and prison have to put up with the differences. Is that Marvel playing it safe but probably very smartly.

Their lead criminal is Paul Rudd, so of course you're gonna audiences are automatically gonna humanize this character instead of dehumanize him. If Scott Lange, his character he's playing, was a black guy, like right, coming out of a jail in San Francisco for committing a crime, how many audiences would have crossed their arms have been like, he's not a superhero. Why is Michael Douglas, you know, picking this guy? But Marvel very wisely chose Scott Lange to be the face.

They show him getting fired from Baskin Robbins because Baskin Robbins always finds out. And he's just trying to support his daughter and he's just trying, you know, he's trying to do all these things and it shows the level of desperation and it shows non violent criminal offenders as well, and Luise and um god, tis character I think his name was I'm forgetting give a guy tip, Dave Dave and then sorry, I didn't know what it st it

was it was Louise, Dave and the other guy. Like these are characters that they show, like, you know, he got in jail for for stealing a smoothie machine and Luis is like two smoothie machines, Like it's not it's like a non violent thing. Because it asked the audience, do you think a person who has has served time can still be contributing to society, can still be a superhero, can still be a father, can still be all these

different things. So I love Louise. It's still a bummer that, like, you've got a Mexican character like still involved in criminality in the superhero world as opposed to just like being a super like. I still want to see like a Mexican superhero character. I still want to see Miles Morales Spider Man someday in this world and we can get to that. But so, I it's a bummer that Luise is like a former convict. But I you're so right, if you I love the way that they fleshed out

that character and the rest of the characters. They just humanized these people before we moved on. I didn't want to say the screenplay like you were saying that Edgar Wright had worked on it, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, but then also the team of Adam McKay and Paul Rudd.

So Paul Redd just having that comedy background, it's fascinating that he you know, this is the first time I think in these films that this star also worked on the screenplay, so that I did hear that Edward Norton did some right, You're right, And of course you know Favreau who's in these but not quite the same, not quite the same, not the title character, right, even if he is directing some of them. So yeah, so any

connective tissue and that's not really see the falcon again. Yeah, so we know the Yeah, that was a real fun We know that at the end that man will be an avenger. And we also hear a mention of a guy who climbs on walls Spider Man, you know, kind of a little different things like that. But um, yeah, I did want to say so right after this, so we had before this. We had so, we had Guardians, we had Aunt Man and in a different you know, franchise, but we have Deadpool then came out, which is not

a part of this but after this. But I think it is important to note as far as the medic actors taking over and kind of being almost like a parody and kind of like making fun of a lot of these superhero not taking it as seriously. I agree. I think Deadpool. I think Deadpool is as much a refreshment to his own X Men franchise as he is to the larger superhero of genre. So like Deadpool works just as well making fun of when he says the three point landing, He's gonna do a three point landing.

He's making fun of like other superhero movies to not just like X Men movies. So yeah, which is something he did like in the comics anyways. But I just think that it was so successful at that time in because of these other films that kind of had these comedic actors starring in them, but moving on to the big, to the big, the big, the big time. This was always interesting to me because yeah, it's Captain America's Civil War.

I was it was very interesting to me that Captain America was the Civil War title and that they didn't use it as an Avengers movie, but I felt like it kind of fits. It kind of worked in the end. I enjoyed it, but as someone who was a big fan of the Civil War crossover, to kind of see it kind of be this mobile version, that's what I'll

call it. Like it was in the comic books, Civil War was a war because you know, the comic books had the ability by the way, the comics have been running for decades at this point, and so they had so many characters they could have called, and so it was an all out war across the United States between superheroes. To see it just kind of melted down into a parking lot fight. Uh. It kind of was a bummer, but it still worked for me. It still progressed the

Marvel cinematic universe in a unique way. We had the Russo brothers coming back. We had our first introduction to Tchechaula as well as Peter Parker. Peter Parker, Peter Parker. That was a crazy thing that happened too. There were so many behind the scenes things that were happening with this movie. I never would have guessed that Sony would have to like a deal like a sharing deal to so crazy. Right, and not too long after Amazing Spider Man two came out, did they kind of announced this?

So when we all heard it, we were like, oh my god, what this is insane that that Sony was going to lend their guy and it kind of meant like anything as possible, So that when people talk about today like oh, the acquisition of Fox, even before that, I think that it meant that Marvel Studios has become so successful that it it is impossible to ignore it. That's how successful this franchise has been. And not only that, but people forget that Marvel Studios put down a date

May in no movie was announced, right. Warner Brothers not too long after put a movie down on the same date, which was Batman Versus Superman. And after Marvel announced this is Captain America Civil War, which is effectively Captain America

versus Iron Man, Warner Brothers moved there. And that is mind blowing to me because the Warner Brothers film has two characters in it called Superman and the Batman, arguably the most icons the most iconic, but the momentum, the momentum and the success of Captain America and Civil War and the Marvel Cinematic universe, and the fact that they were gonna have all the characters and Spider Man was gonna be this, and Black Panther was gonna be in this,

and and we're going to see the Vision and Scarlet Witch and war Machine and ant Man and and and and Hawkeye and and Black Widow. And it's just like it's a lot. It's not comic book level, the whole world, but it was basically everybody up to that point that Warner Brothers moved their film like earlier in the year to avoid that sort of competition. And I think that that is a testament to just it's again, it's like they became so successful you cannot ignore them. So after that,

all bets were off. We were having discussions of like, well, if Marvel wanted to, they might absorb just the characters of the X Men, just the characters of the Fantastic Four, just like you know, it's Sky's the limit whatever. And pretty good movie too. I really liked it. Yeah, everyone a yeah, you know the stuff I set aside. Really, yeah, So what are the main three things before we move on for Civil War, I mentioned the character character interactions.

We get a little bit of a resolution between what's happening with Bucky the Winter Soldier, right Cap is finally able to sort of reach out to him. We learn this is a big deal, a big deal to a seed that was planted in Captain America the Winter Soldier, when we learned that when Steve is finding out what his friend did when he was brainwashed, one of the things he did was assassinate Howard and Maria Stark. Cut

to Civil War two years later. They showed us Tony Stark's parents in the nineteen nineties is when they died, and they show us that assassination. They show us as kind of flashback. So Tony Stark finds out, iron Man finds out that Captain America's best friend killed his mom and dad, and like it's that's the conflict right there at the end. But before that, there's this big airport fight where they're trying to protect Bucky, and iron Man says,

we need accountability, we have to turn ourselves in. Because he was spoken to by a woman named Miriam the beginning of the film, who had family who died in Socovia. You know, so all of the different threads in the film. Again, you do not need to see the whole movies, all the movies to go and see Captain America Civil War. But if you do, it's just it's just to payoff. It's just like, yep, I remember when that happened. Wow,

what a cool little detail. I'm learning now that this woman's son who was volunteering he died in this event. And now now that she's upset at Ironman, and then that's going to lead for you know, it's I was gonna say, there are two other main things. One is this is where King to Chaka dies, which is true, you know, haunted haunts to Challa. Um that he yes, And so Bucky then in the in the post credit scene or the mid credit wasn't technically, um helmet Zimo

that killed him? Yes, yes, m you're right, you're right, yeah Zemo um. And then in the mid credit scene, so Bucky is then granted asylum in Wakonda, which will come in handy later. And then we also have the other post credit scene, which is Peter Parker testing out his new uh yep, his little Tony Star, his little Tony start, which we will see later, but next we get a whole new character, Doctor Strange. We can skip

over most of this whatever Dr Strange. So you weren't a fan of Surgeon, I love as a great film and he's good coming back as important are almost there people origin story? It was an origin story, but it was really cool to see them do this kind of cerebral thing. But like you said, it's more like a you know, just like a popcorn flick in the grand scheme of things. Definitely, this was at the point I got superhero fatigue. Oh no, oh, yeah, well we'll get

into that. So I enjoyed it. There was a lot of controversy was around it this year with the casting of Tilda Swinton. The character she played his name the Ancient One, and the version that she played was somebody who was Celtic, as told to us by she tell Edge of four. That actor was telling us, you know, and he himself was playing a character named Baron Mordo Mordo who in the comic books was white. He's a black actor who's playing him. So again Marvel is doing

what they always do. They look at the source material. They're like, how can we diversify this for other how can we avoid offense, How can we you know, do

this do that. So a lot of debate was was happening at the time with the character of the Ancient One in the comic books as a Tibetan monk type guy, a Tibetan Asian male who departs his wisdom on a white guy from New York and then he becomes the Savior, and so there's a lot tied to that with like historically sort of stereotypically racist white savior type imagery and

and and stuff like that. Marvel tried to avoid that bybinic let's go with a woman instead, But they didn't want to cast an Asian female actress because they didn't want to have other stereotypes associated with that, and so they thought they were going to kind of play it safe. And there's other reasons too, is that they wanted the movie to open in China. You cannot have a Tibetan character because of the complex policies and and politics of

that region. So there was like financial reasons for them to do what they did. There was like we're trying to avoid but at the end of the day, you know it was sort of like you're gonna lose either way because people pointed out like, well, you're taking a role away from another Asian Asian, and Asian specifically is already limited. The four sort of main cast I would say was Bennetic Cumberbatch is Stephen Strange. You had Tilda

Swinton is the ancient one. Like I said, she would ad you for playing a black version of the character Morto, who later becomes the villain of Doctor Strange, but in this Forgin story, like in the comics, they're friends and they're helping each other. And then Benedict Wong, great actor, played the character Wong, who they sort of updated from being Doctor Stranger's man servant from in the comic books.

You see there's a lot of stuff happening in the Doctor Strange world to like his partner and his kind of better and you know he's going to help him along the way. And just to throw in, we also had Rachel McAdams joined the m c U one movie and then she's done ye Christian Palmer his his love interest. And then we had Bennet Cumberbatch, I think, also voiced Dormamo. The big scary thing at the end where Doctor Strangers like Dormamo, I'm here to bargain like he voiced that character,

I think. And then we had a post credit scene that featured thor Thor again we're like, oh, that's where he's been. Cool, that's where he was during Civil War. I guess he's jumping around space or whatever. That was Doctor Strange. Yeah. Then we zip over to Guardians of the Galaxy volume. To the reason I mentioned the superhero fatigue is because I didn't watch this till I was on an airplane. I didn't see the thing. What do

you think on an airplane? Oh? It was great. It was hard not to try because you and the you know with the dad's stuff. You know, I'm a dad now, so all that type of stuff just tuts. My heart had done everything wrong and I'm glad you was my boy. Yeah. Yeah,

I was specifically next to Ronnie Adrian. We were flying into uh to Austin for improv fessed And if for those of you many listeners who don't know Ronnie Adrian, he is one of those friends that razy uh So if he would have and he was sleep so that would have meant if I started crying, he would have woke up and saw tears in my eyes, and I probably would not have heard the last of it. I want to say. I was working on the show with Lawn Harris m who is he works at? Like screen

Junkies and what's training to end? Uh? This was like a year or two ago, and we would write like the cheesiest lines where it was like I might not be your father, but damn it, I'm your dad. Like we would put that, and then they had that in the thing. It was so funny. We would always think that those lines were just like you're thrown away your dream son. No dad, I'm throwing away yours that like stuff like that, and which those are all like Disney

Channel Original movie or Disney Channel whatever. That was from a Cinderella story. But anyways, I thought it was so funny that they had that in this He may have been your father, but it wasn't your daddy. Yeah yeah, yeah, by our little Mary Poppins. No Infinity Stones in this film. It was just James Gunn taking the characters. Two months later we get a baby group because group died in

the first Garden. Yeah, we have to clarify that because a lot of people might not know this because this kind of was confirmed via Twitter from my friend Ash crosn In you like, yeah, and we were talking confirmed when the film came out. It was like recently discovered it again. I think they were tweeting back and forth and gun and he was like, no, Grout died. That's not a new group. That's not like him regenerating himself. He's dead. That's a brand new baby, which means he

has no memories. This baby group does not have the memories of the previous group. That helps. So when Grout said we are group and sacrifice himself, he did. He did sacrifice himself. It's just a little sapling that grew from his remains as like his kid, like his clone and whatever you want to call it. So we get baby Grout, get Rock, a raccoon. Nebula Mantis is now introduced. She's a sidekick of Ego the Living Planet, who's the villain in the film. And the villain turns out to

be star Lord's long lost father. So it's just James Gunn like wrapping up that storyline, that star Lord storyline. At the end of the movie, Ego is discovered evil he gets killed and yeah, and then the Guardians get the heck out of there. That's it, and Mantis is cool. I like Mantis. We still have the sexual tension but between yeah, psic an unspoken thing, but yeah it's there. Well, something might have happened, Okay, okay, then we you know, you're a loan in space and gets hold up there.

So this is this is when I woke up again. I woke up. I was in slumber, slept on Guardens of the Galaxy. Woke up for Spider Man Homecoming. I woke up for that. This was a good film, first Spider Man film that really felt like Spider Man in so many ways. It does, and those first two Spider Man movies are great. Yeah, but you didn't like the hot topic. I liked Toby McGuire. I liked the first one.

The second one I was not a fan of too. Yeah, a lot of people like I Now at this point in my life, I have to go back and watch it because when I was a teen when it came out, I hated it. I hated that he revealed himself to be sure to Mary Jane. I hated the kind of like fast tracking of things. I did not like it. It just did not vibe with me. But I need to go back and watch it because a lot of

people really love Spider Man. There's a bunch of stuff that works there on the story level, but there's a bunch of stuff that if excuse me, if you are a comic book fan, you point to it and you go, well, that's not the complete sort of story. It's not you know, we're we're missing out on certain things. We're missing out on the big thing that I missed out on, even though I do I did love those Spider Man movies when they were coming out when I was in high school.

Was Toby McGuire's Peter Parker isn't quite there, He's not quite there with that sort of quippiness, with that sort of you know that that kind of relatability. I really liked Andrew Garfield in the role and the Amazing Spider Man one and two. But you got well, now you can go back and check them out. I'll let you borrow.

I'll let your borrow. But like, there's some great stuff in there, But those movies are too many cooks in the kitchen, too many things, and they're still kind of isolated because Spider Man is part of the Marvel Universe, and the Marvel Universe is a part of Spider Man. I'll say the same thing about the X Men. When I argue, you know what, I'd love to see the X Men and the Fantastic Four in the m c U.

People go, no, keep them separate. I go no. The X Men characters like Wolvere, they are incomplete without the rest of the Marvel universe. But the Marvel Universe is incomplete without them too. I love them. They need to be over there. So you know, Tom Hollands, Peter Parker's so great, so likable. The villain in this at the time, best villain in the m c U at the time was Michael Keaton. Yes, he loves wings character Vulture Batman. Also, we got to talk about just the societal missdirect in

the twist of the movie. Yes, they caught me, they caught my racist as they called everyone because no, he turns out to be the love interest who happens to be African American. Zendia Liz is played by Laura Harrier. I think you see actress's name and she is black. So when he opens the door and sees Michael Keaton, it's such a dad as heard that, it freaks out and then there's this Pedro Huh what is he doing there?

And it took me a second and I'm like, oh my god, we should go and watch it after this. But then on top of that, it didn't do the cheesy kind of like movie thing of like they don't know like immediately the next scene Michael Keaton that's spun in fact, when he figured it out, this great moment. He's sitting in the car and they stopped at a red light and as he's like talking to Peter and figures said, oh, you must have been so scared in Washington, d C. Right when Spider Man saved you. No, I

wasn't there, sir. I was you know, he's figuring it out. There's a red light. As soon as he figures it out, the light turns green on the Vulture's face and he's looking back at him like Pedro, it's great. And then his daughter would be like, dad the light screen and then he goes And so there's so much great stuff there. But what's fantastic about Spider Man Homecoming is like it's not an end of the world thing. It's a pair

down story about Peter. We get Iron Man. We have him coming in Tony Stark and being this mentor sort of father figure, kind of like an uncle Ben. It's great, it's super funny. It's not the end of the World steaks, but that's okay because to me, it's like a part one of a Harry Potter franchise. It's the Sorcerer's Stone. We've got places to go, people, It's okay, all right, And then we go to thor Ragnarok. I go back

to sleep, I go back. Have you seen any of films New Zealand director Taka Wait, here's a very key thing about thor ragn Rock that I didn't even get

on my first watch. The movie is about vampires, effects of colonialism and the repercussions of colonialism and how the basic premises that Hella, played by Kate Blanchet, returns and she reveals that she is Odin's firstborn daughter and that for Asgar to achieve the level of of success and wealth and fame and wealth that Asgar did, it had to bury people's and cultures, and which is interesting because he is a first people's of Australia, right he is yeah,

He's a Maori. He's yeah, because because the out of vogue term of what people used to say is aboriginal, which now this year we've made an effort to stop using that term. Yeah. Um but yeah, so that is coming from a very personal absolutely absolutely, and it's still super funny. That's what his movies are about. So he brings that voice and yeah, and it's just Thor who meets Hulk up in space. The Hulk has been up there because that's where we last saw him from Avengers.

Agent have a lot of comedy together, really good stuff. I go with TV. I mean, yeah, he if you got to go watch what don't worry I want to see. This is the one I was saying, what we do in the Shadows, thank you exolutely enjoy it. She really would, and then you'd want to see his other work. Um yeah, this was just another you know, it did have some

weight to it. But I would say, in the long run, like another fun, loud music type of Um, I feel like people are going to be so mad and we've we've equated like these films down to Yeah, it was fun. There was music. I just said, it's Coli. You did You're right, you didn't. And we have the All star dropping in. I mean we have Tessa Thompson Valkyrie. I mean she kicked as and extremely Jeff Goldblum, of course, yes, um, but but she really I did set up something special

in this film. And then she later was like, we need to have an all female film, okay, And I think given how great she was in this and and her character's future, I think she can make that work. I would agree. Then I'll wake all the way up. If I was buried, I shout out the grave. I pulled back the curtains, not only for myself but for America because Black Panther dropped. And I will say all the like hype up to Black Panther. I just stayed

very calm, very calm. I didn't want to get too high because I Black Panther is one of my favorite characters so much that there is a level of anger I had that they had not wait longer for me to be of age to play to Challa. You could play to Challa like college ears. Yeah, well you know who knows. I just know that if I'm not into I'm probably gonna fire all my representation and I'm gonna send them this clip once we're done. But it I saw it three times and it really too now knowing

that about Ragnarok, it really did. And even if we go to Homecoming, this new wave of of just aware content from comic books, knowing the effect and really uplifting not only people of color, they do now shift the tide of these movies to not be something that just get these nerdy white guys man, but everybody can show up and feel represented. I only hope we can do it. I hope we get either Michael Pinion and the super Board get you know, like we need to really make

the steps to do it. And I think Marvel they've talked about their like we know part of our future plan is a better representation and diversity and different types of audiences. And look at what Wonder Woman did last year for so many women around the world. Look at what Black Panther did for black around Does everyone really? I mean it's like people see this and they relate to a story of having turmoil and your family of having turmoil, you know, these like sins of the Father

type of things. Like people relate to it. So it's so funny when people like they make excuses for why they didn't know what you know, when Danny, I don't even care anymore because you know what you know, because now we got numbers on the Board's right, We got big numbers on the boards. So any time somebody even tries to negate any Latin next movie, any Asiana, you know what I'm gonna tell him. Sorry, ears Um, that's for editing the workout. But I'm ana bark them quiet

numbers on the board. Are you done? Him? Are you? Are you finished? Are you do you finished? Because I have these numbers on the butt because I have watched from the mountains your white heroes and I am not impressed. Scoff at tradition you scoffed at and blackness in cinema? Yes, can we talk about how we had the introduction of Umbaku Winston Duke himself. Now, just I love watching, like I'm such a creep that I'll go and look at someone's Instagram and he had I followed him that weekend

and I watched he had like three followers. Just and it's and it's so beautiful to watch. Make sure you're paying attention when that happens. Me a black panther. It made stars of everybody. Letitia right, coming from black mirror exactly that. Now it's like everyone's like, you're sure, you're amazing black to black like the cover of lethal weapon, you know. And I didn't mess that up. I meant black to black, black mirror to black. Panther's right, yeah, yeah,

so we okay, what I will say? So tying that to what's next at the very end, Bucky popping out the white sure, yeah, the white wolf popping out. He looked good? Would he look like he's gotten some rest? And which will we We can debate on whether they were calling him the white Wolf or referencing him as the white Wolf, because there is a character in Black Panther lore called the White Wolf, which is a white

character that Chaka took under his wing. He realized that he was not going to ever have the mantle of the Black Panther when to Chola was born, and so there was a secret uh secret police for Wakonda that was disbanded when to child took off. Honestly, I do think they're probably just going to pass the man's Debucky, because there's not enough time to set that up. And I kind of hope they do because that is a good because if they go that route, where they talk

about like a secret police for Waconda. You feel like that blends in perfectly for the story Tennahsey Coats built true true in the comic books. Absolutely, I have to plug real quick. Um Coats was on Marin's podcast and it was so good. Man. He was talking when he took over Black Panther and like some of this stuff that he was dealing and where he wanted to take it, and like how his first book failed and just like, Oh, listening to it is just so fascinating. Definitely listen to

it when you're done with this. One is writing the Captain America comic this summer, which is which is a big deal. I mean, I've loved his Black Panther stuff, but I really cannot wait to see what he does with Steve Rogers Captain America. So we are rounding it out. This is uh this week dropping Avengers and Finity the War. We will all be seeing it together. Yeah, but let's give the people what they want, which is what I was cut off Frier away, what did you stay in

chronological order? But I'm glad we did because everything that we talked about will make what I'm saying makes sense if you did not know before, so I think Danny partner. Yeah, of course the best. So my idea is that Infinity War we still have Scarlet Witch. Non comic fans are unaware of the House of v I know where you're going with this. I'm gonna give it. If he had a few minutes here, he's going to explain this. So the House of Him was an event in the comics.

It happened after Civil War, right now, before before Civil War. Yeah, no, because it kind of blended in with Before Civil War, Scarlet Witch had issues mentally, was schizophrenic. She kind of broke down a little bit. Yeah, she had like a mental breakdown, and this was a problem. They were like, someone who has the power to bend reality should not have a mental breakdown. And so they brought in the X Men and the Avengers and they're like, we need to kill her because this is too big of a threat.

And the X Men are like, you don't even get to say, Avengers, She's with us, this is our family. You And this created an event that eventually lad Scarlet Witch to mutter the words no mutants, which how many mutants did it cut it down to? Out of millions around the world. She depowered mutants when she said no more mutants, and it just you know, around the world, this big blink happened and people lost their powers except for the that ended up forming around the X Men

mansion in Westchester, New York for protection. And yeah, and that's so. So are you saying that the Scarlet Witch is going to manipulate reality in this I feel like the Scarlet Witch is going to manipulate and do a flip of House of Him where instead of saying no more mutants, she speaks to the existence of mutants and then bringing the X Men into our world. And I think that's why no one wants to say the title because it's Avengers versus x Men. Really you think is

going to be Avengers versus x Men. That's that's a bold move me a little bit. And maybe you know, you and I were talking about this hector about some and I think maybe they could have someone from X Men show up. Maybe. I mean, I've heard rumors. I've heard rumors that like we might see the Silver Surfer,

but I'm like that that's still a Fox thing. But like you're saying earlier, if at the beginning of the show, these companies have these deals in that out months and if you do want to say your theory goes along with if you're like Mutants, you know, we have the New Mutants film. Yeah, so I feel like that could be. Yeah, I see what you mean. It could They're all playing

ball together and we don't know. Maybe. I think that whatever happens, I just want to see Ryan Reynolds continue to play Deadpool if there's ever like emerging like that, right, And he's allowed to because that character is the character that breaks the fourth wall. Yeah, so like that's allowed. But I do not want to see Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, And I do not want to see what you're saying. I don't because I'm like, I think that era of those movies are done. Well. I feel like he closed

the book. He closed the book specifically, but even that kind of era, that sort of Fox X Men movies where they're just kind of like figuring it out as they go along movie to movie, it's like we're done. If Marvel Cinematic Universe were to get if Marvel Studios were to get the X Men characters, they will have that plan to be like here's the characters are introducing first this is the bad guy. We can plant these seeds. Boom, boom, boom. But how would you feel about the first class X Men?

I would be okay with I think that a great way to do it is you've got Tom Holland, who Spider Man, right, he's in Queens. I think that you introduced the idea that around the year two thousand, two thousand three, way more mutants started being born. So by the time you get to whatever, they're like in their early twenties or they're like in their teens, and that becomes the class that Xavier is barely sort of teaching. Xavier was maybe born in the eighties. You know, he's

not super old. Magneto still has to be a Holocaust survivor from World War Two. He just ages very slowly. But just make it so that mutants are a relatively new thing. I think it's doable to entry. You don't have to do every character all at once. Boom, we got all of them. We've got thousands of X Men characters. Take it slow, give us that first group and pick characters that are diverse but still kind of make up

those classic iconic characters. Find great actors like you found Tom Holland give us a new X Men movie set in the world, and then you're good to go. Okay, how man would you be if all the Avengers are knocked out and that Cats just standing tall with the shield and and he's looking weak. He drops his shield and Fanos come in from a punch and then a claw it zooms out and it's uh huge check. Ye, I'd be pretty mad. So I think we'd not like that. So, my my, I think that they're at least going to

kill cap Um probably. Yeah, you know, we've already seen. Please, you've got so many I mean, I get it, but there has to be some weight to this. They can't just keep having these. But like, that's the thing though with a lot of these films, is that the stakes aren't as high because nobody does because they're so bankable and we came to love them. I have some interesting picks for deaths for my dead Pool. I definitely think cap might be one of them. I have as around.

We got to talk about that. Well, I think she might be reborn. Yeah, here's what are you talking about? Danny. Don't like that reborn? What does that even mean? Okay, Hulk gets killed. Okay, and they introduce Asian Holp. What about she Hulk she hoped would be tight to. I would take either one. I take I'm a Days Show the totally awesome Holk, or I would take Jennifer Walter's Bruce Banner's cousin as the Sheeholk. We even't one of

those to be fine. Yeah, And the other brilliant thing about this franchise is that they've been planting seeds from the beginning for the legacy of these characters to continue to be passed on to new iterations. Even sureI introduced us to Chilla's sister, it's like she becomes Black Panther. At some point she becomes She's Black Panthers went down that depressing hole where it's like, you know, what if they do kill that's not going to happen. What if

they do like it would be a bold move. It would have to be it would have to be five or it would have to be after second Black Panther. There, he's getting one more Black Panther film. At least they killed my Man's and sure he's the new Black Panther not and then he comes back. It'll happen with the death. See that's the thing that that that that that Black Panther did not include that I think. Okay, So in

the comics, he's not powered by a flower. Okay, he gets the power from the spirit of the god Black Panthers Bust, Yeah, Bust and the panther god the to God. And that's how they were able to co exist Suri and T'Challa as both Black Panther because remember after the events when he took over Hell's kitchen, he came back and Boston bued him with the power of death and black and sure he was Black Panther of life. Um, yeah,

they could do. But but I don't know, because well they did plant a seed, because they do show in the little uh animation at the up top of Black Panther someone communicating with bost They do, yeah, and maybe they burned. So I don't know. There's just so many seeds that have been planted for potential stories, for potential characters, for potential villains, for potential love interest, for potential sidekicks, for potential new characters that pick up the mantle of

the old characters. Even in Spider Man Homecoming, Donald Glover, who plays Aaron Davis as I got a nephew here. He's talking about Miles Morales like those seeds are planted so they could do whatever they want and I'm here for it. All right. Well, I think that's all you need to know. Where can people find you? Find me? Find me on the internet at Hector is funny and I'll be talking about this movie for a long time and you can find me if Y W A D

I W E on Instagram and Twitter. I'm at MS Danny Fernandez M S D A and I F E R N A N D e Z. Don't forget to hit us up on iTunes if you're listening on there and give us a five star review. That would be great. We actually got written up in the A V Club, which is don't We've been getting a lot of cool, a lot of cool feedback. Remember, you can tweet at us. We're at Nerdificent and let us know what you want us to cover. Obviously this one, you know, we had

what eighteen films to tackle. I think we did it. We just did you know our takeaways. If you want to watch an hour review of an hour film, you can go on YouTube a lot of those, but we will have a nice little bonus. Okay, yes, yes, yes, so Hector, if you're down and not too tired to talk about Infinity War, we are going to be having a bonus episode once we all get to see the screening of it. I would love if you want to

come on here. We can see if if he was right and those wolverine claws coming, Oh my gosh, can you imagine if I was right? Watch you, guys, Hawkeye like a phoenix is going to come reborn? What does that mean? Um? And don't forget to follow Nerdificent on Twitter, Facebook. I mean you'd like Instagram tag us in your cool

photos too, like we had Cause players that submitted. You know, if you find cool nerd art or if you if you do art or cause player or anything you want to be featured, do tag us or d M. So that's one of my favorite things, is sharing artists, independent artists and stuff like that. So hit us happening. Thank you guys again so much for heaving. This is a blasting Yeah, thank you everyone, and stay nerdy