Who better to understand art than the artists themselves. Each week, the Talk House Podcast pairs musicians, filmmakers, and other creative minds for illuminating one on one conversations that touch on everything from the mechanics of music making to their favorite candy bar to their social and emotional wellbeing. You never know where these chats are going to go, but it's
always somewhere these artists haven't gone before. Listener favorites from the past few seasons include Jeff Tweety from Wilco with Abby Jacobson from Broad City, Guierramo del Toro from many many movies including Pinocchio with William Friedkin of Exorcist fame and Kim Deal of the nineties, Grunjack the Breeders with Courtney Barnett, indie rock artist. Every week has a new pairing, so subscribe to The Talk House Podcast in your favorite
platform today. Before we start the episode, wanted to share some tragic news. Brian Vasquez, the composer of our theme music and our interstitial music, as well as the theme for my show Takeline and for other cricket properties like Dare We Say, passed away earlier this week with his friends and his family around him.
As you may know, Brian was diagnosed with leukemia in November. We mentioned it on the show at the time with the link to the go fundme supporting Brian's medical costs, which many of you kindly contributed to, and we're very grateful for that.
Here on x Ray, we won't forget Brian's contributions to the show. His generosity, is amazing talent, his positive attitude, and of course through his music. He'll always be a part of the show. Is a joy to work with, as anyone who had the opportunity to collaborate with him. Contest warning, this podcast contains spoilers for the first four episodes of The Bad Batch Season two.
Hello.
My name is Jason Concepcion and I'm Rosie Nike and welcome to x Vision, the Crooked Media podcast where we dived into your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
In this episode. In the previously on, we're gonna be talking about that VFX union that simmering in Hollywood.
Let's go, let's go.
It's time to happen some very interesting parallels with the comic book union struggles. We're gonna be talking more about the AI Art conversation with a very interesting and quite unexpected update in the airlock, we're gonna be catching up on a Bad Batch season two. I know our discord is excited. It's gonna be episodes one to four. There's a lot of fun, weird stuff in there. And in the nerd out Rodney pictures us on a secret invasion scroll theory that I am actually shocked we hadn't already
thought about. So we're gonna be talking about this.
Oh yeah, I think it's a good one coming up. Let's get into the previously on Okay, first up. As reported by Vulture January thirteenth, twenty twenty three, story written by Chris Lee, VFX workers.
In the movie industry.
I wanted to say Hollywood, but I think an important wrinkle in this story and the issues herein is that it's global. There's often no physical proximity of these workers to the places where these movies are made. They're all over the world. So essentially, these workers all across the globe are talking about forming an union. Here's a quote
from the piece. Talk to any VFX artists or tech working in modern Hollywood, and certain complaints come up over and over again, the punishing deadlines, the grueling work hours, too few workers charged with too much work underpayment, and systematic quote pixel fucking, an industry phrase used to describe the behavior of nippicking clients who lack the VFX knowledge to communicate their needs. I think that that last bit
is an important part of this. This is an incredibly skill based, tech based, obviously specialized field, and I think it seems like magic if you're not directly involved in creating this stuff. Yes, and I think it can be very easy to say, well, can't you just like make the fir move when you don't know what the hell you're talking about. And the end result of this is
artists being put through the ringer to create stuff. And the MCU Marvel is front and center of this just because of the weight of the footprint that they have in the space.
Yes, this whole article is just full of brilliant reporting, but there are some unbelievable numbers in this article about how you know, in the era of a kind of like an industrialits and magic, Like just post the original Star Wars, you're talking about like ten percent of all movies that would have any kind of CG post production and now it's ninety percent yeah right, And not just that, but places like Marvel, which you know, this was something
we spoke about this topic before in summer last year, when this massive amount of stories, Reddit threads, tweets came out about the way that Marvel had been treating people
in post production houses. And one of the biggest complaints that come up against here is one of the ironically comes from one of the best things that Marvel does, which is where they take an under represented or newer director who has maybe only made a few indie movies Chloe Jao Tyker, Ryan Coogler, and then there doesn't seem to be a good go between between that director, the studio,
and the VFX. So one of the things that they get into quite detailed here, which is just shocking, is this kind of having to rewrite the entire end of the movie a month before they're meant to be done, and then they're having to rebuild from scratch because a lot of times they'll just say this happens instead, and then you have an artist who has to craft that entire thing. There is also a number in here, I believe where and this one is really painful when you
think about how much money these movies make. I believe they said that they did a survey of payment of people who worked in these fields. One of them, the lowest pay that they found was like seventeen dollars and thirty four cents an hour, which is just absolutely nightmarish for these eighteen hour days. You know that you have to work to be able to finish this movie that is going to make a billion dollars. So I'm really glad that there's kind of this voracious quest for unionization.
But the thing that I find really interesting from reading this article that kind of blew my mind. I didn't really realize how similar the problem is. As you kind of very astutely pointed out, Jason, the lack of a physical space that all of these people work in. It's not a warehouse, it's not.
An office, makes it harder.
Yeah, there are twelve, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen twenty houses sometimes all around the world working on this. And the biggest similarity to comics, a lot of people who do this job are freelancers. It is incredibly hard to unionize as freelancers. That is what for a long time has kept comics so hard to unionize because when you write a comic book for work for hire, you are not an employee. You may be an editor who is an employee who perhaps writes a story, but in general you are hired
work hire. You are not an employee. You don't get benefits, you don't really have any employment rights. You are just hired for that one thing. And that is very much in the same scope as what the VFX space is struggling with. I'm very interested to see where this goes, because a lot of times all you need is the one place to do it, and that's something they talk about.
Here Break the Seal.
You know, we had talked about Image comics unionizing, right and how the inside the company workers had tried to start a union that was not voluntarily recognized. Very ironic. But the takeaway from this article that some people have in the piece is kind of that hopefully one house will unionize, one space, one company, the people within it will unionize, and then from there that can be the start of a bigger union, which I think is what everyone hopes for for comics too. Yeah, this was just
such a great reason and I'm very interested. The wildest thing is like if there was a strike and obviously it'll be like a wildcat strike because there's not a union. But like if there was a strike, I mean movies would that would just the industry would come to a standstill.
I Mean the issue is, as you noted, is the kind of diffuse nature of the VFX industry. Various houses, they're all around the world. How do you get them to strike as one because what would happen? You know, the threat is significantly lessened when a producer, a platform whoever can just say, Okay, well you're not going to do it, I'm going to go over to this other place. And so that's why these issues are very important, and it's also an outgrowth. I see this as very related
to the issue of crunch in the video game space. Yes, crunch being the kind of like culturally accepted portion of the production schedule of a video game during which it is expected that employees essentially live at the fucking office
and kill themselves to make this game go gold. Now, significant difference being oftentimes with crunch and with video game production, you do have employees all in the same place, and there is I think, contra the Hollywood and television, there is from the leadership in video games a keen understanding of the work and the type of work that goes into creating the game.
So and I will also say that there was a huge and very widespread movement by the Game Workers Union to start union that really did like spark off some change there. So that's kind of what I feel like could happen here hopefully.
I think in general, just this conversation, the fact that it's happening out in public, the fact that VFX workers are having their voices heard about the issues that impact them, it's really positive. And if the end result of this is, you know, a wing of IATZI for VFX workers or the like, then I think that we've made a big step. Listen, the rest of Hollywood is extremely unionized, the directors, the producers, the writers. I'm a member of the writers guilds. Yeah,
that's how I get my other churance. You know, It's like you see the benefits of it, and it just makes sense to me that this extremely integral piece of the machinery should also you knowze just as the rest of them have.
I totally agree. And it seems shocking, like it says in this article multiple times, like you'll speak to like a camera operator and some and you'll tell them you're not unionized, and they're like, what the fuck, Like, how are you not unionized?
What the fuck? Yeah?
Yeah, I think that I have to say. And look, people listen to the podcast. They know what we talk about, they know what we read. I have a copy of Uncanny X Men one eighty five behind me, you know, Storm without her Powers. But I think there is a direct line here between the way that Marvel and y C. But let's talk about Marvel because that's what we're talking about have always treated creators and the rights of the
artists who have made this work for them. Direct line from that to how little they value the creators who
are now making these movies for them. And I hope that with the current lawsuits with the heirs of some of the biggest superhero characters, including like the heirs of Steve Ditko for Spider Man, and the upcoming potential reversion of rights that that lawsuit could have alongside this potential VFX union, I would love to see a shift and a change in that corporate culture that could finally maybe start to put the rights and the proper capital and
ownership and also just compensation back in the hands of the people who make these stories possible, whether it's comic book creators or VFX artists, who nowadays are equally important to those stories.
I actually do see them as significantly different issues. The work for hire creators who created Batman, Superman, the X Men, etc. Not getting their do I think is a very specific and sad issue that has been addressed in dribs and drabs. You know, Marvel and DC both give royalties now, et cetera, Like there is a bonus paid when a created character goes into a.
Movie sometimes sometimes let's say, very minimal.
The VFX workers, while it is a creative job, are to me more like the grips and the lighting people in that they're doing a mechanical thing, not just like following a flight of fancy to be like, oh, I'm going to make this character's costume exactly the way that I want, Like they're following a set order of things that have kind of passed down from the creators. At the same time, they are integral to the process. And I think that part of we're going to talk about
the AI art class action lawsuit right after this. I think that broadly there is something that is not talked about enough when it comes to these kind of like tech based worker issues, and it affects the consumers as well.
And it's that things change so quickly in tech. The way that we make movies now, with the volume and et cetera, it's completely different, even though like your computer graphics have been around for thirty plus years is completely different than the we're making movies ten years ago, twenty
years ago, et cetera. Yeah, and so there is I think often an ease of disconnect between the older generation of producer, creator, whoever that has been working in the space and the younger people, more tech savvy people who are coming up. It's just the worlds are so different that they operate in that it's very easy and almost financially incentivized.
To just like not really know what they do. And that actually causes a.
Big problem that That's one of the things that comes up time and time again in this conversation is if you have a director or a producer who doesn't really understand the nature of the work, yes, then it's easy for them to come to you three weeks before the movie's meant to be done and say, hey, I need you to redo that like completely, and I don't really have a visualization for it. This just needs to happen.
It's very like you said that disconnect makes it easy to push that work onto people without necessarily thinking about how much time or if it takes. And I also think that, like you said, that there's a lack of knowledge and education, maybe purposefully, but about how those changes are happening. I was incredibly shocked to find out that Victoria Alonso, who's done so much brilliant work at Marvel, I was very shocked to find out that she's the
head of post production space in that company. That is a job that I would assume you would have somebody who worked in post production doing so they could be that person between the two. You can be that middleman who make sure that the people know, the directors know what is needed, and the VFX people know what is needed. So I think there's that disconnect is a huge problem, and hopefully a union would be able to at least bridge that a little bit.
I mean, use the leverage and the weight that they have, hopefully for good, in order to have the workers' issues heard, and certainly not create a thing where people are working around the clock in order to make a movie or TV show happen. One of the people I work with, Peter Murrietta, who created Which There's a Waverley Place, He always says there's no such thing as a television emergency. I would say that the same thing is true for movies.
While people you know, it's good to work hard, and sometimes you need to put in a twelve hour day, we get it, but.
They say, I'm regular eighteen nowadays.
But there should be no situation in which people are like, are just grilling themselves in order to make a fucking Avengers movie come out.
I love Avengers movies, but like, come on, Okay.
The AI class action lawsuit, We've been talking about it.
The Internet has been talking about the leaps and bounds by which creative AI, whether it's Chat, GBT and the written word, or the various AI art engines Stability, AI, Stable Diffusion, etc. Have been kind of reshaping the creative space, and now a selection of artists have filed the class action suit against the AI Company's mid Journey, who makes Stable Diffusion, as well as DV and Art, who they allege allowed these AI engines to kind of like scrape
their platform of art without informing the artists who post there have filed a class action lawsuit. From a Polygon article from January seventeenth, written by Nicole Clark, quote, the pseudoledges that these companies violated the rights of millions of artists by using billions of Internet images to train its AI art tool without the consent of artists, without compensating
any of those artists. These companies benefit commercially and profit richly from the use of copyright images, the pseudo ledges quote. The harm to artists is not hypothetical, the suit says, noting that the works created by Generative AI art are quote already sold on the Internet, siphoning commissions from the
art artists themselves. We talked about this briefly. I've been surprised that there haven't been more class action suits, but I think this piece takes that on, saying that it's most of the experts, while kind of split on whether what Stability or mid Journey are doing are actually illegal, do agree that depending on how this class action.
Suit goes, there will surely surely be others.
And the good thing about class action lawsuits anyone can just jump on once it's out there, you know. Yeah, and this is a big deal because there's actually like,
these are like high profile people. I'd actually read a really great article written by Sarah Anderson, who makes the webcomics Sarah Scribbles, which if you don't immediately know it by name, you will immediately recognize it if you see it, and she'd written about how people had taken what were essentially like her diary comics and put them into this AI and were already replicating them. And so these are
quite big name people. One of the other names on this is like an illustrator has done stuff for Marvel, like the film studios and for Wizards of the Coast, So I think that helps as well, having like three high profile people who are willing to put their name to it. And the filing is wild. They found forty pages of alleged copyright infringements and stuff and different ways that the AI was infringing on people's rights. So I'm very interested to see where this goes. I think this
is good. I think that, as a lot of people have pointed out, this could be the moment when it goes from like a Napster type thing to a Spotify. You know, this could be that turning point where people find a way of doing it. I hope it ends up being more financially viable for artists than spotifyers. Yeah, but yeah, I think this is probably an interesting thing that we should definitely be keeping our eyes on. Yeah.
I think that, you know, who knows. There is some interesting conversation in a Verge piece written by James Vincent about this that kind of tries to dissect issues regarding fear use of this art and whether training in AI is fair use versus whether using that training to create content is fair use. I think there's that's really going to be where the rubber meets the road, zooming out,
because who knows how that's going to go. I think one of my concerns with this is that AI art and the way it's trained AI art and the text generation AIS, the way they're trained, it seems to bring us back to like an earlier form of wealth creation that was based on I get richer by taking your shit.
You can.
Whatever criticisms we all have of capitalism and neoliberalism and the way it exploits the workers.
Yeah, it's like we had autistic feudalism. It's like I'm taking your shit post the mid nineteenth century. The basic thesis is like, okay, like you give us your time by working in the factory, and you make a little bit more money so that you can buy some conveniences that make your life easier.
Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Okay.
The AI era is you have done all this really really hard work for decades and we're just gonna take it, and we're gonna fucking take it, and that's how we're gonna build the value of our company.
And that is really troubling.
I think you're absolutely right. I think that's the most worrying thing. And I also think that's something that a lot of people seem to have missed in these conversations, is like, yeah, mid Journey is scraping from billions of images or millions of images, whatever they say, and that you can make the argument that that makes it harder
to compensate people or to give people credit. Right, But I've seen multiple examples of people who are using these generators or generators that use this r and just feeding one person's art in feeding fifty images of that person's are and then just plagiarizing that pep of persons are But saying they created it, And yeah, so I think you're spot on, and I think there's numerous different issues with this, one of which is that it devalues the work of artists and not just like it's really weird
how all this stuff is kind of tied in because something people will be like, well, you know that VFX artist who is earning seventeen dollars an hour, Well, that's just they're doing their job and that's what the job's valued at. But no, because when you do a job, you're really being paid for all the work that went into it, or the way, the time that you have to spend to do it, or the rigamarole that it takes on your body. Like there's all these different things.
And as an artist, when you do a commission, when you pay an artist five hundred dollars to commission you some beautiful portrait, you're really paying for not just the time that they spend to draw it, but all of the studying that they did or the practice all of that. And while some people argue that AIAR democratizes art because then you know, anyone can just make a picture by writing a word on the internet, that's not really that simple.
That's like a really nice idealistic viewpoint. And I love the idea of accessibility, but guess what, Art's already accessible. You just need a pencil, pencil and a piece of paper.
You know.
I said this the previous time we talked about this, but it's essentially the way it's being used now. It is a wealth transfer from the working artists who do storyboards, who do the art for book covers, who do the
art for album covers. We've already seen that happening and transferring those monies that those artists would have earned, and taking it at scale and transferring it to the value of these AI companies because of the work that they can make easier for the people who are producing various kinds of products.
And I think that that.
Is, you know, we need to grapple with the question of whether that's actually something we want to do. And hopefully this lawsuit will open the floodgates and we'll see some more because I think, you know, just some of the ways that these various companies have kind of like built their corporate structure, it's very clear that they want
to insulate themselves from lawsuits. The way that they've targeted where to scrape art very clearly shows that they're targeting artists who don't have the resources.
They're not scraping Mickey Mouse. They're scraping Yeah, No, we're not going to Disney dot com.
And like, you know, like they're they're very clearly avoiding you know, big land mines, and that to me lets you know that they kind of understand that what they're doing is going to be objectionable to a great many people.
Yeah, they're they're creating like a gray legal area where this was actually in that Verge piece, you know, the James Vincent piece that you mentioned that was written in November last year, and they actually say that part of the reason why they think there hasn't been any lawsuits is because it's so expensive. Yeah, and that's what this class action lawsuit could potentially answer. And that's kind of
why it's a bit of an out there. People expected it to be a corporation or or someone with a lot of money who would be able to bring that first lawsuit. But this allows multiple people to be a part of it. And yet I'll be very interested that law firm is very well thought of in these cases, and I saw them one of the first people I saw who posted it said the lawsuits claimed back like four billion for people in similar class actions, So I'll be very interested to see where it goes. It's such
a complex topic. But like you said, even between now and the last time we talked about it, yeah, Tor had to do an apology the publisher because they had bought a cover art that they thought was from a stock artist on a website and it turned out it was generated by AI. But they'd already made the books and they couldn't afford to reprint them. So this is already taking money from artists pockets, even in a most abstract way, even if we're not talking about someone directly plagiarizing.
This is already, like their lawsuit claims, taking money out of the pockets of artists, and like you said, it's a wealth transfer. I think that's a really great way to put it, and it's not the way that it's supposed to be. And I hope this lawsuit can open, like you said, open the floodgates, open the doors on a bigger conversation about the morals of this stuff.
Up next, we're gonna be catching up on the first four episodes of The Bad Batch Disney Plus, we're stepping out of the airlock to join forces with Clone Force ninety nine aka the Bad Batch, those genetic mutants that we all love so much, for more action and thrills
in season two. Note for listeners, unlike the Last of Us, we won't be covering The Bad Batch week to week, but we'll be dropping in mostly on our second episode of the week, our Friday episode, The Bad Batch, created by Dave Filoni, of course starring d Bradley Baker as the Bad Patch.
All of them, that's right, all of them.
Great booking by d Bradley Baker, Hunter record Tech, Crosshair, and of course Echo Michelle angas Omega.
That must be so crazy to do all these voices.
I know, especially now it's like a two season long show. This is no longer like a four episode off, you know, as it was supposed to be.
I gotta say Season two of The Bad Batch opens really, really strong. Yeah, but we're going to focus on the last two episodes, starting with episode three, The Solitary Clone, and then episode four Faster, which is really just an action episode, but a really great action episode, shouts so tech,
good driving. Starting with episode three, the solitary Clone. We see an Imperial shuttle arrive on Desex, which is a farming world, and it's carrying the Imperial Governor of the planet, plus a squadron of Clone troopers in their new early storm trooper armor. They are met by Tawny Ames, who
is the native governor of this planet. The Imperial Governor Grotten, is here to bring Desex, which was a separatist world a separatist hold out, into the Empire, and Ames is like, no, we fought on the side of the separatists against the Republic. We want to be independent. We fought for that independence, we earned it. And there's a reason we haven't joined the Empire, and that's because we don't fucking want to. And then she calls out her army of battle Droids,
who have they ever won a battle anyway? She calls on her Army of battle Droyd. She's feeling Optimis's feeling good about it, and the battle Droids eject the Imperials from the planet with a message that's essentially like listen, don't come back, and don't try it on Corussant. Admiral Rampart Summon's cross hair from the mess hall cross Hair. There's a really nice detailing hero where we see how different cross Hair is from the rest of the Imperial clones.
First of all, he wears the black armor. Second of all, nobody wants to eat with him.
Yeah, I was gonna say, these mess whole scenes. For so long, installars animation have been this space of like camaraderie where we get to see the way the clones interact. So it's really really stark and striking that we see cross here here and alone, no brothers, no clones, this is just him. And yeah, it's it's really it's really good smart storytelling.
So Rampart calls cross Hair to his office and he says, listen, I'm sending you to Desex. Your mission is by herker by Crook. You bring down Tawny Ames, the governor or, so whither we can replace her with, you know, our governor, Governor Grotten. Crosshair then goes to meet our old friend, Commander Cody, and what a what a what a delight, what a delight to see our good friend Commander Cody.
It's maybe not so great that he's still working for the bad guys, although it's very clear that he feels a type of way about it.
M hmm, yeah, and this is really cool. I mean I wasn't expecting this, and maybe I missed it in the trailers, but this is like our first canon Commander Cody appearance since like Revenge of the Six, Like, this is what this episode does so well and what the show does so well. But like you say, I was like, ah, still there, but then I was very interested by this choice of, like you said, to use him as kind of this in to where the Clones are when it comes to Order sixty six.
That is such an interesting part of this conversation, and I think kind of like this series is very Clone War's esque, obviously because of the subject matter and the period that we're working in, but also in the sense that you can feel a kind of like overarching thematic structure for a season and then we'll drop in and out of that with different bottle episodes, like faster like different things, the same way the Clone Wars would kind of like move in crab like fashion towards in an
arc from the beginning of a season towards the end of a season, but also would drop out and have like you know, bottle episodes for jar Jar Binks or whatever.
I think.
For me, the most interesting part of Bad Batch is this idea of one where do the Clones find themselves? What place do they have both the bad Batch, you know, on their own and then the Imperial Clones what place do they have in the Empire. They're about to be replaced by stormtroopers though they don't know it. And on top of that, how do they feel about Order sixty six? How do they actually feel about it? And delving into that is really really fascinating. So Crosshair meats Commander Cody.
Cody says, oh, yeah, the Bad Patch not surprised at all that you guys went rogue. In fact, like your whole purpose was kind of like go rogue. And he notes that clones have been discussing in small groups amongst themselves Order sixty six. What it meant, whether it's right, were the Jedi really traders to the Republic? Unclear? Crosshair, however, and it remains to be seen how deep this belief goes.
But he is a believer. He is a true fucking believer.
In this moment, he's looking at Kamanda Cody like Kamanda Cody is the threat. He's like, you don't understand because the secret of cross Has mission is like they're going on a diplomatic mission. But we know from Rampot that really he's sent cross Have for a reason.
And I think that's another thing that's so interesting about this show is the way it takes Star Wars themes and shoots them through the lens of these clones. The main theme being here, how far to the dark side can you go before being pulled back before it's too late? And I think down to his voice and everything, the way he acts like you can't help that every time he's on the screen. Wonder what would it take for Crosshair to go, Okay, this is too much. Now, it's
too much. Back on Desex, Tawny Ames knows the Imperial diplomats are not there to negotiate.
She understands, she.
Gets the empire. Maybe you know, one of the earliest ones to kind of see the truth about what the empire is. She says that, and this is a really cool wrinkle that Douku, who was really an idealist, Yeah he was if you look at his history, was a real idealist.
That Douku at some.
Point lost faith and understood that the Empire would be the end result of what was happening between the separatists and the Republic and the kind of machinations that Emperor Palpatine was putting in place, she sends for droids and tanks against the imperial ship.
It crashes, but of.
Course Cody and Crosshair are not so easily killed, and both of them survive, along with a handful of clones. We get a really cool action scene where cross Hair snipes an entire fucking tank through the barrel, and then they work together to fight their way into Ames's fortress. Crosshair and Cody just kind of like fight their way to a top of a tower where Ames is protected
by droids and she's holding Governor Gratten hostage there. Ames then insists that hey, Desex is independent again, like we've been for many years. We're fighting a defensive campaign against the Empire. We're not attacking the Empire. You're attacking us. Uh So, like what the fuck? Cody then delivers the company line about the Empire. Hey, the Empire is just here to bring order after the chaos of you know, the clone wars. We're here to just bring peace unity.
Ames is like, okay, Well, Desex tried years ago to negotiate a peace deal with the Empire, but the Empire was not interested, not even a little bit. They want everything, they don't want a negotiated piece. Cody is trying to talk Ames down. He vaguely threatens her, saying that like, hey, if you release Gratten, you should do it for the good of your people, which is a very imperial kind of like, hey, what if we just kill everybody?
What about that?
So she does, and then Governor Gratton immediately is like, hey, Commander Cody kill Tony Eames. Commander Cody's a good guy, and so he hesitates, But then cross Hair just fucking does it.
And this is where I say to you, do you think that's the No, he's gone too far? Has I think he's gone too far at that point? What do you think it's Dooku killing Yaddle?
Yeah, it's mace Wind?
Do you know it's those moments?
Yes, I mean it's a cold blooded murder. Yeah, I think it's an order. But like, I think he's gone too Like do you think that cross Hair can come back from this?
I think the nature of this story, and the story of the Bad Batch in particular, is to explore the concept that that kind of nature of us is natural concept, but also the idea that even if you have done terrible things under the guise of following orders, you can become a better person and make right. I do think that in what is essentially a child's TV show, if you think about the way this is probably marketed within Disney.
As much as I think this is brilliant adult storytelling, I do think that once you murder someone in cold blood, you probably you're probably not gonna have like a full redemption arc like this is like a gangster style, like a mafia hit, like he just he does it. I wanted more cross Hair, and I wanted to see where he was at. I find the story very interesting. I think we'll be in a position where Crosshair will have the chance to die to do something that's right.
I think that's correct.
I think that sadly is the only redemption that is left for him at this point. I was so interested by how dark they went with this episode, very very dark. The first two episodes are really great, and they and they set them in these beautiful exotic, tropical tropical and there's a lightness to it even when you're dealing with those big questions yeah, and those same big questions that have always made in my opinion, that animated shows so good, which is that how do other people exist in this
huge space that aren't Skywalkers? What happens if you're created to be a killer? Like, how do you break out of that? What do you mean? How do you what does it mean to have agency? There's a lot of episodes in Clone Wars, I think, and Rebels as well, where people go, oh, You've got to watch this episode, and I feel like this is going to be one
of those episodes. It appears to be an action episode on the surface, but it really has this kind of deeper depth in what it means for crosshairs, this kind of uncrossable line, no pun intended. But also it has like lots of Easter eggs. There's like, you know, the TK Troopers, they look kind of like round Corey's original designs. You have that reference that you mentioned about Aimes talking about going to the Republic, and that was kind of
direct reference to an episode of Clone Wars. So it's this really great mix of that kind of deep emotional storytelling that Filoni does, but with that fun kind of Star Wars fan service that makes this show so exciting.
You mentioned the darkness. Here is some dark shit.
What do you do with Tawny Ames, the late Governor of Desk's body grotten is like, put her body in the square. Let it be a warning to the rest. They let that moment, I think smartly play on Cody's face, and you really see Cody at this moment doubt and really not even doubt, but like know that he's at that point. You know you're on the wrong side and you just murdered somebody who surrendered me.
I'll be the bad guys. Moment, the answer is yes, that is the moment.
Cody then has a private moment with Cross here and asks do you think we're doing the right thing, which is a weird question to ask someone who just murdered someone in cold blood, like, but you know, asks And there's some discussion about the Battle droids and what they do and how their role is very similar and that they go out and they fight the war that they are tasked with fighting just following orders, but saying that in a different way, and then Cody very wisely says, here, Okay,
here's the difference. The droids don't have any free will. They do what they're program to do. They fight who they're programmed to fight, where their program to fight it. We can make the choice about whether or not, say, murdering a gaggle of young wings is right, you know, depending on the justification. We can weigh those things and make our own decision and should should not we do that.
Crosshair looks at Cody with very clear suspicion. I mean, like the vibe I got from Crosshair was like, I'm gonna have to kill you at someone.
Yeah, It's which I think is very interesting because I feel like the vison Cody asked him that is, I almost feel like he was trying to like scope it out. Yeah, Like he was like, does he realize what he's done is wrong? Like is this someone who just had the same realization that I did? Is this is an ally in maybe questioning? But he learns that it's actually the opposite.
For cross had that for whatever reason, he is fully committed to this imperial mission and he will do the worst, most terrific things if he thinks that they are necessary.
There's also something really fascinating about the idea of here are all these clones. They have their identity at least initially was their numbers, you know, like very small differences in the way that they are getting their identity that's
been created for them. But we see here through the course of this story, and this is really one of the deepest like questions of the Bad Batch in general, is even if you are a complete genetic recreation of another person, you can have a difference of opinion with
that person. Yeah, and that's really interesting here. I also felt like maybe Cody is kind of like trying to get an idea of where Clone Force ninety nine the rest of them are landed to use cross Hair as kind of a lens to kind of see where they might be in that very clonesy way of like trying to find out. Okay, like, well, what are the rest of your batch think about this? Later on cross Hairs
laying his bunk, he's lost in thought. He goes to mess again again in these wonderful moments that kind of like heighten the isolation of cross Hair. Rampart calls him again. Rampart has another mission for him. Why not Cody, He asks, well, Commander Cody has gone a wall.
Dun dun du dun dun. I love this because I actually think it's a huge, well done bait and switch because, like you think, this is the start of understanding where Crosshairs Journey is going to go, and it is. But I think the real big returning character here is Commander Cody, and I think that this hints that we will see Commander Cody on a redemptive.
Arc of his own. I think so too.
That will be far more heroic and easy to swallow than trying to do that for who has committed this horrific wrong right in public view?
X ray Vision will be back.
And we're back.
All right, let's talk about episode four Faster, which is really just a fun Clones War era bottle episode. Echo and Hunter are off doing a thing. They're not available, so our good friend the gangster Sid brings in the rest Omega, Recker and tech as like her bodyguards to watch her back because she's got to do some gambling on this version of pod racing, which I mean, who doesn't fucking love pod racing?
You know? Yeah, pod racing is so fun.
We get to meet her driver, Teo, who is a kind of very very flashy and arrogant droid voiced by Ben Schwartz, who got to double dip in the Star Wars universe, not only did Ben get to be BB eight, but now gets to be Tao.
I know, I love this just like you'll go to uh, this is the go to droid man.
Now there are various wrinkles, and Tao cannot continue because of a crash. So guess what Our good friend Tech needs to pilot the craft, and Tech uses his you know, strategic mindset and the information about the track delivered to him Biomega to kind of like master the track. It culminates in a wonderful like Luke, your targeting systems turned off?
Is there anything wrong?
Where he takes all the energy from like his weapons and puts it like the in the rest of the ship and then like makes a jump that nobody thinks he can make, and then he wins, and Sid is absolutely relieved and is wondering, you know, God, how long can I keep escaping like this with the with the use of these clones. And we also get a nice kind of like gesture at whether d is trying to be a better person.
Yes, it seems like a mega kind of making this deal so that Sid can be safe. Yeah, that kind of gives Sid the little nudge to kind of be like, oh, maybe I need to kind of be There's a lot of moral complexity to the characters in this series, and Sid is definitely leaning into that area of like, oh maybe I could be inspired to do better things and
be better by these people who are around me. And this is just yeah, like you said, you love pod racing, Uh, you love swoop racing, everyone's favorite shit from the nights of the Old Republic. Like this is a really fun kind of almost like silly breather.
Yeah, after the bleakness that we saw, extreme bleakness.
Yeah, it kind of makes the last episode even sadder because you get to see the camaraderie and like friendship and trust yeah that the rest of the crew have while Crossair is kind of living this isolated killer life.
It feels like something you save for the penultimate episode and the finale. But they have to cross paths again. Sorry, right they do?
I mean, what do you think the will crossha be sent to kill them? Is that what it's going to be? Like? I feel like that seems like the ultimate kind of poetic maybe specifically to kill Omega.
Yeah, I think that the bad Batch as set up in the first two episodes are gonna make the decision that Okay, we're doing our own kind of independent things, scuttling across the galaxy in the Outer Rim, doing jobs for SID, doing little other jobs here. But what we really need to do, which is something they grappled with in the first two episodes, is get involved in this fight such as it exists. Get involved in this fight
against the Empire. And I think they're going to go do some sort of heisty job and Crosshair is gonna be there with his clone troopers to meet them and try and take them down.
Yeah, and my prediction is that Commander Cody will kind of be alongside the bad Batch at that point.
That will be fucking great. Yeah.
And you know what you actually called this because you'd said you felt like this season was gonna be or something you'd really like to see that you thought could happen, would be like how does the bad Batch become involved with the rebellion? And that is from the very like you said, the very first episode, second episode, that is a big theme. I mean they even have the repainted suits with like the red, yeah, which the red hints
towards the rebel alliance. So we're seeing that move. I think by the end we could see them fully embracing the rebellion. Also, I mean that first season when I was rewatching it for the pod Like, there are so many huge cameos, not less that huge like opening episode retcon opening, which I just loved, which kind of changes the fate of a really famous character. But I would be very interested to see who we're gonna see them
come up against from others our war stories. I feel like they're keeping it intimate at the moment with these characters that we know, who are so intrinsically connected. But I feel like that penultimate episode kind of showdown could take place in a space where the rebellion is already forming, where we could see some familiar faces.
One more question.
There was a tweetleck Green tweeleck in the crowd of the pod race, and I mean hera has already shown up in the Bad Batch season one.
Was she just like in the crowd, like just taking in a race?
Oh my god, I would love that. She was just chilling. She's like, I need to see how things go for tech, Like, I just like, I mean, I love here. I feel like they're having a lot of fun with these like recognizable alien life forms, kind of like what we talked about in The Mandalorian where they want you to look at them and be like, oh, is that character the character?
I think it is.
I'm always for more, more hero more, anyone for rebels.
My Star Wars wife, I want to see it. Will be checking in on the Bad Batch in suremittingly in the coming weeks. Up next a very exciting nerd out.
In today's nerd Out, where you tell us what you love them, why, or a theory that you would like to share. Rodney listened to us. I've been saying on these episodes that you can send in a theory. I've been saying, send it in, make it Tim Foyley, make it as wild as me and Jason would make it. And you know what, Rodney actually came up with an incredibly logical pitch. I'm very impressed by it. I'm actually
surprised this hadn't come up on our list. So this is for Marvel's upcoming Secret Invasion series, and it is one of the questions that we and our listeners have been asking the most, which is who is going to be a scroll Jason? Why don't why don't you read the theory. It's a pretty good one.
Sure this is from Rodney Hi there never sent in a question before, but listening to this week speculation about who could be a scroll in the MSU, I'm flabbergas perfect. No one has theorized the one that seems like a no brainer. Sharon Carter. She's now the power broker and Magic were making shaded deals. She's gotta be one. Thanks for the fun pod. Always excited to hear you both every week. Thank you, Rodney, thank you for these thoughts. Yes, yes, I mean it, Yes.
So much sense. Look, Sharon makes too much sense. I'm not like, I'm not like the world's number one like Agent thirteen fan that that vision of shield is not like something that gets me so excited. But I will say I did not believe that Sharon Carter was essentially an upset like an ex girlfriend of Steve Rogerson. Like what, like, you're you're mad about like that the Avengers didn't help you. I'm like, were you talking about? This is ridiculous? No,
I love this. It makes so much sense. I really like the idea that this would be an absolutely different kind of power base for a scroll to have. It would be a scroll with millions of dollars. It would be a scroll with contacts in the shadiest place in the Marvel Universe where every criminal knows to come. It would also this is a bit Timfoiley, but Powerbroker can give people powers. We know that the Scrolls and the super Sculls can replicate, well the super Sculls specifically, they
can replicate a power. Maybe there's something there, some kind of scroll technology that would be allowing Sharon to give those powers. I'm very interested in this theory, Rodney. She's on the list.
Now I'll go further.
I think it makes a lot of sense from a strategic point of view. If you're the scrolls, what do the scrolls want to do? They want to take over, but first they want to do so covertly.
Why.
One because they're scrolls and their shape shifts. This is the nature of the thing. Secondarily, it's because Earth is really really strong. They fought off Panos, they fought off multiple different kinds of incursions from gods, from aliens, et cetera. They have heroes that are really really powerful. They have a defense structure that is, you know, pretty powerful on its own. They need to weaken all of that from the insights.
So how do you do that.
You you weaken trust inmpowered people by giving losers and mirados and criminals and people who don't deserve it powers.
Anybody who can pay for it.
You give them powers. And by the way, those powers aren't even that good. They're just like, I can beat somebody immaculate. Yea, this theory is so good, Jason. And so now you're creating this kind of corrosive misinformation, creating this this environment in which people who used to look up to Tony Stark to the Hulk to captain America are now like, is this really good thing.
That everybody like sim before? But now it's.
Now it's anybody.
And and that is all working towards what the scrolls want to do, which is create this chaos, this kind of weakening of the of the social fabric so that they can sneak in there and take control.
I think it makes a lot of sense.
I love this, and I think that that would do so much to destabilize the MCU as we know it, and it would explain that choice to me. Plus, I would love to see a space where you have like this scroll powerbroker Sharon Carr involved with this, like Thunderbolts
esque team, yes that Valley's putting together. There could just be so many maniacal evil things occurring in a way that we haven't really seen, you know, one of the classic superhero stories that kind of classic to the point where we rag on it when we see it, like you know, oh, no, Spider Man, there's an evil spider Man and he's doing stuff. It must be Spider Man stand Evil or Batman and it's just someone dressed up
with them. We haven't gotten to see that in the MCU because of the nature of how these stories are told and the huge scope. So the idea that we'll get to see this inversion of what a superhero can be is actually really exciting on a narrative level and as a fan, and leans into some of the most fun storytelling tropes of comics. But like you said this again,
I'm sorry, it's going back there the X Men. This sets up that distrust and suspicion and fear that we would need, and that could be something that could actually see the Scrolls get defeated or destabilize themselves, because if they are in those roles it's going to be much harder for them to continue to be empower as people
stopped to trust them. But if the scrolls revealed themselves in different forms or as scrolls and said, hey, these Suberas are terrible, we'll stop them, then you're in a really interesting place where they can take even more power.
It's a great one, Rodney, you killed it.
Thank you, Rodney. If you have any theories or passions you want to share like Rodney, hit us up at x ray at crooked dot com. Instructions as always in the show notes.
That's it for us. Rosie plugs, plugs, plugs, plug plugs, any plugs.
You can find me rosymarks at Instagram and letterbox. I have a website rosienight dot comway you can read all of my articles which are archived on AU three. You can read some of my comic books there. Maybe I'll be able to tell you something about my top secret project coming soon. But it's going, it's going, that's for sure. Oliver's artwork is looking beautiful as always. Yeah, and just
listen to the extra vision. You know where we are here us now two times a week talking about all this cool stuff.
You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and network with the three in the work. Reach out to me there. Catch the next episode on Wednesday, January twenty fifth, with more of the Last of Us. We're gonna be doing a double Last of Us next week, covering the show on our Wednesday episode and then our second installment of our covers of the video game in our Friday episode. And remember, two episodes a week, two episodes a week
we're bringing you to. That's two episodes a week, two episodes a week twice, the tinfoil Hat series twice, the keep Dives twice.
The stuff, we're doubling.
It, folks, and so to make sure you get the double stuff, you've got to subscribe to the show on YouTube, follow x r V pod on Twitter, and check out our discord where we're always hanging out meet and hang out with a ton of amazing fans and listeners. I'm me and Jason'll be in there. I'm really excited to chat in the discord about the Last of Us when we watch it. That live watch was really great, really really fun.
Five star ratings. We need them.
We gotta have them. You have them, you gotta give them to us. Here's one from Doris Henrique amazing, five stars, quick and to the point, and that's what we love to Thank you, Doris Rique, See.
You next time.
X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production.
The show is produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin.
The show is executive produced by myself and Sandy's Road are editing in sound design Who's by Vascillis Fotopoulos. Dylon Villanueva and Matt der Group provide video production support. Alex Weller for Handle Social Media. Thank you Brian Vesquez for the music.
That's it.
Bye MHM.