MOVIE REVIEW: Captain America: Brave New World

Hey, this is Philip Kennedy Johnson, writer of Superman and Alien, and you're listening to the Oblivion Bar podcast. Welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host, Chris Hacker and Aaron Knowles. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 182 of the Oblivion Bar podcast. I am Chris Hacker. I see every calculated possibility, every impractical future except how to properly take care of this growth on top of my head.

And joining me is our commander in chief with a real bad case of the Monday is my cohost and BFF, Knowles. Never tell me the odds. Everybody we were looking for a pertinent Harrison Ford rebuttal there and Aaron I think you got a good one there. He didn't tell me what it was. I like what you came up with.

I think Star Wars. I wanted to go with something like, you know, Harrison Ford from, you know, Brave New World, which, you know, spoiler alert, that's what we're going to be talking about today. Yes. But I wanted to bring up something from that, but it's still so new and so fresh. It really only came out two days ago. So I didn't want to go and give a good reference that nobody like nobody was like, the fuck is that from?

Also, you know, not to spoil our conversation, which we are going to be talking about, already said we are reviewing Captain America Brave New World, the fourth entry in the Captain America saga and the 35th Marvel Cinematic Universe film. My gosh. That's not including TV. But, you know, again, to sort of speak on what Aaron chose there, not a ton to really quote necessarily, at least in my opinion. know, Aaron, this is our first movie review of 2025.

And also I should say really quickly before we get into it. I'm a little nasally right now. I'm sure some of the people can probably hear that in my voice. So I apologize ahead of time. However, I feel okay. So we're going to power through. I'm a true champion of this. I got to bring everybody that, that nerdy content, right? So, and Aaron's currently holding up his Captain America Brave New World poster. That's actually a pretty good intro into this. We both went to the fan event.

Was yours AMC as well? Was it considered AMC or was it just like an IMAX? Mine was not an AMC. mine was not an AMC. Sorry. I apologize. Because I'm thinking I've actually I've been to two movies this week. I went and saw The Monkey, which we'll talk about later on next week. Next week. But I'll get into it later. There was a huge mix up with how my tickets occurred with the theater going experience and last minute. There's a checkings and a savings.

And as a problem with my checking and saying, yeah, it was, it was a, an adventure, but it happened and it was amazing. And believe it or not for a fan event, there was like 10 people in the audience. You know, it's funny. I saw I saw mine on Thursday as well. Again, we'll get into more in depth, let everybody, but just to sort of tease what we're to be talking about later. I went to the fan event, which is usually just a preview night. It's Thursday night.

I went to my local theater AMC 17 here in Indianapolis and I got this key chain. got a Captain America key chain. You guys can hear it in the mic. was gonna ask you if you wanted one. got one as well. Okay. Yeah, I got one here. And then also I got this t-shirt, which Aaron's Aaron's wearing his Captain America t-shirt right now. It's just your basic symbol. I love that.

I have one of those as well, but I got this Captain America t-shirt has the obviously the logo on the front and then it has, you know, Sam running towards the person on the back. There was so much swag. Yeah, there may be reasons for that, Aaron. We'll get into it here in just a bit. But before we do that, we got to a little bit of news and notes. And also we got to let the people how they can support. Let the people know how they can support the show.

So why don't you tell the listeners how they can support the Abilene Bar podcast? If you want to support the oblivion of our podcast, consider checking out our Patreon for your support. You gain access to a bonus episode each week called the grid. It's pretty much our, behind the scenes. it's our, it's our unse- uncensored, unfiltered, unformatted is our brain vomit word diarrhea. Yes. Emotional. Emotionally cathartic show.

We talk about anything and everything on the grid and it is a super fun, not just for us, but I think it's really fun for the listeners as well and the programs and Dave, David, who get to listen in on that. Aaron, you know, it's funny is that this episode, I would say like the oblivion bar, the normal show is cathartic in a lot of ways. Absolutely. This episode specifically, episode one, 82, our review of Captain America, Braved in the World will be cathartic in a lot of ways.

Again, brief teaser of the of the eventual conversation. don't even know what he means by that. So warning also, Chris and I have not talked about this at all, at all, since having seen the movie. So I'm excited for that as well. Again, with being a Patreon member, you get access to the grid, you get access to our transcripts, which kind of go over everything and everything, all the links, the show notes, everything that talks about what we talk about. So you actually get those early as well.

So you can do a little bit of research before. the episode airs as well as, you know, access to Patreon polls and a ton of free stuff, newsletters, comics, shirts, nicknames. You're part of the family. Yeah, you're part of the family. And you know what, Chris, did you know that they can give it a shot for seven days for free? I think I knew that actually. Yeah. Did you? Okay. I may have set that up. I can't remember. Maybe, Seven day free trial at patreon.com forward slash oblivion bar pod.

You can check out the link in our show notes or just go again, go over to patreon.com forward slash oblivion bar pod. Alrighty, let's go ahead get to our news and notes.

and notes. Well, Aaron and I were talking a little bit before we started recording today. We haven't done a News and Notes segment in 2025 yet. This is our first one. So we have to catch up on a little bit of news here. A couple of these are maybe a little outdated for everybody, but you'll at least get our hot takes on it.

You know, that'll kind of lead us into our first bit of news, which is that Fantastic Four First Steps, we got our first teaser, but also we have some potentially AI generated posters. Now Marvel Studios revealed the first teaser for Matt Shaquin's Fantastic Four First Steps, which launches in cinemas. near you on July 25th. Now, Aaron, the teaser looks great. We talked a little bit about it on the grid. Again, we were off all of January.

We take every January off each year, but we talked about it pretty in depth over on the grid. Is there anything you want to say really quickly about the teaser in terms of like how you felt watching it, all the things? Well, again, think it looks pardon the the I guess pun intended. looks fantastic. I'm Did you see Miles Teller say the same thing on the red carpet yesterday for the gorge? He said, I wish them well, I know Pedro and the trailer looks fantastic.

And I don't know if he meant to make a pun like you just did, but it was obviously, cause he was Mr. Fantastic. Exactly, exactly. Which, know, speaking of, I'm excited to see, you know, the gorge. But I'm ready to gorge myself on some movies this season. But the trailer itself, and I've said this many times already, the trailer itself looks amazing. The movie itself looks amazing.

The aesthetic of like the, you know, the era that it's in, the very retro, futuristic technology look, know, Reed Richards, know, kind of a man, a mind out of his own time. You know, it's I'm excited to see and not to reveal or go forward too much, but I'm curious about what the plans are with like post credit scenes and such. Yeah. That's that's a good point. You know, the thing looks good. Really happy with the way Ben is looking. All the noises.

We talked about a little bit on the grid, but I will say that like and I'll reiterate here is that he doesn't sound like Ben. He doesn't have that yonkers sort of, hey, you guys come down to back to building that whole thing. So that that is sort of like a slight peeve, but I'm not annoyed by it. It's just sort of like I wish he had that as well. Right. Obviously, Kirby, Kirby. Was it Kirby? No, no, it's Herbie. Herbie. Herbie. Herbie looks good. Fully loaded. Her. Everything looks good.

I'm very, very impressed with all of this excited. Galactus looks good from behind. We haven't seen his face yet, but the back of his head looks great. You're per. Got a great ass that. Galactus. Galactus. But I think what's more interesting, I don't think. she asked. Yeah, it's not a hot take that everyone really likes the trailer. I haven't heard anybody say that the trailer doesn't look good, but I think.

the thing that people are really talking about the thing, the thing that people are talking about here is the posters, which I will say just on the surface all look pretty bad in my opinion. what thoughts on that? Do you think they look good in any capacity, whether they're AI or not? think that the theme is spot on. I don't think that they were executed the way that they should have been.

think that this was, again, Chris, as a Fantastic Four fan, as a Dr. Doom fan, as a, just a Fantastic Four franchise fan, do you not wish that after so much time and so much wasted effort that they had put more effort into this because of how important the First Family is to the MCU? Yeah, you know, it's funny as you sort of spoke on it there. My two favorite characters in Marvel are two sort of Fantastic Four adjacent characters, my favorite villain or some might say antihero, Dr. Doom.

And then my favorite hero, just outright hero is Norin Rad Silver Surfer. So both of those characters obviously premiered in Fantastic Four. They're obviously often attributed to that team and the first family. And I just love the Fantastic Four in general. I'm a big fan of the team, you know, front to back. And I think, again, if we're talking about What's most important here?

Of course, the movie is what's most important and watching the trailer for the first time on the big screen right before Brave New World. It looked great. And you saw yours in IMAX. I obviously saw mine in IMAX as well. They had the intro was a fantastic for themed. Yeah. So you got this. Yep. OK. Which looked great. Like it was a little like staticky from my end, but I thought maybe that might have been a functionality of the theater I was in and not the actual teaser.

dumb people that were late to the movie. So there's like a whole group, just large, massive amount of people coming in last minute. So it was very distracting from the countdown, which I really was excited to it. And that's, that's what Marvel used to be.

Marvel movies used to be an event and you used to be excited to see all the different changes, all the different, like all these different things that occur, slight variations, whether it was the Marvel intro and how they changed that, whether it was the music. or like the franchises that were shown in there, or things as simple as a countdown in an IMAX theater. Like you were excited about this and it was very distracting to have people coming in.

that right there is a good sign when you walk into a Marvel film and you have that excitement from sitting down and going forward. You know what mean? absolutely. Yeah. And we do get a variation on that opening in Brave New World. We'll talk about it here in just a bit. But to go back to Fantastic Four, everything looks great except for these posters and Marvel. They came out and said Marvel spokesman confirmed with the rap that AI was not used in the creation of these posters.

This wouldn't be the first time, however, that Disney and Marvel Studios have experimented with AI. As we know, in 2023, the company used AI to produce the opening credit sequence for Disney Plus's Secret Invasion, which honestly could have been made completely AI by itself because it's very, very bad. Now, in terms of like Fantastic Four, again, I'm going to tie this all together. I have eyeballs, Aaron. I don't know if you know this or not, but I have it's confirmed.

I have two eyeballs, functioning eyeballs that work. I'm wearing glasses currently, but they work with or without glasses. This is AI. You can not tell me this is not AI in some capacity. I'm going to go across the board, all four posters, but specifically there's a poster that has a crowd of people and they're all holding up you know, fantastic for posters and flags and they're holding up old cameras, old Canon cameras and all the things. There's confetti. It is AI.

There's again, you can just not, you cannot convince me that mid journey was not used in some capacity with this poster. So in terms of your original question, I'm going to go all the way back. Do I wish that they use more quality with the first family? I think that they are in terms of the movie, in terms of the marketing, there's a lot riding on this. I think I should say that as well. Like If Fantastic Four doesn't work, this is the last movie before we get Doom War or Doomsday.

Actually, I think is what it's being called. Doomsday. So what we need, what Marvel needs, we don't need anything. What Marvel needs is this to work. If we're going to get into what Captain America was, what Thunderbolts could eventually become later this year in May. Only a couple of months away, actually. But what Fantastic Four really needs to work, because what we've gotten thus far from the Fantastic Four and live action has been mediocre to bad.

across the board every single time they've tried to bring this team and this property to live action, it has ended terribly in some capacity or another. So they need this to work because a lot of what hinders on the success of Doomsday and eventually Secret Wars down the road is this team. And I think what I've seen on screen thus far looks good. But when I see marketing tactics like this where they're using AI, it's not a good sign. There's corners being cut, I think is.

my main takeaway and that's not good because if you want this thing to work, you got to get people on board top to bottom. And Marvel used to believe in that, know, like the posters, the trailers, we all used to get really excited for these trailers and posters and such. And I woke up early to see this premiere on Good Morning America, 7 a.m. and they waited an hour, Aaron, to actually post the trailer.

was an hour of just Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby and Iban Mat Baqarak and Joseph Quinn talking to the crowd like, giving the most PR. just so excited to be part of this franchise and Marvel's good morning. America fucking outside in like Times Square bullshit. Yeah, it's just milk toast dumb bullshit. OK. And I just we don't need any of that. So again, this is my I spoke enough about it. Is there anything we all seem to say about this?

Like I think we both agree that this is a and it looks bad, at least to you like to a degree. Yeah, there's no excuse for this because check out the show notes and you will see a graphic that points out nine, at least nine issues. Feel free to let us know if you see more in this because it's, when you get to this point statistically, this is not even that big of a poster, but to have nine plus things that are, even if they were just borderline AI, there's too many examples to not be.

And then again, you go into like with a problem with it even being presumptuously. Yeah, like the problem is not that it's AI or not, although there is a problem with that. I think that's our problem. Yes. But I think the overall problem is that if it even, you know, mirrors AI or is like subject to be accused to be AI, that's a problem because that means that it looks like broad bullshit. It does not take. Listen, I've done focus groups. I've been in focus groups.

It does not take very long to put a an image in front of a person and say, does this look like a I? Yeah. Oh, OK. Here's your 10 bucks. See you later. You know, like that's it. You know. Right. Right. All Well, let's get into our next bit of news here. A little bit of good news, I guess, from the nerd world. I'm excited about this one so much because I don't know what it is recently, but there's been so many good franchises and IPs that have dealt with living in a bunker.

Walton Goggins offers up an update on Fallout Season Two, and he says it's gonna blow Season One out of the water. Can I ask really quickly? So I only got about four episodes into season one and I was enjoying it. I just you know, sometimes you just fall off of a property, movie, television, whatever. And you loved all of season one. OK, all right. But I'm also. I'm also a Fallout fan. I don't know how big of a fan you are of the Fallout series. I've never played a video game. Not one.

a Fallout video game. I've never played any Fallout games, ever. Exactly. Cause you just said I've never played a video game. Not one. I know you've played video games in your life. So yeah. But like that's the thing is you don't have to be a fallout fan to enjoy this. But, but there are a lot of things, obviously the brotherhood of steel, you know, like the whole, you know, survivors, the, don't know. But anyways, let's get back into what Goggin said.

He, recently offered an update to deadline saying we're in the middle of filming it right now. We've been at it since November. And I can tell you that I thought season one was extraordinary. Personally, I was very pleased with it. This blows it out of the water. What these writers have done and the artisans that have come together to tell this story, it's really going to be something. I can't wait for people to see it. We're working really hard to make that happen.

Fallout's first season was nominated for 17 prime time Emmy awards, which is insane, including outstanding drama series, outstanding lead actor in a drama series for Goggins. And this adaptation success on prime video, it's led to renewed commercial success of the Fallout video games.

Including the original game and according to Steam charts, which is again amazing it experienced the highest percentage increase in player base at a hundred and sixty percent now this game is already Bethesda like they make amazing video games. These games are already popular. They're not shitty games They're not ones that people haven't discovered. You know what I mean?

So to have a hundred and sixty percent increase is insane for a series, especially one where much like, so Steam is the company behind games like Half-Life and some of these other ones. And those are hugely popular for being decades old. The same with the Fallout series. Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, Fallout 76 are decades apart, but they're still loved in the community. again, makes perfect sense that this is so popular and it's done so well.

Like they had to dump a ton of money into this. to make it practical, to make it beautiful, make it, you know, like original at the same time, as well as being referential to the actual series itself. It's amazing. So I highly recommend it. If you haven't finished it, go back and finish it.

Yeah, you know, it's funny as as I was watching those initial episodes, I remember being really impressed with sort of what you're saying here, essentially that, you know, the series didn't rely on knowledge of the video games at all, really, to to get you interested. I think Ella Purnell's main she's essentially the main character of the series, I think, as a vault 33 dweller. And her story is a a, you know, a tale older than time, just someone that wants to go out and do more, do better.

And I found that really impressive about the series as far again, me falling off of the series had nothing to do with the quality. It was just essentially that as we've talked about many times here on the show, we've got a lot of stuff to watch and ingest in terms of nerd culture. It's a good problem to have. know, you would if you could go back and talk to, you know, 15 year old Aaron and 15 year old Chris, they would be like, wait, hold on. Sorry. What?

There's going to be three Marvel movies a year. probably two DC movies a year, you're gonna get multiple television series plus video games like, sorry, what? You know, and here we are complaining about it, right? Yeah, the one thing I want to say the last thing I want to say about fallout is the fact that thematically It is so fitting the way that it's written and the way that it is Kind of digested by the audience.

Yeah, because it's the same way that the company Vault Co and like all these companies in the actual show sell the idea of the vaults to people because it's in this like 30s and 40s and 50s kind of era where it's very retro, but they're selling the idea of like vault life and like come live in the vault, have your kids in a safe environment, you know? And it's like radio ads and all this stuff and it's all happy go lucky.

And you know, it's in a time where everybody is smoking cigarettes and you know, it's just, it's so good because the show itself follows that same like theme where you're like, you know, the attitude of the vault dwellers that you're watching are happy go lucky. And it just starts to like decline. just like the world declined, just like the declination of everybody in the silo itself, in the vault, it just continues to go down.

it's like, it's just this adventure into like almost hopelessness, but then right back up again. So it's such a wild ride. again, can't say it enough, recommend, go back, watch Fallout. It got renewed for a reason, people. Yeah, you it's interesting you saying that it sort of brought up this thought that like propaganda evolves, right? Like we can all be fed propaganda and it will sort of bring us a certain amount of hope and optimism.

But eventually humans, we become privy to being fed propaganda relatively quickly, right? Especially in today's world. I don't know how I can't speak to what it was like in the fifties and so on because we weren't alive back then. But I can tell you from what, you know, modern day perspective was again with the Internet. and the way that we communicate with everybody propaganda pretty quickly runs dry.

And we're to see a common theme not only with that, but also with Captain America, which we'll talk about it during our review. Captain America was created as a piece of propaganda and has evolved into something much bigger since then. I go go help build a plane wing. All right. This is sort of a good news, bad news or sorry, bad news, good news. Bad news day, everybody in terms of news and that's. Bad news sandwich. Diamond comic distributors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Now, before I get into this bit, Aaron, I've been pretty vocal about my disdain with Diamond and sort of their spot in comics. They are sort of the end all be all in terms of distribution when it comes to comics and.

I've been like leading the charge when it comes to down with diamond, but I think what's really interesting about this tidbit and why them filing chapter 11 bankruptcy and ostensibly going away at some point, or at least changing in some large capacity, it means a lot more than just like, someone will fill the void. That's not necessarily true. And I think this altered my perspective of like the direct market in comics quite a bit, and we'll get into it here.

according to the court filings, the world's largest comic book, direct market distributor Diamond is currently looking for buyers with an auction scheduled on March 24th and is closing no later than April 10th. Until then, comics and graphic novel publishers and comic stores even are scrambling to find the least painful way to shift their business to other distributors while bracing themselves for lost income from direct market sales, which are unreturnable.

Now, to sort of contextualize that, Aaron, I don't know how much you're privy to like the behind the scenes of comic markets is that A lot of the smaller publishers and even some of the big two, they will honor returnable comics. So let's say Marvel puts out Venom War number three, right, or whatever, and they order a shit ton of copies of issue one. What Diamond will do is go, hey, if you order 60 copies of issue one, 20 of those are guaranteed returnable.

And then the comic stores can, instead of like just keeping all that back stock at their store, they can return it and get a portion of what they paid for it back. So with Diamond going under, this ruins all of that because if you're familiar with chapter 11 bankruptcy and if you've ever been someone who has purchased something from a company that is going under bankruptcy, legally cannot return. You can't get a refund during that process. I actually had this happen to me last year.

I ordered a Jen Bartel cover for It was a Spider-Man cover that was going to be signed and CGC graded from a company called, it's like Joe's Comics. It was a smaller distributor, like a small comic store, online comic store. And they eventually filed chapter 11 bankruptcy. And I ordered this in 2018 and it is now 2025. Okay. So I'm not going to get that comic at any point. And I emailed them, I was like, Hey, listen, I know that like, this is probably not going to happen.

Could I get my money back for ordering this book? And they're like, no, unfortunately we filed chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023. We can't give you your money back until this is all settled. So my $150 is sort of sitting in limbo right now under this banner of bankruptcy. So while Marvel Comics, Boom Studios, Dark Horse, IDW, they've all already made that wholesale switch over to Penguin Random House. Actually, Penguin Random House is owned by the same company that Marvel is owned by.

I think there's like an umbrella underneath Disney. And DC Comics and Image Comics, they also have dealings with Ping and Random House, but they have also have a partnership with Lunar Distribution for their single issues. So they kind of have their foot in both of the big sort of companies waiting on the back end for Diamond to implode. Essentially, there are still a couple of publishers that are exclusive completely to Diamond. You've got Dynamite, Distillery, Titan Comics.

Those are a couple of the sort of larger publishers. But I think what's more interesting is that there's a ton. of smaller publishers. I'm talking like at least a hundred smaller publishers that are still exclusive to Diamond because they are for a long time, they were the only game in town. This is what happens when you allow a monopoly to rule an entire industry. Cause when they eventually fail, then a large portion of this medium is in flux. Now I'm going to stop talking here for a moment.

I want to let Aaron sort of, are your thoughts here? Did you, were you privy to any of this? Did you hear about this happening when it eventually happened in January? did hear about this. I think I was more interested because I saw that there are already negative consequences. Like there are publishers going out of business. There are comic shops that are going out of business. Like what is going on is not good for this. It's not good for the comic industry.

It's not good for small business and it's severely, it's unfortunate man. And it's sad, know? I know people have been having Issues with diamond for so long like even my local comic shop were telling me.

well, we didn't get our comics They're two weeks behind like this is like I got people like calling me and yelling at me because we didn't get their books in like that's not your fault that's like that's them like It's it's it's it's sad it's almost like the evil you know is better than the evil that you don't. Yeah. Right.

And you know, in today's world in 2025, you know, with the political landscape that we're currently living in and just sort of the way that 2025 handles business, you know, it's almost I have this inkling with inside of inside of me that thinks that like whatever replaces diamond is not going to be any better. If anything, it's going to be worse. It's going to be far worse because. Diamond has been doing this since the nineties.

They've had a monopoly on this industry since the spectator boom of the 1990s with image and even the big two like Marvel and DC. They had this big spectator boom with the death of Superman and X-Men, obviously X-Men. X-Men number one is the highest selling comic of all time because of the spectator boom. People were buying boxes of Chris Claremont and Jim Lee's X-Men number one because they thought they were going to be able to sell it now in 2025 for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Whoops, that didn't happen. That book, you can buy that right now for $10 because what people don't realize with collecting is that in order for something to be worth something, it at some point has to be worth nothing. Think of, you know, Amazing Fantasy 15 from 1964, first appearance of Spider-Man. That book sold for 10 cents and they made a million of them. And then people would read them and then throw them in the garbage, you know? That's how things become collectible.

There has to be a finite amount of things to eventually be worth. something down the road. It's kind of funny. don't do you remember the radiant charm collection from Pokemon when we were playing it? Like they had like all the EVs that had like all the little like hearts and diamonds. sure. And remember how those things were like they are fucking everywhere. You couldn't open a pack without getting them. Yeah. The radiant collection was so nauseatingly everywhere.

And I walked into a card shop the other day and those things now are worth like seventy five bucks a piece. Silly. Like at one point, you were just like, you're just throwing them away because nobody wanted them because there's so many of them. came in every pack and yeah, it's funny.

It's almost like we'll go to a comic, I guarantee Aaron, we'll go to a card store in 20 years and old like card codes for a platform that probably doesn't even exist anymore will be selling for like 10 bucks because they're a collector's item or something like that, who knows, right?

But let's get back to Diamond here after the announcement, Image Comics, the third largest publisher of comics in the direct market, they were the first ones to make that move, ending their wholesale relationship with Diamond and canceling all orders only days after the bankruptcy. This leaves a lot, again, as we said a moment ago, small publishing companies scrambling on what to do next.

And we can sit here and talk all day about, we could speculate on what the comic industry is going to do next, but in reality, we're not going to know anything until April 10th when this eventually goes through. I've heard that Alliance, which is actually a gaming, like a board game company, they're in talks to possibly buy it, but I can't imagine that they're going to use it for comic distribution.

They're going to use it for making board games, RPGs, and you know, hero clicks and shit like that. It's not going to be comics, right? And I would imagine if, you know, if I were a betting man, everybody, would say that lunar and Ping and Random House are going to fight this thing out post April 10th.

It's just going to be, diamond's going to go away and then get your, get your stocks in Penguin Random House and lunar right now, because both of those, they will split the comic industry in half and then they will handle both. And honestly, that might be better, right? Because again, biggest problem with diamond was that they were the monopoly. They were the only one for the longest time handling this business. And it was COVID that made Marvel go to Penguin Random House.

And then I think it was DC quickly followed them. then, you know, Lunar, I'm sorry, Lunar got Image Comics' single issues there. And then IDW jumped to Penguin. Like it just sort of slowly happened. And then this is why we're getting the bankruptcy of Diamond. So what I will say sort of at the end of all this, and I just threw a lot at everybody, so I apologize, but there's a lot of unknown here.

And I think... what I can do here I think is the best way to go about this is I'm going to link a really, really interesting article from the Beats, Heidi McDonald in the show notes that she wrote for the Publishers Weekly that goes over this top to bottom. And it goes into a lot more detail about smaller publishers and how they're, some of them are like in a very optimistic point, like, they're losing money right now.

But I think in the long run, this might be good for them in terms of what Diamond was doing to them initially and what. they can, that new relationship they can establish in 2025, having all of the success that they've now gained. So Aaron, is there anything you want to say about that before we move on? You're all good? A lot. I just need comics, man. I need my comics on Wednesday, you know? just tired of hearing people bitch about fucking diamonds, so. Yeah, I get it.

And I was the one doing it out. I, and again, as I said at the beginning, diamond, they are such a piece of shit, honestly, like they really are shitty, but it really, and honestly, it's a interesting thought of like, again, as I said a moment ago, that the devil, you know, is better than the devil. don't, you know, and, and a lot of times what happens when something that you hate fails, something you hate more could come in underneath it. that vacuum.

It's like taking Saddam Hussein out of power. Something shittier is going to rise up. like taking Joe Biden out of the office. All right. Anyway. Shut up and move on to Captain America Let's get into our conversation about Captain America Brave New World. But before we do that, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

So. Alrighty, let's get in this conversation about Captain America Brave New World. during our little break here, Aaron and people listening to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you won't know this, but if you go over to our YouTube channel, Aaron has changed a tire. Aaron, what do you have on now? I didn't change a tire. What you talking about?

is this is this is what I've been working No, it's like a tire like a tire Aaron's currently taking pictures as we're taking a selfie because I want to remember this moment that we're about to talk about Captain America, Brave New World. I wore my shirt, you know, and I did this specifically. I did this specifically because I feel like going back and I've been looking at some of the images and I've been looking at some of the shows that we've done in the past.

And Chris is always wearing some type of shirt that is very on brand for that episode. And like, I feel like I'm letting myself down. I feel like I'm letting the team down by not being as on brand as Chris. So here I am. Even your hat, Chris, you may not have recognized this, but even your hat has like a wing on it, like what goes on the side of Captain America. I do wear this hat a lot. This is the same blues hat that I wear pretty often. But yeah, I get you saying there.

And again, people, if you haven't gone to our YouTube yet, YouTube dot com forward slash oblivion bar pod, Aaron is currently wearing a Steve Rogers S Captain America helmet. This is it looks like possibly Winter Soldier helmet. Is that correct? Or is it? We know, honestly, they all kind of look very similar. But to me, it looks most Winter Soldier ask. And you also cosplay as Captain America as well. Right.

Yes. In my, in my less heavier days, in my pre COVID days, I did dress up as, as a Steve Rogers. and, and you know, it's, I've been so excited for this movie for a while. This was definitely one of my most anticipated and Chris, as we normally do when we get into these, well, first off, spoilers spoilers, spoilers ahead. generally as we do before we start these reviews, We get like a first like first, you know, what's your initial thoughts? Yeah. Your initial thought. I'm asking you, I want you.

I hated this. I you to tell me. Yuck is all I'm going to say. The initial thoughts are yuck. I hated this so much. This honestly, this is probably my least favorite Marvel film of all time. Are you fucking joking? Undoubtedly, 100%, this is bad. This is like when people talk about like going to a superhero movie and it being like a roller coaster where it's just colors and lights and there's no substance, it's a hollow Easter egg chocolate shell of nothingness.

This is what they're talking about. They're talking about Captain America Brave New World from 2025 starring Anthony Mackie and Harrison Ford. Are you a hundred percent serious right now? I feel like you're joking. I'm being 100 % serious. I hated this more than I've hated. I would say that this is only maybe slightly above like a Madame Webb or a Zack Snyder's Justice League. It's like barely above those for me. I like Craven the Hunter more than I like this movie. What are your thoughts?

You're you seem stunned. So I'm going to let you enjoy this movie. I am absolutely stunned. We have never been more divided on anything, I don't think. The flash was an interesting conversation. It seemed to have liked it. I hated it at that time. And here's the thing, everybody. I'm going to pass it off to you. This movie has gone through a multitude of reshoots and changes. COVID. This was I think this was being developed in 2019 before COVID. You know, the writer's strike from last year.

There's so many sag-aftra like everything. This movie had an onslaught of hurdles to get through. So I get that. But This needs to be the last one. This needs to be the last Marvel going, we didn't have any options. This is the best we could do. I don't know what you want us to do. We did reshoots. We gave you a red Hawk. Do you see you got him for 10 minutes at the end? What do you want from us? Aaron, go ahead. What are your thoughts? I am so in shock right now. I loved it. I loved it.

This, this movie, honestly, it gave me everything that I wanted from what I was hoping for. Like I'm like, I, I am stunned right now. I am absolutely stunned at your reaction to this film. And I'm just, I don't even know. I have no idea where to go from here. Well, a lot of times I'm more this opposite on the conversation. obviously usually, you know, gives us an interesting debate or conversation about the movie.

And I think this movie is so lifeless because again, and we'll talk about it here in just a moment, the multiple writers, this movie had five screenplay writers. We had Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dallin Musan, director Julius Onan, Peter Glanz. I mean, technically we had six, Matthew Orton. was also credited as a writer for additional reshoots. I mean, anytime that you have more than I would say at the most three writers on a movie, bad things are gonna happen.

Cause I can see the hard cuts in this movie when something was in the first screenplay and what was eventually added. And I'm talking mostly of like Giancarlo Esposito and his inclusion in this movie, how Harrison Ford becomes again, as I said a moment ago, the red Hulk in the last 10 minutes, how a lot of this movie. looks really, really bad. This is the worst CGI I've seen in a superhero movie in a long, long time.

I'm talking and I'm talking specifically, I think it can be said a lot about about a lot of the scenes, but specifically the air, the submarine ocean fight by Tiamat about, you know, three fourths the way through the movie is cartoonishly bad. I have seen PS4 graphics better than what I saw in that opening and that scene where they're all fighting. Now, not to say I didn't enjoy myself, it is pretty action packed.

And I think like there is part of my lizard brain that still enjoys seeing things like that. And that goes along with seeing Red Hawk versus Captain America. But there needs to be a quality check. And part of me, I got to give credit to the big picture over at the ringer who first brought this to my attention.

And I sort of agree with it is that this to me, the quality that they gave us with this movie, it makes me think that Disney and Marvel are like prepping us for AI movies, eventually AI television series. They are saying, and I think the eventual box office success of this movie will say a lot about how they're gonna react to this, because that's what Hollywood is, they're reactionary.

If this movie does well, I think, honestly, two to three years, I honestly think that we're gonna start getting AI-generated movies and television series. No doubt about it, this is successful. That's the way I think about it.

I mean, I think that there's going be a lot to do with like sag being against that and like the actual industry, like the people behind the industry, because you got to imagine how many people imagine how many people are going to be out of work writers, the animators, the voice actors, the, what are they called? The basically the truck drivers that they have like their own like, like, like, I forget what they're called, but they have their own, union.

So like there's going to be so many people that are going to be against like any kind of major takeover of AI. Yes, there's going to be more AI use, but I have to argue with, with you and we can go into and discuss like more of the essential parts of this movie. But yes, there were some choppy parts of this, but in my opinion, the way that it was chopped up was rhythmically and the cadence of it worked for me. does.

It was like, there was a lot of chopping, but the cadence and the rhythm of the chops really worked in my favor. as far as like the storytelling, because, and I'm gonna say this, like a lot of times, one thing that worried me about this movie, and a lot of times what Disney has done with a lot of their shows and their movies, even DC has done it. They've overloaded a plot with too many characters that you're supposed to care about throughout this film.

And throughout this movie, I did not feel like there were, like the characters, I cared about the characters. I cared about the their motivations. And I think that they played into them well. The only person I would say I really didn't care about enough was Signwinder, was his character. And Giancarlo Esposito. I think that he played a great villain. don't think they gave him enough context. I don't think they gave him enough background. How can you even say that he was a great villain?

He's in the movie for five minutes. And all of it is Rishi. saying he's a great villain. liked his character. I'm not saying he's a great villain at all. He's not even a could you like him? You don't know enough about him. All he did was bad things. He had no motivation whatsoever in the Because I liked the fact that he had this like fighting style and he was so direct. I just liked his, I liked Esposito as this character and he reminded me, you remember back rock from, from civil war.

want to winter soldier. Yeah. He was a fun character, even though he was only in it for a few minutes. He was a fun character because he had a great moment where he challenged same thing. Captain Mary almost cookie cookie, cookie cutter, cookie cutter situation. where he challenged Cap, and in this movie, Esposito challenged Cap and was like, are you more than the shield? And like, like, again, I loved both of those scenes and both of those movies.

And I think that they very much set up the same exact fight and the same exact feeling when he had to address, like, are you more than what you are without the shield, without the suit? And I think that those fights really gave him some context. I think the main difference though is that Giancarlo Esposito is meant to be a major villain in this movie.

I mean, I think you can make an argument that he is supposed to be the villain, because I don't think it's supposed to be Thaddeus Thunderbolt Ross. He is just sort of caught in the crossfires of his bad doings and being trying to make, trying to turn a leaf or turn a page in his life. And it just so happens that his past comes up to bite him in the ass.

I think Giancarlo Esposito was supposed to be the bad guy, but... if we're going to make a comparison between Batchroft, the Leaper and Sidewinder is that Batchroft was meant to show how Captain America has adjusted to modern day and Winter Soldier. We got to think about where Steve Rogers was in the MCU at that time. He had just come out of the ice, then Avengers happened.

And then Winter Soldier is sort of him, you know, coming to modern day and sort of, you know, we even see it like his fighting style. Everything that he does has sort of been upgraded to, I think it was like 2014, 2015, whatever the time was that Winter Soldier came out. I would argue that Sidewinder did the same thing for Sam Wilson.

I just, don't agree because the Sidewinder is supposed to be, and at least the movie is telling me that this is supposed to be an important character, but I'm not getting that. I can understand you liking the aesthetics of what Sidewinder is and how he challenges Captain America in the very small amount of time that they have on screen together. But to compare them would automatically put Sidewinder at a disadvantage because he's supposed to be the big bad in this movie.

If it's not Sidewinder, who is it? It's the leader. It's it's Stern. is Stern is is Stern is the mastermind. He is literally the mastermind behind everything. He is literally manipulating everything from point A to point B. He has thought about every single outcome. Now, again, we're getting into spoilers. We haven't even talked the summary of this movie yet. gave a spoiler warning if you guys already here.

please. Okay, so Captain America Brave New World follows Sam Wilson as he takes on the high stakes missions involving a global race for a rare new metal discovered on the celestial island Tiamat. When an international crisis unfolds, Wilson, his partner, walking Torres and President Thunderbolt Ross, that is Thunderbolt Ross must navigate political intrigue, mind control, conspiracies and hidden enemies, manipulating events from the shadows from the beginning.

Stern is the bad guy and I have been waiting all of this time for him to finally come out from the Incredible Hulk with Ed Norton and we see that head pulse. That's Paulson. And you know, like, and that's what I've been waiting for. And I was so excited because I think and also let's talk about, I mean, we could talk about it later, but like, I want to talk about how awesome. His evolution was into the leader from his character. Just the brief moments we see him in the incredible Hulk.

What 16, 17 years ago. He is just, I mean, we're talking about, we're talking about, what's his name? Weasley. Weasley senior. Okay. And how silly he is to this guy. And he plays this devious, calm, manipulative, secretive, gamma radiated genius. And I loved it. Yeah, I mean, Tim Blake Nelson's leader, think is one of the most unoffensive part of this movie. I think like his involvement. I like the character of leader. His his whole shtick of people.

If you didn't get this from the movie is that he is so smart that he can predict things by probability. Like there's not that's not his only power, but his essential power is just intelligence. Like, you know, they say like the Hulk, his power is limitless in strength. The leader is the opposite of that. He is limitless in his knowledge and we get a little, we don't really need to talk about it in depth because the end credit scene is again, one of the worst in the MCU.

But what he hints at is that, Hey, there's multiple universes and also there might be X-Men get ready for that. Everybody that didn't say that though. That's the thing that I hate is that they just say, say the thing. Okay. Most people don't know what you're talking about here and you, can't be that ambiguous about it. You kind of have to be a little bit more.

was, we can talk about how bad that was like, you know, but yeah, there was the, the, the end credit scene was just like, Hey, there's a multiverse. You fucking know that already. I mean, and incursions. Hello, we're going to be talking about the, hello. Hello. You know, it's like that.

I agree with that being terrible, but like, I mean, the other thing was you can't imply X-Men when The rare new metal that they discovered in the celestial, which I'm going to assume is like bone marrow or something is adamantium. Yeah, Wolverine. Hello, McFly. But like that. The other thing is like, you know, now we have adamantium, what does that mean? And it's stronger than vibranium, apparently. In the comics, it's sort of ambiguous. We don't know which one is stronger.

It's definitively, according to Harrison Ford in this movie, stronger than vibranium, which, man, talk about the hit to Wakanda's infrastructure, their infrastructure, to their budgets. They just he just tanked all of their all of their their stocks, you know, in terms of world power. Fake news. It is coming from the president and we're well aware of that. So let's just talk about this real quick.

At San Diego Comic Con later in 2022, the film's title was revealed to be Captain America New World Order. And it was given a release date of May 3rd, 2024. The subtitle, which is also the name of the first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, was noted for its use in politics, professional wrestling, and various conspiracy theories, along with anti-Semitic rhetoric, and was deemed to be basically too controversial of a choice. So that's why that was changed.

Real quick, which one do you like better? Do you like Brave New World or New World Order? I like Brave New World because I think it's it's alluding to the changes of what like of what this new because here's the thing this movie you said was originally supposed to be like a release in like 2019.

I think you said and developed in 2019 which was closer to the time of the internals, again, we've been waiting years for them to finally revisit the idea of special with this like just groping like virtual nuts out of the Indian Ocean. You know, and we haven't revisited it really at all.

So now we finally have this being like, let's, let's, know, let's address the celestial in the room and brave new world would have been like, okay, now we're really in a brave new world here because there was literally like a celestial with who knows what inside of it coming out of the ocean. I just picture Harrison Ford at some point looking at the camera going, now we're in a brave new world. You know how they do that in movies? Sometimes they just say the title of the movie in the camera.

I will say that if I were to, I don't like either by the way, I don't like New World Order. I don't like Brave New World. If I were to give it a subtitle that makes sense based on the plot, I think Captain America Collateral Damage would have been a way better subtitle because we've got collateral damage with the effects of Tiamat and sort of what happened with that whole thing. Again, with the Eternals, you've got the leader.

and sort of his dealings with Thaddeus Ross and him and leader essentially being collateral damage. He even says it in the movie that he is collateral damage to Thaddeus sort of surviving at this point in the movie. Thunderbolt Ross, he says it in the movie that he's about to die from his heart. And the only way that he's able to survive is because of Tim Blake Nelson's, the leader.

And then obviously I think there could be small ties to the collateral damage of the mantle of Captain America after the events of Endgame and how... Where do we go now? The world, think, you you can make arguments here, your temperature may vary, but I think the world is better when there's a Captain America and this mantle, you know, the American government tried to make it happen with John Walker. Oops, he's a psycho. Where do we go now? We don't give it to Bucky.

Also kind of a psycho sometimes. Where do we go? All right, Sam Wilson's our new Captain America. I was going to say something along the lines of you know, Captain America, like family ties. Yeah, well, I mean, outside of Betty and Thaddeus, where's the family ties at? Well, I look at like, you know, cause family's not always blood. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So it's like fast. You know, it be Captain America, fast and the furious.

but it's like, I really needed from this movie was them to discuss Isaiah Bradley and his connections to the Captain America mantle, his background. And then, and I'm going to tell you this, like the reason I love this so much was because it gave me again, It gave me everything that I wanted from a lot of the discussions that we've had. know, the things that I attributed to what I thought a good Captain America film would bring to the screen.

And that was discussing the racial approach to Captain America, what it means to people of color to have a Black Captain America. Like there's the scene, there's so many powerful scenes where there's the first scene where Isaiah Bradley is talking to Sam Wilson over the pool table and he's discussing, how can you stand next to the president that did this to me? And Sam Wilson's basically saying, it's bigger than us. We held the mantle of Captain America to be better, to bear that weight.

And then there's this discussion later on in the film between Joaquin Torres and Sam Wilson, where he was saying, you're burdened. by this and it's not something like you just, you ask yourself constantly if you're enough. And I love the fact, and here's the thing, this is the last movie, this is the last Captain America with Sam Wilson franchise that I want them to discuss and to really lean into the racial aspect of it. I think this is enough.

I think what they've discovered or discussed here and what they've brought to kind of into the limelight here is enough to say like, okay, You are enough as as Sam Wilson, Captain America, because you are not the super soldier. And that's and that's actually that brings up a question I have for you, Chris. At what point would Sam Wilson have taken the super soldier serum? Because I don't remember them bringing this as an option to him. he's.

Yeah, because like the only thing I can think of is maybe Thaddeus Ross offered it to him the same way he offered it to Blomsky. Well, you had the the Flag Smashers and Falcon Winter Soldier just willy nilly passing out Super Soldier serum. That's. Right. Got it. So, I mean, there was that's right. OK. guess if you really if you really wanted to. OK, I did forget about that. And then also, at what point was Bucky Barnes campaigning for a presidential office? We'll get into that.

Let's let's hold off on Bucky and his inclusion in this movie. I want to say really quickly, if people haven't read, if you're not familiar with Isaiah Bradley, there's an excellent Marvel mini series from 2003 called Truth, Red, White and Black. It's written by Robert Morales and it's penciled by Kyle Baker. And this is essentially the backstory of Isaiah Bradley and how he became the original Captain America.

And I think what it does is it really highlights or at least I think it mirrors the growth and the power of America and how it's always came off the back of disenfranchised and minorities and people who, mean, people can say whatever they want about critical race theory and things like that, but there's no argument to be made that America is not built off the back of African-American people, indigenous people, people that look like me.

They moved in and said, you know what, that piece of land over there, that looks good. Can I have that? No? Okay, nevermind. I'll take it. It's fine. No, no, no, you go. No, you don't want to go? Okay, I'm going to take it anyway. Whatever. You just keep going west until you can't anymore. And then you go west, you go south and then, I guess you have like a small patch of land there. Yeah, that's fine. Right?

Anyway, point being is that that's a great analogy with Isaiah Bradley, who again, as we found out in Falcon and Winter Soldier is the original Captain America. It wasn't Steve Rogers. It was Isaiah Bradley. So I will say, This is a weird turn here. I just feel like it needs to be said that the movie's post, the movie poster features Sam blocking the Red Hulks punch with the shield. This is obviously an homage to Captain America 230 from February of 1979.

This is obviously drawn by Robert Wilson, excuse me, Ron Wilson. And I think one of my biggest problems with this movie of the many is sort of the over inclusion of Red Hulk in its promotional material. It was in the first trailer. He's been on every poster. And again, as I said, Now I've said a couple of times now is that we get the Red Hulk in the last 10 minutes, 10 minutes of Red Hulk at the very end of this movie, we end in a fight.

And what I think this highlights to me is a more overarching problem, which is that, as I said a moment ago, I don't know who the real villain is. You can make an argument that it's a leader, but in reality, what I think what is more interesting to discuss is like, what does this movie say interestingly about Captain America? know, Winter Soldier, it's about choosing. friends over country or like your friends over obligation of duty, right?

Civil War, it's about a lot of things really, but power entices power. I think Visions does it really well there at the Avengers Tower. Like all of these movies, the first Captain America, we could talk about that, the Joe Johnson one is about like a man out of time. And like, why can't the little guy help, right? There's a lot of things. What is this movie saying interestingly about Captain America? Aaron, do you have anything that you- that you can sort of glom onto from there.

I mean, again, I think it's it's a I don't want to say it's like a commentary. I want to say what this movie is is is saying. And again, this is what I took from it was that it takes different people to be able to to like like approach problems. And I think that this movie is saying that everybody has a version of what the right answer is, as well as we're all flawed and we can we can either grow from our past or We can let it consume us.

And I think that that's, that's one of the things that each of these characters is kind of like being like is battling with, you know, you have the leader who was promised like freedom by Ross. And that's why his entire goal as, and I'm going to say this as the villain is to bring the light of, of what Ross has done in the past, which was essentially hate and screw everybody over because that's what he did. He turned Ross into the one thing that he hated the most.

He also turned Ross into the one thing that ruined his life because Ross right now is up to this point in the movie or in the series hates himself because the choices that he made tore his family apart, tore his relationship with his daughter. It took him took her away from him. And they say that very clearly early in the movie. And he's trying to find a way back from that. He's trying to be a better person.

But that's a struggle and I don't care how hard you struggle with becoming a better person throughout your life. It will be an ongoing. It's just like addiction. You are addicted to the person that you were and you're always going to potentially go back to it, but you're going to fight and it feels like you're fighting a monster inside to be a better person. And I think that that was the intention of Stern as the leader to bring about and again, as he said in the movie, ruin his legacy.

And I think that again, it's the same with Sam. Sam is battling these thoughts of being like the imposter in the Captain America mantle. That is not because he doesn't have the super serum. He doesn't have the past. He doesn't have the chops. He doesn't have the experience. He doesn't have the power to be what Captain America is supposed to be. And it's the same thing with Joaquin Torres. Same thing. Like they're all trying to be better than where they came from.

Joaquin's trying to be better than this kid that he was in Miami. Sam Wilson's trying to just be better than the Falcon. You know, he's and I think that every character right there is fighting for that. And again, Samuel Stern as leader wants, he wanted to be free. He wanted to be better, but instead he was manipulated and he was experimented on and he was empowered even more. And he was basically tortured by Ross and like that's that he's the villain.

Yeah, I mean, I definitely could see where you're getting a lot of that. And it is sort of in a very half-baked way shown throughout the movie. But all of that just feels very surface level to me. think there's a lot of that could be easily torn back and sort of shown in a way that these are all things that we've already talked about many times in these movies. It just seems like we've seen it done better more times in the past, at least from my perspective.

And it's, I want to just say also the same thing with Isaiah Bradley. It's the same thing. One of the hardest scenes, like several, several of the hardest scenes to watch. We're watching Isaiah Bradley either in jail or being, or being cuffed, you know? And I think that that's maybe something that you, I don't, I'm not saying, I'm not trying to be like, like rude or mean. I don't know if you can like relate to what he's going through.

And I'm not even saying that I can relate to what he's going through, but there's that moment where He is, he's being thrown to the ground after the assassination attempt and he's like, just be careful of my suit. And I don't know if you put any context into that because all he wanted them to do was be careful with his suit because that's the suit that he spent with. He was with his wife in when they went out together, who's passed away. So that holds a lot of emotional, you know, context to it.

And then also he's like, I can't go back because going back means that he, he himself has to relive those. those past traumas of him being experimented on and being put in the hole and being treated like, you know, sub human because of this mantle that he that was thrust upon him as Captain America, which I need to make a correction because you said that Isaiah Bradley was the first. He was not the first. Steve Rogers was still the first Captain America back in World War Two.

Isaiah Bradley was, I believe, made like Captain America either during like Vietnam or like the Korean War. Yeah, I think you're right. In the comics, he is the first. OK. But yeah, I apologize. You're right. And Falcon Word Soldier, Isaiah Bradley and a troop of other black men were created as like a task force with with like the Super Soldier serum, you know, off brand or what have you.

And I will say sort of just, you know, Charles, what you're saying there, I can I I may not be able to obviously relate, but I can empathize. And I don't think that any of what is shown here with Carl Lumbi and the Isaiah Bradley character or with I mean, we could even go as far as like Thunderbolt Ross and sort of his struggle and Captain America Sam Wilson as his his stroke. All these I'm understanding all of the struggles here. I'm seeing it Claire's day. I'm not blaming any of the actors.

I think there's not anybody in this movie outside of Shira Haas, which we'll talk about her here in just a moment. Her inclusion in this movie. Everybody I think is doing. You know, I think everybody's doing a fine job in their role. I will say that like Again, and we spoke earlier about the reshoots, like there are very clear points in this movie where the camera and the camera work, the way the shot looks, all looks wildly different from the scene next.

For instance, there are particular scenes like Joaquin Torres on the table. And when he after the big fight, that scene where Isaiah Bradley is running through Washington, DC, the scene where Harrison Ford is talking to everybody, talking about adamantium. there are certain scenes that look really great. And I'm like, wow, what this looks like an actual like thriller. It almost looks like it doesn't even look digital.

looks like almost like, and we'll talk about Julius Onon and sort of his previous directing work. It almost looks like 30, 35 millimeter. Like it looks really great. And then there are other scenes that looks wildly CGI heavy and very like colorful and like in your face.

And like the, has that really bad blurred background that you often see in these movies where the frontal character, happens with a Anthony Mackie and Giancarlo Esposito when they're talking at that military bunker about three fourths of the way through the movie where they could easily. Yeah, another great scene where like, yeah, not great scene, a great example of a scene where it's it's obviously green screen. It's like undoubtedly green screen. And it's so bad. That's what I'm talking about.

It's the mix mashing. It's the Frankenstein of a movie that really bothers me. And again, you can say that you empathize with these storylines that I will I will not fight that. You know, if that, you resonated with all that more power to you. But I think a lot of times what makes a story is, or at least what makes that compelling story is how you tie it all together. How you, how, how me, the viewer, the consumer digest that, that content. Right. And I just don't think that they fed it to me.

Well, they, they served me a four course meal, but they gave me my dessert first or really, I mean, not even my dessert first. They didn't give me any dessert and they gave me all my least favorite foods and it was all cold. You know, like it's that kind of thing. So let's get into the director here and talk about the director. Oh, you.

So the director is Julius Ona, who directed 2015, The Girl's in Trouble, 2018, The Cloverfield Paradox, 2019's Loose, and then 2024's Bad Genius, which I'm not familiar with Bad Genius. I'm not familiar with any of these besides Cloverfield paradox. But my understanding is that a lot of his movies are, and again, this comes from secondhand reviews. you know, everybody knows that I'm like a big into like movie review podcasts and such.

I have not seen any of these movies besides Cloverfield paradox, which is pretty bad, but like all the rest of these movies from their sort of view is that like, these are good ideas that are like half baked. And you know, again, as we spoke about a moment ago, it kind of feels how that's sort of how I feel about this movie in a certain sense.

So this is the first digitally shot film for Julius Ona and his previous films were all shot on 35 millimeter, which maybe that was something that he put in there, like you said. Budget 180 million. Little below the normal, right? Like 200, 250 million is usually sort of the ballpark in terms of the budget. It's interesting. It doesn't. I couldn't find anything about reshoots and there are there were three rounds of reshoots with this movie.

So, you know, they always say like with the budget, you kind of have to like read between the lines and say, well, did it really cost this much? And, know, I don't know if this movie costs 180 million dollars with three rounds of reshoots. Honestly, that would make a lot of sense to me. I'd like, OK. Yeah, I can see that. But I would imagine this movie is probably closer to like 250 million with reshoots. But let's talk about the box office here.

So Captain America Brave New World has grossed about 12 million dollars domestically and about 90,000 in other territories. Kind of a low number for the worldwide for a worldwide total of 12.1 million on preview night. So this is only Thursday. Brave New World projects to earn somewhere between 86 to 95 million dollars in its opening weekend. and more than 100 million across the four day weekend with Valentine's Day and President's Day.

This would be similar to Captain America, the Winter Soldier at 95 million in its opening weekend. So I think if this movie does about a hundred million dollars worldwide, Marvel's going to be pretty happy with that. Daisy is going to be pretty happy with that. But I could also see this be very similar to like Batman v Superman, where it has a giant opening weekend and then there's a dive, a nose dive. Huge fall off. And there always is like there always is that second week dive.

Everybody goes out that first weekend. But Word of mouth is very important. I'm thinking Barbie. I'm thinking, Top Gun Maverick. These were all movies that like, they all are actually more recently. Elemental was a good example of this where word of mouth sort of prevailed and people got more airs taken off his mask. Now it's getting hot. That also brings up a good moment with, Anthony Mackie during the press.

He talked about how the, the, the cowl that he had in Falcon and Winter Soldier, he said, did they take away your white half helmet? Because I told them that I was never wearing that shit again, dude. That was hard. It was with the heat, the sweat, the fogged up glasses. It was impossible. It just, it was called a cowl. It was my worst nightmare. You can't do anything. He got the Marvel treatment, which is where everybody has like the nanotech helmet, you know, like that's the new thing.

Even see like Ghost, I think Ghost has it in Thunderbolts, like people who just like, they just record their scenes normally and then they CGI the helmet go over the head. Kind of like that. There's the guy that he did like a fan version of the Deadpool versus Wolverine initial fight scene and he added Wolverine's cowl. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really have a stance on that. Do you in terms of like real cow, not not real cow. I mean, Iron Man looks good. like the helmet.

didn't like the flight helmet in this movie. you didn't? Okay. didn't like that. He covered his face. Yeah, well, it was like, so I went to the movie theater. I told you, like, I got the Captain America shield and the guy came out and he had the helmet popcorn bucket as well. And I'm like, no, I'm good. Yeah, yeah. I saw that at AMC and yeah. Runtime hour and 58 minutes. Now I will say again, I did not have a good time with this movie. However, it was pretty breezy.

This movie feels pretty tight in terms of like, it's a lot of action. It sort of moves quickly. There's not a lot of downtime. I can't remember one time in the movie. Actually, I will say this. I did go to the bathroom at one point in this movie and it was when Bucky showed up. Weirdly enough, I just couldn't handle at that point. And I knew that we were getting to the third act and I wanted to be there for that. So, and this is like post the air fight on the ship.

And at this point I'm super annoyed and I'm like, okay, I get it, but he's here and he's going to tell him that he's Captain America for a reason. Steve gave him the shield. Is that what he said, Aaron? Is that what he said in the moment? Yeah. Okay, cool. I see. knew, I already knew what was going to happen. So I went to the bathroom, came back.

was still a good scene because his speech was like emotional and then they made a joke out of it, which they've always had this like jokey... I hate that. What? It's not my. I mean, I'm not just, you know, I'm not just saying this about this movie, but I hate that Marvel does that. They ruin every sentimental scene with a joke like everyone's some kind of quit machine. Tony Stark, whatever. That's their, that's their, their like relationship.

Do you remember like back in the day, like the first time we see them together, it's Sam Wilson and it's Bucky Barnes in the, in the, the inside of the car when he's talking. Yeah. And he's like, yeah. And like, they have this like quipping back and forth. It's like banter. Can you move your seat up? No. That's their shtick. Yeah, exactly. That's their shtick. So it works for them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I definitely, and I liked them together.

Honestly, I would have loved to have seen Bucky in this movie, but we're going to see him in two months in the Thunderbolts. So it was cool seeing him. It made sense. I was actually going to be slightly disappointed if he wasn't in this movie somewhere. I do like that they never really, they bring up Steve Rogers one, I guess twice this, in this scene here with Bucky. And then obviously Ross says you're not Steve Rogers or whatever in the movie, but like the exclusion of Steve.

I thought was very appropriate because we need to move on, right? I think we can all agree that Chris Evans was incredible as the character and he had a good run and we're gonna see him again in Secret Wars doing something. It's already been confirmed everybody, sorry to burst your bubble, but Chris Evans will be back. But I like Anthony Mackay as Sam Wilson as Captain America. I want this character to be Captain America. I think he's earned it. I like him in the role.

There was at no point in this movie with all my issues of this movie. It was never that Sam Wilson was Captain America and sort of his, his, there was a little bit of hoity toity like, Ooh, there's the real black Captain America, know, like, he's like Patton military folk on the back at the bar and all that. Like that's all like very campy bullshit, but I, you know, I get it.

Like you kind of have to establish to modern audiences, the movie goers, people not like you and I air and people that listen to the show that this is Captain America now. Right. We've already accepted it. We've got to get other people on board. So I get it. Right. So my problem has never lied within that sort of realm. Good. Don't be racist. the cast of this film, not my cash. I'm Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, captain. Real quick, real quick. I want to talk about the composer.

because and we don't often talk about composers in movies unless they're really good. This is is a moment where I hated this. the the background music was so bad. It felt so plug and play like it didn't. Oftentimes it didn't even match the moment. Did you feel that at all? Or am I am I by myself in this? You're by yourself in a lot of this, man. Okay. Did you, did you, did you have an argument with somebody? No. bad food where you're not feeling?

mean, it's not been a great it's not great right now. Life is well as shit wall to wall right now. But no, I went to this movie with a complete open heart. I didn't feel good about it going into it. Like we've talked about it many times. Like we were at like a six to seven excitement level wise. Yeah. And Captain America is both of one of our favorite characters.

I just ask because, you know, we've talked, we've discussed the fact that sometimes walking into a movie in a specific mood can affect our outcome. mean, is it, is it that you're just secretly racist and you do the same Wilson? Anthony Mackie, is that what it is? Like not again. be it. might just be secretly racist. I think I kind of hate you a little bit. I don't know. Like I'm sorry. You know, it would make sense while you're arguing so much with me right now.

I just think that I'm better and it's because of my white, it's the pigment of my skin tone, my Caucasian-ness. Yeah, you know. I'm just like naturally smarter, better at everything. Right. My blonde hair, green eyedness. Please listen. Here's my problem is that Captain America, Aryan, he should always be Aryan. Right. Like that's I think that's the argument that a lot of intelligent people, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, like these people are making these really smart people. Right.

People don't let this do not clip this all sarcasm, all sarcasm. I know that is so not it. But yeah. Don't believe this racist fuck. Okay. My point being is that Laura Cartman, the composer, she did Lovecraft Country, Ms. Marvel, The Marvels and American Fiction. Good stuff. know, American Fiction, like that movie. Yeah, Lovecraft Country. Good. You know, I had really don't have an opinion about Ms. Marvel or the Marvels, but like, I don't know.

just, I remember very vividly thinking during this movie. I think it was when we're in the Captain America office, wherever this might be with Sam Wilson. It was like the star symbol in the window. Like they both have their desk. sitting there at like a shitty death like cubicles kind of and like they're right next to each other. It's like don't look at my screen. have their uniforms and like a glass case like, Yeah. The background. was like, Oh, this is bad.

Or even like when they're in the gym with Isaiah Bradley, like, I don't know. Point being anyway, sorry. Going to the cast. This is important. We should talk about this. Okay. Anthony Mackie is Sam Wilson, Captain America, Harrison Ford as Thaddeus Thunderbolt Ross, which it's funny because the night before we watched this, obviously as FX does, because FX is a fucking MCU slut. You showed incredible Hawking. That's exactly what came on TV was, was incredible Hulk.

was Iron Man, the incredible Hulk. And I want to say like civil war right before the incredible Hulk. So it was like, yeah, we're watching all this stuff and it's, uh, know, I was seeing Thaddeus Ross who was playing, forget who played the William hurt. He, I think he passed away. Yeah. Um, so it was funny cause I was explaining to, to, you know, Carly, I was like, this is, this is Thunderbolt Ross. This is who's going to be Harrison Ford, red Hulk.

you got Danny Ramirez as Joaquin Torres Falcon, who I thought was, you know, did really well. Shira Haas. Well, let's talk about her because Let's take a break and talk about her really. Shall we? Shall we? Shall I think? Yeah. Shall we? What the fuck is this casting? What is this? Okay. I think the most glaring thing firstly, and Aaron, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. When they're walking away from the facility where leader is.

Yes. And the absolute insane physique difference between even Anthony Mackay, who's not like, he's not Chris Hemsworth, know, he's not, he's not even Chris, no offense. Like in terms of like stature, Chris, Chris Evans, like he's a normal looking guy. Shira Haas is like 4'11". What is going on? How is she imposing in any capacity? I know that, you know, strength comes in all sizes. I know that technique comes in all physiques.

I know that there's so many different ways that fighting can be fighting. But when you're talking about somebody fighting multiple armed, armored soldiers and security forces, I'm sorry, but I do not see Shira Haas's character, Shira Haas period, being effective in that fight. Correct. And, you know, despite her having like a taze baton and whatever, it just did not, that was a little bit too beyond belief in my opinion.

Again, I understand that she, she was a widow or an ex widow, which that's fine. Reconnaissance. Like somebody who's doing recon recon who's stealth, who's a sniper or something like that. That makes sense. They can be small frame. She's like tinier than a a jockey at a fucking horse race. I don't know how effective she would be in a face-to-face, hand-to-hand combat type situation. And again, I apologize if that's some kind of wrong feeling. It just did not work for me. It makes sense, right?

It's an optics thing. we should, but as, as audience members, we let a lot of reality go out the window. We can be convinced that thing, like I can be convinced that this man has wings and can fly and throw a shield and it just magically bounces back to him. my God. want to just say real quick. You addressed earlier. I know we're jumping around a lot, but you addressed earlier at the, the, the, the fighter scene, like the flying scene around Tiamat. Yeah. I it's called, right?

Yeah. There's this, there's this move that, that Sam Wilson does where he like spins in the air just to do like a complete one 80. And you cannot tell me that was not one of the most bad-ass things you've seen. Listen, I'm not going to say that everything in this, in that scene specifically is horrific. I'm just saying it looked bad. I think the, the sort of concept and what they were doing, I thought was really cool, but at no point did I think, and again, it's CG, it's always CGI.

It's you're not telling me anything I don't know, but like at least make an effort. The, the just Sam and Joaquin, they looked bad in terms of like CGI in that moment. That's what was my biggest problem. I want to go really quickly though. And I think It's not, I don't know. You're trying to skip all the negative things you're saying about all this.

I just don't know if we should completely omit the inclusion of, know, so Sabra in this, she was supposed to be Sabra in this movie, which is an Israeli character in the comics. And that was what she was going to be initially in the first draft of this movie. And of course, due to the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2023 and has been an ongoing conflict. Even today, you've got fucking Trump saying that he wants to turn it into a like a strip, a resort strip. It's bad everybody.

It's a lot of bad stuff. But I think the main issue with a lot of people is that Shira voluntarily fought in the Israeli army at one point, or did she was a volunteer in the defense at some point. I don't know all the details. I probably should know more about it. But this character, think just wall to wall was a bad idea. There really was no upside to any of this. I don't know what they were thinking when they included her. This is not. some kind of deep cut character that a lot of people love.

Like it's, we're not talking about Beta Ray Bill here. Like this is a fucking Ruth, Bat, Sapra. I don't even know who that is. Sabra, who is that character? I am a longtime comic fan and I'm not saying I know everything, like, omit her from the movie. Just be done with it. Nothing about it worked. Moving on here, Eric, you go on with what you were saying there. No, I just, I, I, I agree. I, didn't, it didn't, I mean, Ruth bought, bought Seroff, I think is how it was pronounced in the film.

And it was like, for a moment there, I was like, Ruth bought Sir Ross. Is she like related to Thunderbolt? I was like, is she another daughter? Cause I heard, I heard Ross. That's all I heard. But again, I, I agree with you. Like if there was a different way that this was written to include her in this, because of some kind of, you know, conflicting conflict that was involved in the film, maybe.

Or maybe this this had to do with something that was going to be interconnected back when widow was more prominent in because that was another thing that popped up on FX was was black widow. So maybe that was something that was going to pop up and be like, you know, woven into this as well. Yeah, maybe we don't know maybe after the events of Black Widow when it was still much more part of like the overarching story.

Maybe they had some kind of like a protection program where if you were an ex widow, you could be put into the military somehow as like a, know, since your skills sort of unilaterally help in some capacity. Also, why does the president have no offense? And I think some of the strongest people in the world are female. Why does he why are both of his secrets like his secret defense? People are both female.

Well, she was brought in, Seraf was brought in as a specialty in this instance after the assassination attempt. His lead agent happened to be, didn't catch her name. Rookmore, yeah. But up next we have Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley. he's great, his character, loved his haircut, because I had one similar when I was younger in the military.

Very, like very, to be honest, kind of looked like the the judge from the original like who frame Roger Rabbit movie with like that kind of just coming out the top. Is that Chris? Is that not Christopher Walken? Christopher Lloyd. Christopher Lloyd. Thank you, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's that. But again, I loved his character. was, again, there were several moments where I'm like watching his, he's such a good actor.

he, there was a moment where, again, where it's the one-on-one like booth with Isaiah Bradley and Sam Wilson. And he's just like, you want to help me? Don't come back. And like the look in his eyes was just so that of desperation and of like hopelessness. It like, it honestly got like choked me up and I was emotional. because there is that connection between again, Sam Wilson and Isaiah Bradley and he literally was the one who talked him into going to this event and it was just unfortunate.

like we talked about Zocha Rokemore as Layla Taylor who is kind of the lead agent for the president's secret service. Giancarlo Esposito as Seth Volker or Sidewinder which we've talked about kind of a little bit. I thought he did a great job, but it was kind of, I don't know. Again, not, not enough, know, of him. I'm just bummed that they keep giving Giancarlo Esposito these roles. I hate that every time that they try to put him in one of these big movies, they bring him in as like a band-aid.

I think it's given people a bad taste of his character, like him as an actor, because he was incredible in Breaking Bad. But it seems like every time they put him in one of these like big IP movies, it's always like last second, last moment. Hey, Giancarlo, we need a quick fix. Can you join us for six weeks for filming? And he comes in. and the movie's bad and they're all like, Giancarlo, what the fuck, you know, like. he definitely he definitely deserved better.

He's had some really good roles where he's been a prominent character Yeah, and for one I'll say like it's even in Once Upon a Time when he actually plays like the the the mirror from from you know, the Beauty and not be Snow White Snow White he plays he plays like the mirror guy For the evil witch and so he does he's a he's a great actor again and Breaking Bad even let's also talk, Liv Tyler, who at first I didn't even think it was her.

thought it was like maybe an AI generated voice because she wasn't actually going to be in the film because the first time we see her or hear her is just her voice on the phone. undoubtedly reshoot undoubtedly reshoot. not sound anyway. never had a conversation like that on the phone, Aaron. Okay, let's try to recreate that really quick. Hello, ring, ring, ring, ring. Hello, honey? Hey, it's me, Thunderbolt Ross. Hello? Hi, hi, dad. Hi honey.

just, was thinking about you and I would just, I would love to go on a walk for the cherry blossoms. Okay, that sounds nice. I just, miss you so much. And you know, your mother passed away a couple of years ago and you know, everything that I do is for you. And I'm just trying to turn a leaf and I know we haven't gotten along before and gosh, I really just, love you and I miss you. That's nice. Bye. Click, yes, that is, and scene. Like we've done it.

We've literally recreated the exact scene in the movie. Thank you. Again, but that we and there's the two different things. I do not like Liv Tyler at all. I don't like Liv Tyler. She to me is just the most bland actress. But what about Norma Gettin? Same thing. Still still she's she's lived Tyler in every fucking role she's ever been in. She's like, I don't know about that. She's always got a dad in fucking pain. Like, don't be Liv Tyler's dad in a role. Correct. Because you'll be in.

be her dad and don't be her boyfriend because they always have her hurting. Yeah. Don't say it, Chris. And then the other thing is like Harrison Ford, he does so well, like emotionally, like he does so well in this. think he just, don't think he phoned it in. I think he, loved what he did in this role as that as, then, and then to have Liv Tyler as his daughter, it's like, why have we recast so many people so many times in these films, but Liv Tyler is still Betty Ross. Just speculating.

How much do you think she got paid just for that last scene? Just to just just record that one very monotone bland conversation and then that one scene on the right. Yeah. On a green screen. Yeah. Hundred thousand. Somewhere that range, probably. I would do it, too. I don't blame her. Get your money, Liv. Yeah. Live and let live. All right. You got Tim Blake Nelson, a Samuel Stearns, AKA the hero, AKA the leader. I never even called the leader in the movie, but we know he's the leader, right?

But he calls himself, I am the hero. Okay. But like I loved, I loved his portrayal. You like this character in this movie. I do. thought his... Again, here's one thing that Marvel has always done so well. They have always made the villain a villain that can be relatable. Hmm. That's a loaded. There's there's a lot of things I could say. I think I would say the leader in this movie rivals a lot of phase one villains outside of the fact that he didn't die.

That's the only difference between him and fucking whiplash and killmonger. No, killmonger is like phase three. He's pretty good. I like I like killmonger. I would say that like I should say this. OK, you know, we've talked we've talked pretty in depth about how much I didn't like this movie. I will say I wasn't revolted by Tim Blake Nelson's leader in this movie. I thought his look was pretty bad. I didn't like the eyes.

Like they should have just done what they did with him in the comics, which is he's got a little bit of like an obtuse enlarged head, right? Big forehead. I told you that they were going to make him look like the guy. did fucking. He looks like a character from in blue. looks like he has like, he almost has like a, like a fungal look to his head. Right.

Well, and here's the thing that I think about with this one is in every other origin, I don't think he's ever been, what's the word, like experimented on. So one reason that he could look as fucked up as he does is because of what Ross did to him in that bunker. Yeah, possibly. We do see a little bit of that in the incredible hawk. If everyone remembers from that movie is that when the blood of Bruce Banner interacts with Samuel's blood, you see his head start to expand a little bit.

And then that's the last we see if I'm until this movie. So like very possible, you know, again, I don't absolutely hate this. I don't mind him in this movie. And I would, I would, I would probably be okay with seeing him again at some point down the road, but I don't know. I will say that I do kind of like the end result of his arc in this movie where he essentially ousts Ross and sort of his actions there at the end, which turns him into the Red Hulk. I didn't mind that.

I didn't mind him that being his plan because yeah, he knew he was gonna get caught. But at the end of the day, getting back at Thunderbolt Ross was really his goal and he achieved that. Yeah, ruining his legacy. Now, and I loved how angry he got when Captain America like fucked up his plan. Like, can you imagine like somebody who's been so obsessed? Right.

Somebody who's been, it's like the Riddler, you know, getting mad at the Batman, you know, somebody who's so obsessed with the statistical outcome and to have it snubbed last minute because of somebody else's, I understand like his frustration. I, and again, I think, I think that Tim Blake Nelson fucking like rocked this role and I'd love to see more of the leader.

I think it's interesting about that's the interesting thing about the leader is that a lot of times in the comics, he can give you an exact statistical probability of a moment. He can do the Dr. Strange thing from affinity war and go, Oh, I can tell you that this is going to happen at a 76.9 % percentage of success. But the thing is, is that thing about probability is that there's always that other percentage, right?

And he didn't, he didn't account for that other percentage of Captain America doing what he did in this movie. So there's always that part. And that a lot of times what sort of the leader and sort of why he's unable to be successful is because he's a brash idiot. He's overconfident. He is immature, egotistical.

He thinks that he is a smart and he is very smart, but like a lot of times these unbecoming personality traits is what ruins these villains and honestly is what generally separates them from succeeding. So Harrison Ford replaces again, as we said earlier, William Hurt in this movie as Thunderbolt Ross. Of course, many people know this already, but William Hurt tragically passed away. in 2022 of terminal prostate cancer.

Now this is Harrison Ford's second movie where he plays the president of the United States. Of course, the first one being Air Force One in 1997, big fan of Air Force One. People, if you haven't seen Air Force One for whatever reason, go watch it right now. Stop this review, go watch it and come back. off my Blaine. very good. I actually had a moment in my life here recently where I was going through all of the 1990s Harrison Ford total dad rock action films.

know, again, I said early fugitive, clear and present danger. Like these movies that are like, it's just Harrison Ford up against the government and I fucking love it every time. It's always the best. And then as we said a moment ago, Sebastian Stans, Bucky Barnes shows up in the third act, undoubtedly a reshoot. It's almost unquestionable at this point that they got this You know, they brought Sebastian Stan in for a day to shoot this scene where it seems that he's running for U S Congress.

Now I think it's speculation at this point that it's Congress, but in the Thunderbolts trailer, we see him in the crowd of. Thank you. Yes. We see her talking to, you know, a council of some sort saying, I want to reform the Avengers and that's what the Thunderbolts eventually become. So, you know, more Russian propaganda and our government let's do it. Honestly, at this point, who cares?

It wasn't like Bucky bars was just Willy nilly killing billionaires and high profile American people in the nineties. Let's just put them making part of the government. Not a big deal. Who cares? Aaron, let's talk about a big question here. And this is, this will be the last part of our sort of a conversation here. Cause do you want to talk about the, talk about the end credit scene?

Do you want to talk about the final scene with Harrison Ford and Harrison Ford's Thaddeus Thunderbolt Ross and Sam Wilson and the cherry blossom? Is there anything to say? So, mean, there's not really much to say about either of those. We've talked about the end credit scene already. There wasn't really a mid credit scene. There was a post credit scene. Right. But I think that, you know, I mean, the final scene, I don't want to, I mean, I don't think we necessarily need to get into it. mean, it.

You know, it didn't look bad. Honestly, I thought the final scene with Ross as the Red Hulk, the Red Hulk looked good, you know? was an engaging, awesome, fun battle to watch. I thought it was really like interesting because again, I love any opportunity, fuck it, let's just talk about it. I love any opportunity to see the Hulk actually like rage out and be the Hulk because not too many times have we gotten to actually see the Hulk.

It's been a long time since we've seen the Hulk, just be the Hulk without any mission, like not fighting aliens, not getting his ass whooped by Thanos, but like just hulking out. And this was a really cool one. Probably Age of Ultron, right? That's probably the last time. Yeah. Yeah. Destroying helicopters, like fucking up the entire White House, like punching the shit out of Sam Wilson. punching the shit out of the Washington Monument. Yeah, Jesus.

it's, was, I thought it was really like the battle itself was really cool. And the fact that we saw again, Sam Wilson, an unempowered individual taking on the, like the, the, red Hulk was awesome. And then like what he did like to, basically subdue Ross was, I did not expect that. was such a bad-ass scene. Like again, I really enjoyed it. Even if the background was kind of stupid, it was kind of silly being that it was among all these cherry blossom trees.

the fighting was again, I really liked the, the, the, the fighting that Sam Wilson did. It shows that he was training very hard. It shows that he had been doing a lot of training with the shield and the wings and everything was being used. It was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't hate that last bar. remember thinking when Harrison Ford sort of emerges from behind that podium and shows himself as the red Hulk for the first time, I think all of that looked pretty good.

looked like they had been working on that for a while. So I was totally fine with all of that. And again, his sort of reasoning and having like, you know, bringing up Betty and all the things like, okay, sure. Whatever. There's no, there's no world where captain America, even Steve Rogers can compete against the incredible Hulk.

in any Incredible Hulk, we're talking, know, Joe fix it all the way down or all the way up to like World War Hulk, like all of these, the Hulk will fuck up any character that's not like Thor or Century or you know, any of those guys. So I didn't mind that conclusion. It's what else can you do really? And I do like the fact that they included the fire ability that the Red Hulk has in the comics. He has like a little bit of a like a little bit of a kindred.

to his punches, like emits heat and all these things. My only big sort of bummer, and maybe we'll get it later, is in the comics, the Red Hulk has his mustache, but obviously Harrison Ford doesn't have the mustache in the movie.

You see it for a minute where he's getting like angry on, like during a news outlet, but maybe one day we'll get, gosh, Aaron, tell me this would not be incredible if like in Secret Wars or something where we get Harrison Ford's Red Hulk and he's got like some aviators on and a black mustache. Pretty good not be dope as fuck. Right. And like a like he's wearing like a giant like general suit. Like, I don't know.

It just it just would take a little part of my brain that I didn't know that I wanted. But all right, let's get into something a little bit more interesting and again, probably a little bit more important. And I think the last thing we'll talk about in this review, Aaron, I'd love for you to talk about a moment here that led up to the eventual release of Captain America Brave New World. This was kind of a big thing in the news.

It was circulating on social media quite a bit, but there's this press event in Italy and we did talk about it briefly during the grid. the end of January, Mackie said Captain America represented values like honor, dignity and integrity rather than America itself. And Captain America represents a lot of different things. And I don't think the term America should be one of those representations. He received a lot of backlash because of that from idiots.

Some online commentators who labeled the film and his opinions anti-American and woke and later added, I'm a proud American and taking on the shield of a hero like Cap is the honor of a lifetime. Cap has universal characteristics that people all over the world can relate to.

James Hibbert of the Hollywood Reporter said, Evans made similar statements when playing the character and the actors were likely directed by Marvel to focus on Captain America's universal qualities to avoid any jingoistic connotations while promoting internationally.

So one of the things that is brought up by this is the simple fact that he was saying again, that Captain America should not represent necessarily America itself, like the, like the title America, represents again, we talked about this, like the American, like it's not the American, it's the human dream. It's the, it's the, it's the societal dream of pursuing progress, pursuing embedded like betterment and America. Yes, America. is Captain America.

And he is a representation because he is Captain America, but what he is in essence should not just only represent America. It should represent all humanity wanting to be better, wanting to be that shield, wanting to be that armor around the world like Iron Man wanted to do.

And I agree with what he's saying because he also went on to say that Captain America, yes, know, a Black Captain America can be representation of a superhero for, you know, black children, for children of color, for people of color, you know, to see that anybody with any complexion can really, again, represent one of the greatest and most iconic heroes in history, not just Captain America, is a beautiful thing. Yeah. And the thing is, is that this is all rage bait bullshit.

People that got mad about this were strictly mad about it because it was a black man saying this as it was said here from, you said it there a moment ago from the Hollywood reporter, James Hilburn. He's, mean, Chris Evans was constantly saying this on the red carpet and, Chris Evans is notoriously a giant liberal who was like constantly clapping back at dumb right-wing idiots online. And Anthony Mackie says, he says it very plainly.

It's like, And this is a, you know, a great example of like, it's a good conversation to have about what Captain America is and why he should re why he should be mirrored to what the idea of America. Cause again, he doesn't represent America. He represents the idea of America and America used to mean something more. It used to mean opportunity. It used to mean freedom. used to mean doing the right thing only because it was the right thing. That's what America used to mean.

And that meaning has I feel like it's slowly changed over time. America is a complex melting pot of a lot of issues and great things. like, it's always perspective. It's always people talking about what a certain thing means to them. But I think at the end of the day, Captain America is at his core, at their core is a person that just does the right thing. I think it's, and then we talked about earlier, mean, Captain America was made in 1940, was created as a character in 1940 by Jack Kirby.

and Joe Simon as World War II propaganda. At that time, the masses, the American people were against getting involved in World War II. And it wasn't, mean, say what you want about Pearl Harbor. People have their speculations on what Pearl Harbor is and why it happened and all the things. like Captain America was created as a piece of propaganda to get people excited about punching Hitler in the face. That's literally on the cover of Captain America one number one.

It's Captain America punching Hitler. It's the it's the idea of America punching Hitler in the face, right? But much like propaganda, and we said this earlier, you know, the idea of America has changed. The identity of America has changed. And this is best explained in the 1988 Daredevil number 233, weirdly enough, from writer Frank Miller and artist David Mezzocchelli. Captain America says, I'm loyal to nothing general except the dream. Right.

And lot of people don't know if you ever read Daredevil number 233, it's Captain America and Daredevil have to team up to take on Nuke, who Nuke at that time sort of represented this person post Vietnam. We see a version of Nuke in, I think, Jessica Jones, where he takes the pills and he like becomes a maniac and gets powers and all the things. Nuke in the comics represented, especially in this run, sort of this, again, jingoistic America number one, always no matter what or else kind of person.

And daredevil daredevil and Captain America had to team up to take this guy down. So, you know, don't take it from us. We're idiots, Aaron and I, but like, I think we have a little bit of perspective on America. We both fought for this country in some capacity, Aaron, more so than I, but like at the end of the day, you put your name on the dotted line. That's all you can do, right? To tie this all back together. That's what Captain America is doing.

He's putting his name on the line and whether that's Sam Wilson or Steve Rogers or anybody. That's all you can do. That's what America should represent. Let's get off our soapbox, Aaron. Final thoughts on Captain America Brave New World. thought it was great. I mean, I loved it. I I enjoyed it from start to finish. And honestly, it gave me everything I had been wanting for, you know, from what I had been talking about, it gave me everything I was wanting. Well, I think this movie is an atrocity.

I think that it represents the worst that Marvel can do I think that if we get two more of these this will be the end of Marvel Studios plainly stated if we get two more movies and or television series that look and feel and Talk and look like this.

It's bad We're in bad news and and I've and Erin I've talked about this many times Marvel Studios has my money until secret wars It has it has a direct line to my direct deposit to my banking account until then If we get to secret wars and I am washed out from this universe, I'm done. I don't need to watch it. I will pick and choose which movies I want to watch.

I'm not following along the way I'm now because over the last five years, this universe has ebbed and flowed to a point where it legitimately ruins my day when these movies are bad, when these TV series are bad. Like it hurt. We talk about it here on the show. A big pillar of this, of this podcast of our conversation is Aaron and I, love to get out here and talk about these cinematic universes that emulate these characters that we love.

And what really struck me was the night that I went to go see Captain America Brave New World, I came home, I'm fucking bummed out. I'm like, God, this sucked. I do need to talk about this with my best friend Aaron, but I just need something, something to pick me up. And I went and watched one of them days with, we talked about it during our Misc. films of 2025, you've got SZA is in it. And then also what's her name from? Kiki Palmer. Thank you, Kiki Palmer. Kiki Palmer and SZA in it.

And I had way more fun with that movie. Now granted it is a comedy, but like it was better made, the jokes were better, like it looked better. just top to bottom was it just a better movie. And I remember thinking like, is this where we are? Is this what Marvel is now? Or is it just a content, you know, IP machine where like Kevin DeFigy is going to get up on stage with his stupid sports.

coat and his hat of the whatever movie's coming out next and just like tells us, Oh, in 2032, everybody, we're going to get a new version of, I don't know, name, name an event from Marvel from 1970. Like, is that what we are now? And these movies were always popcorn movies, but like at some, like we've said about, we said about this many times with the MCU is that like, it gets us on board with, with loving the characters.

At the end of the day, if we love these characters, that's about all we can ask for. I've said it already in the conversation. I love Anthony Mackie as a character, but he deserves better than this. He deserved better than Falcon and Winter Soldier, which I thought was fine, but not great. I'm just, I'm tired, Aaron. I guess the last thing I'll say is I'm tired of these. And if Thunderbolts isn't good, it's gonna really worry me for Fantastic Four.

I mean, again, I'm just I was so shocked learning that you didn't like this. I am. I am absolutely shocked because I I had such a good experience with this movie and I and I honestly like again, I was emotional during the movie. I laughed. I enjoyed the combat, the aerial combat. I again, there's absolutely things that I put there. I think that's with any any Marvel film is like there's wanting more.

Yeah. And maybe maybe because I didn't look I didn't do so much research or I didn't know so much about the reshoots and all. I didn't know all that stuff before having watched it. Like I went in there with more of maybe a tabula rasa clean slate idea of what this movie of I just the only thing I did was I just want I went in and I had an idea. I was like, I want them to slightly talk about Isaiah Bradley's past and like how it's affected by this film and then some other stuff and I'll be good.

And I got I got way more than that. So. Maybe going in with less and is better off. I feel like maybe, maybe you went in with too much expectations. But again, that's, that's, that's your prerogative, man. I'm not going to tell you, you ever expect, you shouldn't expect a lot from these films. You know, I'm just, I'm easier to please. There's a threshold. I think that again, if you just got to hit a certain level of quality, I don't expect these movies to be Schindler's list.

You know, like I just want them to be fun and have like, just like a layer or two. If there's like a layer or two of substance, I can get behind them. You know, like they have my money again. I said it, like I'm going to go see these movies and I'm going to enjoy them on some level. Like again, I didn't like this movie, but there are moments that I was fun.

Like again, the red Hulk, the 10 minutes we got him and I sort of liked the opening scene a little bit with Anthony Mackie and him infiltrating that Sidewinder mission that he was on. Some of that was fun, but just overall not great. But let's get into the ratings here out of five David A. Weiner's as we do. Again, first film of 2025, we rate everything out of five David A. Weiner's. So Aaron, out of five Weiner's, what are you gonna give Captain America Brave New World?

I'm giving it a 4.5. goodness. goodness. We need to. we need to. no. OK. All right. Wow. wow. Yeah, this movie for me, honestly, like as crazy as the sound was near perfect for me. I enjoyed it. Okay. Sorry. My heart just started to flutter. Like it just was, I think I was, I think I was having, I was having some, some Thunderbolt Ross heart palpitations. Don't take any pills. They're laced with with trace amounts of gamma. I'm gonna give this movie a two out of five. This is not great.

Again, as I said earlier, it's borderline Madam Web, in my opinion. How fucking dare you? I'm going to, I'm going to smack you like a bitch when I see you next. listen. Hey, if you're listening right now, please let Aaron. I know we are clearly on wildly different sides of the coin here. We are literally joker and the Batman. So like tell us what you think. We want to know, like, what are your thoughts on this? If you enjoyed it or not, but we're to get off our.

We've been talking about this for almost two hours now. Aaron, let's get into my favorite segment, one that I've been missing here in 2025. Let's get in Aaron's arcade.

It's time for Aaron's Arcade. Welcome to Aaron's arcade. am exhausted. Uh, that's, this has been one of the most intense reviews of a movie that we've ever done, think. Um, but I wanted to talk about my recent delve into mobile competitive gaming.

And with that, this is, this is not a sponsored segment, but there's something I want to talk about because I recently, uh, a guy that I know, Scotty Ted well, who, you know, helped develop the G fuel brand has, uh, recently invested in a company called puck. And that's P UK. And it is a mobile gaming, like kind of ecosystem developer. And there's actually a, there's a news outlet called puck as well, like a Hollywood, Hollywood reporter type. Yeah. didn't know that.

But Puck is a mobile gaming controller designed to elevate your gaming experience. It aims to make mobile gaming feel more comfortable, more immersive. with they have like thoughtful features, as they say, with like tailored to solve common gaming challenges, know, ergonomic controls that are improved, allowing you to play without compromise. So whether you're a casual gamer or a pro, Puck is helping you take your mobile gaming to the next level.

And I say this because Chris, you know that I've got some some nerve damage in my hands. So I have to be careful about how long and what I play on mobile devices. Cause I like playing mobile games. Like, you know, call of duty mobile is one that I'm on a huge kick right now. And I've been kicking some serious ass. but I'm not going to lie like this puck gaming kind of, ecosystem as they call it, the, the ergonomic, like, like grips that I have.

So, I'm just gonna tell you, I'm, I've been testing out the complete bundle package with each cell, which it sounds like a lot, but I think it's actually really, really, affordable. It's like $85 for everything. And I got that using a coupon code. It comes with like these triggers, a thumb stick that is magnetic that like magnetizes to the screen. So you don't have to like attach anything.

These grips that you attach to like a case, you basically get a case that's kind of just like something you can throw away. That's fold. That's bendable. So you can put your phone in and out of it and a link cable that helps charge it. So it's not in the way of like your hands while you're playing, which again, it all works. really that's why I call it ecosystem. It all works very well together.

It's all kind of, what's the word like modular, and it helps you play like at a more competitive level because it's ergonomic. There's less strain, there's less pain and there's less fatigue. And, as, again, as somebody who, you know, that is a big deal for me. I work on a computer all day long. I'm a freelance writer, so I'm at a computer, and with the nerve damage they have in my arms and my hands, like I haven't had the same pains that I've been having. while using this. So I included a link.

I included a picture in the show notes, go to puck gaming.com, tell them that Aaron sent you. but again, I, I, I've been playing a lot of call of duty. I've been playing a lot of pub G mobile, and this is honestly one of the best mobile gaming peripherals that I like. I didn't even think that I needed or wanted, and it's so helpful that this magnetic magnetic thumb stick stylus thing is so cool. Cause it just like, and magnetizes to your screen.

So you just put it exactly where your your like little thumbstick is and you can it's it's so what's the word? Revolutionary. not revolutionary, was gonna say it's so, like you can customize it. It's so customizable for the individual. you, again, you don't have to use all the pieces. could travel with just the thumb stick. You can travel with just the grips. You can travel with just the link cable. It all goes with how you like to play. And that's why it's so awesome as a feature to have.

So keep an eye out. I'm gonna be doing some more reviews, some more videos. Probably gonna be streaming pretty soon with this as I get things developed over on Twitch. for the Oblivion Bar Pod Twitch channel. So keep an eye out for that. And mobile gaming action can gonna be coming at you with the help of Puck Gaming. And again, go over there, send them an email, tag them on social media, tell them that the Oblivion Bar Pod and Better Action says hi, and go check them out for yourself.

Cause I guarantee you, if you play mobile games, you won't be disappointed. And now let's go to my favorite part of the show, which is Chris's Corner. It's time for Chris's Corner.

Alrighty this week for Chris's Corner we're talking about assorted crisis events as written by Dennis Camp illustrated by Eric Zawalski colors by Jordy Belair and lettered by Hossan Otsman Elham and this is an upcoming comic from Image it comes out on March 12th I got an early look well Aaron and I got an early look from Image shout out to Image for giving us early looks at their books and this is an awesome book now Dennis Camp has been

doing a lot of great stuff recently he is also the writer of The Ultimates over at Marvel He also wrote 20th century men, which Aaron and have talked about many times where it is a sort of also somewhat of an anthology, sort of a different perspective.

Every character in the story is sort of a different perspective of war, which is interesting, which is something we often omit when it comes to war stories, is sort of how war affects everyone differently and how, you know, multiple people can sort of view that conflict in different interesting ways. So assorted crisis events, an ongoing anthology series about the compromised clicks of our clocks.

full on one shot stories, both beautiful and ugly, tragic and redemptive, surreal, and somehow all too familiar stories of people and reality in crisis, trying to keep it together while the world is falling apart, seconds twisted by seconds. So yeah, this is really cool. just, really intrigued and interested in the idea of assorted crisis events. The first issue is Immaculate. I absolutely loved it.

It's basically about this girl sort of just trying to go about her regular day while a sort of DC crisis event is happening around her and how there are like, it's just, it's interesting. I don't want to spoil anything about this book. I want you to go in fully blind outside of that and how time is this interesting story construct where you kind of have to know where you're at in time to understand what's happening on the page, on the page. Right.

It's great. Dennis Camp, I think is one of our great young writers in comics right now. He has sort of burst onto the scene again with Marvel's. uh, the ultimate and then obviously 20th century men and this. So yeah, he's also doing DC's Martian manhunter ultimate Martian manhunter. So if you're looking at his ultimate ultimate absolute, sorry, absolute Martian manner that's coming out, I think later this year. So keep an eye out for that.

But again, assorted crisis events comes out on March 12th. Go give it a look. I've already pre-ordered it, put it on my poll list, very excited for it. Uh, and that'll do it for Chris's corner. Uh, and that'll do it for episode one 82 of the oblivion bar podcast. Aaron, we've done it once again. a movie review in the books and next week, another movie review. We're going to be talking about a movie that you and I have both seen and we haven't talked anything about it.

Aaron's emulating a drum beating. We're going to be talking about the monkey, the brand new Oz Perkins film, new neon film, new horror film based on a Stephen King short story. It's currently getting pretty glaring reviews in terms of being all over the place. Some people are loving it. Some people are not loving it. And not only that, that's exciting to discuss, but also we're going to be joined by a good friend of the show, Eric Fett, who is the cohost of the Cryptid Camp podcast.

She also has a giant following over on social media. She's a cosplayer. She does all the things. She's awesome. So we're excited to have her on the show to discuss the monkey. That'll be episode one 83 next week and that'll do it. there anything you want to say before we head out of here?

Looking for that convert looking looking for that comfort looking forward to that conversation and to discuss this movie because I'm about to go read the short story that it's based off of because I As we've talked about recently need to know more This movie is interesting everybody. It's definitely, yeah, it's wild. It's one of those movies that you kind of, there's no, like you can listen to our review next week and we hope that you do.

But I don't think you really can understand this movie unless you go see it yourself. There is no, there's no understanding this movie period, like not from a review, not from a person. This is a firsthand experience to understand movie and, it's, it is a wild one. And also to like get your own feelings on it. Like you can listen to Erin and I talk all day about what we thought about it, but it is a movie that you really honestly need to see yourself to like get a gauge on it.

And I'm actually, really, excited to hear Erica's thoughts on it, cause she's very versed in horror. Like that's her thing. She loves horror and you I love horror, you love horror, but I think we all sort of approach the genre of horror in like a very different way, right? Like we all take different things. We all look for different things. That's what's interesting about horror. That's why it's such a fun genre to talk about because we all sort of, we gather different things from it.

So great conversation. homework. Also do my homework. I need to finish long legs just to be aware. You should honestly watch long legs. Everyone, if you're listening to this, go watch long legs. That's Oz Perkins, recent film before the monkey. Also another movie that you kind of just have to see to believe. So, Aaron, that'll do it. Take us out of here. That'll do it. That'll do a pig. Subscribe to our podcast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Audible, iHeartRadio.

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Musical themes. Thank you DJ Skyvac for a grid theme and last but not least do not forget to tip your bartenders 20 % or more because they work hard That's right. 20 % or more. That's the bare minimum. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to our review of Captain America Brave New World. We will see you next week for our review of the monkey. But until then, see you later. Later gator.