X-Men 97 Review, The Acolyte, Rebel Moon Part 2, Furiosa, Alien Romulus, Beetlejuice 2, and more!

Hello everyone, and welcome to Superhero Slate. This year we run down the latest superhero entertainment news. We love TV, movies and superheroes. So let's talk it all out. My name is Chris. And my name is Mike. And this week we're traveling back to 1997 with the X-Men. My gosh, the whiplash, the muscles in my neck can't stand it. I, I, I needed I went looking for my juice boxes and my Teddy Grahams, and I couldn't find them because I needed them.

They're they're building a Toys R US down the street. What decade am I in? I mean, I tell you what, the everything else that's come on here this week is a little bit with that as well. But we'll we'll talk about that because we have trailers to talk about. We have Star Wars, the Acolyte. We have Rebel Moon part Boo. I mean, to Furiosa, a Mad Max Saga movie, Alien, Romulus, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice or Beetlejuice two as we'll probably call it in more.

I'm so glad you clarified that Furiosa title, because I wouldn't have known it was in the Mad Max Universe, and it's a saga on top of that. So I'm glad the marketing department, who I'm sure knows better than anybody else over there, appended that on to them. My guess is the test audiences were like, What are we watching? What is this?

And I'm like, Can you not tell from the sand in the cars and the chrome that is Mad Max because it looks just like I mean, there's nothing there's this is not a complaint. If you take Mad Max Fury Road and put up beside Furiosa, they look identical and they're supposed to be, you know, part of the same little set piece. But I'm like, they look exactly the same, if you would.

Yeah. I mean, we'll talk about it more in depth, but since it's in the front of my head, the sound design for the for Fury Road and Furiosa, like it gets into my soul. Like I'm not like a muscle car person. Like, I'm very much looking forward to going electric on my vehicles in the future and just being a silent passenger as. I. Go down the road.

But like the growl that George Miller gets out of the surround sound in the movie theater is just like, It encompasses that original eighties Mad Max like vibe, right? So, like, I know, I know they're all Mad Max, but this one's your modern update. You feel it? I mean, the guy, we thought he went soft. We thought George Miller went soft. And he did babe and babe, too. But. But here he is, you know, back again with the cars. Cause I'm the same way I, I, you know, I already have a hybrid vehicle.

My lawnmower. I move my lawn today. It's electric. You don't hear it like that. My earpods are louder than that. So I agree. The sound design is fantastic because we just we yearn. We yearn for the sound, not for the fumes. Exactly. We like. We like the fake sound. But. And yeah, absolutely for sure. But no, I was I was saying just earlier, there's a down the road from us. There was Rest in peace, a Kmart in a plaza that's right next to a Chucky Cheese as well. It's like a 90 central over there.

And it didn't. Become a spirit. Halloween. No surprise. wow. Like, and this like, like L.A., the Valley, like spirit Halloweens will go in anywhere. Like if the I know the infection of spirit, however, I was going to say across the entire country. But like, if the infection is like most prominent, like, I don't know, towards like the brain, like this is the brainstem. That's what I was going to say. Like if I could take a store and apply it to the last of us.

The cordyceps stuff Spirit Halloween is cordyceps for for dead stores and I really would have thought it would have been spirit Halloween but continue with your. Yeah, because it sounds like another dead store somehow. Yeah. Because if you pop in like the next door at the local subreddits, you know, local hashtags, people are like, what is this Kmart going to be already It's been empty for years.

And then there are some activity like just the other week where they started putting like some almost like window killings up or something. It's like, okay, something's happening here. And then if you follow along the progress, you start to see a vintage Toys R US starting to form out of nowhere. Like it made me think of that South Park episode where Cartman is like, willing, like these Shakey's pizzas into existence. Yeah, I'm like, this is coming out of nowhere.

But then just before you think it's about to be a real Toys R US, that's when you start to see like the Star Waggons and the Cranes and like, you know, the doll, like the jibs and stuff for, like, the cameras. And it's like, okay, this is for shooting. And surprisingly, you knew what was going on there and you're not your 2000 miles. It's funny what's filming down the street from me. I am so far away and we hadn't talked about this until they it already crossed my feed this morning.

But it is the Michael Jackson biopic. It's filming there because he used to go into Toys R US and drop off. I can bank on on Toys and Toys R US again, I'm not going to get into the politics of Michael Jackson, but like, you know, that's if I had that kind of money, I'd do the same thing at 38 years old. 37 years old, right. Like, I'd I'd go spend a lot of money, Toys R US today. But that's that's what they're filming.

There's a michael Jackson biopic, which is I think is kind of been going for a couple of weeks now. So it sounds like. I was going to say I was going to say, Chris, you're already pretty close to go into a Toys R US and dropping back, it feels like, Yeah, you told me you just picked up a laserdisc. Yes. So was pretty.

Funny. Well, I mean, we talked about my birthday last weekend and my wife got me the Halo X box and to treat myself, I just happened to to be on Facebook Marketplace and someone was saying laserdisc player, a good model that worked and it was Porche pick up two didn't have to deal with anybody like directly and that's like my favorite thing when I don't have to like talk to anybody who's put the money in the mailbox and walk away.

And I picked up a laserdisc player and it came with a bunch of movies. But my three the three movies it came with, other than these other weird ones, were Blade Runner, the director's cut, which I thought was, That's a great grab offhand, right? Escape from New York, which I haven't seen in years. You know, Kurt Russell movie would love to watch that. And then also Showgirls, which we watched in my bad films class in college. So any chance I get to revisit that thing?

I would love to take the opportunity to win this laserdisc player. And it came with the remote. That's the big thing. Most of these things we've talked about, the Winnie the Pooh in the Mickey Mouse TV is Mike. But like a lot of them just don't come with the remotes or like the backs that are most of us had the whole remote with it. And I was very impressed with that. So it's even got like a little knob. You turn for the jogging.

You remember when jogging was the thing is that a fast forward like you would turn it like the faster you held the, the more you held the knob, the faster it would go kind of thing. yeah. That does kind of sound. I didn't know it had a name too. I didn't know there was a Yeah. Term of jogging in video editing. That's what you would do. Like on the, like the switchboards you would quote unquote jog forward if you would or jog backwards based on how hard you turn that knob.

So it's got a little jog thing on the thing with that. And Mike, I explain to you and what most people mean on that was with laser discs, they're not like CDs. They're actually double sided for a lot of the movies because they don't hold you know, they were huge. You know, they're record sizes, but they don't hold as much data as a modern DVD Blu ray does. So you have to, like, turn it over halfway through the movie for some of them. Which is hilarious to me.

Like the laser disc to me is the epitome of kind of what a lot of late eighties and early nineties kind of thought the future was going to be like, I'm, I'm imagining watching like I don't think this literally happened and total recall the original one with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but that's the type of thing you would see like in a total recall movie, like you're in the theater. This is like the eighties.

You're watching Total recall's like version of the future and it's just like, Whoa, they don't have VHS anymore. it's like a disc. Like a silver wine record. my guess is. Crazy, But. But you still have to flip it over. It's like. It's like, almost the future, but, like, not really. So. But it is nice as like, we talk about all the time on the show as like, we're getting older.

We're starting to just feel more comfort from these older pieces of technology, which when we were kids, like the second I learned about, like seeds and DVDs, I was like, Let's burn and melt all of these VHS as they're all garbage. Get rid of them, let the past die, kill it. But now I'm like, But the VHS is were kind of fun. Maybe we should bring them back. It is something about the tactile mess right of it. Like you just don't get it with streaming or anything.

You're touching your phone for everything. And I'm like, Well, I like to, you know, pick up these these laserdisc and handle them a little better. My vinyl record, I like vinyl records. We don't talk about that. But that's come back, right? Like vinyl records are selling more than CDs these days. Yeah.

I don't remember who who put it this way, but I heard it somewhat recently just out there in the pop culture sphere, and they kind of attribute it to a little bit of maybe why the NFT craze never really took off and maybe why these whole even though these video game companies do make a lot off of like skins and, you know, the boxes and stuff like that, like I feel like you're only ever going to get humans so excited about something that's not real, right?

There is a special thing about, like literally touching atoms, like, you know, like owning like an atom, like a physical encapsulation of, like a real object. It's like, it doesn't matter how advanced the future becomes. Like, that's always going to have something special to it. And yeah, you can just attribute that to just anything from your childhood, right? And it's always something like, you know, I buy a lot of old video games and stuff like this, right?

You know, we probably just player like, I will spend like, you know, I will look online and I'll see something on eBay for like $5 cheaper, $10 cheaper. But if I can touch it and take it home that day, I'm going to spend that extra bit of money because I already have it, right. There's no waiting. There's no guessing. I know what it is. I've seen it myself, so I will pay that little premium to to literally have it in my hands and take it home with me that way.

But to bring that back around to this point, this laserdisc player, the reason I bought it actually has a be switcher internally, so the laser will turn around for you so you don't have to swap the sides if you don't want to, which I think is which which is. Crazy to me too, because you're saying there's a mechanism inside of this laserdisc player that kind of rotates the laser to the other side of the disc.

Yeah, Yeah. I would imagine if laser discs stuck around in popularity, even just for like an extra like financial quarter, like an engineer would have been like, let's just put two lasers in it, take out the motor. But they never quite got around to that, it seems like. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure hell there might be make I don't know. I don't know too much about lasers. I didn't have experience growing up or like any access to them. Like even in our schools we didn't have these things.

People like to watch laser tests in schools. I'm like, Yeah, that's cool. I never had a laserdisc in school. So for me, I'm very excited to to play with this and and put it up. I have, you know, I think I have an area I'm going to put it up on the TV and watch it on like the old tube TV. And, you know, I've talked about maybe putting it in front of my or on my projector, even, like making it part of my VR experience right.

So I've got some some hopes and dreams for it, but I'm very, very excited to to snag this. So thank you for bringing that up this week along the way. But I'm going to go the other way. So, Mike, normally you have a lot more things to list here than I do, but I think our first topic is going to be that that thing. But I had the opportunity yesterday to go watch a matinee of Ghostbusters, Frozen Empire. Mike and I texted you from it because the the what did I send you yesterday?

I forget what it was the this all the crazy like Ghostbusters merchandise out there is is wild to me like all the different theaters have different popcorn buckets. I know it was it was the AMC popcorn bucket the trap. That's what they say in the video. I couldn't even send Mike a photo of it. It was so cool. I had to send them a video of it because it has wheels. It doesn't even look like a popcorn. But the crazy thing is like if you detach it from being a popcorn bucket, right?

And you just put it in an ice box and put it inside of like a comic book shop, you could probably sell that thing for twice the price. Just as like, you know, a collectible for the movie. But like, it's weird. It almost like, artificially lowers in price once you turn it into a backward, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So the popcorn bucket on this one is interesting because the trap door opens up and Scott leads, but you set a purple just it's kind of like a box on top of it on the lights and it's kind of snaps in on its own. Told the popcorn. But if you take it off like it's Lori just a toy trap for this thing with a bunch of knobs and stuff. A lot of the knobs and twists rotate themselves like they're not like plastic molded to it, which I thought was really cool.

There's the wheels that very freely roll the thing back and forth, so it's pretty cool. I'm probably going to take the popcorn piece and I put it up because I'm like, like you mentioned, it doesn't look as cool with the popcorn piece on it. It just just kind of loses that. Or it would be kind of cool if you put the popcorn piece on it and then maybe find some like prop popcorn, like some fake popcorn that you can put in there. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could put real popcorn in there.

It's not like that. I mean, it's not a little bit old already. But what if I use it? So we have a bunch of prepackaged microwave popcorn that we keep here. Maybe I could throw all those in there and people can, like, grab them from the trash. yeah, That's not a bad idea. Yeah, Yeah, Those are packaged, and it'd be just like a big candy bucket, if you will, for popcorn. So that might be something I look into. But right now it's sitting on the shelf pretty, pretty snug in there.

It was pretty cool. But I got to go see Ghostbusters first in person. As we always say, the best thing to us about Ghostbusters, Mike is ecto cooler, which they did not release for this, which is a huge missed opportunity for both both Ghostbusters. I think the new ones have not had a. Big bummer, but that does kind of set the stage of where we're at. Like weirdly enough, like we grew up with Ghostbusters, but we don't really have nostalgia for it.

I don't know, like maybe I feel like sometimes it comes down to like the parents, like how often maybe they wanted to rewatch it or maybe like mine just didn't happen to pick up the VHS when it was on what. Was on TV. When you get those free HBO weekends? Occasionally, Yeah, it's like I watched it. Like I watched it sometimes.

But yeah, we don't really have a lot of embedded nostalgia for the Ghostbusters, which hence probably why you went to a matinee on a Saturday instead of like a Thursday night. Yeah, and that was something I was like, Yeah, I'm like, There's nothing in Ghostbusters to me which could be spoiled if I'm going to be completely honest. I feel like, you know, it's a comedy movie at its core. It's not a horror film.

It is kind of, you know, this is the fifth, fourth film in this franchise, fifth overall with the soft reboot. But like, you know, we we're not precious. We don't we don't have a strong feeling, yes or no to Ghostbusters. And the fact that it's Al is God. Did you watch Afterlife? I can't remember if you've seen the last. I watched it on a plane. So I only have plane memories of it, which is kind of difficult and.

Fleeting, literally. And yes. So Ghostbusters frozen in part picks up after afterlife in New York City. And what is I mean, I'm not going to spoil anything here, but you've seen the trailers. There's a big scary ghost that controls essentially ice in New York. And then that's the whole point of this. I will say some great things about Frozen Empire. I brings a lot of the original cast back in doses, which is which is great to see the Soul Alive returning casts.

We get to go back to the firehouse that we've now come to know from the Ghostbusters original movies. You don't think Ghostbusters without the firehouse, right? And the actor one, which is really cool. I will. And I will also give them huge kudos for the ghosts are not CGI ghost. They actually did the props and the lighting and then impose them over the movie. Mike So when you see Slimer, it's not like, we CGI Slimer It's like our Slimer puppet that they put in there. that's cool.

So that was really cool. What are some of the things I will say I don't enjoy? There are too many characters, like some of the afterlife characters came from what were they in Colorado or whatever state they were in in the last one? Yeah, like the middle of nowhere. Kind of like farm. Yeah. They came to New York and I'm like, You don't really need to be here other than just being in the movie. Like the character podcast is back and then the girl love interest is there.

And what I really would say, well, I mean, I think of Ghostbusters and I think what this movie would need for me, the next one to really enhance the Ghostbusters experiences. This sounds like a mean villain and it doesn't really have like a bunch of the side ghosts that the original movie had, right? Like, you remember, like they had the library ghost they had, for lack of a better term, the blowjob ghost, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's all these little bitty ghosts throughout.

And like, those little plumber jobs, essentially plumbers, right? For ghosts. Okay, we've got a ghost called Ghostbusters. I'll come over this movie. Really needed that. And I hope that you know that there will be a next one. I don't. I don't want the Ghostbusters franchise that I think it's fantastic.

Paul Rudd, Phantom tastic in this movie Mike absolutely killing it and everything he does But the next one needs to be like, I want a bunch of little ghost adventures where they're actually busting ghosts rather than like, Hey, we have one big bad guy and that's all we're focusing on. Because to me the comedy, the situational comedy is set with those individual ghosts when they're trying to capture them, right? Like the silliness, the goofiness, like this is very surreal. We're very scientific.

The ghosts are, you know, kind of they may be scary, they may be gross and nasty like slimer. They may be, you know, you know, again, the blowjob ghost for like, for better terms, like there's just silly things that they could have done. And I really hope the next one embraces that because this one is just like, hey, another big bad into the world ghosts, right? And that's not always the case, if you will.

And I would say that's probably like a what I but it also is when we talk about Marvel movies or DC movies, it always doesn't have to be the end of the world, right? It can be smaller and still have a good time. So I think Frozen Pie is a great movie. You like Ghostbusters, you're going to love it. You're gonna have a good time. If you're like, maybe s like on Ghostbusters, you can probably go to a matinee or maybe wait till it's streaming, but I don't think it's a bad movie at all.

Mike I just I get I have no feelings either way. If I could lay it out here, like, I think it's for Ghostbusters fans. Good for you. If you're like, Yeah, you know, I don't know. You can probably wait and still be happy with you even watch it on an airplane. Mike Another time along the way. So any questions about Ghostbusters, Frozen Empire, other than there's no ecto cooler, which is that. I'll stay tuned for the next time on an airplane.

Yeah, hopefully it's not a Boeing that falls out of the sky. Yeah, that's becoming my ghostly graveyard. Yes, right. I mean, that is how timely of you how dare me? Yeah, absolutely. So let's see if some girl let's get into something we both watched and I didn't get to watch this the day of. Yeah, I had a very busy unexpected week, but we were able to to watch both episodes of X-Men 97 in our house. Mike And I assume you were the same way over, over this past week.

Yeah. And if you happen to maybe watch any other impressions out there, I believe critics of you at the first three episodes. So everyone will kind of all be caught up and everyone will be on the same page come Wednesday this week. Yeah, but yeah, we are two episodes in just like the rest of the people out there in the world. Now, I watched this. My wife and I watched this together, and I don't believe she has ever seen an X-Men 94 episode.

Did you watch it by yourself, or did did your wife also. Know this is actually great? You're bringing up exactly something I wanted to talk about? No, my wife was the same way. She didn't really have any nostalgia for retro 94 X-Men. She's always like the X-Men, and in general. She's dressed up as rogue before even. I mean, yeah, I know she's she's a cosplay this one before. Yeah. But you know the gender line divide I think back in our day was, you know, a little bit stronger than it was today.

So like mostly boys watching X-Men 97, you know? Yeah. Girls watching something else. I believe those lines are have faded, thankfully a lot more. absolutely. Now yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. You first name. No, I was just going to say this. This is a good barometer. I mean, we're going to talk about what we thought about the first two episodes. It kind of passed with flying colors with my wife, which was surprising. Yes, because it was a it was a Wednesday night.

You know, we're getting close to turn it in for the night. And I'm just like, there's like two X-Men episodes, You know, I really want to watch at least one of them before, like I wake up, you know, in the the nerd media cycle starts running, you know, with it on Thursday. So I was like, let's just like, watch one X-Men before we go to bed. And, you know, we had already watched a bunch of other stuff. So she's like, okay, yeah. So I throw it on and surprisingly she was pretty into it.

And then when we watched the second episode the next day, I was like, you know, can I, you know, you cool If I watch the second episode? She's just like, Yeah. And she like, watch it. Like, yeah. The second episode kind of ends on like a cliffhanger. And she was just like, we were talking about who we think, you know, the, the extra Jean Gray is and everything. And she's, she's even asking me like a couple of different days, like, when does X-Men come back? Like what day of the week is that?

Like, are you I was like, are you blowing my mind? This is the last thing I thought you would have sunk your teeth into. Yeah, because there's there's so much going.

There's more going on here than I think people would think when it comes like with the layers of, like history and nostalgia and what the show's trying to recapture and just for somebody to just come in totally fresh with not much perspective on it and just be able to get into it, that is a really, really good sign for the success of the show moving forward. You are you were mirroring my experience as well with this.

You know, this is X-Men 97. This is essentially what, the fifth season of X-Men 94, if you will, right? The original. Yeah. Or maybe 60. I forget how many seasons, I think since the sixth season. So it is unapologetically picking up immediately where the last one ended at this time. And, you know, my wife, even if she has maybe seen some X-Men 94 in passing because I've had it on my my local server, I don't think she'd seek it out. It starts up you kind of get the to meet the team.

But thankfully with the live action movies over the last 20 years, Mike, anyone who has touched anything superhero would kind of pick up on what they are, right? Like we know who Jean Gray is, they beat her to death. Cyclops same thing. Wolverine We all get it. Everybody knows it. And this kind of coming back into it, like I was like, Ooh, this is this is fun. The animations, you know, it's it's new, but like, it's not that far from what my memory would hold of the 94, right?

Like, if I was like, if I could think back on a what would look like it looks exactly like this. It starts with some pretty pretty high concept stuff with the Anti Mutant League or whatever they call themselves. The Dudes in Berets. Yeah, pretty. Pretty much. They look like beret or a megaman with the little arm cannons. So. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and hop in there and it's action and the characters are there and they're there. I wouldn't say

attitudes, but like, their personalities kind of bleed through pretty quick. So. Absolutely. And then also, you know, we didn't watch the same one the next day. There was like a day break and my wife was like, When are we when are we going to watch that next one? Is there more like, yeah, we can watch it whenever, you know? So we watched that last night and then I think average like when does that next one come on again. I'm like they're Wednesdays going forward. So it just it's crazy.

It's not something I would have expected. And the show is almost executing on every level perfectly exactly what I would want like there what you were saying or talking about. this looks like how I imagined it when I was a kid. But if you compare them side by side, it's like night and day. But like, that's the trick. You don't want to make it look exactly like it did back in the nineties. You want it to look like how you thought it looked back in the nineties.

So, you know, obviously it's widescreen. They're even using like 3D animation. There's like, there's like a, there's like a action sequence in the second episode and they probably did this in the first one, but I didn't really pick up on it as much.

But in the second episode when they're kind of like storming that government building, like you can see that the characters that are fighting, they're like 3D models that are animated, but they're doing they're doing a really good job making them look flat. The end credits scene is the 3D pivots of all the characters. Yeah, which is the heroes.

Yeah. And that's just like a nice little like seasoning to add on the end when they really I mean, they could have just cut right to the credits and nobody would have been like, upset about. They didn't have to do that. But that's, that's very nice though, right? Like I remember when they would just played the same thing over the end, but I'm like, this looks good.

This looks. Real good. Yeah. And all of the kind of dialog is like pitch perfect for what they would kind of do back in the nineties. Like the characters kind of maybe they talk a little weird and stilted, but it's almost kind of on purpose. They speak in like these big like kind of cheesy platitudes. They're like, it's like soliloquies. Like they are doing like they are talking above everybody kind of thing. But at the same time, the message resonates downward.

Yeah. And it's just like nobody like nobody in the real world ever talks like that. But like it just all like it's all harmonizing and kind of feeling like everything is like a little campy, a little cheesy, but then, like, they are really tuning up. I think some of the like choreography, like in the first in the first scene of the first episode where they're rating that based. O Psycho. Cyclops storms and he uses his fucking blaster to slide himself across the room.

I didn't pick up on it at first, but he doesn't like to or. Like, dodges with like he's like. Like a force blast backwards. Yeah. And that is so cool. So. And that, like, I feel like a lot of that comes down just to the talent of the, the storyboard artists on the show of just thinking like, okay, we have a fight that we want to go on here. What cool stuff can I do? And that's what happens when you give a lot of really talented people like time to really craft something fun.

You can think of these fun things and then like, this is one thing too. Like if you if you're only super familiar with like the X-Men, primarily from the live action movies, which are still really, really good. Yeah. I mean, like a Cyclops is a big wet blanket, like, almost like not a lot of redeeming qualities. They literally kill them in the second movie. And we. The third movie. Third movie? Is it the third movie? Yeah. Yeah. Died at the end of the second one.

No, no. The third one starts off where he goes to get Jean out of the water and she, she nuke them. That's why he's out. Okay. So pretty much so he pretty much only is in two movies. He's kind of like a wet blanket. And he's really just supposed to, like, antagonize Wolverine, the star of the show. But like in the animated movies, like Cyclops is always supposed to be the hero and the leader, but he's just kind of like a goober, like he's always kids.

Just kind of been an annoying Boy Scout, too self-righteous. He's like, He's too self-righteous. He's like, Everything I do has to be for the good of everyone else and not not myself kind of deal. But I would also. Say and it's just. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry. I was just going to say, like every other thing Cyclops says, I'm just like, laughing at how cool yeah. Is because it's so perfect. But he says it with such conviction. You're like, Yeah. He believes that.

He believes what he's saying. Like, you can't fault him, right? Like, it's the voice actors. The voice actors are nailing this whole thing. yeah. Because, like, my wife even pointed out that she was like, they would really like to say to me, my X-Men, like, a lot like, like they literally love they say that phrase so many times in these first two episodes. But I would say also I was going to talk about action scenes. The first episode when they when the plane blows up and they had to fight.

We talked about the Sentinel fight before, but like when they buzz in Cyclops, like lands himself with an optic blast because he uses that to like, land on the ground. I was like, Damn, that's pretty cool. Like, I never would have thought we would have seen that, like in a in a show. Yeah. He's like, Hey, don't worry, I got this. Yeah, they this kind of was annoying to me, but I get it. They're coming from the perspective of their they're probably on, on onboarding a lot of new audience.

There's some just like straight straight plot dumping from people of saying like, I'm Storm and I can control the weather. And you know, they're really just talking out loud, right? But when you wrap it in kind of like this nostalgia is like nineties rapper, It still kind of fits anyway. There's there's like a small at all moment that I actually thought was really clever where when storm comes in with that sentinel fight at the end like one of them says like. Omega.

Omega level threat detected and it's just like a nice reminder of just like, yeah, I forgot. Like Storm is like way more powerful than most of the people on the actual like. Literally all the signal stop fighting. And we're like, we got to focus on her because you know, these guys are nothing compared to that. But yeah, it's fun to see the action. You want to talk about nostalgia, Blanket make that intro. They've recreated the. Intro. I loved it. I was like, I didn't. I didn't. I?

For some reason I never thought before. We started watching this show, what are they going to do with the intro? Like, what? What are they going to do? And then when it started playing, I got really nervous for a second. I was like, like I totally forgot that they have to remake an intro and then like, they almost just did it shot for shot then It's amazing. I love it. Well, and then the second episode, obviously, guys, as soon as Magneto comes into the atom, Magneto section in the next episode.

So like they're changing the intro based on the episodes a little bit. And I was like, this is solid, but you and that skip credit are skip intro button came up. I'm like, Who the fuck would skip this intro? What's a psychopath who is. Just, Yeah, I skipped on the second episode. I skipped the last on X-Men because we, we just watched it and I was like, I don't need that. And then the intro came. I'm like, We're not skipping the intro.

We'll skip that recap, but we're not skipping this thing because it's just so, so good. So really, really good. One of the cool characters I thought has been was was kind of under the radar before. If you watch X-Men 94, but has really taken, taken a really cool turn in this is morph and so how he is actually turning into other mutants is just fire like he turned into Archangel when the plane blew up to catch.

I was at Wolverine I think like he instead of said turning into like, you know, a bird or something, he uses the like the X-Men as, as who he's turning into. And then in when they're fighting the the mutant anti mutant team in the second episode he's lady death strike he's Psylocke. Yeah. Morph is going to give me a freakin heart attack because like, I am just on the edge of my seat waiting for cameos because this is living in the streaming animated space. So Marvel's not really.

I mean, they're way less locked down live action wise than they used to be, because now they seem to be able to access almost all of their characters now. But back in the day, you know, it was the animated worlds, the only place you could see all this crossover. And then like Lady Death Strike Pops, and I was like, Holy crap, I haven't seen Lady Death strike in decades. And it's in that icon. Like, I don't even know how to do this.

She got the bandana, she got the bandana on and or long claws, kind of like like it's like a Japanese warrior. Kind of. Yeah. It's almost kind of like a like a robe vest type of thing. Then I was like, Holy crap, lady doth strike out a no. And then like, it's Morph. Okay, So this is kind of a fun way of maybe if they have like a more obscure X-Men character, but maybe they don't really have any stories planned for them because they already got a lot going on.

Morph can be our way to kind of like, Hey, remember this random character? So I did enjoy that a lot. absolutely. I think he was in the first episode. I think he was also Xavier for a little bit. Yeah, he was in Xavier for like a fun comedy. But yeah, he was sabertooth at the end of the. yeah, he was. Jean And then Sabretooth I think right, Yeah. At some point. So yeah, absolutely. He's, he's and then he opens that, I think he opens the door at the end of the second.

So when the second jean shows up so you know what's not him as Jean. Right. They kind of help you notice that a little bit. Yeah. My my wife is convinced it's mystique which would make a lot of sense. Mystique is a pretty iconic X-Men character. But, you know, why would Mystique be at the mansion door in the form of Jean? Exactly. I love the idea. Even though Jean was shown in the jeep on the way to the hospital. Right. She was shown using her telekinesis. So more than likely it actually was.

Jean, I love the idea of Scott Summers accidentally having a baby with Mystique. That would be while that was some intense storytelling. I mean, I could probably I've read the comic books and write all these X-Men shows are nothing new. They're taking things from the comic books, and I have a pretty good idea who it is. And I don't know if you want to know if you want to wait, if you want to know. I feel like we're going to find out on Wednesday, so I rather be surprised. That's fine.

You'll find out because because they've also teased this character model before and they've done in the story. So it's fine. It's going to be great. I it doesn't matter what stories they tell going forward. It's really cool. I really enjoyed. So Sunspot is a new character in this.

If no one's familiar with Sunspot, he was actually in not the age of Apocalypse, days of future past movie for a little bit but his little his little black bubbles the Kirby that's when he fires up his power love scene that animation in this a little bit yeah because you don't you know we only got back in the nineties. Yeah because that's something you can't really easily do in 2D animation But yeah, they're doing a really good job of leveraging what they have. I know it's a losing fight.

I can't fight the battle of keeping 2D animation like literally 2D for the rest of my life. You know, the 3D Pandora box is just too affordable, it's too convenient, it's too. And and I do get benefits from it. Like they can probably crank through some of these episodes faster if they can, you know. Reuse the models. Models. Yeah. But I'm just glad that they're really taking care when they use them. I'm just like, make it look as 2D as much as possible as long as you can.

But sometimes every once in a while, like a plane or a spaceship or a character does like a camera, it's just like, okay, I can. See you can see the lighting. The topologies now. Yeah. Absolutely. I'm just I'm thrilled. This is this is a knock out of the park. I believe in it. Launched Rotten Tomatoes score was 100% from critics. Yeah. Who wouldn't like this? I couldn't recommend this. I don't know.

I'm not going to pull it up right now because, like, if someone someone's probably going to be contrarian and be like, well, obviously, you know, it's that no sort sitting at 100%. And right now, if 45 reviews 100% make 92% audience score. So you can this is this is just a knock out of the park. You know, this isn't necessarily representative of Marvel as a whole, but you know, this is this quality and then you've got quality.

I mean, come couple, couple this with the double headed wife approval, which that's got to say something at the broader market space. Right. We're not going to be the only nerds out there that are putting this on and then their spouses come into the room and they're like, okay, yeah. So there's definitely some conclusions we can draw from this, but this is this is a good sign because if you look at just X-Men 97, on the whole, a very like niche kind of project, right?

Obviously there's a lot of like a fan base that has grown up with it and has demanded more, but like eventually something has to be a bit of a crossover hit for it to continue further into the future. Like, yeah, I could see them making one or two seasons, you know, out of something that not a lot of people were into. But yeah, yeah, some crossover appeal here. I would love to see the return of the nineties animated Spider-Man.

I would die if I could see that intro again with that iconic guitar riff. I believe that was Aerosmith. The Aerosmith guitarist wrote that. Yes. Yeah, it was some it was some rock guitarist was definitely. I think was serious. I think it was Aerosmith. The guitarist from Aerosmith. Absolutely. Yeah. And and then we could even get some crossover because these cartoons did crossover in the past.

I don't know if they could bring back maybe the the Fantastic Four, Iron Man possibly That would be rad. They had the nineties. I mean, I remember The Punisher Cameoed in the original X-Men 94, you know, Daredevil, you get the little characters, right? Like, you know, they love you and Daredevil right now and everything. So you bring Charlie Cox in The Voice, Daredevil on here for a little bit. There's so many characters and from the Marvel thing, we can bring them in.

However, the X-Men cast is in the books is thousands, right? Hundreds if not thousands of of characters they can bring in. I would love to see we got to see the Morlocks in episode two, a smaller city. Which was wild. I wasn't expecting. See? Yeah, yeah. We got to see each for a little bit. It just feels so good and feel so at home to watch this show.

Mike And that's, that's a big, that's a big victory, I think in my books, whether, whether or not, you know, we've talked about this the the showrunner or writer slash where was was let go or departed from the show two weeks ago. Obviously it wasn't for quality because this is just like you mentioned, firing on all cylinders. So I want to see three seasons of this. I want to see more of X-Men. I was just I just ran over to eBay to look up some X-Men 94 animation cells.

There's some pretty cool ones over there. I mean, for the really cool ones, you have to cough up quite a bit of money. But for the low, low price of $12, you could just get a background panel of a door, a curtain and a window. No characters in it at all. But you could buy a character and put on top of it. Now tell me while you're there, because we talked about physical media at the start of the show, how much are VHS as of X-Men 94 on there? God, VHS. Let's find out. Let's see here, series VHS.

Because that's something I would I would, you know, one or two tapes. I'd probably get. Okay. So the first thing that pops up is a VHS. Lot of volumes. One, two, three, four, five and nine. Okay. and it's there's five bids. There's still a day left, so that doesn't really have a buy it now. Price. But if we just wanted to look at one as a whole. Yeah. give. Us a ballpark. Total Hasbro Pulse, Marvel Legends Series X-Men totally nineties Animated series.

that is a toy. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot. There's a lot of nuts. Okay, here we go. Solid number. Buy it now. Price complete nineties VHS collection of $300 three. Hundred. Dollars or is that the see this is the problem They made these figures okay these are actually VHS that I'm looking at. I'm confirming now there is no toys inside these boxes. You can get a lot that has nine of them for 180 bucks. I see. Just I just did a quick Google on Etsy, which I don't trust.

Vintage X-Men, the animated series, one two for Factory Sealed 800. Man. These are these boxes, these box arts for these VHS are really awesome. Like, they were like kind of like covers. Yeah, it's almost kind of like if they turned the animated show into a comic book. Yeah. How would they interpret the art as a comic like these VHS covers? It would be cool to own the boxes.

Well, look, have you seen the site art where they do the the the profile shot and all the different colors and the the character names on them. Those look pretty good. But, And I'm loving this box. So there's one with it's called X-Men Deadly Reunion. yeah, Just. Jean Gray with the Cyclops Blaster or not. Sorry. Rogue coming out. Yeah. This has been. Awesome. This is going to be something 94, I think you see these when you go to comic Collins and they have those little bootleg booths. yeah.

These are. They're bringing jarred the price up on some of these. But see, this is I got to get, I got to get that, that VHS combo, Winnie the Pooh TV. Throw in some of these X-Men can't. man. I know we can split it. I can do, like, split custody on the on the X-Men. Just blow out retirement on shipping this thing across the country. Yeah. Well, I mean, we've had worse ideas in a group chat, so.

yeah, but I think overall, you know, out of, out of four people I can count, I've talked to, you might well, at least you, your wife, me, my wife. This is thumbs up all around for X-Men 96. So, absolutely recommend it highly from from all of us. So check that out on Disney. Plus with your subscription you can also watch X-Men 94, the original series on Disney. Plus it pops up at the end when you're done. So if you hadn't seen those, you want to go back, you had the opportunity to do so.

But boy, don't don't get your hopes up that's going to look anything like this when you when you through. Let's hop into the the biggest trailer park we've had in a long time on this show. Yes. A few. We have six trailers in a row. And we're going to start with in the same vein, this Marvel 1943, the rise of Hydra. Now, this game title is a little vague, being called Marvel 1943, but it kind of gives me maybe an idea that there's going to be more games in this line.

This this, this franchise, if you will, if this takes off. But this is the game that stars both Captain America and a Black Panther in the 1940s, World War Two era. So do we have any confirmation if the Black Panther is to Shaka or Azari? Maybe it's to Shaq, his father and Zuri? Yes. The grandfather of two. Yes. So he's in there. We also have another like like in the Korea character. I forget her name now, Vala.

I believe it is. And then another one, Gabe, who is a howling commando with Captain America in this. And what's cool about the story trailer is it sounds like there is a red skull in France and the Black Panther and Captain America are both trying to take down this hydra infestation in France, But they're not on the same side yet from this trailer. Right. Like this is Godzilla versus Kong situation where they're going to punch for a bit than their friends.

I would imagine they have ideological maybe rules of war differences. You know, it seems like maybe CAP is taking the position of more honorable where he was like, there's two super soldiers in France, including me, and that's like two too many or something. And he's like. Yeah, there's like, there's three and there's that's two too many according to him. So yeah.

So, so it seems like maybe the Black Panther is maybe mercilessly like trying to complete their goal, which kind of almost aligns with a little bit of T'Challa that we saw in Civil War, where he was ready to do whatever it took to get revenge. Very single. Came around. Yeah. So maybe that's kind of the dynamic between the two characters. But I was watching this trailer just before we were caught excited and seen it yet absolutely gorgeous. The fidelity of these graphics.

Like once you get to the late stage of these generation of consoles and the developers like really have learned how to like dial in the hardware inside of these machines. I mean, this looks astoundingly good, like. Wow, and what did I tell you, Mike, Right after you watch it, this is rendered in game. This isn't pre-rendered cut scenes. This is this is live rendering from these games.

So if you are playing the console, it's not like, we made these scenes like old member of Old Final Fantasy, right? You'd watch a video. So this is not a video. This is like they are actually rendering it live. So I assume much like Spider-Man two or a game like that where if you change a costume or you change something, you would render that live in this cut scene. So to be that good on the fly is fantastic.

Yeah, they didn't they didn't show any gameplay, but there was a brief shot where they were. The camera is kind of over the shoulder of one of the characters, so I don't know if this has been said of it's going to be first person or they. Wouldn't it wouldn't make sense to be first person, right? Neither of these guys are shooters at this point.

A cat may have a gun, but like we saw, there's a cut scene where he threw his shield and it looks like that's kind of what it's going to be like, a third person brawler with some gear, whatever gear you happen to have on that case. Yeah, but I mean, I've been like I've been really craving some some stealth gameplay recently. Like I am chomping at the bit for that Metal Gear solid Snake Eater remake to come out so I can kind of get back into my stealth boots.

But it seems like if you're kind of varying up the gameplay between Kap and Black Panther, it seems like Black Panther is going to be the stealth Uber that of course can like throw down as well. And Capps going to be the more like, well, I'm sure they're stealth. All warfare probably requires a little bit of stealth. They're going to be a little tech gear, but, you know, he's I don't imagine the Black Panther having a gun in certain situations.

And I definitely think Cap would have a gun in certain situations, especially because there's four characters. They say you get to play as all four characters at some point. So I guess with the the ancillary non super soldier characters, there's probably going to be some some scenes where you got to maybe shoot your way out or or brawl your way out of some places. But I was impressed. I actually, you know, EAA is we've talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Right.

A very sketchy game company when it comes to anything that's not sports. So we were like not really sure what was going to happen with their games, but boy, this feels pretty good and it feels like a good story. First game, it's not selling micro-transactions, right? It's not selling multiplayer. So yeah, that is a huge win in my book. And this is a second game set in France, by the way, with Blade Announce. Remember, it was also set in France. Yeah, that's right.

And you mentioned with the title being like when it reveals at the end it says Marvel huge letters like 1943 as if like this is the title of the game. It's called 1943. It's not, you know, anything else like that. But then the rise of Hydra comes up as the subtitle makes me think, maybe they'll be like Marvel 1974 or, you know, some other moniker. And we kind of travel through time, you know, with some older, maybe Marvel characters. That would be kind of fun. Yeah, absolutely.

Like if they wanted to do, you know, these type of Marvel games, like they're like, Hey, we need a commodity. We need to modernize it. Maybe it's Marvel 20, 23 or something like that, right? Like a they move forward. We've got, you know, Captain America, he's been frozen. He's a thought out. And then we have the New Black Panther and they have a little more new technology.

They can implement that if they wanted to along the way or they do kind of like I don't know if you remember this old airplane games where it was like a side scroller and you're shooting upwards like they were called like 1942, 1943, 1934. So like they could do Marvel 1944. And then maybe it's a Hydra, maybe it's something else, right. Like they do Or, you know, I like your idea of the Cold War, like a winter soldier, like a winter soldier game in, like, the seventies or something.

That'd be pretty cool. you have, like, a winter soldier and, like, maybe a Nick Fury is the the hero side, the winter soldier's the bad side kind of deal. Yeah, that'd be cool. Absolutely. So this awesome trailer is in the shadows. Check it out. Let us know what you think. I'm really excited to see game play. It looks like it's coming out next year, so they've got a little bit of time to do that. But we'll we'll keep you guys post everything comes out.

Another trailer that dropped this week is this for a show? Not a game. It is the acolyte Star Wars. The Acolyte series set in the High Republic. And Mike, if I was to ask you, when is the High Republic? Do you remember this one? I think you might remember it. The High Republic is, I imagine, these eras of like how old Yoda is. Yeah, like there could be Yoda, but that's going to be about the only character that I believe would still be alive, right?

Yeah. Yeah. There's I think there was like maybe one or two more, but yeah, very, very few main characters, if you will. You're the word. Character. A young. A young Yoda. Yeah. Younger, Yeah. Younger, yeah. So the High Republic was several hundred years. 100, 152 years, maybe up to 400 years before the The Phantom Menace. So this series is set like later in the latter half of this, I believe it's reported this might be rumored. It's about 50 ish years before the Phantom Menace.

So we're getting closer to two with the newer stuff, but not enough where we're going to see, you know, Mace Windu is not going to show up, right? You know, not now. Chancellor Palpatine isn't going to be here. So we're in a nice, nice place and we get to see some the other Jedi that we haven't really got to experience through this trailer. So we get to see a what appears to be not necessarily a Sith, but like an assassin trying to take out Carrie in Moss's Jedi forces in character.

And then later on, we see a red light saber, and then we see a bunch other color lightsabers, Mike, which I know is your big thing. I know I love seeing lightsaber colors. I don't know how you feel about that, but yes, this is kind of the downfall of the High Republic. Not a lot of story beats here, just a lot of action scenes and a little bit of like, you know, Jedi nurse.

But it does seem to be a part of like where right before the Jedi got too smug and were taken down from the inside on the Sith. So what do you think of this? I'm I'm curious on your thoughts on this this trailer, the teaser, if you will. Yeah. I mean, that's got to be the direction they go. I feel like I have to be cautious about what I say about new Star Wars shows because I was like, Andor, that's going to be a hot pile of garbage. And like, no, it was actually amazing.

So maybe they could carve out a little bit here. I do. Like I still, no matter what, whether it's good or not, I always get that prequel idea of just like, Well, I kind of know where this leads, right? I know like the Jedi don't reign supreme forever. And then it gets into this weird future where the empire falls but then comes back. And then there's a dude called General Hux, and he's a weirdo for a little while, you know?

So it's like, no matter, like, how cool anything gets, I know eventually it gets to a point where I hate it and it's stupid. So like, I don't know how you solve that problem. I guess you just have to make a good movie with Rey next so I can just forget about all of those movies that happened that she was in. But there's a chance here to make some cool stuff I like leading into the idea of maybe what the politics are like when the Jedi are kind of on high, right?

Like you brought up the point smug, you know, Is that what happened? We've only ever really got to experience Jedi like as the good guys who are at their best kind of on the back foot of trying to push back against this growing empire. But like, yeah, what happens when they have no problems, right? Everything's been running smoothly, You know, maybe they don't quite want to go to the dark side, but like, I'm sure an asshole could just be a Jedi, right? It's not like just because you're a Jedi.

You're like a nice guy. So when I read the The High Republic novel, the first one of the three that came out, well, I notice was very similarly to the start of The Phantom Menace. Right? The Jedi are they're not warriors. They're not generals, a battlefield.

They're peacekeepers right there as envoys to, you know, discuss on behalf of different people, not necessarily the republic till, like the initial scene where we're going to be one were sent as envoys right to the trade federation very early on. And so like a lot of this that and a lot of interesting things about the the Jedi back then they were just exploring light travel like light your travel. It was very, very young at that point.

So they're exploring different parts of the universe that hadn't been out there. But a lot of the Jedi were allowed the ability to not be so restricted in what they were able to do, like like they had different abilities, like the force were able to kind of flow freely. They weren't like looking for humanoid people who could force, push and force pull, right? They were like, Hey, you can you know, you can commune with animals a little bit.

The stuff that we kind of were tease more recently in Star Wars, but like it was very free flowing back then. They were very like, yeah, just whenever you feel they kind of run with that. One of the characters in this from the from the book, she actually has a light saber that turns into a light whip. And I'm very excited. See this in action because, well, the one thing I love seeing lightsabers, but Mike, what have I always said about the light sabers in modern Star Wars?

They look like light sticks, like I have a light saber on my wall. If I just lit it up and filmed it, that's what it would look like. I want to see Balan Scholes light sitting right where it feels like a burst of energy is coming from a handle. I don't want it to be like, Hey, we lit up some glow sticks and we filmed it because those are not lights. So hopefully they can they can nail it up.

But I was excited to see, you know, the the Jedi, not necessarily generals, but like the yellow light saber, ones who are like more less warriors and more like, hey, we're just like keepers of the peace kind of thing. We're not we're not fighting. We're more, I would say, ambiguous, if you will, but like to see those different colors is interesting to me. I'm I'm excited. I have no ill will towards this.

I would love to see it and kind of let it prove itself to me, knowing this is a teaser, we don't have any story beats, right? We just kind of see some quick characters, some quick action, and that's really about it. So I'm hoping for this. This is come out June 5th, I believe. I think we reported that a while back. So this will be coming up here this summer.

My turn to watch on and Disney plus for that any anything else on that evening I mean I was kind of hoping to get skeleton crew first if I'm going to be completely honest but I'm thinking maybe it's Star Wars celebration this year, which I think is in Japan on May the fourth, we will probably get a skeleton crew trailer and release date as well, knowing that Andor was pushed back a year. So I last. But Star Wars is before we start Mike the Phantom Menace tickets are on sale.

I don't know if we've talked about that a couple of weeks ago at the 30th, 30th, 25th anniversary. I believe some of the movie is coming out in theaters. is it fifth? Yeah. Damn it is. And the day after that, on May the fourth, I believe they're actually doing one of those all day every Star Wars movie in theaters, like all the Me, The Skywalker Saga, nine films.

I was telling someone the other day when we did Iron Man one, two, three and Avengers in a row and how it wasn't horrible, but I cannot sit in the theater for four movies ever again. After that. I don't know. I don't. Know. Yeah. And I got to imagine that the global attention span of the moviegoers out there have not gotten any stronger since then. So good luck to those fans. What an emotional roller coaster that would be to watch them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

In a theater, the you get to see literally the rise and fall of the Star Wars saga all in one go. So, or you can stream it on Disney plus that's an option to moving on into the most wannabe Star Wars movie ever known to man Rebel Moon Part two The Scar Diver trailer has debuted, so this is a trailer showing off the second part of Zack Snyder's film. It's a story slash teaser trailer. The story is, Hey, that guy at the the bad guy, The first one didn't really die.

So now he's going to come attack the village. So the villagers have to learn how to fight. Do you like slow motion? Because, boy, do we have more slow motion for you. Well, also too, like, you can piece the entire movie together with the shots from this, Right? And since nobody in their right mind could possibly be waiting for, you know, midnight whenever part two drops, From what I'm seeing. Yeah, the the bad guy comes, they fight.

There's explicit lines in the trailer, just like I won't let all these people die for me. And then cut to the scar giver inside of their spaceship, you know, fighting the bad guy. It's starting to go down. Things are blowing up. She's on her own, you know, I'm sure there'll be some sort of, like, dramatic, like, we fake out where we think she's dead. But no, she's still alive. Yeah. If anyone cannot die in this movie, they die. Then they come back. They've already proven that in the first one.

So, yeah. Like, like we said, with the first one, if you seen, if you seen any of these like, iconic science fiction movies in the last 30 years, like they all are doing it better than Snyder's doing it. So one of the things I will I will call while the action scenes from this is there's two parallel action scenes, ones with the main girl scar. You ever want the bad guy where it's essentially a them versus the army kind of shot, right?

And they go through a hallway or a tunnel and it's very choreographed like like almost too choreographed. Right. Like, you know, that person's not going to die or get hurt. So it's very gratuitous in like, this person's a badass, see what they can do. But like, I never really felt like they were in danger, that whole scene. So that's really I mean, I hate to say this movie is disappointing beforehand, but like those scenes, knowing, like, seen how calculated they are is is not enticing for me.

It doesn't give me the draw that I need to watch it despite how cool it is. It's not very for me. Could you could you believe that the robot rises up and fights alongside of them? I could have saw that coming. That is probably the most thing I'm excited for. Can come. I'll just be transparent. The robot we were promised and tease with Anthony Hopkins voice getting to fight the army. I think is going to be the coolest thing because I think he will be the most brutal of all of them.

Probably because it's robot killing humans. The sun. It'll be a day smack in a situation where, you know, the line will be pressed. All hope is lost. But then the robot finally stops becoming an observer and fights back. And then they'll hold him off for a little bit. But then they'll be this dramatic slo mo where like. These. Robots start pumping through, there's you could see nuts and bolts flying like shrapnel going everywhere. So it's Dragon Ball Z when Androids.

Is yeah, their head falls to the ground. And then since there's like 18 lights on, this thing's facial to see them all slowly dim and then somebody will be like, sad. But then that is, that'll be when all hope is lost. Where does that part happen in the three act structure, Chris Like at the end of the second act, right? Yeah, like I would say, yeah, like, and then that's when you find out that the scar. You ever gotten to the ship in the sky and blew it up.

So, like, it kicks off the third act by like, Hope's lost here, but the ship blew up. So now we're reinvigorated to fight. We're just See, if you're not subscribed to Netflix, we're just saving you the subscription right now. Absolutely. It's very it's a very choppy the first and very trophy this feels just this trophy So if you're into that kind of thing cool Don't knock knock enjoy what you want to enjoy. But this this trailer has not really sold me on the uniqueness of it.

After the first we were burned on the first one, if you will. I will be tuned in. It's in April. We were like a less than a month away. Again, if you had Netflix, it's a freeze free watch free movie, you might as well. But you know, if this was in theaters, this is Barbie money. That's all we talked about. Barbie number one, grosser of all time. Where is Barbie Part two? Where is it, Mike? We don't have it yet, but Rebel Moon dead. That's How popular was this?

They still are right in it, right in the churn. But and then I believe we talked about this generic but the rebel moon part one into a director's cut will come at the same time probably later this year when Netflix subscriptions are getting low and they need some money. So we'll keep you guys post the trailer. In the show showdowns, move it on Furiosa, the new trailer for the upcoming Mad Max Fury Road prequel.

So this focuses on obviously the character of Furiosa, who goes on to be a main part in Mad Max Fury Road, played by Anya TAYLOR-JOY. This time her, you know, essentially stolen from the green place. And then how does she become the Furious? So we know Chris Hemsworth just shoe and scenery is a villain in this trailer. There's sand, there's chrome, there's cars, there's fire. Mike, what else do we need? I don't know what else to say about this. I'm excited.

The last one was great. Fury Road was fantastic. I've no reason to doubt this one at the end of the day. Yeah. Yeah, I. I talked about it on the show like months ago when I rewatched it and I was like, God. Fury Road is such an amazing, perfect movie. So you got to hope, even if you get like a 10th of that, you know, you're still going to be doing better than, you know, some sort of random high budget action movie that's streaming on Netflix. Wink, wink, nudge nudge.

Yeah, But yeah, I second the Chris Hemsworth just really digging into a new character. That's not Thor. It's nice to kind of see him channeling something. I don't know what it is, but I like it. He's it's just like a little like a little insane, but like, he's just, like, unhinged but kind of funny. He's got like, that was a prosthetic nose on, I think is what it is he's wearing really, really doing that again George Miller is all like James Cameron.

You can't sleep on what he's doing because you never know how good it's going to be. Right. Like he's done, you know, all the Mad Max movies. He he was a writer, Babe and babe. Babe, too. Happy Feet, one and two. He's just out there, you know, doing doing what he wants to do. So absolutely love it. Really, to watch this. This is one of those we talked about like should make this is a popcorn movie for me, right?

we're going to go sit in the theater and get that full theater experience while not carrying a thing about it in the world. Because I don't have full Mad Max feelings. It's like Ghostbusters. Like this is another movie from the Eighties is coming back. By the way, another franchise like Ghostbusters. I have no Mad Max affinity, so I can just enjoy this and not really worry if it messes anything. Up or No, this is this is May. This is sooner than I thought it would be. Great.

I can watch this before before the kid before the kid. Arrives. At the end of the summer. So actually, see this one? Yeah. Awesome. And fun fact. My brother has a cat girl. Cat. Her name is Furiosa. She was named after Fury for us in Fury Road years ago.

So, in fact, there another franchise from the seventies eighties make this coming back yet again is alien and we got a trailer for Fay Alvarez's upcoming Alien movie which is set in between Alien and Aliens and focuses on a colony of people, kids, mostly young people going, traveling through space and how are they deal with an alien. And this is much of a this is a story. This is more of a teaser trailer. Right. If you can, you know, take a look at it.

But someone pointed out, we'll finish up Patrick. He was like, you know what is really cool about this teaser is that the ship feels like a character in this trailer. Like because you see the shots, you see the aliens, the scream and the horror and the body horror, but like the ship, like there's some lingering shots of just like hallways in the ship. So you're like, ooh, the ship is going to have its own person that like, not real person. Like it's part of the movie, right?

Because hiding the aliens and in being I'm so was. Here I believe the crew at least when I read the synopsis on IMDB. I believe the crew is supposed to be maybe scavengers is how they're described, but I have high expectations and I hope it pays off for this because Ridley Scott is really kind of a crap the bad on the last couple Alien movies and I really like Alien and Aliens and I even like Alien three. And if I can reach the part in my brain where I kind of like turn it off just to have fun.

The Alien versus Predator movies are fun. Like, I just think I just think the Xenomorphs are really, really cool. Very unique design. Nowhere else in Hollywood have they really kind of captured the the terror of this kind of creature set loose out in the world. So since this isn't a Ridley Scott movie, obviously he's attached to it. You know, it's his franchise, right? But it's a different director.

We're going to have like a totally, like, hopefully different take on it or a return maybe since it's taking. I didn't know it took place between Alien and aliens until you just told me now. So that's pretty cool, too. You don't have to deal with like, you know. Legacy or anything.

Yeah. Story related or like to do it or like the are like the big time jumps that happened between like two and three and also like, or you go back in the past and now like, you know you have like the what do they call this engineer and stuff. Yeah you don't have that You get it just yeah, you're doing your thing. Back to basics. I don't know what Romulus means. It maybe is that's the name of the ship, but I think that's cool. Like Romulus is just a cool sounding word.

So the cool factor is really great here, and I'm hoping that at least maybe when the studio greenlit the project or the creative development team that was working on it, I'm sure they couldn't ignore the popularity of the recent alien video games which are straight survive. So so this was a stuck on a ship. This was originally supposed to be a Hulu straight to Hulu release like Predator or Prey, remember though. So after the quality of this in the success of Prey, they were like, You know what?

Maybe we underestimated these alien focus franchises a little bit. So it's coming out the 20 century studios fairly. Alvarez He is known for his horror films. All right. Evil Dead, Don't Breathe. Was it The Girl in the Spider's web, which I think is one of those with those Grow the Dragon Tattoo movies kind of thing. So like, he he comes from a horror background and they're they're really kind of pushing this movie a little bit. And I'm excited. The Alien movies is is great.

So one of the things some of the crew members from Aliens are coming back to work on this movie as well. Mike To help with the production. I just I was going to say, there's one shot, the Xenomorph at the end of this trailer where you see the, I guess, tongue, for lack of a more accurate term, comes out of the mouth. He's little head even though his little Yeah. Even though it only happens for a couple of frames it feels like a physical prop. Yeah that's shooting at the camera so yeah.

Absolutely so so I'm excited about this, you know, again, the success of Prey has me, you know, jazzed about these, these, these movies. So. So. Well, we'll see. Praise, Praise. Getting a sequel, I believe, from the same director. Yeah. I think it's I don't know if it's a sequel, but I think it's in the same universe. Maybe. I don't know if it's a direct sequel, but they're doing more of those Predator movies like like that. So love it. So Alien Romulus here in the, a trailer in the shoot.

It's the last trailer we have is for Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice or you? I'm going to refer to as Beetlejuice two, because I don't want to keep saying that a bunch of times, but it's a legacy sequel. So this is another eighties movie coming back. My God, boy. Are you sensing the trend today? So Tim Burton has returned to direct Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice. most of a lot of the original cast, Lydia Deetz played by I guess her name she's in Stranger, The Mom and Stranger Things. And then her mom.

Ryder. Does what. Winona Ryder. A writer. And then so, like, they're coming in. So this movie also introduces Jenna Ortega as the daughter of Lydia Deetz at the end of Astrid's. And they're all coming back to this town due to the father with his father passing away. So you have three generations of is from the trailer. It looks like, you know, we find the miniature of the town upstairs and then a very much older Beetlejuice slash Michael Keaton appears to wreak havoc, if you will, in this film.

yeah. I me personally I saw the original Beetlejuice, I think at a slightly too young of an age where, you know, there's like it's not a scary movie, but like, there's some stuff in there that like if you're like a too young, it's going to kind of freak you out and you're not really going to appreciate, you know, some of the more like. Comedy and. Kind of county vibe, even though like NDEs weren't really a thing.

But you notice, yeah, it's like kind of oddball, you know, you know, off that kind of typical beaten path. Maybe movies coming out like what's an analogous what's a cop to Beetlejuice back then. Right Not a whole. Lot of ghosts Ghostbusters. Yeah which we just talked about in the top of the show not really having a lot. So I have seen Beetlejuice, but I, I couldn't, I couldn't really tell you what the plot of the movie was. I couldn't tell you the main driving force for any of the characters.

I know Michael Michael Keaton plays a guy named Beetlejuice. Some people in this house occasionally. I don't know if they're going into another dimension. I don't know if they're going to hell or purgatory, but there's like people there with like weird puppet heads. So yeah, so about okay, so. So yeah, so this trailer at least to me like okay, so I can't really speak to if anyone should be excited for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice because I don't have any affinity for the original movie.

But this is an awful trailer because it is so wrong with every troll you've seen from every reboot trailer ever. Like there's, like the slowed down dramatic version of like kind of the classic song that appears. There's those like Crane Dolly shots into like old objects we haven't seen in a while. And even I know it and I haven't even seen the movie in like decades. There's dramatic shot where they pull the dusty.

I kept thinking of Ghostbusters Afterlife on this trailer where this totally the same vibes. And then at the very end you reveal, you know, the character you haven't seen in so on so long which you know, this is Beetlejuice. Michael Keaton in Ghostbusters, it was the ecto one when, you know, you pull it off. So I'm sure that is just that's got the the marketing creeps all over it. You know, they're just like trying to fit puzzle pieces. Well, well, they're like well.

Worked for ghosts Might not be in. Yeah. The trailer might not be indicative. Yeah. They're like, what? Work for Ghostbusters. Let's do the same thing. Right. Like, like, literally, it's like, you know, revisiting the nostalgia. And this is a teaser trailer, so hopefully I don't know what the story is, but I remember the original one is that, you know, the original homeowners, which I was it was Geena Davis. BALDWIN The mean Baldwin, Alec Baldwin.

Alec Baldwin were like, they lived in this house. They died in an accident and they were sent back to the house to hornet. Really? Right. But they weren't like trying to, you know, be too scary. Lydia is into the occult, works with them. She accidentally summons Beetlejuice, who is like a poltergeist and is like, if you marry me, you know that he wanted to marry so he could get some sort of powers or something. I don't know what it was. So it was just really, you know.

Again, it was a comedy, but it was like a dark, weird county. Is Tim Burton right early? Tim Burton before he went to to. boy, I'm really bad on the Wizard of Oz. That wasn't was her Oz. He did Alice in Wonderland stuff, but so was cool. So like, you know, why are we why do we need to revisit this 30 plus years later? Do I the well, I mean, seems like we don't need to revisit this 30 years later. Right. Like, it's interesting. It's got some big names in it.

You know, Winona Ryder and Jen Ortega are huge right now, so that's cool. But like, I want to know more about this, what's kind of what's going on. It's fun to see it. I will say, you know, it's just it's I watch I grew up on the Beetlejuice cartoon. Did you ever watch that one growing up? The animated. Thing? I remember the intro. I remember the animated. But I think at the time I probably didn't have the the right cable package to watch it because I don't remember watching it. I don't know.

I think it was I think it was on Cartoon Network or something. And I remember because it had it was very like people just could turn into things and like it was nothing to do with the TV show. It was very wacky, like Freakazoid era, like Cartoon Network. If you yeah, yeah. So I remember watching all that. So I don't have the if maybe the fitting for the movie, but I do have the affinity for the cartoon show. So I'm hoping that this is, you know, at least quality.

But you are, you know, touching on this is all safety safety nets on the trailer, right? Like, do you remember this? Do you remember this? Do you remember that song and these characters and everything. So we don't know what the story is yet, but hopefully it can it can pull it out, you know, along the way. But we'll we'll see as we kind of get through that. But you can check out that, She's on I was going to say Beetlejuice aired on the ABC network and I'm just really right now. Yeah, yeah.

then it must have heard me talking. It had four seasons. Wow. Okay. so yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the. The episode count here is crazy. Season 113 episode Season two a season three eight season for 65 episodes. Well, if yeah, it could happen. Yeah. Do you notice it had four directors in season four? yeah. Like regular season five five different directors across season four. So it's as well. But I remember watching it, I remember watching this.

I don't know if maybe it eventually went over to to Cartoon Network or maybe it was like when I was watching ABC when they had like Buzz Lightyear of Star commands and like stuff like that on. So, yeah, you guys, if you haven't seen that go, go take a look at that. This is while I can't believe this came out in 1989 Mike this is when this debuted animated was 1989. Wow. So that's a wrap. But that ends up for the trailer park. Mike That is it. We were going to.

Yeah, but we're going to stay in the spooky season, if you will. Yeah. Can I name the last three subjects that we have here? absolutely. It kind of feels like we're. It feels like we're opening the junk drawer a little bit. We're like, sometimes You're finding exactly what you're looking for sometimes. Like, how long has this been in here? I think this battery's dead, but I don't know. So this is like the junk drawer section and maybe can continue this going.

I'm I'm going to intercept you, Chris, of whenever you do the show notes, try to imagine what could go into the junk drawer. And no, we'll brand the segment. We'll we'll see if anybody wants to sponsor the junk. The juncture of the show. Yeah. You want to go ahead and we'll go through them because the first one is it was kind of tight. This this was originally the last subject before these last two kind of popped up here on the weekend. But the they're calling it

the Punic verse, if you will. And Holy shit, what a horrible name is. Puna versus Monster's a symbol, which is the twisted childhood universe from Winnie the Pooh Blood and honey creators. So if you're not familiar with this Razzie Award winning movie Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey, where they took Winnie the Pooh once he's in the copyright free zone and made him it made them serial killers. The sequels coming out, I think pretty pretty soon.

But they're also going to be combining Winnie the Pooh, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, Bambi, Mad Hatter, Sleeping Beauty, Tinkerbell, and many more fairy tale copyright people into this twisted gross childhood universe. Mike and I don't even know what to do with this. Like, I'm I'm not surprised and. I have no interest. The first one, let alone the rest of them. You can't stop it from happening. Yeah, it's just. This is okay. I mean, do is this enough to get me to watch it?

That's the question I have here. When I saw the stunt of the original Winnie the Pooh kind of slasher fest coming out, I was like, I don't need to watch this. Then I heard the reviews of like, this isn't even fun for gimmick sake. And now they're just going to crank it to 11. Is this enough to to reach a threshold of watch ability in any sense? I don't know. But this kind of feels like something that like I'd rather watch a YouTube essay about. Right.

You know, somebody gathers the clips and I just kind of sit down for like a a 14 minute like dive and then I'm out. I feel like that's what I'm looking for here. And then that way they don't get any money either. Well, I'm trying to figure out myself here how much the movie cost to make. And they made $5 million worldwide. Is is that did they make a bunch of money on accident? And that's what we're not seeing like is maybe fireworks.

Yeah. Or it was enough for them to get an outside investor of like, hey, like we were able to turn, you know, 5 million into, you know, 20 million or you want to get on this boat, throw a couple million, we can kind of flip it and turn it out into something else. Yeah, I mean, with the first one, it's easy. You just to throw the costume like the Hollow, the Spirit Halloween store, Winnie the Pooh costume on somebody, and then you just make a bad slasher movie.

It seems like this one is going to take a little bit articulation, a little bit more planning. And I can't. Can they pull it off? We'll see. I think again, I always think there's an opportunity for and C level films out in the marketplace. It's just this is a weird one to get into for my sake. I think original things are great, but like do you to have the twisted childhood universe? It's just a very, very weird name and concept to me. But you know, what can you do, Mike? What can you do?

Well, jump into the next two topics here. DC Really? Joker Fully Ado will be a jukebox musical featuring iterations on 15 well-known songs, so be prepared to having the singalong versions of this Joker two that people will be coming to to sing too. Yeah. Inter Interesting.

I'm curious if they'll lean into or out of that when it comes to the marketing, I'm just comparing it to the last musical to come out this year, which was Mean Girls and everyone talked about like, people went and saw this movie and they didn't know it was supposed to be a musical. So I would think you lean into it or people are going to be very confused.

This seems to be embracing that DC strategy of, throw popular songs into it, but maybe make it on purpose this time and not slap it on in post-production. This is the part of the of the junk drawer. You're just like, I found this. this could be useful. Let me see if let me see if this piece of gum still tastes good. It's been back here for a while. Yeah, but I. I'm down for this. Like, I'll. I'll still watch it. It's nice to get the confirmation, though, that as a musical, you.

Don't get Lady Gaga without having some songs in it. Mike Right. Like, yeah, she's a she's a world known singer. She's won, I believe Grammys even was at that one movie. She did A Star is Born was that it's something like that. They'll probably have some original songs in here too. But like you know, Todd Phillips didn't have to make Joker, too. But if he's to make it, he's going to do what he wants to do. And obviously he wants to make it a quote unquote jukebox musical.

And we saw some set photos a couple weeks months ago. We talked about like there's that big fake moon in the background on that. It looks like it's on a set right kind of thing. So, you know, maybe maybe these songs are just part of the head, like a part of it in their head and stuff like that. diegetic or diegetic film or music kind of stuff. Yeah. You bring up a good point with Lady Gaga in the movie singing. So I did a head and I did a crucial Google for everyone out there.

And the simple search terms are can Joaquin Phenix sing? Because I don't know. And the response was indeed, yes. In fact, he played Johnny Cash in the movie Walk the Line and used his own voice. He also learned to play guitar from scratch as well. So according to Google, automated results from Korra, Joaquin Phenix can indeed sing. So maybe this is going to be a smash musical masterpiece. Yes. Along with this and Wicked part one coming out later this year as well.

It's a musical fall for everybody who wants a. What are the what are the Vegas odds if because was was was it Alfred that was technically in the first Joker movie on the other side of the Wayne Manor Gay or was it like a security Guard? I don't really. Remember. I don't remember either. I couldn't. Tell. But there there is a at least greater than 0% that Alfred could have a musical number in this movie. I'm not saying it could happen or it will happen, but it could happen, right?

He exists in this universe. Apparently. There is a young Bruce Wayne that Alfred could sing. He did. Actor Douglas Hodge was Alfred. He was a middle aged man on the other side of the fence. So. Absolutely. So it's Hodge All right, now. Now I got to Google Kent, Douglas. Kent. Kent, Douglas, Ken, Douglas, Hodge, Sig and this will be our.

Okay, just to be clear, there is nothing frilly, coy or effeminate about Douglas Hodge, this British singer and songwriter who won a Tony in 2010 for his portrayal of Alban the wife. Is this the same guy? I don't know if this is the same guy or not, or that just happens to be because that would be like if you have a British singer songwriter playing Alfred, like, how do you not have saying? But to be clear, I do not think this is the same person. That's fine. We'll think well, we'll know later.

This this isn't something we're going to solve today with that. But but at least we now know for for the Joker. So yeah, I'm excited to see the the replays when they do the singalong versions. Mike That's that's what I want to see at the end of the day. Moving on the last bit here is Suicide Squad. I, Isaac I know this is a Japanese word. I'm probably butchering the hell out of it as the sky is kind of sky. So WB Discovery, Japan is making a suicide Squad anime cool.

They do a lot of animated DC projects tapping into anime, one of the most popular forms of animation right now. Not surprising at the end of the day. But Warner Brothers Discovery Japan is looking to increase their enemy output. They have some studios that are doing a bunch of work for themselves and other people and they're looking to increase their own output, including more DC properties in new IP.

So if we end up seeing maybe some more Warner Brothers anime, different things, you know, in the next few years, I wouldn't be surprised. Is there any DC character you would love to see in anime fashion? Mike It would be the question I have for this. Yeah. Well, I mean, we've seen a lot of the Batman adjacent characters because Batman has kind of been to this medium before Batman Ninja. Which was several years ago as well. Yeah, exactly. So I'm kind of curious.

The only thing I can really pull out of this news story, this beef jerky in the junk drawer of segments here is Cartoon Network was shut down, at least their physical offices out here in the valley, and they were absorbed into Warner Brothers Animation as far as I last checked. So I'm kind of curious what the overall strategy is for all of the animators, you know, working for Warner Brothers. Well, right now, I mean, animation stuff, you know, takes a while. It's a long tail.

So this could be a legacy project. But yeah, well, this overall, I'm just kind of curious what this. This is Warner Brothers. This is WB Discovery Japan, by the way. This is not the American branch like this is specifically the Japan branch, not necessarily the American brains doing the anime. So I can't say anything to that. But if the if the Japan branch wants to do what they dub it or they would probably dub it coming over here, I think this will do a suicide as well.

They don't have to. They could solve it if they really wanted to. And it makes me wonder if it's actually a branch though, or if it's just like the like all animation seems to do. They ship it to another country to make it. You know, this is this came out from the head of the Japan person does it like this is not like Warner Brothers. So this is this is out of Japan. So I believe that it's like their own thing.

And I think they're doing anime for other studios over there as well, like in in Japan, which is cool. I was always a marvel anime project that creeps out of nowhere for a weird reason. Yeah. So that's probably the same type of situation. Yeah, I would love to to see if I can say green lanterns like an anime green Lantern thing because with all the different type, like they're aliens, right?

I would love to see the anime designs for aliens and like the Green Lantern powers because like, rather than creating CG models and like a live action Green Lantern, like you could do whatever you wanted in anime and I think it would look fantastic at the end of the day if I was to pick one other than Suicide Squad. because we don't get a lot of that I think. I think Green Lanterns are left to the side and they're one of my favorite characters in DC. Yeah.

Well, if I felt like I had to bring this podcast full circle, Chris, I would say nothing is cooler than whatever shade of blue they're using on beast from X-Men 97. I love that incarnation of Beast, seeing them on the screen again. It was just absolutely delightful. So fun fact there is a marvel anime for X-Men that came out in 2011. Yeah, I remember. I feel like we talked about that as we were doing this podcast in 2011.

No, no. No, no. We were we were both still in school, sadly, but I actually own that on DVD. I bought all the animators when they came out back then that was getting them shipped over. I'm trying to see if they had it because they have a that is specific or Wolverine one. And then also they carried on the X-Men. At some point in time in the in the near past that was on Netflix because I watched at least one episode on Netflix. So it's there anymore.

Beast was in that and that's when he looked like a cat man. He had. Yeah. Because I was like, I was like, I remember this. I remember it because you're talking about blue and it's I'm going to send you a photo of it because it is very anime. Like in Japan. They lean into the weird stuff and I know they love it. They love the cat stuff. And this is the bluest cat man I never seen. yeah, so, so sad for the cat man, but I love it.

But yeah so yeah hopefully we'll we'll see some more DC animated stuff I think. I think it's great they do great work, but as you mentioned, that is it for the show. That was it for this week. People will know what you're up to, what you're doing, buddy. Where can they find. Yeah. Well, if they want to find me closing the junk drawer on this on the end of this episode, they can find my webcomics at life Rewards risk Ecom or pickled comics dot com.

Chris, people want to catch up with you or hit the find. You can find me on the screen. 1487 Val day in or video game systems of the same name always doing stuff there If people know about the show where they can find new episodes or watch us on YouTube live as we're doing right now, like and subscribers. Because if I say those words, the button glows. Where can they get all that good information at? Yeah, all you got to do is head on over to super hero slate dot com.

You might have to VPN to it if you are from the mutant country of Joshua. I don't know if they get the full internet over there or not, but superhero slate dot com. We're on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever else. You loved to find podcasts and you got to hit up the website to check out our show notes. We talked about a lot of trailers here, so these links will really helpful for you so you can get merchant super hero Slate.com slash store. We love hearing from you.

What did you think of X-Men 97? I know super fan Jim out there was excited for us to talk about it on the show this week. So let us know what you thought about X-Men 97. Did your spouse who didn't watch the show grow up also like it as well, let's get a spouse, We need number 97. That's on this. Yes, we need spouse stats. And if you are a fan of the show, you want to be a super fan of the show.

If you want to gravitate if you are just a lowly mutant, but you want to gravitate to X-Men, it's the same type of strategy here. You just got to share the show with a friend, share the show with a buddy, and we'll be here every week, folks. That's right. We will see you guys next week maybe.