It's not a bird, it's not a plane, it's Superhero Slade It's a weekly podcast where we talk about everything that's great Like movies, TV Hello everyone and welcome to Superhero Slate, the show where we run down the latest superhero entertainment news. We love TV, movies, superheroes, so let's talk it all out. My name is Chris. My name is Mike. And this week, we've got your Captain America Brave New World review. That's true. We are one of...
thousands of people reviewing this movie this weekend. So I feel like we're going to get lost in there, but that's fine. We also, we're going to recap the trailers from last week's Superbowl as we like to do trailers, trailers, commercials. I also put some commercials down. well that i remembered and i tried to do this off off memory mike i didn't look them up so i'm gonna hope to see if you remember any as well
Twisted Metal Season 2 looks authentic to the games, and I'm thoroughly surprised they actually did something like that, Mike, and that's why I brought it up, and more. Yeah, I'm glad we made the right choice.
last week where we didn't hop back on the horn to talk about Super Bowl trailers because there's a few but definitely not enough to prop up an entire second episode of the podcast in a week if Jurassic Park arc and um fantastic four had waited uh i would probably disagree with you but since the two big ones were Wednesday and Thursday of the week before. Absolutely just kind of took the wind out of the sails, if you will, for the rest of them. Yeah.
Well, I mean, it was probably a smart call because I don't know, at least in my feeds for the first couple days after the Super Bowl, it was just nothing but Kendrick Lamar memes. And I was living for them. They were hilarious. It was great. I went back and rewatched the halftime show on YouTube a couple times. So I think that's honestly what...
took it away from me. I mean, we're all living in the future now, so we all know the game was incredibly boring, but exciting if you were an Eagles fan, but just... Or if you really hated the Chiefs, I suppose it was a really good game. I have no strong feelings either way, but I love a good play, especially whenever there's interceptions and you sack the quarterback because that's my favorite two things to do.
NFL Blitz, Mike. So those are my favorite moves. So I don't care which team's doing it as long as exciting gameplay things that you don't expect show up. So that's what I like for that. Yeah. So that whole media event is over. You know, we can kind of get back to regularly scheduled silliness on this show and the very first silliness. We finally have all we have both tried. the trifecta of new quarter one 2025 sodas which is the dr pepper blackberry the orange cream
Coca-Cola and the Pepsi Wild Cherry and Cream. We just... Chris just literally tried the orange Coke on right before we hit record. I found it like two days ago, randomly at a target. I thought it was going to take forever to find it, but. My assumption is that Coke has a much better distribution team and plan than these other cans. Cause I was hunting down these other cans. Like my life depended on it like weeks and weeks and weeks, but we finally tried them all. Uh, so.
Chris, what is your just initial like power ranking? If you had to rank the three, how are they ranking? Yeah. So Pepsi, Wild Cherry and Cream at the top, Dr. Pepper, Blackberry at the bottom, and Coke Orange Cream right in the middle.
That is hands down. The first sip from all three of those told me how I was going to feel. And I know you're going to be different. And we've talked about why you're different on some of these. But those are my top three. Or those are the three in order. Pepsi number one, Coke second, Dr. Pepper. bottom, where you at?
Yeah, we're close. I think Pepsi Wild Cherries and Cream is the top, but honestly, it's because it's the safest. I mean, this is a flavor that kind of already really exists in some fashion, especially if you've visited like...
any sort of like freestyle machine i know pepsi has their own but even like you can make like a cherry vanilla coke very easily so cola with vanilla and cherry yeah yeah so the cream in this they say orange cream cherries and cream the cream is vanilla It's vanilla flavoring.
uh, in these drinks. So it is literally half to me. And I think I told you this is half Pepsi wild cherry and half vanilla Pepsi in, in one drink. And, um, for some reason that just works with, with Pepsi. And I think that's why I would rank it number one as well with you. Yeah.
great i even tried it in a uh like a 20 ounce bottle and i think cans are far superior to bottles but it was even great there um the dr pepper blackberry i'd put in second place um they're kind of um they're kind of weighing on me a little bit i had an entire 12 pack and you know i was like oh these are these are good i can drink these but then now i'm like i have like maybe six cans left i'm like ah this kind of seems like work
I'm drinking one right now just to get through it. But then I would put the orange Coke at the bottom. I bought a 12-pack because it was the first way I found it. Sometimes I only ever see cans in my area. I never get the bottles.
to get it now and i cracked i cracked open the first can i was like i do not need 11 more of these so uh but my wife my wife likes them so i think she will work through those coke zero uh orange creams i to me and this is what it comes out and i saw someone else post this last night is that the dr perry dr pepper blackberry
Fake blackberry flavor to me tastes like cough syrup. And Mike, you have an affinity for that flavor, that tone. And I do not. Like the second I had that Dr. Pepper blackberry, I looked at my phone like we've made a huge mistake buying it. these like I was the other way with your Coke orange cream I was like I was like no I'm good I don't think I need to have any more of these ever again unless I find something to mix them with but
On the flip side, Coke to me always goes great with like a citrusy thing, like a lime Coke, right? I think you were showing me like lime coconut diet Coke this week as well. Oh, yeah. I went to... like the flavored water enhancer things. What are they called? Like Mios or something like that. Yeah. And they, and Target had its own store brand. It was coconut lime. And we've talked about these dirty sodas that.
the Mormons invented in Utah like a thousand times on the show. Uh, but their kind of default like flavor that they invented, the first one was like a coconut lime. And then I think they also put like creamer in it too. So I was like, Hey, we're like halfway.
to a dirty soda so yeah um the only thing is is like these things add like sweetness so you have to be like really gentle with it when you add it to a diet coke yeah and i just think i think just citrusy things orange lime probably i think lemon coke was pretty good too Uh, they just seem to, to, to cut through the Coke sweetness to me. And I like that. So, so for me, Coke orange cream has, has the heads up, but obviously.
These are all personal preference, right? Everyone can have their own flavor. So if anyone else has had these, let us know. I think this is where we, maybe we already shouted out, but the... I'm going to add on here the monster blue Hawaiian. Was it the ultra blue Hawaiian can we talked about last week as well? I had another one yesterday. That was great. I love that. Yeah, great. Be better at warm weather. After the second one, I'm like, yep, I wish it wasn't raining and snowing here.
in in louisville but uh uh absolutely these are these are great we're in the the season of flavor mike but it's it's all the new flavors are dropping so i'm excited for this uh as we go through it If you're ready, let's jump into the Super Bowl, which none of these drinks had Super Bowl commercials, if I remember correctly. I don't remember a Dr. Pepper blackberry one. Coke, I'm pretty sure, had one.
I don't know about Pepsi. But anyway, the Super Bowl last week, commercials and trailers. We're going to go to commercials because we don't have a lot to talk about. We'll talk about trailers. So the commercials that stood out to me, Mike, and I texted you this right away. The Instacart Cinematic Universe. Absolutely.
Love this because you get all of the weird mascots. What was it? I was a puppy monkey baby was in this one. Jolly green giant, all the mascots from all the food things that Instacart can deliver to you right there. on this trailer. It was fun to see them all kind of come together for this. I would watch this before I'd watch space jam two again, uh, with all the Warner brother properties sitting around the little basketball court.
uh for that this was a weird commercial for me because you see all these kind of like brand mascots and i was like is this a weird like proctor and gamble or johnson and johnson commercial and then usually when a big corporation like that makes a commercial it's because i don't know they killed a bunch of people in a factory so now they have to like generate good pr by
rolling out all the mascots but weirdly I was relieved when I saw it was an Instacart commercial I was like oh okay so at least it's not from the corporate overlords yeah well there was like Chester Cheetah was one of them I know that the Kool-Aid man Busted out of a window. Energizer Bunny, I think, as well. So to me, that one was fun because it kept me guessing. Like you said, I was like, who is this for? Nobody owns all these things. Do they? They probably do.
And then lastly, the other one I have here, I just have two, is Seal's Baja Blast Seal commercial, A Kiss from a Lime, which they've turned into a vinyl single record as well, Mike, that you can buy for your record player. This was... just funny number one i have an affinity for kiss from morose because of the batman forever movie because that's the song they play in that movie uh and seal the ability for him to not take himself seriously
uh as a seal it was it was just it's great but since you brought the commercial up now i have to bring out my apple box i have to stand and deliver and just throw my fist up at a cloud and wiggle it because this was not a super bowl commercial i know that they will tell you it was i know they will say internally when they were
like project managing it this is our big game commercial then why did i see this commercial four days before the super bowl oh you saw it early bad oh yeah it was just i saw so so many of these commercials during the super bowl were all fed to me through YouTube days beforehand. Wow. It got to the point where like, you can kind of tell when a commercial starts, if it has a little extra like zest to it, a little bit more cinematic quality right off the bat, especially when you're near.
the super bowl like oh this is a super bowl trailer and they're just feeding it to me early i'm gonna like skip it or like look away or something like the doritos commercial with like the ufo like sucking the doritos up same saw that days early so i know it feels like so weird to like complain about commercials because i rather live in a...
in a world where they didn't exist but like there used to be like a lot of fun and pomp and circumstance to the super bowl commercials now it's like all meaningless it's like why am i even watching the super bowl like i can get all these commercials like days well i i had no preconceived notion on any of these uh at all so i i i feel sorry for you because for me the magic's still there i don't i don't know i don't know how i avoid them um maybe i
I pay for YouTube premium. Maybe. Is that it? Is that why I'm not seeing them?
maybe probably yeah yeah so uh i i had i had a great and the fact that they actually mountain dew and taco bell are like the two brands i'm like they're gonna do a weird commercial then have something like a prop that you can get with it and i'm glad they put this little kiss from a line single out on that now is there any other non I guess trailer commercials that ring out to you Mike that you were like that's great or That was really really bad. I couldn't think of anything else.
I mean, that's probably not a great sign from the perspective of the amount of money it costs to air these commercials. That a week later, that's all we can remember is a puppy monkey baby shaking the rattle and then a seal as seal. And I will tell you the one thing about these commercials. I will also...
A lot of them are brand awareness. They're not announcing new products. I didn't feel anything. I think the one that kept me guessing the most, there was the OpenAI's chat GPT commercial or whatever. I was like, there's a bunch of dots in here.
But they're not changing my sentiment towards these brands at the end of the day. So I think that's important. But I will tell you my... least favorite thing to come out of the super bowl was the superman spot uh the little promo video the super bowl cut clip with the uh Nathan Fillion's Green Lantern in that and it was during the Puppy Bowl and there was no real commercial for Superman nothing new it was just this and I fucking hate this so much Mike I can't tell you how much I hate this
I'm even using strong language because number one, it's a Superman movie. And they were like, ah, don't worry about all the extra characters. We're going to focus on Superman. There was no Superman. It's just Nathan Fillion being smarmy in his bowl cut as. as um guy gardner green lantern and i just hate it so much mike how do you feel as strongly as i do because i it's bothering me it's just it's uh i mean i guess
This is probably from the mind of James Gunn. He kind of is a weirdo at heart. I mean, I guess this is something. I mean, we weren't really hyped up. for the Superbowl, we kind of knew that Superman wasn't going to be making an appearance. So at least I don't feel like I was let down. They said they were going to do something during the puppy bowl. No, they, they said we're going to do a Superman thing during the puppy bowl. And this is what it was.
Well, I never was expecting a full trailer because that's a waste of money to do it at the Puppy Bowl. I mean, why would they do it there? Because Warner Brothers owns it. They don't have to pay for it. That is why. Like, that is why they do it in the pub. They literally just like, oh, it's our airtime. We'll put whatever we want on it. I mean, I got to assume that this bowl cut is referenced in the movie.
they gotta be making fun of his hair. Cause I mean, if they're making fun of it already, it's gotta be, it's gotta be a joke in the movie. I need to look at real fast. Warner brothers movies, 2025, Mickey 17, the parenting. uh well these are distributions uh working me in minecraft movie is part of it final destination the accountant two
I guess they have a bunch of movies this year, more than I thought. So I thought they'd have more, but did not care for that at all. Moving on to, we talked about this, knowing it was coming, Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning.
trailer released uh starting i think it's one of those trailers that i i like how they open up the viewport a little bit but it's a very silent trailer right it feels like the first one we watched several months ago um but like we always say tom cruise he's trying to he's trying to kill himself with these stunts like
Every time he does a stunt, he's like, I'm going to do it myself. He's just trying to end himself. And I think this one is the airplane. They save it for the end, right? They always save his stunt for the end. He's flying on the side of the airplane. That's actually him and not CGI. kind of along the way. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, I feel like I recall seeing him hold on to a, like a biplane like that. Um, a prop plane early on in the franchise, but I could be wrong. I mean, the biggest.
Problem with the Mission Impossible movies, they're not totally unlike the Fast and Furious movies where I can't tell any of them apart. I can remember different set pieces and occasionally a villain here or there, but after the... second movie it's all just one big amalgamation of like tom cruise like running as fast as he can and and it's high and like high speed chases i would liken it maybe more to the j like the born movies because i i know the born
movies and I could pick out a couple scenes but I couldn't tell you which one it was a part of more than Fast and Furious because At least Mission Impossible movies feel like they're trying to make a movie. And Fast and Furious movies feel like they're trying to make a parody. Or something awful. So I would liken it maybe more to the Bourne movies. But yeah. I don't. I know this is a.
We know this is a sequel to the first one, which was Dead Reckoning. Originally titled Dead Reckoning Part 1. This was supposed to be Part 2, but they've kind of gotten away from those Part 1 and Part 2 names recently. But I think... I think this might be maybe the last Mission Impossible movie, Mike, before they reboot it with somebody new. Yeah, reboot it or, I don't know, spin it off. Like maybe they'll actually kill Ethan Hunt or maybe they'll do like a... A.
the final Batman Nolan film where we can't be entirely sure, you know, if he's dead or not, that kind of maybe feels a little bit more thematic for the character, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And I would say much like the original. the Jason Bourne franchise, they had, remember they had Jeremy Renner in like the fourth or fifth one? And he was supposed to kind of take over the role of Mission Impossible. And I'm like...
He had so many roles lined up that never really came to fruition along the way. Yeah, they could definitely hand it off, but I think they're going to bring back a lot of people. from even mission impossible one they brought someone back they brought a couple people back in the last movie so i think they're trying to maybe like you said kind of wrap up this story and then maybe if they move forward it'll be it'll be new but um
Yeah, I think Mission Impossible movies, they're coming out faster than James Bond movies, Mike, and I enjoy watching them. So hopefully we get this coming out end of May, end of May this year along the way. Moving up, How to Train Your Dragon, the live-action remake of the animated movie. I believe... Is this DreamWorks? Is it DreamWorks? I...
I think How to Train Your Dragon is good. I don't revisit it. I don't know if I've ever revisited it. They're doing a shot-for-shot live-action remake of the original movie, almost exactly, and I feel that's cool, but... We've talked about this on the show. If they don't take a swing, they don't make a change. Why live action it along the way? Yeah, I kind of hate it.
I hated this trailer in a way because it's essentially just looks like somebody did like another render pass on the movie and made it look more realistic and took out all of the charm and character. And. It also, I suppose I should wait to fully judge the visual design and the set decoration and the costuming.
until I get maybe a longer trailer or I sit with the movie. But what I've seen in the trailer looks like bad cosplay or just good cosplay because cosplay just tries to replicate what is already on the screen. You know, when you'd make... something live action i feel like the costuming should be elevated right we should be seeing more textures and like natural fibers you know something to make it feel unlike a cartoon
Or even the hair, like, they gave this dude, like, cartoon hair. Like, yeah, it looks exactly like Hiccup from the animated movie, but, like, that's a cartoon character. Like, this is, like, a real human who's a Viking, and I know his character is...
his archetype is supposed to be like, you know, against type of a Viking and that's what makes him special. But like, he doesn't even look like he lives in the same world with how he looks. Do you think his nose is that big in real life or is that a prosthetic? Because that actor has a huge nose. That's a good question. And also, I think the biggest problem I have... What's the main dragon's name? Toothless? Toothless, yeah. It looks almost down to the pixel of what it looks like.
It's a modern render of the How to Train Your Dragon movie. It just looks like a next-gen Toothless. I would have hoped that maybe they would have done a little bit more visual development. I'm not saying drastically change the design, but give me a reason to go to the theater to see a live action. There's no reason. Yeah, well, I also, I mean, you might be the audience one day. I don't have kids who watch How to Train Your Dragon 1, 2, and 3. But I think the shot-for-shot remakes are...
They feel lazy. I think I think everything you're saying kind of agrees that right like they're not really doing anything different They're not trying to elevate it I don't mind how the dragons look. The dragons look cool. That's awesome. But everything else just feels just low effort, if you will, kind of along the way. And I wish maybe like, hey, we're going to redo how to train your dragons live action.
Maybe there's a twist that's coming and they're just showing us the stuff that looks the same. But I have a huge suspicion that this is going to be identical to the other one. And they even got... Oh my gosh, what's his name? Mr. 300 himself to do the live action version of his Viking that he voiced in the original movie.
Yeah, I can think of everything else but his name. In South Park, he was fighting around the world. No, no, no, no, no. That's Russell Crowe. It's not Russell Crowe. I thought it was Russell Crowe. No, no, no. It's the guy who was 300. The main guy in 300.
No, we'll just have to leave it up to the internet. Someone's telling us. I'm going to get text messages tomorrow about who this is. But, you know, it just feels low effort. Gerard Butler. Gerard Butler. There it is. It just came to me. Yeah. So it feels low effort. And I'm like, I'm not.
excited like i don't want to watch it it doesn't feel exciting it doesn't feel different it just feels like this i know parents are gonna you know kids like oh my god i gotta see how to train your dragon we you know we've seen the trailers we have the toys we've been living it for years they're gonna go see it
it'll probably do well but you know as as someone who they have the animated version they can still watch it and they don't need a live action version next to it on when they're like trying to pick which one to watch right so um
hopefully they do differences and and despite what you say you know like oh disney does live action remakes all the time yeah but they they change up a lot of that stuff right like i feel like uh you know snow white and seven dwarves feels different uh dumbo was different uh alice of wonderland was different so i think there's opportunities to you know judge it up a little bit if you will
all right so the trailer i was most excited for mike uh and the one i think that has like the most interesting things to talk about was the thunderbolts and they had only had like the a little spot during the trailer during the super bowl and like all right the full trailer is online which they they do so We got the full trailer released online for the upcoming Marvel movie Thunderbolts. Now that Captain America is behind us, we can look forward to this. And it's.
I don't know how to describe this, Mike. It's not dark, but this movie is very gray-coated, like shadow-coated, like when I was watching it, like the trailer. Does that feel accurate to you, watching the trailer? Yeah, well... I feel like we were a little bit more lighthearted that first teaser around. Now we're seeing people obliterated into shadows, which is a very interesting visual effect. We haven't really seen anything quite like that in the MCU.
to you yeah like maybe there's some there's been some magical things like if i can try to recall maybe stuff that happened in like thor 2 like maybe those are kind of the feelings i get like oh there could be like a dark elf you know like that could do something like that. We get a hint at the villain doing some stuff. We get a hint at the sentry, just the hair, like his thing. But it was more the team kind of coming together being, hey.
Does anybody fly or do energy blast? No, we only just punch and shoot. Well, shit, we got to figure this out.
Which is a great line. I mean, like, Yelena has just become quickly the standout in the MCU for me. She's just so much fun. I love the charisma. It must be really fun just to write for her, you know, because she's kind of... like this aloof character that kind of just seems like you know the life that she has now it's just it's just all like oh yeah i used to just be kind of be this uh this widow and told what to do and now i just kind of get to kind of hang out and do whatever i want
like nonchalant but she's also a badass so she's never really threatened wherever she goes because she's so good at what she does i just love that idea i mean we i feel like we're operating on a different level of information
Because you are a century freakazoid. You know everything about the character. He's one of your favorite. You know all about his alter ego and identity. So we kind of already theorized here on the show very heavily that the... entry probably is going to be the villain in some way um so i feel like this trailer
is all but kind of confirming what we kind of already knew. You know, you see like a shadowy version of him, which I assume has to be the void in some way. So, um, I guess now the question is like, well, how does he get to that? point you know yeah how did how do they tie this into the mcu which is more grounded than the comic books right like how do they bring him into this we got to see julie louis dreyfus's character uh the avengers tower under construction even you know what's
her role in all this. I will say, again, the biggest draw here is Sebastian staying as Bucky. Yelena's great. I have no doubt in her, but to see Sebastian, he's growing his hair back out as Bucky, right? He's not doing the... the high and tight cut. He's going to back out. He yanks the cars. He literally single handedly, you know, gets the, um, uh, The other people, you know, Yelena, Red Guardian, U.S. Agent, Ghost, he wrangles them all up at some point. He's a return to badassery.
Bucky, right? He's not the guy who was, like, in Falcon and Winter Soldier who was, like, literally pulling his punches. So, like, I'm glad we're back to him being able to flip a car with his arm, right? And just being the Bucky that we know. From, I guess, pre-infinity war era. Kind of buggy. With that... There are a lot of people online. I've seen a lot of articles here believing that some character will die because they're not featured in the trailer enough, Mike.
And that is the Olga Kurlinko's Taskmaster. Now, I will say this. You know this as well as I do. Marvel edits their trailers pretty heavily. They edit things out. They'll hide things. They'll do shots that are different. Different outfits, stuff like that. This character could very well be hidden.
in these shots uh kind of long way also taskmaster i don't think i don't think talks right do you remember i don't remember that character ever talking either so they might not be like we need to have them here but they don't have any lines along the way yeah like if i had to if i had to play devil's advocate
that rumor it would be out of the cast of characters that we have here on the screen taskmaster seems to be the most cloak and dagger out of all of them like literally i think there's daggers so yeah you know i could see this character like
dropping out of the story and maybe popping back up in the third act kind of out of nowhere from a bush well right yeah if you're gonna send someone off screen to hey go run black ops while we're doing send the person who doesn't talk right like oh it could literally be anyone in them in that suit like they don't show their face very frequently you know so I think everyone everyone is technically probably other than Bucky and Yelena
everyone's life is on the line in this movie. Uh, no one is guaranteed to make it out alive, but at the same time, boy, have they, he has Marvel like, you know, tried to throw the story one way with the trailer and really it's gone iconic on the other way a little bit. And I think that's, that's true. Brave new world. We'll talk about that full spoilers at the end of the show. We review it, but I think that's, that's how it's going to go.
uh also there was an international poster released with this um that said asterisks uh you know uh the thunderbolts asterisk and it was asterisk the avengers aren't available Um, which could be a translation to like the title of the Avengers isn't able to be used like, cause it's international. It might not be a one for one, uh, a translation. So.
I think that would be interesting. It's like, yeah, they're called the Thunderbolts because they can't call themselves the Avengers, right? Like, well, we can't, we're not officially titled Avengers. We have to come up with a new name kind of thing. I think that I'm really curious. I don't know if Marvel would do this.
to kind of take it the next level. I mean, we're all assuming that the asterisk at the end of Thunderbolt is a name change for the team at the end of the team. That's kind of the prevailing theory. And we have seen in...
But it would be kind of next level if after this movie is out for like three... months and people had their time to see it and when it drops on like disney plus they like change the name to like the dark avengers or whatever that would be like that would be kind of like fun like i think that would it would annoy one
Part of my brain of like, well, now you're just really screwing up the Google search history on this thing. Well, it would be kind of like a fun like media. They make it Thunderbolts with a subtitle New Avengers at that point. Right. Like keep Thunderbolts. But then you add the. the new Avengers after the fact, because you know, some movies have done, I won't speak in Tom Cruise movies. Was it live, die, repeat? Was that one movie he did? Uh, or like, you know, um,
It had like three different names, remember? Edge of Tomorrow. Edge of Tomorrow was, I repeat, yeah. So they actually changed the name of that movie after it came out. I don't think it helped it, but like...
When you have something like this prominent that's available, I think that would be fun to be like, oh, yeah, we've, you know, something has happened. They become the Dark Avengers, New Avengers, or whatever they call themselves. Maybe it's not even relevant. It's just like a kind of a fun thing at the end of the movie. that they, if they do that, I agree. That would be really fun. But, um,
Yeah, I'm excited to see this movie. Again, that's our next Marvel movie. Again, I'm trying to put my bias for the century aside. I will say my wife leaned over. She'd not seen this trailer when we saw Captain America Brave New World. She was like, who's the villain in this movie? I'm like... Oh, I know. I'll tell you in the car ride home in length and detail. Yeah, I was like, I'm not going to tell you.
but know that the sentries in this and she was like oh my god really i'm like yeah she's like i bet you're so excited like you have no idea you have no idea how exciting for this so um yeah Every trailer that we talked about for Superman, Mission Impossible, How to Train, Dragon, Thunderbolts, those links are in our show notes for anyone who's listening and wants to follow along or go back and reference those as well.
Moving into some news here, some official news. Spider-Man 4, I think they don't have a name for it yet. Spider-Man 4 is officially filming the summer and fall.
2025 this year in the uk because uh there's a uh one of those competitions where you can uh i think donate and then you can win a chance to be someone on set meet spider-man for in person and be on set while they're filming this meet yeah meet uh scroll down but an all expenses paid trip for two to london with a thousand dollar spending cash you get to go on set
A selfie with Tom Holland. You get to take a picture. You get to get lunch with Tom. Two tickets to any West End show of your choice. That's kind of funny. But I guess that gives us an idea of when the movie's filming. Yep, yep. It says... All expenses paid trip for two to London UK summer autumn 2025. So, um,
That summer kicks off, I guess, what, June 22nd proper is when that kind of kicks off through that. So there's a nice little three, four, five month window they're filming it. So they will be filming Spider-Man 4 in London as well. We do know.
That also It's just going to go into our next topic here Mike Because I don't have anything else for Spider-Man Is that the Avengers Doomsday Starts filming March slash April in the UK officially So they will be working on Doomsday With Tom Holland, and then he'll just essentially go to the studio next door to work on Spider-Man 4, it sounds like.
And some actors already there ahead of schedule. They're like, you know, I think Chris Hemsworth was there. Sebastian Stan, a couple of other people are, you know, spending time in the UK, getting situated and getting ready for this longer production shoot. So. I can't wait to start getting some set photos, Mike, because I literally have no idea what this movie's about. I'm so in the dark on everything kind of going on.
It is really crazy. We've never really gone into an Avengers movie kind of quite like this before. It's funny because the Avengers have never really in the history of the MCU been like a... a team it almost feels like it feels like they just briefly came together in the first movie and like somebody just called them the Avengers and then
it seems like they had a lot of fun adventures before Ultron that we never got to see that kind of solidified them as a team. And then they just started breaking apart and fracturing and they never really came back together. So we never really got to see their kind of like seasoned team, like just. you know, clocking in and out at the office, like doing like Avengers stuff. Um,
So I guess we've never really had a clean entry into an Avengers movie, but it does feel weird going into Avengers Doomsday having no idea where we're at. We'll talk about Brave New World here at the end of the show, but we've seen from the trailer... a spoiler that Ross wants him
to restart the avengers uh speculation that thunderbolts might be called the new avengers like what kind of team are we cooking up going into uh doomsday and there's like a lot of legacy characters right you know we haven't seen captain marvel since the marvels you know
Mark Ruffalo's Hulk, Wong, Doctor Strange. There's a bunch of people who have been part of the Avengers and were part of those initial movies we've not caught up with in a hot minute. So how are they going to get here? How do they all arrive at the same place?
So I I'm excited to, to learn more. I don't want everything. Obviously we don't want to be spoiled before we go into the movie, but knowing that they've got a script, they've got directors, you know, we were getting Robert Downey jr. We've got one. uh fantastic four introducing us to that team in a different universe before we kick off this movie we got a lot of a lot of a lot of uh ingredients in the bowl we got to mix together to make this cake and uh i really i really just want some cake
uh to come out nice so may 1st 2026 so we're coming up um you know 14 months or so um before uh 14 and a half months before it comes out so they are filming that and we'll keep you i suppose we hear anything else and i'm going to switch gears into the sequel to that avengers uh secret wars will film one year after Doomsday per Anthony Mackie. So they're going to make Doomsday this year, then Spider-Man 4, and then kick off.
after post-production, filming Secret Wars while Doomsday is in theaters, which is kind of how they did, I think, Infinity War and Endgame, right? They didn't do them back-to-back. That's what I was about to ask. I couldn't remember if it was a back-to-back situation.
They said they couldn't make it work or it was too hard to edit one movie and make one movie while they were doing two. So they did them separately. So I feel that's a smart move on their behalf. Right. Rather than trying to make two movies in one go, they can make.
individual movies along the way yeah i just i i just hope they don't give the russo brothers like um just full control because they've quote unquote like proven themselves i've seen so many movies so many directors just like go in a downtrend and like nobody gives them any sort of creative pushback or like kind of creative like limits they just let them run free so i i hope the relationship that existed during infinity war and end game is still kind of solidified and presses forward yeah
And obviously with Bob Iger's take quality over quantity, they know they got to hit it out of the park with these. They got to end this phase. that was troubled with Bob Chapek stuff, with the Kang actors' dismissal and problems kind of along the way. They've got to really kind of come together here next year and over the next two years and kind of wrap it up.
get a nice clean slate to introduce X-Men and all other fun stuff. And again, I don't think, again, the Russos only really operate on good scripts and good content that already exists. So hopefully the... Whichever writers, one of the writers, not both of them coming back from Infinity War Endgame, tells that story in the right direction with them.
I shared this with you last night, Mike. Fantastic Four has an IMAX-specific intro. So when you go see an IMAX movie, they do the countdown that says only an IMAX. It's like from 10 or 9 to 0. And it's always been like, you know, IMAX. They've actually updated that to be Fantastic Four themed with the Fantastic Four theme song and everything. And I thought this was cool as hell. I didn't actually get to see this before my movie we didn't see in IMAX.
but i i you know on the on this um tweet that we have shared a link to that where this video is it's on film but in the theater uh they they caught that it's another sign that marvel studios know that Fantastic Four will be their big event hit for 2025. And I think I agree with that. You don't have IMAX make a brand new intro on a movie you're like half invested in, right?
Yeah, it's a really good move from IMAX. Like, I don't know if it was Marvel's idea or IMAX's idea, but like, hey, we should just sell off. the sponsorship rights to this countdown. I bet they made a pretty penny off of it. So whoever came up with that idea, I hope they got a promotion. And it's a free trailer for Fantastic Four without actually using the footage. But it's really cool. It feels 1960s. It feels authentic.
they've obviously done animation but it feels like it's real uh you know like like tactical and then at the end it says um presented in fantastic vision or fantastic vision uh so they've really kind of gone in on the branding here i i love it it's just something little not not a heavy lift not a huge thing that you'll see but um i recommend even check that out because i just think it's one of the coolest little promos they've done so far.
We're going to touch briefly on the Harry Potter series, Mike. Obviously, we are not the hugest Potterheads. We've said that for years. But knowing HBO is going all in on the TV series, doing one season per book. going forward eight across you know uh seven books uh they have to start casting this and the first casting that has come out of this so far uh is that john lithgow uh known for such as 30 not 30 uh was it um
Oh my gosh. Third rock from the sun from the nineties. Obviously the biggest show ever. Everyone's seen it. No, uh, Dexter, uh, other Lord Farquaad and Shrek is in the final talks to be cast as Dumbledore. which is interesting along the way. I have one interesting note on this. Not interesting. I have a note on this. John Lithgow, I believe, is he 79 already?
He was born, I'm Googling it now for other reasons, 1945 in Rochester, New York. He is 79 years old. If they're going to do... seven years of this he will be 86 while i do believe you know hollywood age you know people in hollywood tend to live a little longer they have access to um you know doctors and stuff like that Boy, that's a risk to see if someone pulls through for seven more years when they're filming this until they're 80.
Spoilers. Technically does not have to make it all seven seasons. Well, no, no, no. He has flash. Well, then they better film his flashbacks in the last book early on because he will make an appearance at all. Seven books. Yeah. Whether that is a good point. I think the big, the biggest change here, not a Brit. That's why I Googled it. New York, American born and bred. I know Lithgow has a very.
specific kind of way of speech. And I would not be shocked if somebody told me he has a great British accent. He does, actually. He literally just was in the movie. I just pulled it up. I'm going to pull up again. oh my gosh it's a British show where he's like like a king or something. It's like one of those like a royalty movies. Um, I'm going to find it, but he does have it. Cause I was like, it's like, no way. And then I looked up and he does have, uh,
he's been doing British X's lately, like in the past, like two years. Yeah. But I mean, that's a, that's a sign that now the. the casting kind of, I guess, unspoken rule for Harry Potter is broken. These actors can come from anywhere now, I guess, as long as they can imitate a decent English accent.
Like there's been so many rumors that I've seen pop up for the casting of this. I'm curious to see how many of them are actually going to be true. This one, this one is from deadline. This is, that's why all the other ones are like fan casting. This is the only one I know that is actually. being reported on in like THR deadline, all the actual variety, all the big ones. So, um, which, and obviously it doesn't matter. Um, so, oh my gosh, was it, was it conclave he was in?
No, The Crown. He is Winston Churchill in The Crown show. So... so i guess he's an honorary brit then yeah but he he won an emmy for it so obviously like you're not gonna win an emmy if you can't do an accent very well along the way so um Cool. Awesome. I'm excited to watch these and see kind of how they change them up. I've been revisiting Hogwarts Legacy, Mike, because I've been playing it in VR.
to the VR mod I showed you. And let me tell you, if you don't have VR legs, that game is not going to help you. It does not help you one bit, but it is so cool.
to walk around hogwarts fly on a fly on a broom just see that that game from the first person point of view um so maybe they'll add that in uh to some of the console versions later Mortal Kombat 2 is coming out later this year and boy I really hope they do a Mortal Kombat in this but the first poster for this is actually not a Mortal Kombat movie it's for a
Johnny Cage movie in the movie called Uncaged Fury which is from the studio that brought you Rebel Without a Cage so Carl Urban is playing Johnny Cage in this he will be portraying the character from the video games I love Carl Urban. I think he's great for this role. I'm excited to see it, Mike. I have nothing else to go on at this point other than hopefully they do a tournament along the way. What do you think? Yeah, I'm curious if this movie franchise has any juice left in it.
even though it just started. But I think it was like a pandemic movie, if I remember, like an HBO Max. It was one of the Max ones that they put on Max that was also in theaters. So they literally were like, you can either... watch it on max or go to the theaters uh so it didn't get any it never got any theatrical thing but at the same time my biggest point is there was no fucking tournament you can't have a mortal combat movie without a combat we continue yeah i i literally never hear
anybody anywhere talking about this movie. So I'm curious to see how it's going to go. I think, I mean, obviously it did well enough to get a sequel. without having theatrical returns uh maybe maybe maybe some producer is like a really big mortal combat fan and they've got like a you know real pull for it maybe but I'm trying to think, has Carl Urban been in a bad movie or product lately?
I can't think of anything he's been in. I'm like, oh, that was just okay. He tends to be in stuff that elevates it a little bit, right?
along the way so i was like oh he would you know obviously he did he was in the star trek stuff he was in uh lord of the rings he's been in with the boys he's been in thor thor uh not love and thunder the one before that ragnarok so um you know hopefully he's uh you know he's uh he's able to kind of elevate it he's not picking bad stuff uh along the way so but yeah check that poster out obviously it's not actually mortal kombat 2
um but oh i gotta change it they said coming soon with a k because obviously it's mortal combat uh so coming soon release date from red boom surprise announcement mike we never talked about this i feel uh but secret level season two is in confirmed by amazon and blur studios um didn't care for the first season i i think they were they were just little fluff pieces that didn't do much like
well maybe we did talk about right because you said like pac-man was like yeah it's good but like not pac-man um mega man
Like, it was like, oh, this is fun, but it never really got to where it was good. Like, it's just like a little tease for something better. Honestly, like, I have a strong feeling that, like, the Mega Man short is already done, and they just, I feel like they chopped it into, like, three parts, and then just... hoping that they get three seasons out of it uh because it really does feel like oh they just paused it we're like on a commercial break for the rest of it
And Pac-Man was weird enough to be like, hey, we have a weird idea. Or someone's coming down off some mushrooms or something. Like, well, what if Pac-Man was... controlling a person who was hungry and i'm like i really didn't care for it it was kind of weird and i feel like nobody really knows the properties are working with them there but
um you know i i could probably finish them all up here you know like an hour someday probably go through there was talks that there was like you know blur studios is trying to get other properties like trying to get halo and the doom guy in the short so maybe the I guess maybe the popularity, the people talking about the first season could get other properties involved. Like not the weird, what's up? What was it? PlayStation where like is a mailman delivering mail? And I had all the other.
stony characters i'm like what if we got a real god of war short mike uh you know with like kratos rather than he's just helping a male guy deliver mail so would love to see that. But, um, season two is confirmed. My Amazon blur studios, obviously blur studios known for working on a Deadpool. And, um, was it love, love, death and robots, love, sex and robots. whatever it is. I think, I believe it's death. Okay. Whatever. Um, so yeah, move along.
uh twisted metal season two dropped a trailer this trailer was shown before captain america brave new world for me mike i actually saw this in theaters as well uh i need to link it in here uh i sent it to you right um the actual trailer. And what I will say, well, I don't care for like the first one kind of just being like, Oh, it's a cross country.
trip with anthony mackie and he's driving his cars and there's a clown chasing him like that's not twisted metal we talked about that to death when it first came out this second season is actually the twisted metal games they have calypso the guy who grants you a wish if you win twisted metal we get to see specter the guy who sucks spirits out of bodies um the the return of i can't think he puts the arms in the wheel like the
Axel. These are the characters from the games, Mike, and they have to survive a tournament. This is exactly what I want, and I'm glad that season two isn't continuing the story of a cross-country trip with Anthony Mackie, but it's actually doing... The Twisted Metal games. I will give them credit for that.
I appreciate the hustle and the flex of announcing this in front of Anthony Mackie's big Marvel movie. You know, NBC, Peacock, Universal. They're timing things appropriately. They understand that this is their time to...
strike uh but i guess it was successful enough for them to make a second season or i had a lot of people were like yeah i liked it um you know but that was it they're like you should watch it i liked it but there was nothing else but i'm like i i will i would just like mortal combat i will
beat it to death if it's not following the actual game story then it's not very interesting uh there's one scene in this where the clown dude his hair catches on fire like in the game as well uh i was like okay so it looks like they're leaning into some goofier stuff to kind of to play with those characters so i'm i'm on board think thankfully you know i'll give them the benefit of i'll watch the first season to watch the second season um because they actually did something
what looks to be right i'm not gonna say it's good i'm not gonna say it's identical to what it should be but it looks like they actually listened when they made a second season mike so i will give them a little bit of a little bit of a boost for that kind of along the way um Let's see here. Last bit of news, Mike. It's our Captain America Brave New World Review.
We've got to see it. I saw it Thursday in theaters. You saw it Saturday. I believe you watched it Saturday, yesterday. So Captain America Brave New World, it is now... Out in theaters, I linked something here. What did I link to? I linked the Twisted Metal trailer in the wrong place. That's what I did.
So that's why I was like, I'm pretty sure I put it in there. So the movie is released in theaters. It is the fourth biggest President's Day opening behind Black Panther, Deadpool, and Quantumania so far. And it is the 35th consecutive Marvel movie to open at number one on this weekend. Do you know how many Marvel movies there are, Mike? A lot. 35. 35 if you want to.
to do the count there so this is our 35th marvel movie 35th number one um it's looking to to be around 90 million us it's uh over it's exceeding uh in other countries so worldwide it's like 200 and something i think uh maybe 200 plus a million. So it looks like this movie is landing as a success to audiences this opening weekend. And we're here to talk about it. So we can do spoiler free first. What do you think about that? You think we start with spoiler free?
Yeah. And then I would love to just move into a conversation about the film. I feel like there's so much to talk about and it feels like it's been two years since I've seen the movie. And all I want to do is talk about it with you. Yeah. Well, and this has been one of those.
The most behind-the-scenes tracked movie, I think, that we've ever had out of Marvel, right? So, like, we have more conversation about the movie, the different versions, the reshoots, everything kind of more than the actual movie itself, probably, with that. Mike, I'll let you kick it off. Since you have the freshest viewpoint on this, go ahead and let me know what you think.
Yeah, it's really hard to take in this movie without talking about the production of the film overall, but I think that's just going to be our point of view for the film. We love talking about insider baseball and... Hollywood stuff when it comes to these films. So, you know, if you want like, like a, like an un like bias, like super coned in review of the film, I would say look elsewhere, but I just love.
of everything about Hollywood and from top to bottom. So it definitely informs me when I go in. to watch these movies you know this film was the first marvel film out of all of these 35 where it was not just standard run-of-the-mill reshoots like we know almost for a fact that they had to go in and fix things it went so bad the first time around which we've never heard before when it comes to these movies like we know um kevin feige is a bit of um
as a little tinker there in the editing room. I've heard stories before where he's like saved movies or found them in the edit. But that was all before these big reshoots of the film. So when I went into the movie, obviously I'm looking for seams. I'm looking for cuts. I'm looking for added-in characters, removed characters. So I feel like I didn't get to watch the movie.
in this pristine environment that maybe some casual viewers got to you know we always talk about you know the mom test the parent test with these movies of like how do people experience a marvel movie when they're not in it like we are. All that being said, I feel like this movie is just...
kind of right down the middle for me. There's not enough in here to make me like hate it and like rage against the machine. Uh, but there's not enough in here to make me go like, Oh wow. Yeah. Marvel has definitely like turned. in the ship around. I know the popular thing they do online is like scream Marvel's dead, Marvel's back, Marvel's dead, Marvel's back. I'm not one of those people, but I don't think there's enough in this movie to make that type of person make a declaration, right?
So this really is going to be a movie where you find your opinion of it in the spoiler conversation because I just want to talk about different parts of it. So I guess at the end of the day, would I recommend it? I mean, I don't know if I'd say go out of your way to see this. You know, there is a lot of exposition in this movie that has to catch you up on things that had happened.
like I think literally decades ago now in that very first Hulk movie. So, I mean, if you're not somebody that's following this super long thread, I don't really know how you kind of get the multiplying factor of a cinema. So if you're just a total casual viewer that's just trying to go on instinctual visual memory, you can't even really be helped. unfortunately so
I mean, and we have been pretty public on the show of how like, I don't know, we just don't jive with Anthony Mackie. I don't know what it is. You know, I loved him as the Falcon. I thought he was kind of like a great.
sidekick and I know his character is elevated you know in the narrative of the comic books and I have no problem with that direction but I don't know just the performance I feel like I can't quite see him as a leading man and even like the one episode So we'll dive into it more, but... I think this is the, if I remember correctly, I just saw this. This was the first Marvel movie ever.
to get a b minus cinema score this is the lowest cinema score that marvel has ever received and if you're not familiar with the scoring basically it's just uh, what the kids would say, a vibe check. They pull people as they come out of their screening and they ask them to, um, grade the movie. What did you think? You know, and usually I, I like cinema score. I like this idea of just kind of getting people's.
initial reaction you know i think it tells you a lot about is this what the audience expected uh is this what they were looking for it did something totally throw them off and like a b minus i mean a decent grade in class but for a Marvel movie that has never scored that low before, you know, it's a great sign that there's not a lot in here that's super impactful. So, Chris, I'm curious, what do you think before we jump into spoilers? Less eloquently put is fine.
Like, you know, like I have nothing like I'm like, oh, this was awful. I have nothing to really like knock it down a bit. I will have nothing to really say, hey, this was elevated. it to a new level a bit i will probably say um i don't audit the problem with cinema score the problem with rotten tomatoes is they're never really updated later right they're always done at the first
This movie is way better than Thor love and thunder and Thor love and thunder had a higher cinema score out of the theater, right? Like that movie.
um where the hammers are jealous with each other mike does that hold up like that doesn't hold up to this right where with uh you know fighting around the world guy himself russell crowe was you know a fat you know pompous uh what the greek zeus god like that movie not that good this movie this is a competent movie um i i've said a couple things and you alluded to them uh for those who may not realize this this is not a spoiler
This is essentially the Incredible Hulk 2. Like, do not let the Captain America title fool you. It may be led by Anthony Mackie as Captain America, but this is not really a sequel to any Captain America movie.
Mike, like, right. Like it doesn't feel like we were getting some remnants of the Falcon and winter soldier, but like not a lot. We're not getting anything out of any other captain American movie. Uh, maybe civil war simply because thunder mr mr ross is in here again um but like it is an incredible hook too uh as a movie and um i would say and i told you this this is a great value winter soldier at the end of the day literally you have uh winter soldier was on captain america
and um natasha black widow and and bucky right you mean like three versus you know the the hydra thing and this one you have uh anthony mackie's captain america his little buddy torres who is now the falcon and then another uh female lead who is also a black widow that we've like but we've never really spent time with these people in these roles they're just kind of thrust into them in front of us during the movie so it is essentially a very similar plot to the winter soldier but hey
We've already done that, and these are characters that didn't really have any buildup into that. So it's a very interesting take being the first outing for Anthony Mackie's Captain America. I probably would have given him a more personal villain. rather than um general ross like yes they have a little bit of a history but he was after
Steve Rogers more than he was after. Hey, get the Falcon, right? So why do we not have a more personal villain in this? I'm not sure along the way. I will disagree with you. I don't like Anthony Mackie in anything else, but I think he does a really good Sam Wilson.
uh, the, the vulnerable moments. And when he's serious in this movie, I'm like, I, I get it. I see this. He's done that great. He's carrying over his Sam Wilson performance from 11 years ago, uh, in the winter soldier. And he's carried that forward through Marvel. I think he does great. Anything else, he's too smug, and I just want to hit him in the face. I don't know what it is. But I think he does a great job here. Harrison Ford.
as president ross and this harrison ford is he's a great actor right like you know star wars indiana jones anything he's done he's been the president in air force one and other movies he is a great actor he knows what he's there for he does a great job I don't have any real issues with any of the casting in this. The story is kind of threaded along here.
We've always said, why are they showing the Red Hulk as the, you know, why are they showing that? That should be the big reveal in the film. Well, the reveal is there's actually another villain behind everything, which we'll talk about in spoilers.
that revelation comes in the movie pretty early on. But overall, I think, you know, a cinema score being the lowest, I don't... i don't believe that for one goddamn second mike like that that's maybe what came out of here but like that is not a true representation of some of the awful chapek era marvel films we got right like that we
Sat through Thor Love and Thunder. We sat through, I don't even think the Marvels is that bad, but like that, this is more memorable than the Marvels at the end of the day. And even maybe Quantumania. So, yeah, I think, yes, cinema score may be B-, but I think this is way more of a competent film along the way. There's no real big swings taken, but that's okay.
because Marvel's been taking some real big swings lately, and it's okay to reign that back in, right? We don't need the multiverse in every movie. We don't need, you know... uh really a world ending event this wasn't really even a world ending event uh kind of along the way uh but i i love to talk about in spoilers kind of like how some of these things are
you know what the story points that I don't want to talk about just because they are spoilers, but like, you know, there's some really good seeds laid. There's some other stuff. They, it looks like they've probably pulled back on, but overall it's a fine film.
sits right in the, I think this is right in the middle. Overall, it's pushed down some other movies. Like I talked about quantum mania, uh, the Marvel store loving her. Those are pushed down farther, but this is very solidly in a competent film. that knows the limits of its actors and the characters is bringing to the table while not really pushing the needle in the MCU in any direction. Just kind of leaving it where it was. When it came in. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Well, I think now is a great time. Like you were saying, jump into spoilers. Let's talk about it. The number one thing that I've just been wanting to talk about forever is just my theory that they relied.
heavily on red hulk to get butts in seats and drive up box office dollars every every plotting point about uh the red hulk in this in this movie is supposed to be like secret reveal yeah you know i mean if you're familiar you know with you know the characters you know i suppose you could see it coming sooner than others but you don't get the battle until the third act. So obviously it's supposed to be met.
for the end of the film and i i think they kind of saw the writing on the wall you know if they had to do reshoots it's because part of part of the film was not working it was not jiving with test audiences so we got to find a way to juice it up my assumption would be that they a lot of people liked the the red hulk battle so we're so they're like okay we're got to do a little bit of damage control here even the most amount of money and the most amount of reshoots
we can never make a brand new movie. So we need to take what's working, put it out in front and get people excited for this movie because. I was under the assumption watching these trailers that the Red Hulk is going to be a bigger part of the movie, right? Even if you look at the posters, because the Red Hulk exists entirely at the White House, and then he makes a couple big jumps.
ends up in like a cherry blossom peninsula those are the two locations the red hulk exists in the movie uh and then all of a sudden on these posters like you see him in like a downtown area amongst like skyscrapers like in the streets and stuff you know it kind of makes you think that there's going to be more battles or it's going to take place over more locations. That's not really what we get. So I think this was like a marketing strategy of like, we need to boost up the red Hulk and.
even though that's probably the right move to do, I, I feel like it hurts the narrative, right? It was like never a secret what these pills were doing, right? It's never a secret. Why is general Ross getting mad in the hallway, like holding onto his like chest and like,
you know it we all knew what it was going to culminate to so that was disappointing to me i i don't think we needed him any earlier though i think i think the plot along the way to get there the the macguffin is adamantium right and And really, the whole point that exists at this point, which I'd hoped Adamantium would have been bigger, was to...
solve what prevent, not a world war, but like the countries fighting over the island of the Celestial along the way, right? For me, the Red Hulk, it's, I'm not as upset about that. I think that's fine. The real secret was the leader, Tim Blake Nelson's character in the background controlling everything. Again, if you didn't follow the movie and didn't know anything, nobody knew that guy was coming. My wife was like, that's a surprise.
what do i know him from i'm like you know him from oh brother where art thou and she's like oh yeah because they really they really make it they really gave him like a zombie look i loved his glow like reflective green eyes a little bit like i thought that was a really cool effect for him but like he was i guess the real quote-unquote villain but like he never got a come up until then being put in a cell what like a the next cell block over from uh the red hulk at the end i think he
His plot points were probably more disappointing, I think, than Harrison Ford's. The reveal, obviously, you get a Red Hulk, get Harrison Ford in there. You're using him for a big thing. I think that's marketing. Not really that upset. But, like, the lack of adamantium doing anything. I thought we, I thought.
my theory Mike was that Sam was going to get an adamantium suit to fight the red Hulk. Right. That was going to be like, maybe we're seeing red Hulk end of act two with the cherry blossoms. Act three would have been the adamantium, but like,
Boy, that stuff falls off the movie as fast as it showed up. Or like an adamantium, like... tool or weapon right you know we see this canister like recovered at the beginning of the movie and then we never really see it again so i thought maybe they were going to bring in a cameo of maybe like a super smart character in the mcu that was gonna like do sam a favor and like refine it into something like a bullet or a dagger you know just something anything but like really adamantium
is in the movie, like in name only. Yeah. I love that. I love the concept of where Adamantia is coming from, how it's being introduced. They show like a little 3D render of like, oh, there's labs inside of the Celestial where the Japanese are working on it. I wanted a set piece there. I wanted like Falcon and...
um, or, or I guess Torres is Falcon. I wanted Sam and Torres to like fly into the celestial. And even if they're not doing like a whole thing, maybe there's just like a couple of punches and kicks in there and then they fly back out. You know, I don't need them to fight them. I just need them to work with.
that like what if the other countries like okay we're gonna we they because they all seem to trust captain america right that was the point they all like captain america they're like sam you're a good person they all work with him to give him the adamantium like maybe it was even a new shield mike that was an adamantium shield
to help take down the Hulk or, you know, and that's his like secret weapon. Cause he's been working with him because they all like him. They didn't really kind of play on lean on that a little bit. They just like, Oh, the president as Harrison Ford will, he will.
you know get everyone together and he never did but they all were like yeah we like captain america he's a good guy um with that so you know there's some some missed opportunities but like i think from what we knew of the first version we knew like there was what that wrestler and Rosa Salazar with the pink hair as Diamondback, who even got a toy at McDonald's last year. They took out several other villain subplots, and I think that was a good move. I think this movie...
if they'd added too many extra powered villains that were like snake powered villains, this movie would have been much worse than the other, like not in a good direction. Like this would have gone downhill. pretty quick what do you think about those and we saw set photos of them on an airport fighting them as well so like they took out like whole action scenes they probably even cgi'd a lot of that before they re-shot this stuff uh in late 23.
So, yeah, I think it is pretty less is more is what I'm saying. Sorry. Yeah. I mean, if like if we had to like make guesses, I mean, obviously, there's some things we don't have to guess about. We know Carlos Esposito was added during the reshoot. So. presumably anytime we see him, it's gotta be a reshoot. Right. So, yeah.
Almost probably the entire opening of the movie, you know, all revolves around him. I didn't see any airports, you know, anywhere at the beginning of the movie. So I got to imagine that's all reshoots. He pops up again on his own. in the middle of the movie, that's got to be a reshoot. And also, like, I text you after I got out of the movie and I was like, oh, it's got to be a reshoot because it's like a junkyard somewhere outside of Atlanta.
Like you watch enough, you know, you watch enough movies and TV shows, you start to get a feel of what Georgia looks like outside of Atlanta. And like, this is Atlanta through and through. It's exactly what it looks like. So. We know that changed. So it does make you wonder, like we'll never know, but it makes you wonder what was there before. Presumably they made it better. They spent a lot of money to make it better. The budget on this one is pretty high up there.
I will say that second part where... what his name's sidewinder right carlos esposito shows up i had a goddamn jump scare in the movie theater mike because like sam just drive around the corner and then he just like opens fucking fire on him like i was like oh my god i get scared the hell out of me but it
Boy, does that feel like the Bucky scene on Winter Soldier where he attacks Samuel L. Jackson in the car. I'm like, I see the shades of Winter Soldier here that you were trying to go for. But again, great value brand. We have Winter Soldier at home. And this is another problem. They did not have to make this movie a political thriller.
They start with a blank slate when they start writing these movies, right? They did not have to do that. They didn't even have to at the very beginning of the movie. They do a kind of a unique... marvel studios logo at the very beginning it like fills up the entire frame it kind of feels very like spy thrillery noir like type and vibe um they 100 were leaning into this kind of being a winter soldier successor, but it just does not live up to it in any way. And I kind of just wish.
They could have just gone in a totally different direction instead of just trying to do Winter Soldier. I think Winter Soldier wasn't the original idea. I think this movie is still an Incredible Hulk 2.
with um trying to also resolve the eternal celestial right like the big question everyone says what is this celestial doing why is it there what are they doing with it well here's the answer it's adamantium great love that awesome seed planted to to develop later in x-men wolverine stuff like that but like the leader and general Ross and Betty Ross, this like 90% of this movie is incredible Hulk too. Just dealing with the fallout of Harlem.
The Incredible Hulk 2, The Abomination, The Hulk, all that stuff. They even have a flashback scene of him getting angry with a mustache. Harrison Ford getting angry with a mustache. And I'm like, oh, this whole movie is Incredible Hulk 2. coded. They probably were trying to do an incredible hook to something happened. Okay. Well, why don't we add in captain America? You know, we can make, we can merge. It feels like two ideas merged together.
And then that the second iteration, not the first version, but the second version feels like Winter Soldier. Because I think if you would have had the weird snake people, powered people, it would have not have been a political thriller. You would never have gotten that vibe at all. And that came in the second edit, like, hey, maybe we can lean into that a little bit more here, edit some things around, reshoot some stuff, make it more questionable what's going on.
with with everything so i think that kind of it feels to me like it came later but like this really truly is a hulk 2 like i can't say that enough because All the two villains are Hulk villains that have no connection to Anthony Mackie or Captain America other than the super soldier serum. Asterix, Mike, one of my favorite scenes, Bucky shows up.
since we're in spoilers, shows up, has a little heart-to-heart with Sam, playing off their Falcon Winter Soldier vibes, their Civil War partnership, had a really good speech, and I believe... he's leaving to go do something in Thunderbolts, uh, based on the trailer, the outfit he was wearing in the, uh, something we saw in the Thunderbolts trailer. So I, I liked that part. I actually had a good time seeing those guys together, have a, uh, heart to heart.
I mean, it makes sense to see Bucky show up, but, and I, and I obviously, I love the winter soldier, the character, the. I love Sebastian Stan. Anytime he's there, he's going to make the scene better in my opinion. And it makes sense because the last time we saw these two, they were in the winter soldier together. It would be weird if he wasn't in the movie. Yeah. Right.
But if I kind of had to wrap things up, maybe with like... things that i a thing i like and thing and i didn't like you know to kind of even it out to make this movie just kind of middle of the road uh i i love isaiah bradley's character he's the single most like engaging thing happening in the movie The only thing driving Sam throughout the movie, like he's motivated to save his friend and to get him out of there.
And but just at the same time, I wish they could have done more with him. It's almost my exact same issue I had with the Winter Soldier where they're doing everything like but trying to make a point. or have like a narrative or have a point of view, right? Like for a political thriller movie, like what do we walk away with? Like they just kind of basically reset the status quo at the end of the movie. Uh, there's, there's, I feel like there's not all.
whole lot that we really did in the movie besides like watch some fun action scenes like watching the falcon like ride like a torpedo or a missile or whatever it was in the ocean like that was really cool i liked that it looked neat and fun But I still have a lot of issues stemming from Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Like, I get this thing that they're trying to do. They did it in Iron Man 3 of a man's more than his superpower and his suit or whatever. But it's just like...
I cannot it's so hard for me to believe this man throwing the shield the way he does like it's it's it's in it's inhuman it's unhuman a normal person could never do that under almost any circumstances but you can believe Steve Rogers can do it because he has these
heightened abilities so and i believe sam could fight somebody strong because he has a wakandan suit but there's just some things that he does that is just unbelievable to me that i feel like is kind of breaking the established rules of the mcu And I just, that's something that I'll probably just never be able to get over until maybe they just beat me over the head with it and just get to the point where like, I'm never going to have my way.
So I guess I said I was trying to say something nice and I guess it was cool when he rode the missile. But yeah, it just goes back to that. At the top, what we said of just I mean, I feel like I just I was not affected in any big way in any direction for this movie. This movie set some seeds going forward. It brought some players from literally 2008 back into the fold.
I thought we saw trailer spots where Betty Ross was at a funeral for what we thought was General Ross. But they didn't kill him off. So maybe an original plan was to kill off Harrison Ford. at the end of this movie rather than talk him down into a human. We don't know. Again, we will never know. The true iterations here will never be released. But I do think there is a reason I left Harrison Ford alive.
and and as and will continually be the red hulk whether that's world war hulks if they actually get to it or not i'm not sure but they did set some seeds going forward adamantium um you know put these people you know there but at the same time you know like you said like the needle wasn't moved either way was it good or bad it just kind of sat in the middle and uh
We'll see if Thunderbolts does anything different. But this is, I've always put an asterisk beside it. This is the last Chapek era project, right? Movie.
um out of that uh they tried they tried to film it or fix it without restarting over which will always be a challenge uh we may see some of that how they handle that in television next month with daredevil right since that movie or series was in production it didn't do everything and then reshoot it had a little bit done and then retooled it so we may see some of that in there but this will be the last time we can say this is a chapek
era stained project and we don't have that excuse anymore going forward so excited to see where Thunderbolts lands with this but at the same time boy I really wish Sam had a personal villain to fight Like, don't you like that? That's my hope. Like he didn't really have anyone personally to fight him. He just happened to have that, uh, have his own black widow with Ruth bats are off and, uh, his own Falcon with Torres. So.
Yeah. It's just a shame. The movie to me just feels like, Oh, I'm glad we got it out of the way. Cause I'm looking forward to Thunderbolts a lot more. So I'm glad we got it out of the way again. I don't feel cringy. Like there was no cringe moments watching this movie. Like I,
think back to thor love and thunder where the hammers are jealous of each other and i'm like i'm like oh cringe god damn why does that hurt so much to watch that uh in hindsight so this movie wasn't cringe and i i'll give it give it that credit That's the show, Mike. If people want to know what you're up to, what you're doing, where can they find you, buddy? Well, they can read by webcomics at liferewardsrisk.com and pickledcomics.com. Chris, if people want to catch you, where are you?
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