Oh he is bot.
It's shoot time.
People say, good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater.
They want cold sodas, pop popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Don it off.
Famous around the world. Please welcome the.
Fantastic four, Mister, fantastic, Invisible woman, human torch.
I love you Johnny and the thing.
Hey, what time is it? Say today?
That's not really something I say.
It's coming time.
That's just in the cartoon. Never late for Sunday dinner. Let's see. Hey, what time is it?
It's dinner time. Get inside.
I herald the beginning.
I harold your end.
I harald.
Galactus.
What is that?
Get us out of here?
Friend, always say, I don't know.
The clock is ticking.
We are going to find a solution. We are going to make it right. You don't want to just crush him, hide that. The four of us will face the danger.
We will protect you.
Family. It's about connecting to something bigger than yourself.
Who face it together.
As a family.
What time is it bad?
No? What time is it bad?
No? Johnny, I don't want to die.
Welcome to a special crossover episode between the Projection Booth, the Culture Cast, and Midnight Viewing. I'm your host. Mike White Jovini once again is the host of the Culture Cast. Mister Chris Stashue.
To quote one of my favorite characters from Superhero Dumb in general, it's Babylon time.
Also, all the way from Midnight Viewing is Father Malone.
Gentlemen, I invite you to die with your own On.
This episode, we are looking at the twenty twenty five film Fantastic four First Steps, which is actually the fifth ree tread in this franchise where we're looking at for superpowered beings who protect the Earth or Earth A two eight, this time from Galactus, who is not a big gas cloud. That's good. There's not a lot of origin story, but it's more of a look at the fourth year going into the fifth year of the team's existence. And we
will be spoiling this discussion like crazy. So if you haven't seen Fantastic four First Steps, haven't watched the bootleg that floating around out there with the French subtitles, turn off the podcast, come back after you've gone to see the movie. I know it's not like that exists. Chris what's your history of Fantastic Four. I'm very curious about that. We've talked about that on the Superman episode, so a couple weeks later, what's your history with Fantastic Four?
So The Thing is one of my favorite superhero characters period, just something about him, and like the portrayal in the comic books, I really enjoy the portrayal in the movies. I think has been more spot on in most of them, at least in those Yowen Grufford, Chris Evans, Jessica Alba Fantastic Four movies which I saw. I have seen every Fantastic Four movie that has been released in theaters, including Fan for Stick, which not many people saw that shit
in theaters. There was a reason for that I saw in theaters. You're a masochist. That's the word I would use. And this is one other thing. And Father Malone I think mentioned this when we were recording Maybe or Off podcast. Not only is the Thing one of my favorite superhero characters, Read Richards as the Maker is my favorite comic book
villain I think period. In terms of Marvel. It's literally what if Reid Richards was just like, I'm the universe of smartest man, and I could do whatever the fuck I want, And he's just like practicing genocide. And he becomes so smart and gets so much knowledge into his head that his brain and skull essentially become like an ancient alien skull. His head head becomes like conical, his brain grows so much.
Let's not forget during Civil War whose side he was on.
I think, if you're gonna do a Fantastic Four movie, this is the right place to start. However, and I'm saying that in terms of the setting, I think, in a lot of ways, this is marvel going. Man, wouldn't it have been nice if we had done a period piece with the Fantastic Four in two thousand and nine or ten. I liked the setting. I liked the world
that this movie took place in. However, this movie was an hour and fifty five minutes, and there are parts of this movie that drug and the plot of the movie and the way that the conflict resolves, and a lot of the Deus X teleporter bridges is just there's some stuff that doesn't seem as well integrated into the
story as I was hoping they would be. And there are parts of this that I'm like, I'm glad that we're doing this version of the characters, and there are other things where I'm like, I'm a little disappointed that we're doing these versions of the characters. And by the end of the movie, once we see where they end up going with everything, I think I'm hopeful for where the second or third steps go. If that's in fact what the movies are beyond this one. Who knows if
they keep the Spider Man naming conventions. And I know John Watts was originally going to direct these movies, so I wonder if there is going to be a little bit of the Spider Man naming conventions. But all that to say, I think for the most part it's one of the better Marvel movies we've had in a while. It shows a lot of reserve where other Marvel movies of its similar ilk have not, including something as recently as Thunderbolts. But I think at times it may plays
it a tad too safe. Look, it's twenty twenty five. We know where the MCU is effectively headed. In the next couple of years. We're almost at year twenty of this. I'm assuming by year twenty of this we will have a whole new thing with all new people, which is what they've talked about and they've alluded to. And now seeing that thing at the end of the movie is just like it sets in. Oh my god, we're like right back here in like twenty and eighteen nineteen again effectively.
So I enjoyed it. But I think there's plenty for us to talk about in terms of the shortcomings of the movie. But I think overall, best Marvel movie in a while. Yeah, best Marvel movie in the last five years. Yeah, I don't know about that. There have been a lot of decent Marvel movies, if not great Marvel movies that
have come out in the last five years. But in terms of this, to answer the initial question, Mike, in terms of doing a Fantastic four thing and my history with it, this is the best Fantastic four movie I've ever seen in theaters. So that's a distinction that it has over the other three times I've been in a theater watching these same characters do similar things.
And Father malonew about yourself.
Growing up in the seventies, I read a lot of Marvel as a kid up until about teenage of them when I decided that horror comics were the way to go, and I didn't have any fealty to any comic book company after that, but definitely Marvel as a young kid and Fantastic for us made for children almost and when I was reading comics in the seventies, I was effectively just reading the original run from the sixties, So it was all of this kind of material that ends up
in this movie, which is bright and shiny and cosmic. Now, I never really had much use for the Fantastic Four. I always loved their peripheral characters. I think they have some of the best villains in Marvel. One of them is on display here for the first time Moleman On who I just I love as a character Harvey Elder. But more than that is Galactis. But more than Galactis is the character noorin Rad, the Silver Surfer, who is one of my maybe top five Marvel characters of all time.
Just the existentialness of that character, the dilemma that he finds himself in, which is fully on display here, which I really appreciated. The first Fantastic Four movie I saw was in ninety seven, when I got a bootleg of the Corman produced flick, which we just reviewed over on my show just a few days ago. And then obviously Yowen Griffiths. That's how you pronounced that it's Welsh friend Griffiths. Those two movies, those were garbage. Even worse than that
was the Josh Strank thing. Who on fucking planet are thinks? A dark and twisted version of the Fantastic for his Way to Go? It is literally the shiniest and brightest of the Marvel titles. I had no expectations for this movie. All the trailers I saw I did not respond to at all. I didn't quite understand the Paeder Pascal casting, and the rest of the cast seem good to me, nevertheless,
so my expectations were zero. This to me was one of the best superhero movies I've ever seen, honestly, not only the best film from Marvel since Endgame, but one of the best overall. Whatever praise I heaped upon Superman for making a cinematic comic book, this one puts that to shame. This is a fully realized world, with all of the pieces fitting together very subtly. In some places. When we're talking about tell us some of the dark side, we alway talk about the economy of those scripts. You
said it, Chris, this movie is two hours. This movie it moves so fast.
One hour and fifty five minutes. Dude, it's wild. It's a less than two hour Marvel movie in twenty twenty five.
This movie starts four years in, catches up fucking immediately to where we are, and gives us an incredible fucking dilemma and actually pulling off the fucking impossible in that it made Sue Storm one of the most powerful and interesting characters, whereas she has always been the most underwritten and boring Marvel characters. I loved the movie. I actually seen it twice. I saw it last night and this morning I went and saw it again.
But did you buy the eighty dollars popcorn book?
One for display, one for eating.
Large, if not oversized, comical portions of cereal out of.
No just for eating all of the popcorn on planet Earth in one sitting.
I hunger.
What about you, Mike White? What's your experience in history with the fan four sticks?
Fantastic four might have been one of the first comics that I read. I remember specifically, my folks had a rental property and they were doing a lot of fixing it up before we could have renterists move in. I remember sitting around and reading an issue of The Fantastic Four, and I swear it was right around the time of the Iran hostage crisis, because I remember there was a parody song of Barbaran the Old Surfs Bomb Iran, Bomb Iran, Yes, and that was playing on Dick Purtin and I was
listening to that and reading this comic book. So very strange memory of that, but yeah, they were some of the first folks that I read as far as comic superheroes, and like you said, fout them alone, they're perfect for kids. And it's just this kind of candy colored world that they lived in, at least back in the sixties. And I love this retrofuturism vibe that they have with this where things are analogue but they really shouldn't be. Things like Herbie with the tape deck in his head and
how he's got different programs on tapes and everything. And when you see the Fantastic Car zooming through the city, you get to see like a robot dog walker or these little tiny cars that they have, and I'm just like, I love this world. I really like this Earth A two eight that they have, where it feels like because of the Fantastic Four coming to be, or maybe just because of the way that the world played out, things are running differently, and we don't have transistors, we don't
have the smaller technology. We still are using blackboards and things that are very analogue, and I really like that. I like the look of this and that kind it is so different thinking about that Josh Trenk version where so much of it just took place in a fucking warehouse and it was just dark all the time, and this we're out in the daylight. Even the stuff with Harvey Mouleman is pretty bright once we get down into the subterranean world that he goes in. There's some light
in there. It's not just dark the entire time. And then having Paul Walter, how oh, he is so great, so much, he is so good.
Don't be mad at me, Johnny, I didn't dress you.
It was so nice having more Sue Storm in here, because I really feel like, at least those Tim Story movies were so much about Johnny and the Thing, and we've got a pretty good amount of the thing, and here it's tough. You've got four very strong characters and you're trying to balance all of them, and I think they do a good job.
I really.
If anything, I think read Richards might be a little bit opaque as far as his motivations and things, but I think that works well with him. It's almost like he's on the spectrum or something, and I'm really okay with that. And I'll tell you I just before we started recording, just realized that Johnny Storm is Eddie from Stranger Things. I could not put my finger on where
I knew him from. Really don't get a good beat on Johnny Storm in this one other than he's a pretty smart guy, but he hasn't given the credit that he's due, and that he actually figures out that whole alien language. I'm pretty happy about that. I thought that was pretty great.
He is an eighty from Chris Johnny's the good one. That's perfectly fine, though, because again when people get bent out of shape about portrayals in the movies, my response tends to be, at this point in my life, if you've read comic books at any point, there's no one
there are singular standard bearers of the characters. If we're talking about like the singular Earth of the comic books in the Marvel comics, because like in the Marvel movies, there is one more or less decided upon Earth that most, if not a lot, of the things take place on. But there's plenty of variations on this character. Joseph Quinn's character is very different in a I would say an updated way, because I'm not sure that kind of character
would really fly. I think he'd be way too easy to write in a way that the audience wouldn't want anything to do with him, and they'd be put off by him.
The Johnny Storm, the Chris Evans Johnny Storm was insufferable, but it was Chris Evans, so we put up with it. If you continued that character with anyone else, you would want to murder him basically.
And look at what happened to his character in What Wolver in a Deadpool? I mean perfect if they traded in that. They made it a point to be like, yeah, this guy's kind of a fucking turd too, But again, like it works for that movie's benefit. Here it's this is a softer, more gentle Marvel for a gentler time.
I like this portrayal of Johnny Storm because he's always portrayed as the hot head showboat of the four, but you know, ultimately what he represents is the sort of teenager of the family, and there are other aspects to him. I loved that he figures out the translation of the Zenla language in this. At the same time, he is really annoying, you know what I mean. It's played for laps and everything, but if you were living with that guy, you would want to punch him all the time.
Well, I'm just glad that the thing isn't such a sad suck, like, oh my god, look at me, read look at me. I'm so ugly. Oh god. And the only person that thinks I'm cute is a blind lady.
Oh god.
There's no way a woman would find this man attractive. Fuck you, he would, she wouldn't. He's literally a superhero. Bozo's like, it's self explanatory. You're gonna tell me it's because Natasha Leone has a really deep voice. That's why it's actually the other way around, Ben Grimm When she opens her mouth.
Because I don't want to hear that she's so cute. She rained in all her regular Natasha Leone here. It's not the sort of broad from Brooklyn. It's a different character, my god got.
They got Natasha Leone to play less to type than she normally does, let's put it that way.
And I love that he's like the one of the few that I know of Jewish superheroes, and that he's very proud of his heritage, the whole thing of growing up on Yancey Street. But it's not like they're overplaying that either. It's not like he's, oh, I remember when I was growing up. It's instead of yeah, I grew up over there. Nice small thing. And to give him the little taste of he's a really good cook and that's his science. I think can figure out the languages,
and Red can do all of these calculations. But here's been in the kitchen cooking.
With Herbie and he's a fucking hell of a pilot. What you're talking about, how he's always been portrayed before is the sad, sack lonely guy who's just loveluren. We get that in one scene. Speaking of the economy of the script, it's him watching himself on television and seeing what he used to look like. And they just cut to and what's amazing to me in this was it's a shot of a CGI face in a reflection of a window with a television on it, and you can
see all the emotion. You see how sad he is about this, because that's when he looks over at Natasha Leona decides to walk away. I got all of that, didn't need him crying about it for scene after scene, I.
Think, and this is again me just speaking broadly because in the cases of something like Fantastic Four or Superman or Spider Man or Batman, we have had so many retreads of this that we can go they did it better, and they didn't have to do it, and I don't feel obligated. Fantastic Four once again proves that the audience at this point, mind you, maybe not fifteen twenty years ago, and I understand why they have now proved. I think
once again the audience are not fucking stupid. The audience knows the audience can do a little legwork on their own. And even if we don't have forty five minutes of the movie for setup of the origin story, which it's there is like a fair amount of setup in this movie, but it's not origin story setup at least not of a certain kind. It's an orgin story of a different kind.
Frankly, they give us that fucking like little documentary at the beginning. It's so fucking.
Brilliant in this day and age, It's like, instead of showing us the whole damn thing, just give it the both points, give us the cliff Notes version for fuck's sake, and it works just as well, because once again, if you're able to do it economically, get away with it. Spider Man did it rather well. Superman did it rather well.
This did it rather well. They aw trafficked in the same thing, like the backstories just peppered in throughout the movie, and so it works better and doesn't feel so stilted in terms of the flow.
You know, I think did it the best and kind of started to off this idea of we don't have to show everything. Is that Edward Norton Hulk where it was just like the opening credits, We're going to show you the whole thing very quickly, and then we carry on with the movie. We don't have to do the origin story every frickin' time. How many times do we have to see Peter Parker get bit by a radio active spider. I'm glad that those home movies that they had just went away from all that stuff.
How many times have we been to fucking crime Alley, for God's sake? And what I liked about this opening and that little documentary where they give us the origin without giving us the origin, is that at no point do we get to go out into space and see the cosmic rays hit them and watch this and that happit. Instead, we watched them take off and then we see a ship crash and then the Thing's hand punch its way out of the craft. That's all we needed for the
origin there. The other thing I loved about the opening is, like you said, it's bullet points. We get like the greatest hits of what they've been doing for the past four years, like the inter missions where the Thing is hauling a burning tanker by its anchor chain into a harbor, and then Johnny Storm is putting out fire at an electrical plant, And all I could think was, like, any one of these sequences would be the giant sent piece on any of the other Fantastic Four movies up until here,
and they're just like burning through of them. At the beginning The other thing I noticed in the power plant sequence when there's a crew on the ground who salute him, thanks Johnny Storm. The two guys in front, the one saluting him and the one standing next to him, that's Jay Underwood and the fellow who played the thing in the nineteen ninety four version, and then Alex Hyde White and I think Jessica Stop I think her name was.
Those two are reporters later in the movie. So that was a cool thing that they didn't need to do, and they fucking did. It made me very happy. I just watched the other one the other day, so it was a little obvious to me.
Michael Bailey Smith played Ben Grimm, and I only know that because he was the guy who played gigantic Freddy Krueger in Elm Street five, remember when it's roided out Freddy Krueger. So and look, I'm a little biased because I do like even Moss Backrack in other things. Obviously, to bear and the cooking thing with me was like, okay, like you're trafficking in a little bit of what he's really known for now. But he's really good as the thing.
But I think to the point that's already been made I think Vanessa Kirby walks away with this movie and she's amazing. I like that again as someone who's a fan of the comic books and the more recent stuff, definitely like the character of Malice is something that is a big part of her character, especially in the comic books, and I know that she is has made it clear that that is something that she wanted to bring to
the character. And as someone who again is a fan of that character in the comics, it's a pipe dream to think that we'll ever get that in the movies. But at least she acknowledges and understands that's an aspect of a character that isn't just its own separate thing. And she's trafficking that because she doesn't really take anybody shit in this movie, which I appreciate. She has a lot of agency every one. She is the founder of the Future Foundation, which is like so important in my mind.
He negotiated the treaty with the moment exactly. She has given so much agents.
I don't trust anyone up above ground except for Sue exactly.
Everybody has to clear the room before he'll even have a conversation. I love it, and it's not one of those I think you're cute, Sue, so I'm going to talk with you, because we've seen that in other movies before too, where it's just the other guys. Is a horn dog for the hot superheroines. And they don't strip her down to her bra and underwear in this movie, either just to show us that she's sexy she or just fully naked, like oh no, yeah, covering the bits. Yeah.
I like that.
The movie opens with Sue storm and read Richard's having just like a genuine conversation and just the two of them talking about life, and there's this kind of pretext of the moment before she tells she's pregnant. But what a refreshing change from pretty much everything Marvel has been doing up until this point.
For a fantastic for me. We finally have characters that are seem to genuinely like each other and feel like a relationships yeah, and feel like a family, And then I'm completely invested in. They seem to have skipped all of the origin story bullshit, and this actually does feel lived in, which is so important.
Now they have to be a family, they have to be a unit because they're put into jeopardy with this whole thing of Galactus wanting that baby, and if they weren't a tight family unit, there'll be fricks among them. And as far as I saw in the movie, there's nobody casting doubt other than Reid Richards because, like I said, he's this fucking mad genius where it's just the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the view kind of thing. And I'm just like, Okay, Spock, Yeah, gotcha.
But he's not going to give up his child either. They have to be that tight unit. If it was fucking hot head Chris Evans or Michael Chickliss or oh god, any of the Miles Teller like it, I wouldn't believe that they're Michael B. Jordan, Michael B.
Jesus Christ. What a nice time that Michael B. Jordan has had getting far away from that, because man to be kill Monger to be brought back in that second Black Panther movie, because you were so good in the first one, they brought you back in the second one.
Kill Manger is one of the best characters that they've had, one of the best villains that the Marvel Universes ever had.
Yeah, it's a shame that he dies.
Well, this is the character that even Ben Backrack has played in Marvel that's been really good. He was micro on the Punisher series.
Oh that's right, Yeah, he as the thing plays the character. In my mind, it's really understated, but I think it needs to be because I almost feel like everybody gets out of the way of Vanessa Kirby. But I think that's important because it's so clear given that, again, it's the plot of the movie is not made apparent in the previews, but once the movie gets rolling, it really is. Galactus sees Franklin Richards the son of Sue and read as his replacement, which I mean in the comic books,
he is a cosmic being. It is made very clear that in this MCU they're going in some direction similar to the way he's been portrayed before, but there's none of that in the trailers. And so when you find out that it's Galactus wanting the child and all of that, I don't know. I think to both of your points, it had to almost be Sustorm's movie because it's so focused on the child and the fact that they're all family, and believable family is the reason this works. Like you said,
father and Malone. They have to be a family unit of people otherwise this movie fails like two seconds out of the gate.
This whole movie is but defending your children. It very much reminded me of if anyone watched the television series torch Wood, which is a spinoff series of Doctor Who. Their third season was a five episode arc called Children of Earth where an alien intelligence shows up and secretly amongst the government demands ten percent of the children of Earth they're going to use for whatever purposes they're going to. What they believe is they boil them down for recreational
chemicals basically, or they destroy everyone on Earth. And it is harrowing and awful and left me dazed that series. So the fact that they kind of sneak it into this light entertainment here, this threat of we're going to destroy your world unless you give us that kid, and they deal with it because the people on Earth are fucking angry about it, like maybe you should give them their kids. We'd like to live. It's one child burst.
It is the needs of the many versus the needs of the one, and is the.
First time seemingly anyone on this planet has had an issue with the Fantastic Four.
They all love them, and it's so important that we set up that montage at the beginning with everyone, thank you Fantastic for and those little dots creating the Big Four for that television special.
Everyone has a little flag yeah, or that little that obnoxious guys sit in the line.
I'm like, yeah, this is nice. I like that there's a difference between cartoon Fantastic four and real life Fantastic four. And Ben's just no, that's not what I say.
I mentioned my favorite character that appears in this thing. It's the Silver Surfer. And because this is Earth eight one eight, we're in a different universe. What we're given is Sheella Ball, who is a noorin Rad's wife on zen So in the original conception of the character, and we got a version of it in that Rise of the Silver Surfer movie with Doug Jones playing the character
with Laurence Fishburne doing the voice well noorin Rad. The plot is that Galactus shows up to his planet says I'm going to eat your planet unless you become my herald, and he says, okay, I'll do it and leaves his wife and child and Zena's end up being safe. So they've just flopped that here and made his wife the character who is now the Herald of Galactus, and they eliminate noorin Rad from the plot here. So this is
a fully different universe of the Silver Surfer. But I got to say, twenty minutes into this movie, the Silver Surfer shows up and if her opening shot, it was fucking breathtaking. The realization of this character, like compared to that earlier version of it, or any of the earlier tests of any sort of chrome character I've ever seen, just like this is breath taking, and not only just that sort of opening scene, but like we get cosmic surfing in this movie that I oh my god, thank god, man,
I heard it. I left my body man when she was they're in that nebula and she's like surfing along. Oh boy, I.
Never in a million years would have thought they would actually show that. Feels so weird in the MCU now to be seeing things that she's a Silver Surfer and she's not just called that she has a surfboard, not just for a reason like she does it because there are times where she has to do that, Like it's just it is a form of conveyance.
But if she's on that board, you're fucked man.
And I love the mirroring of the scene of her coming to Earth and warning us versus later on when they've got all of the voice recordings from her home planet. I love that both of those who are taking place in that Times Square area, which is where the whole end of the movie happens and everything. I thought that was really nice, just very smart filmmaking. And of course
there are nods to other things that we've seen. I love the little thing with the Latveria plaque but nobody's there, like that country's missing from the Big Foundation, or that they called the Shifty Excelsior. I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's great. That's how stan Lee used to sign off every like stand soapbox and everything.
Eggs ou Oh someday I'll find out what that means.
I thought that was so nice that they weren't just like hammering us with stuff and just giving us enough of those little fan moments like that they have the mole Man, but they actually bring him back into the movie later on. I was like, Oh, wow, that's actually really smart, or just that little throwaway moment of the green creature that's coming up through the city. Read some Oh there's the cover of the first Fantastic Four. That's
so nice. And I love that they do those little things without just I was definitely looking in the background and just taking in all of those moments, but it was just because the city was so cool looking and just so much fun to see, Like, how does this world work? I guess if you like Canada Dry, you are really in business, because they've got Canada Dry advertising all over the.
Place and setting up the splash pages kind of thing that they keep doing in the movie. But anytime they slow action down to give us a tableau earlier in any Marvel film prior to something like Avengers, it's almost like in the middle of some big action moment and they basically do a freeze frame to let us know, hey, here's a comic book panel for you.
Here.
It's anytime the movie slows down, so you get these sort of poetic moments with the Silver Surfer when Johnny grabs her surfboard for the first time and they're floating together and it's gorgeous. And then later when she's having her crisis of conscience, she floats up and it's just hanging in front of the moon. I was like, this is fucking beautiful. And it didn't feel like they stopped to do it. It felt like organic to the plot. I fucking love this movie.
I love when she shows up for the first time and you get all of the people's reactions and you get those two guys in an office building and they do a reverse shot over their shoulder. You see her in the background, and it's Timely Comics and you can see pages out of comic books and stuff. I'm like, Oh, that's nice. Like we're not going for the obvious. We're not saying, oh, this is a Marvel Comics office. No,
this is Timely Comics, which will eventually evolve. But this is so nice that we just get a little nod to these guys working overnight coloring their comic books and setting up for the next issue as we have the new Silver Surfer outside.
I looked at the names of the people involved with the film in terms of the screen running, and so there are four names that are listed. There's Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff kap and an Ian Springer.
There's one more for story right, and yeah.
There is one more for story Cat would so the two names I mentioned at the top, Josh Freeman and Eric Pearson. Eric Pearson worked on and co wrote Thunderbolts, and then Black Widow and Thor Ragnarok and Agent Carter, and there are a couple of uncredited rewrites on certain things like Spider Man Homecoming or Quantum Mania. And then Josh Friedman. This is his first like Marvel thing. He worked on something that I really hadn't enjoyed. He worked on Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles.
I love that series.
Yes, the series is way better than had any write it to be. Has been unfortunately forgotten in all the other Terminator bad things as maybe one of the few good things the Terminator actually did after part two.
I think it's the only worthy thing other than the video game.
I'm inclined to agree with you, But all that to say, I'm really glad that Marvel is working with people that they have not worked with before in the things, but also still having people that they're continuing to work with in those rooms as well, because I think it's helping balance out the problems that we've been having with a lot of these Marvel movies, which is they just get stuck in these ruts of doing the same thing, not because it's easy, but because it's just the way Marvel
does things. Maybe all would agree with me. This is almost a typical of a Marvel movie at this point in a lot of ways. There's what three action scenes in this movie, maybe four, and they're pretty economical too for the most part, and they work rather well, and they're good additions to what's going on, but they're not necessarily the focus, because the focus is it's a character
drama almost like really it's a family piece. And I don't know, like I've been preaching about this and bitching about this since Captain America came out, But if you know what the source material style you want to go for is lean into it. And they leaned really hard
into it here and it worked like gangbusters, clearly. And I'm glad because maybe Marvel will continue to be creative and work themselves out of these ruts that they work themselves into, because yeah, this is a lot of this movie just feels atypical of what we've been seeing of Marvel recently.
Well, I think it's good that they're working with the same people in some cases here or promoting people from within. Because Mark Shackman shepherded all of WandaVision. He directed every single one of those and what created that show, and I'm sure was the showrunner overall, So he got to learn how to tell a story in ten episodes or twelve episodes. So he's the perfect guy to tell it in two hours because he can cut off all of the fat and get it all down to its essential components.
And I'd also like to point out that if you read the comics at all, Franklin Reid, his first governess was Agatha Harkness.
Yeah. If I had one complain about the movie, though, it would be that it feels rushed sometimes. I know that's very opposite of what you were saying, Chris, where you're like, I'm a little bored in parts. But for me, a lot of times it felt like the begin and endings are cut off a little bit of each scene just to move it along a little bit more. But
I was like to see a little bit more. But I think that's just because I was enjoying the world so much and enjoying these characters, and if anything, I would have liked to have spent more time with these characters. I would have liked to have known them a little bit more.
But it tells a.
Story in less than two hours, which is pretty freaking remarkable, especially because when I booked the tickets for the theater, it was two and a half hours that they allotted for it, and I guess a lot of that was the pre show, So it.
Took forty minutes trailers, baby, and then ten minutes of there they're fucking commercials.
We had two trailers in front of our movie, and that was it. Oh really two wow, And they were both Disney things, Avatar and trying Oh okay, yeah.
I had both of those. Yeah, and then we had gosh, the new Aeronofsky the knew Paul Thomas Anderson and something else. But all three of those I was like, I don't want to see, which was surprising that I would say that about a Paul Thomas Anderson film. Leo wins me over sometimes.
The action scenes in the movie, by the way, the initial one really is Galactus. It's when they jet off to Galactus for the first time, leading up to and including when Galactus finally fucking leans down and you get the sense of how fucking huge he is and how tiny we are is something I haven't experienced I don't think in any Marble film.
Of all the things that this movie does right is they don't fuck up Galactus and Man talk about the MCU, going as far as to stop doing the big villain characters for some of their characters initially because they don't want to blow them like they did with Red Skull, and Red Skulls obviously, in my mind, like the worst one.
That's because they fucking brought him back as some mystic celestial to kill everybody.
He's transcended that though, And to be fair, now, you could just bring in Red Skull from Earth wherever, fucking whatever. For the fuck, Hey, don't look at me. I'm not the one who decided multiverses were an easy way to fix.
The cacore can't come fucking fast enough, I know.
I'm so glad that this movie wasn't a like ret con horseshit machine, because that's what it would have been. If they had not figured out the multiverse scenario that we're in now, it would have been like the Fantastic Four existed and we didn't know anything about it, and why haven't they been mentioned? This movie would have just been the Eternals, because isn't that The problem the Eternals had was like, where the fuck were you guys this
whole time? You can't do the Fantastic Four without the retrofuturism. But you could have done like they've done with the earlier versions of Shield. They have Hank Pim and they had the agent Carter and Top, so they could have said, yeah, in the nineteen sixties, the Fantastic Four went up and they got their powers, and they did a couple of secret missions Firth, and then they went up for some other missions and they disappeared. That's how they could just
red con that. But having them be in their own univers is fucking perfect.
Here.
I like them there. Here's the thing My fear going into this movie was this was in tragedy that Galactus was going to win and they were going to have to escape and they would be the only ones escaping from their universe into ours, and then I was just gonna feel bad for them for the rest of the fucking run of the Fantastic Four in the MCU, because they would be like Superman or fucking any of these people, like what for for Christ's sake.
I get the distinct feeling that the way that this plays out is Franklin Richards puts them in the MCU universe unintentionally through some sort of because again, like that's the power level of that character, is he can bend like space and time and so Now, because again to your point, Father Blow, we talked about this at the
end of the Thunderbolt episode. I was under the impression, I think we all were, that the Thunderbolts movie and the post credit scene implied that Galactus eight Earth both A to eight and you know what, good on them
for practicing restraint and not doing that. However, I also feel like that's because of the other thing that happened last year about a year ago now, which is the casting of one Robert Downey Junior as Iron Man replacement doctor Doom, which I'm assuming is the case in this universe. In this universe, there's not an iron Man, there's a fucking Victor von Doom, who's essentially gonna just be dark iron Man, which I mean, again, you have Tony Stark, the actor who played him in that role. So it
makes perfect sense in my mind. Anyways, and clearly, if they had destroyed Earth. Then it would have been where is this Doctor Doom coming from? But now it's like he's this universe is doctor Doom?
They could have just pulled him from some other universe. And by the way, more than ever, I'm unhappy with the Robert Downa junior casting as Victor von Doom given what we got in this movie. The level of imagination and the perfect spot on casting is like across the board. Who these people could have cast for Doctor Doom given a wide open net, Like maybe it'll be good. I don't know. I just think it's a huge mistake.
And I think is the biggest issue I have with this movie because the lat veria like random mentions and stuff.
Do you feel a little No, I'm fine with it. This is a Galactus story.
That's my point. Like, I'd rather just focus on that because Doctor Duma is such a big threat. Don't hint at it because it reminds me, like you said, Father Malone, of the Robert Downey Junior thing, which I agree with you wholeheartedly. A year ago I was maybe like just more shocked than anything else, and now it subsumed everything as the thing that is all anyone is focusing on It's.
Like when the Hulk lands at Doctor Stranger's place and he's like Thanos is coming. Now we're all sitting around here, going, Robert Downey Junior is coming.
Back, right and we know it. Imagine if we hadn't known it and they had revealed it at the end of this movie.
Oh god, yeah, if he had just turned his head just a little bet, we would have all collectively lost our Yes.
Yes, And you know what, I don't understand why they passed up that opportunity, because, you know what, it's great to do it at the Hall in fucking San Diego right now, it's Comic CON's going on? Was in this past week type thing? You're telling me that you would rather have that one video of people reacting to Robert Downey Jr. Than it being played over and over in movie theaters from here until Eternity as the one of
the greatest twists in cinema just to see. Could you imagine how many people would have just gone ape shit if today had seen that on screen, because that's what could have happened. I don't know why the answer wasn't just will reveal who doctor Doom is in Fantastic Four.
You will see who he is at the end of the movie, Like, why spoil it, because, like you said, Father Milone, Like even if it hadn't been Robert Downey Jr. Whoever it would have been, would have just been like amazingly insane because we know that's the villain of the next two movie.
They needn't reveal anything here. They could have just done what they did and have her walk back into the room and see this green cloaked figure and you'd be like, oh fuck, and then that's the end of the movie. By the way, speaking of the end of the movie, it's a happy ending. They pushed Galactus into this black hole and send him into another universe, did the fantastic for it by any chance doom us here on Earth? Because that's how it feels.
Well, that's what I was gonna say. They didn't push him into another universe. They pushed him to the other side of their universe without his spaceship like the Delta quatering or thing. Yeah, so it'll take him millions of years to get to us, which I mean, Look, there's a couple narrative conceits in this movie that I feel like hokey, Like the we're gonna all save our energy together. Okay, movie, we're gonna turn off the world power grid.
Hey did you did see the world that they live in?
Right now?
They're all under one banner and the only country not participating in Slatvaria.
I get it. I was gonna say, like, the movie gets around, it's narrative conceited. That's fine. It's a happy ending movie, which I was not expecting, not when Galactus is involved.
I honestly thought when the power grids started to go down, when they were trying to do the whole we're gonna move Earth out of the way thing instead of move Galactus out of the way, when those grids started going down, I was thinking, oh shit, was that Latviaria refusing to be part of this and turning off their grid? And I thought we were going to go in a whole other direction.
All of a sudden, I thought the same thing. I was like, because they kept showing the map and I was like, it starts in eastern Europe and I was like, wait a second, is that no? It wasn't.
Yeah.
Then I was like, oh, okay, no, it's just the silver Surfer having incredible powers, which is so nice. To see just how powerful she is, because that's what the silver Surfer can do. It's none of this bullshit just oh, I can be so easily defeated. It takes a fucking lot to defeat this person. And she ultimately in conjunction with Sue and they get everybody else on board and stuff,
but ultimately it is her. It is a silver Surfer that defeats Galactus, which is just absolutely appropriate that she gets her revenge for her own planet.
It's the two mothers who defeat Galactus.
And how great is Ralph inison?
Is Galactus fantastic?
And then it was a practical effect, like they built a suit for this man and he was like in a Galactus suit on them for doing that, even because it yields dividends. Really, I love the way he looks in this movie, like he's to Mike's point earlier about the fucking floating cloud, which they because they couldn't commit to just the giant dude floating through space in a
big he could be inside of a spaceship. Again, who cares they think that audiences used to want to go watch comic book movies that made comic books boring, And it's like we read comic books because they're exciting and fun and over the top and bombastic, but then also they can be all kinds of other things, but don't try to take what makes comic books out of them
and shut them in the real world. And it has to be real and reality like why And it was so refreshing to watch the MCU just go yeah, like at some point we are going to stop trying to make everything in real life and just accept that this guy's just building a suit of armor and he can fly around in it, and we have a god. All of those things can interact side like the can go in the comics, and that's not a problem for the audience.
And this movie really is like one of the better examples of like the audience is on board from the first moment we're watching the movie. By minute fifty, when a guy in a giant space chair jumps down and starts antagonizing our heroes, everybody's like this, cool, we're on board. Okay, you already got me through the door, and I'm on
board with you. And that's again tell us in two thousand and eight about this movie being like this, and I don't think I think our brains would have collectively melted.
I mentioned the sense of scale when they're on his ship, but the whole sequence at the end when he's chomping around the city is so incredible. Man, just watching him turn in a building behind him, you can see all the glass shatter on a skyscraper, or him balancing himself
on buildings. Speaking of buildings, in the opening scene, not to keep jumping around, but in the opening when we get the Moleman's first exploits where he takes the pan Am building and drops it into the ground again, another sequence that would have been big payoff of any other action movie like that was fucking fantastic and felt fun and not horribly destructive, whereas here at the end where Galactus is going crazy, just the sense of destruction was
unlike anything we've seen in some time, and felt more personal than we've seen in some times. I always say about superhero movies since day one, we don't need them to save the world. It can be a personal story, like it can just be a couple of characters versus a couple of other characters, and we'll fucking go with it. But in this case, if you're gonna have them save
the world. Here's the way to fucking do it. Have a fucking giant celestial character chomping around and you're flailing trying to stop him.
Thinking about even their handler, who's played by Sarah Niles, I think she's a great character. I wish I would have seen a little bit more of her, but her with her blue coat that she always wears like she's part of the team, and then even in their big un type building, like all the chairs are blue, and I just love that the blue carries through with everything, just to We've seen their uniforms in the past movies and they've never been this bright as shade of blue before.
We've never had a bright and shiny world in which they live. And with this retro futurism, it just gives everything this kind of candy colored sheen to it, and I love it. It's a feast for the eyes, which a lot of these movies think about talking about you, Quantumniam, talking about you thor Love and Thunder. A lot of these just look like shit, and this one looked really good.
The sense of style that they allow Matt Shackman to have is shocking. It really is. Imagine if they had been letting everybody do this from the get go. I
know why they didn't. We all get it, but just imagine in a lot of ways, like Father Blone already mentioned it, but I think it bears a little bit of talking about now, Like imagine now knowing what you've seen, is James Gunn, what you can do in response to the MCU with the DCU, and that the audiences are now more receptive to just doing whatever the fuck you want because we're just gonna tell the stories that people
want to see. And if it Robert Pattinson's Batman is not ever with the Nicholas Holtz lex Luthor, So what that doesn't mean we don't get Robert Pattinson's Batman.
Keep them fucking separate. I don't want that Pattinson Batman running into Mix your Mister Mix Opickel.
Or Batman or any of that. Yeah, And James Gunn's stuff allows for that, And that's the thing that is the bummer here, And I think it's the transition point in my mind of what does this look like when they interact with the characters from the NCU.
Can't wait. Actually, it's gonna be fucking awesome.
Because half of it is just gonna be like, why do you look like this? What is with your outfits like and your uniforms and your sense of style? And because again that's the thing. At the end of the Thunderbolts we saw them reacting to the ship, not to the ship itself, but the fact that there was a ship in their orbit, but like part of it would be like, what the fuck does why does the ship
look like that? Cause again it looks so markedly different than anything we've seen in any of the MCU, even the most Again to point out something that I think this movie does better than Black Panther, to speak to the retrofuturism that they actually do in this Unlike Black Panther here it works really well. But yeah, you have to essentially create an entire new universe around this, because there's no way right now with the MCU the way
it is to do it any other way. To your point bottom alone, like, I can't wait to see where they go with it, but they have to address it because there's no way that they don't. Like it's so stark a contrast between Earth eight two eight and Earth six to six.
Oh, I'm sure it'll be a source of comedy in future movies. And what I liked here is that it seems like since studios started taking superhero movies seriously, there has been a push to get as far from comic book accurate costumes as possible, starting with the X Men. Let's put them all in black leather. Okay, sure that makes it somehow more relatable to the real world, so to have them leans so fucking heavy into the original
look of the Fantastic Four. But what I discovered here is because I watched the ninety four version, and they replicate the costumes of comic book almost exactly in that as well different one. The difference is, of course, that these are heavily stitched and designed, and there's an eye towards a real world version of those costumes. You can
do anything, and we'll fucking go with it. Now, after fucking Deadpool and Wolverine, where we've got a comic accurate Remy LeBeau, these days you can pretty much get away with anything.
I'm surprised you mentioned the good old Channing Tatum and not that Wolverine.
Like screen accurate or the comic book act which one the tiny one in the bar, You know that one.
Also they're just think the tiny one's the best one. The yellow one.
Yeah, the tiny one's amazing.
Yeah, no, the yellow one. We finally get the wolverine with the with the.
White eyes and the yeah two batman facing each other.
That's true. And when he put that fucking mask on, like everyone in the fucking theater cheered, and it's such a one hundred and eighty degrees from before, Like, get, we cannot ever show him in this. This is the No one will ever accept this, it's too ridiculous.
Well, they were making jokes about it in the first one. What do you expect?
Yellow spandex I like that the thing has an eyebrow ridge in this. This is the best version of the thing that's ever been put to film. Like, I like Michael Chickliss as an actor. I think he was doing exactly what he was asked for, and that's not a bad thing for him as an actor. But those movies Father Malone already Ranferencill like he's just a sad sack of shit.
Those whole movies.
It's one note. But Michael Chickliss plays that know really well though, Like to his.
Credit, the pasthetic work in that is really good, except they needed to have done something like Peter Jackson photographically sizing him in some way to make it more like he looks like a human being underneath all of that rock. This looks like a rock man.
It's surprising how well the thing works, because it's the one thing that I feel like they haven't been able to get right.
Well. I do want to give the ninety four version it to do because Steve Johnson's suit in that for they had a million dollar budget in that movie, which means he maybe got fifty sixty thousand dollars and he made that one suit. It's fucking incredible. If he had been given a couple of million dollars, we would have had a practical suit in ninety four that would talk and fucking move and fucking clobber and time all day.
Hey man, Those turtle suits in the nineties are a good example that you could have done it if you actually had the wherewithal to do it. Those turtle suits I think are still in my mind like the best animatronics ever made, because those they carry those movies, say which will about those movies, but those are four people in fucking full last puppet suits like given it, they're all and yeah, I think that is the bummer. Is the thing about that original Korman movie is just it's
a big what if. Look the Captain America from the nineties similarly like Luigi.
Wuf Hey Captain America, Come on over here came out and it's bad.
Fantastic four movie at least would have had some charm. And that's the thing, Like the thing that the Fan four Stick movie didn't have that those first two had were they were at least like mildly charming, Chris Evans charming, Michael Chicklis charming, like they're all charming like that Fan for Stick just is like let's be serious, ugh, and they take all the fun and the charm out of it.
We've talked about him a little bit, but I think speaking of charm, I think for me, like Pedro Pascal, this is I'm good now, Like I don't need you to be in everything anymore. And this is like the thing where I'm like.
I really liked him, honestly, I know, I like it.
That's the thing, Like he's really good and this is like I'm saying, like peak Pedro Pascal, But dude, what else can you be in at this point because you've now been like in everything in a degree that no one else can even replicate.
People.
He's like a singular Star Wars character for them too, Like more important than fucking Luke and Han Solo Mandalorian is. Some people's like the Star Wars they only care about, which it's that's fucking Pedro Pascal.
Like He's been around for quite a while now, and I've seen him in tons and tons of things, but I've only recently warmed Pedro Pascal. So this is the perfect movie for me to finally embrace him because I loved his Read Richards. We got the actual perfect Read Richards in that doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness. No one could portray the smug, fucking assholary that is Reid Richards like John Krasinski.
Thank God, I do not like John Krasinsky at all. He's such a smug guy right like, he plays it so well.
I despise him.
I was so glad that they kept the stretching to a minimum and that they didn't do just stretch for stretch sake, like I like when he used his arm to go up on the blackboard.
I was like, Okay, that works, And I liked that the blackboard was also it looked mid century modern that it came up in peaks, but it also made sense because he could stretch up that far in the big.
Action scene at the end when he's going around and he's stretching all over the place like that looks all right. But keep that shit to a minimum. We don't really need to see it because no matter what, no matter how they do it, it's always going to be uncanny because we just don't move that way, so it's always going to be weird. So I think they do is best of a job as a can by keeping it to a small percentage of it. And I liked when Galaxis was stretching him out. Oh my god, the pain
on his face. I thought that was really great. I think the one missed moment for this is when Sue is laying on the street, possibly dead. She should have woken up and said, I really want to try some shwarma.
All I could think was, man read Richards is not putting his back into that CPR. He's find out her. Come on, dude, dude, that's your wife. Brother, But dau Sex Franklin, Richard's baby.
Yeah, and that's when that baby looks awful. A few times in there. There's a few times, especially like when he's trying to get to his mother, I'm just like, oh, CG baby all it's CG. But baby head nor that baby has the power cosmic, all right.
It does have the power cosmic. It can bring people back to life.
In the comics, Schallibal one time appeared as a silver Surfer because Galactus in the form of Franklin Richards made her.
Do you some, Michelle Obama, shallabala shallabaal shalla bala gamala. That was the other thing that was nice because this movie is set in like retrofuturism. Like I went into this movie is like I forgot that there was a
real world outside. And that is again I think Father Malone you would agree clearly having seen it twice now, like there's something to be said for that given that, like we literally two weekends ago talked about Superman not doing that Superman literally just being like, let's steer into this shit with the rage baiting troll of Lex luthoran there's none of that here and again, and you we've already talked about a little bit in this universe. It
is a much better world, clearly than our own. Can you imagine what twenty twenty five would look like if this was the universe that we lived in. Just again, the world coming together to turn all of our electricity off? Other than these one group of assholes in Latvaria, what would that look like?
And they've even started galactus cults. I was like, oh fuck that, plus.
The death cults they're coming.
I wept many times during this movie. I know I'm a sentimental old man and everything, but there were moments of actual, fucking pure emotion. This movie features a birth in space. I've never seen that in a movie, and it is emotional and appropriate, and it comes in the middle like of an action sequence. I don't know, gentlemen, this.
Movie has made for Father Malone. Yeah, it really was.
And here's the thing, Like I said, I'm not the biggest Fantastic fore fan. I can take or leave. The fact that they were going to have Silver Surfer in this had my money, and the fact that we were getting screen accurate Galactus and everyone involved. Obviously, I was gonna go see this movie, but I had no expectation whatsoever, and it really won me over It really reinvigorated my interest in the Marvel sort of universe. I can't wait
to fucking finish this goddamn saga, the multiverse saga. We got three more, is it?
Now?
We've got Spider Man and the two Avengers movies, and then we're done, and then we can fucking move on to our next frontier. And it can't come soon enough because if this is where we're going, I'm so excited.
Does that mean that Marvel is now just gonna do this is its own thing like that The Fantastic Four are just gonna have two sequels or as many as this time allows, and it'll just be in their universe. That's my hope.
We could be so lucky.
If you go to other multiversal things that have been done, one of them, speaking of DC, is Injustice the video game. In the video game, in the first one, it's like a multiversal crossover that causes the issues, but the second game has nothing to do with that, and it's just taking place in that universe that was dealing with multiversal stuff in the first game, but now it's just dealing
with things in that universe. They're different than the universe you're used to but we don't go and have alternate universe Batman brought in. We don't have any of that. Again, It's just that's whatever is taking place in this universe is that is that version of the game, and that's what I would like to see what the MCU after this.
It's like I would like if these movies stay in their own lane moving forward and don't get bogged down in the MCU of it all, because I think the MCU could do like the DCEU is going to do and allow things to just be their own things. And there's nothing wrong with that, because I don't think Father Malone, your favorite Superheroes Captain America Sam Wilson would not work
on Earth eight to eight the end. It just wouldn't work, and I don't want to see it, and I would prefer to just have this be its own thing moving forward after whatever they decide to do with Doomsday and everything else.
Yeah, I agree with you. If they go back to Earth A two eight and they just chill because they are, as far as I can see, the Earth's only real protectors. Keep them with that Earth, let them stay there, let them have their thing, Let the move against other villains. If they need to. I'm excited to see the deleted scenes with John Malkovich. I think that would be pretty cool singing it to him. And from the just the tiniest images that I've seen, I don't know if he's
in jail during it or what's going on. We get the red apes. I'm not familiar with that character, so it seems so cheesy to have these red apes going around. But I'm like, yeah, that's the fantastic four I love it.
Oh yeah, man, Red Ghost is fantastic. He's got his army of apes. Yeah, they're really fun. And the fact that it was going to be Malkovich, I feel like we got robbed of a few movies of just the sort of wacky adventures that's fantastic for.
Yeah, he was on the poster, not his face, but his name. So I was just like, oh, I wouldn't for a while because I was trying to stay away from this stuff as much as possible. I was like, I wonder if he's voice in Galactis. That would be interesting, this this big cloud with John Malcov's voice coming out of.
It, just like a young man coming in for a QUVICKI.
She'll so unseatisfied, and there's a little bit of moment of comedy in here right at the end to lighten it up with them trying to put the baby seat in, and I was like, that actually works for me.
Had that been at the beginning of the movie, I don't know if I would have taken it. But by the end I have such good will for these characters that I just like, Yeah, this is it and that they need to use fucking teamwork to make it work.
This movie makes the unthinkable real and it gives Ben Grimm facial hair that doesn't look ridiculous.
Oh my god, it was awesome. That was great.
I was like, man, that's so cool.
He walks into that temple with the hat and everything. I was like, yeah, man, he looks like a rabbi. He's great.
I will say I wish that they had given the it's clobbering time moment a little bit more of a pause, or maybe my movie theater just wasn't loud enough, like the mixing wasn't loud enough. But it got lost in the explosion punching galactus in the side of the face of it all.
And it's also in the moment where Galactus is stretching Reid Richards, which is very harrowing, and then they cut away to this sort of raw moment and it's it is lost in it.
Yeah, it's jarring because, like I did see in one of the final trailers for the movie, they showed the lead up to that scene, but they don't show that it's clobbering time payoff, and I was like, man, I can't wait to see what it's like in the movie.
And then when I saw the movie, was like, man, I almost wish they had just done that fucking Captain America thing where it's like Avengers dot dot dot, Like I wish they had just done that, like given it for a moment and maybe Avengers dooms there or something where we actually have him say it, because if this was going to be it, I don't know. You didn't give the moment enough time to breathe, which is a weird thing to say for a rockman screaming at a giant space god.
And the next time he says it, I want him to say it very quietly and mean right, like it's clovering time.
And then just whack this shit out of Doctor Doom like Uppercut him. Yeah, the Thing is a character that you could give them his own thing, like you could give any of these characters or own things. That's maybe another direction to go to is split that split them off and do their own thing as well.
I used to read that The Thing had at least one spinoff series that I read all of that, and it was almost a little not quite Planet Hulk esque, but it was him on another planet kind of doing his own thing because he just felt like such an outsider. And I was like, Okay, yeah, this works. I love that series.
Yeah, man, and please, I know we're getting a neuron rad silver Surfer from what I hear they're doing in as like they did the Werewolf by Night. They're going to do it as like a special And please, for the love of God, because we can do any kind of story we want, give us existential neurin Rad. Give please, just half an hour of him just surfing the fucking universe is fine. Whatever plan they had to knock Galactus to the other side of their universe, they opened a
black hole. They'd have no fucking idea where you went.
Maybe they did just send him to Earth sixty six by accident.
Because look, all the action takes place on our Earth, in the Marvel universe, so they can have their fun over there, but all the shit's gonna end up here eventually.
Yeah, any of the serious stuff anyway, anythings where the stakes need to be resolved, I feel like are going to have to take place on Earth.
So, as far as I can tell, the next Marvel movie that TV show. But the next Marvel movie is that Spider Man movie, which is set to come out July thirty first, twenty twenty.
Six, just fucking wild.
And then it's six months later Avengers Doomsday, and then a year later Secret Wars.
We've gone into the feast and famine times. We're in the famine times with Marvel.
Hey man, if we got to wait and we had movies like this, fucking take a year, take two years.
As a video gamer, this is a thing that we deal with, like a lot of oversaturation of things. I think Marvel and Disney and Star Wars reach an oversaturation point during probably would we all say, early pandemic years twenty one twenty two, Like I think everybody was getting burned out in that general.
Once that fucking Boba Fete thing was up. The tails from Boba fet By then I think it was like that was all over all of the fucking sequels, oh suh.
And for me with Marvel, it was like stuff like Moonnight. I like Moonnight a lot, actually do too, but it doesn't have any stakes with anything. It doesn't seem like it's ever gonna matter.
Those were all over long may all should have been two hour movies. All of those series were nothing but diluting everything that was going on with Marble.
Well, that's the thing, like you just said, with the Werewolf by Night, they I didn't need a full fucking series that was exactly enough, perfect enough.
Can I, by the way, recommend you know they have that in color. If you can watch that in color, watch it in color. It's a thousand times better.
I was gonna say, speaking of Michael Giacchino, Wow, talk about doing some heavy lifting in this movie and Fantastic Four theme that lead motif. I wouldn't say modern day John Williams, but definitely someone who has that level of grandeur when it comes to working in the film landscape, because it gives this movie like a sense of scale that it needed. And again, like we've already mentioned, the
Fantastic Four is only Earth's defender. There needs to be some real weight given to these characters and what they're dealing with, because it's the four of them between destruction.
Wells, it's got a lot of frolicsome early sixties lounge music kind of themes going on.
Well, it was nice too that, as far as I could tell, the songs weren't Earth songs, that they were like Earth songs but a little bit different because it's a whole different Earth. And I was like, like fringe when they would go to the alternate universe and they would see like different cars, like different It was the Eric Stoltz version of Back to the Future. Those differences were there, which I liked. And it wasn't like punching
you in the face with things. So it wasn't like we had to have a music video where it was kind of like the Beatles but not quite them. It's okay, please. Like even though this universe, this world, this eight too, eight could have lent itself to really gimmicky garbage type stuff, they stayed away from it. They didn't even focus on
the cartoon that much. Is a couple of moments during the movie and then having the cartoon intro at the end I thought was really a smart thing and also harkened back to the end of the One Spider Man movie where they're no way helme. I think, where they're all pointing at each other, and I think one of the Sony animation.
Ones where it's the animated one does that is.
The twenty ninety nine version of Spider Man coming in. Yeah, that was nice and I thought that was a very nice way to end it.
I'm glad that this movie didn't dip, like it's toe too much into comedy. I would say it's about as comedic as any Marvel film is, but I would say it's less so in my mind, like there are moments of comedy, but we're thankfully getting away from those Josh Weedon moments that MCU was plagued by for a decade after Avengers ice crackery. But it was also like serious beat, serious beat joke to undercut the two serious beats because we could never be serious. This movie doesn't do that.
Thunderbolts doesn't really do that either. I went and rewatched Thunderbolts as well to see.
I did too. By the way, my estimation has grown, my criticisms remain. I think it's clunky and really poorly paced, but yeah, the ending is like fucking riotously good to.
Your point, Like, I think it's way better than it had any right to be. And I have really enjoyed rewatching it like two or three times.
Even that's a good team. Really enjoy them.
And same here. Like as much as maybe Pedro Pscal for me doesn't do all the heavy lifting, he's almost the Leonardo of the group. There always has to be one character that can stand to be underwritten a little bit but doesn't always have to be. But Pedro Bescal is great. But for me, I think all of this movie really does benefit from the four leads just being so great together in a way that the Thunderbolts were. And I'm hopeful that with more team based fucker.
Let's do that. Yeah, yeah, keep giving us teams for Christik, give us the fucking Midnight Sun, right they're sitting right there, I know.
And I'm hopeful for the X Men, like I'm hopeful for whatever we get of the X Men, but I'm hopeful that it's great because they've been nailing it with these big hero teams recently, and the chemistry is really where this kind of comes down to, and they the actors right now, they must just be champion at the bit to work with Marvel. If you're in a team setting, because you get to work with these great actors and feed off of one another, it must be great.
So you're saying that Pedro Pescal is good, but he can be better.
Maybe the movie that made Pedro Pescal never want to shave his face again, apparently, is what he has said. I hated the way I looked about facial hair.
You just said it. Chris Hopeful for the future of superhero movies, I thought it was all over, And finally it seems people are figuring out that you got to give us a good story and take your time and make the characters enjoyable and make everything pay off and maybe in still a sense of awe and wonder that we all go to the fucking movies for in the first place.
As much as Deadpool Wolverine last year didn't nail it, the thing that movie nailed was that fucking team up at the end. That was the best part of that whole movie. That's the best team up I think in any of those Deadpool movies, because they're like Okay, there's a sense of those characters, there's a sense of how Deadpool interacts with them, there's a sense of how they interact with Deadpool. They're all different, but they are all
on a similar wavelength and that works really well. And I can't help but wonder how much of that positive energy and chemistry of those teams work their ways into the other scripts and the things that were being worked on around the same time being filmed and going into production like this movie was and Thunderbolts really and I just that Deadpool Wolverine movie just everything, but the team up at the end is eh. But you know what, if that sets the tone for some of these things
moving forward. Great, because there's about to be a really big team up thing, and I hope it's half as good as that original Avengers big ass team up was with Endgame because our Infinity War, because that's a pretty high barred across at this point. But these are some good team up, teamed team films, so I can only hope that beyond this it'll be better. Hopeful.
There's nothing but potential from everything that's come up until now. All of the films have been they've been all disappointing in one way or another. But now we know who those characters are, we're established with them. If we can get them into a situation that is half as good as Infinity War, I think we're golden.
For the first time in a long time, there's a good Marvel and a good DC movie in the movie theaters that you could go watch on a Saturday, back to back and not have a bad time with either.
And by the way, it was never one versus the other. As comic book fans, we love both of them like we want them both to succeed.
And if you don't feel that way, then get the fuck out of here, because that's only good for us that they're both successful. I mean it's good for them too, obviously financially, but as consumers them being good at the same time actually makes both of them better in the long run, because if you're just resting on your laurels, one of the other ones can be complacent. Marvel saw DC and went, well, we're just going to elevate ourselves
further than them. They looked at him and went, these guys just keep shooting themselves in the foot over and over again. It's like racing a one legged man. You're ahead of the whole time, and Marvel got so complacent that they're having to redo everything. But I'm so excited to see what that is at this point because the way they treat the audiences is so markedly different from ten years ago, let alone two thousand and eight. So yeah, hopeful for the first time with Marvel is wild. This
Marvel is one thing, but DC is another. So collectively, this is a first I think in our lifetimes with these kinds of things.
Really, it was very strange when I went to the theater. I pulled right into a very convenient spot. There were very few people in the lobby. There are very few people in my theater. I know it did very well this weekend, but it was pretty empty when I was sitting there, which was a big surprise for me because I was expecting packed everything. I was like, Oh, this is the Fantastic four, this is going to be huge. The theater was overflowing for Endgame, of course, but not here.
Yeah, I don't think they've built up the good will yet. Like Thunderbolts was a good first step, Honestly, that before first steps, this has.
Taken a lot of momentum to get to this point, and this is a good thing that this will keep it building and not stifle it. But to your point, Mike, like I went saw it in my theater was almost full, and I saw it today one in the afternoon on a Sunday. The post church crowd in the Midwest show up for this movie. So I'm thankful for that because they're kind of the hardest ones to get through the door sometimes, especially on the weekends, because there's so much
other stuff to do. But there were plenty of people there, and it was a pretty mixed crowd too, a lot of adults, but there were also some families with kids.
There was one couple in the theater with a baby, and so whenever Franklin would get upset, the baby would get upset. So now it was almost like stereo.
It was don't be at most feel everything.
Chris, when you're not talking about the Fantastic Four? What are you up to these days?
Just doing audio stuff with you over at weirdingwaymedia dot com. You and Father Alone. We do a little show with Father Malone every other week. We're on his show midnight viewing. And then I've taken a little bit of a break from my show to retoul it. But the Culture Cast still has six hundred and ninety one episodes, So if you want to go listen to that show, it's on weirding Way Media too, But that's where you can go for everything that.
I work on.
What about you fodd him alone?
You just mentioned my show Midnight Viewing, where we look at horror anthologies and horror things in general. You gentlemen, and I every other week look at tails from the dark Side. Currently, those other weeks aren't filled with a bunch of fests. Right now, mister Walters and I are currently going through the works of John Fusco and our Fusco Fest. We've also begun our Yaucha Fest, which is the actual name of the race in the Predator movies.
We're starting with Predator this Friday. It's a great series. We're having a lot of fun doing it. That's what we're up to.
You get two thumbs up for me Predator Rius What is this Marl logo?
Hey, exactly why we're calling it Yaucha Fest?
Youcha Yaucha Fest. That's got a nice ring to it.
I like on that one.
And as for me, you can find everything that I do also at wordingwaymedia dot com, including the projection booth which you are currently listening to. You might be listening to this under the Culture cast or under Midnight Viewing, but yes, all of those Wordingwaymedia dot Com. Come on over, give us a listen. I think you'll be very pleased.
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