Hello.
My name is Jason Concepcion and I'm Rosy Night, and welcome to a bite sized episode of X ray Vision, the podcast where we dive deep it's your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
In today's episode, we're stepping into that space X Men ship air.
Lock to talk the Marvels.
It took us too long break, but it's good and I'm glad everyone else is realizing it's good and we're excited to talk about this good movie.
So next up the Marvels.
We meet in the opening of this film, Darben, the Kreese new very very militant leader, as she discovers a quantum band on some desolate planet somewhere. The band, which of course we have seen before in the Disney Plus television program Mis.
Marvel An, a very good program.
Another very wonderful program, allows Darman to open connection points portals in space time, and she plans to use these openings to revitalize the Cree home world, which has been all kinds of fucked up ever since Carol made the manifestly unwise, probably criminal decision to carry out a decapitation attack on the Cree government, killing off the Supreme Intelligence causing a wide Cree civil war and just devastating ecological, political,
and economic collapse across the Cree systems. It's bad.
It's bad and also like maybe genocidal to the point of the Gamin.
Bad choice. You need to pay for your crimes. I'm sorry.
I really think you should have at least checked in with somebody. Conversation one one one question Marina, see what she thought? You know, I just think it's it was. It was a bad move. Dar Ben's portals destabilize the the ancient interspace. We'll call it the Highway network, but there's the the connection of interspace portals that allows fast travel throughout the universe. Nick Fury now in charge of
the Saber Space Station. That's where he's been, as we saw, just hide and just chilling out as we saw in the in the in the bad sadly the.
Bad secret vasion. It was bad, secret vasion, painful.
Asks our friend Monica Rambo and also our friend Carol Danvers to check this out. What's going on hijinkson Sue and Monica, Carol and our good friend Kamala Khan. Yes, home in Jersey City after the events of Miss Marvel discover that using their respective powers causes them to switch places wherever they are in space. This was actually really fun and I enjoyed this.
They did.
They enjoyed just fun job.
And also this adds like so many fun chances to do incredible action sequences. Yes, we get such good action sequences with this. It's a nice fun kind of call back to the Rick Jones storyline that we talked about that was kind of like this the Marvel plot line. So there's there's a lot of fun to be had here, and I just those three are so joyous together. And I had some issues with the first Captain Marvel movie.
I didn't necessarily love Carol's characterization, but I think here this is like how doctor Strange was reimagined post to Scott Derekson movie. Like this is a huge change. It's a Thor Ragnarok kind of change where we get to see Caro having fun, She's on the space station, she's with her cats. Like it's just a delightful expansion of the character that allows he to have a little bit.
Of fun despite the quantum intertwining of our three heroes that causes, you know, unexpected and chaotic effects. They do manage to fight off a Cree strikeforce sent to New Jersey to the Khan family home to obtain Kamala's Bengal, the other quantum band that Darban is so so dedicated to finding. Darben opens a portal above Tarnack's home to a population of Scroll refugees in order to steal their wonderful,
clean mountain air for the Cree home world. Our trio of heroes managed to evacuate most, but certainly not all, of the population, and Kamala is heartbroken that they could not accomplish that. Carol has to tell her, listen, save what you can save who you can save, and but she does save for later that this is all her fault. She's holding on to that little tidbit right now.
She needs to be coming clean about that, because I feel like I love this movie. I thought it was so much fun, But I do feel like Carol doesn't necessarily get held up for crimes in the way she probably should have it.
I completely agree. Carol is particularly heartbroken because she helped found this colony on tarn X, though kind of stiffing the Skrull on her promise to actually find them a real homeworld. Anyway, our heroes realize Darbin went to Tarnas in order to punish Carol personally for her crimes against the Creed. It's not just she's picking planets that have resources that the cree need. She's picking planets that Carol likes, has connections to, has connections to the people's there, because
she specifically wants to hurt Carol. Meanwhile, Monica needs a code name, and the trio itself needs a name, despite the fact that only Kamala agrees that they are a team.
In general, there is a lot of fun to be had in if you love Easter Eggs, they have a lot of fun with Kamala basically just choosing all the different names, and Monica kind of shoots down a lot of the cannon comic names.
It's really fun.
I mean, especially like Monica and Kamala together are just so great, Like I really hope we see more of them.
Yeah, there's the the hero worship between Kamala and Carol, and then also like the unexpected chemistry between Monica and Kall. It's really fun. Okay, so we got clean air. Great shouts to Tarnack's We're done. Now, what do you need we need clean water. That rings a bell for Carol, who just so happens, woman of many secrets, to be secretly married to Prince Johan, the leader of Aladna, a planet almost one hundred percent covered by wonderful, fresh, sparkling
water where everyone communicates via song and dance. Lovely to visit.
Alada Disney see Disney Dance Princess sequence.
It's so good.
So we get a big fight on Alattna with our trio and Prince John's forces battling the creed. Dar manages to open the portal to suck out the water, and unfortunately our heroes can't do much about it. They jump away from Alatna with dar Ben right on their six. Carol, now desperate because she could not save her husband's planetlit it's a political marriage, but still that Alatna. We never go back there, but I would expect that it's devastated.
Now admits that her ill considered attack on the Supreme Intelligence is the reason this is happening, and this is all her fault. And because of this conversation, they realize, Okay, water down, air down, need that sunlight next. That can only mean the beautiful, sweet, juicy Earth sun just sitting there in the middle of the solar systems. I got
shining mango beautiful. We need that sunlight, says Darban. Meanwhile, things on Saber are deteriorating because of the destabilization of the portals, and the space station is coming apart at the seams, which is bad because we like Fury kind of, But also Kama's family is also on the space station, and that's a big deal. Fury manages to evacuate everyone on the space despite them only having one escape pod,
by having the entire populated. It's great. This is one of the great great secrets horror.
Sequences in all of Marvel.
He basically has all the crew eaten by fluckins and then puts all the fluckins into one escapeboard okay, an escapeboard of cats.
But the way they shoot it is just people.
Running away, screaming from these aliens, trying not to get eaten by cute cats with giant tongues. So ten out of ten fantastic sequence. I think that's up there with one of the best sequences in the MCU.
Absolutely, and it's all set to memory reprise, Yes, the cat iconic song from Cats. The musical bab uh just an incredible an incredible sequence. The Marvels confront Darben on her ship. We get a big fight. Darben ends up impaled by a piece of the deck and the Marvels try to talk her out of this mission of destruction. Monica makes an offer. Okay, what about this, Darbin. I understand that this is weird to be making a deal right now while you're impaled, But what if Carol uses
her powers to restart the Kree Sun? Would that do it? And Carol kind of like makes this kind of pulls on the heartstrings a little bit like, let's you know, peace and enough and I'm so sorry about everything that happened, and it seems like it's a done deal. She frees Darben, who immediately goes back on the perceived deal, steals the other band off of Kamala, and then flies out to fire up both bands and do this big sun stealing portal thing. But then she disintegrates because it's just too
much power. She doesn't know how to use it.
Rip Dolben, Rip Darben.
I disagree with your actions, but I get the anger, and I think it's justified. We should also.
Mention that Carol is so hated that they call her the.
Annihilate, like she is seen as like a genocidal villain. So dar Been, I feel like, is more of a resistance fight everything, even if methods are.
Not great, and I just completely I feel like, Monica, could you not have come up with this plan earlier? And like stop the wall? I feel like, I feel like, come on, yeah.
Just come on, guys, just fix the sun already. And that, by the way, doesn't even solve the water and air problem anyway, So Darban is out. This explosion also disentangles the Marvels, not officially their name, but we're gonna call.
Them, Yeah, we love that name Kamala.
Then they come up with a plan. Kamala uses both bands and Carol using her powers herself. They fire just huge blasts of energy at Monica, who absorbs them and then goes over to the portals to close them using this energy, But she has to really remain in the aperture of the portal for the whole She can't just like pop out Tony Stark in Marvels the Avenger style, and so she ends up closed behind the portal wall in another dimension. But Earth is saved Tarnack's sorry about it.
Sorry bro, Sorry bros. We can't figure it out in time. But Earth is fine.
Look, let's we're gonna talk about this because one of the most hilarious.
Like not necessarily a plot hole, but like a plot question.
Yeah, when did they sell this like inter dimensional portal network that we just never heard about until this movie?
I feel like to learn more about that?
Yes, I want to.
Anyway, that's fine. That's the only planet that mattens in the MCU. No one cares about the fallout. That's never gonna come back and bite us.
I'm sure. I'm sure planets are going to be people.
Of are are just fine with their newly dried out shell of a planet. Anyway. In the six one six h Kamala goes home to Earth and because the Marvels never really again came together official, Kamala is like, I need a team. I'm gonna start looking for other young heroes on the come up to start a team. First up, our good friend Kate Bishop Yes on the Hawkeye series, wonderful, can't wait for this.
Fantastic we're talking about young Avengers. Baby, we know that's where it's going to get it going get it going. We've been waiting. Carol.
Then, as recompense, partial recompense for her crimes against the Creed, she flies into the file, flies into the Krea sun to fire it back up and it works Elsewhere in another dimension, do do. Monica meets a variant of her mom, Maria in the guise of the superhero Binerya, and she's hanging out with Hank McCoy of the X Men, who deduces the problem of alternate dimensions. Don don, let's talk about this film.
Come on, isn't she great? I just love her so much.
We're so blessed to have her in the MCU. She is like a breath of fresh air that we need. She's that ultimate kind of in character for people like us who love this.
Stuff, meta character.
She's a meta in character who's not an avatar in any way, Like she gets to be her own person. But we can all kind of laugh and be like, well, that would be us, Like we would be the ones with the bootleg the boot like Kamala Carroll ties. Actually, let's talk about that, because you raised the good question when we were doing pre question.
Do heroes like Carol who have merch profit off their name, image and likeness. Who owns that ip? In the Marvel verse. It's important, I.
Think because also we know that there's like, uh, you know, Avengers musicals. We know that there's bootleg Marvels merch thanks to the Avanngers incredible marvels.
Much so that means there must be legit merch.
There is a there is a trademark, right because you would not be what you would You would just be able to do boom.
Yeah, it would be a problem. So like, okay, so is this like a Marvel comics esque.
Situation where when you join the Avengers, they own, like Stark Industry owns your likeness?
Right? Sadly I believe that's the case.
I think Stocking really really sadly believe that that is I do.
And I think Stark Industries has like a merchandising department and that's why you're getting like Hawkeye dolls and Carol Danvers T shirts. And it would be very interesting to see that explored in a future episode of something or other, because I doubt it will be in a movie, but.
The people want to know who's making the millions.
I think what happened is when the Avengers started up and when all the versions of the teams were put together under the under the banner of the Avengers, Tony Stark handed people like a five hundred page contract and in the contry tract is ownership of the IP and the IP derived from the Avengers activities is the sole property of Stark Industry. Now here's the question. Does Carol and the other heroes act? Do they get a royalty off of merch sold containing their name image like this that's all?
Is it like a work for hire gig?
Where like Tony is just getting all this money and it's going into the Avengers Initiative bank accounts.
Yeah, we need to know more.
Maybe that's how he's funding.
You know, he's a billionaire, but maybe that's how he's like he's like, you want to get a new suit upgrade, Well you need a T shirt, Give me that T shot money.
That's how the Avengers is kind of like self. It's sustaining in that way.
Don't ask pepper pots get pepper pots on the podcast.
Yeah, it's like Quinja, you know, gas for the Quinn Jet. All the arrows quo ar, Yeah, I mean Clinton has too many arrows.
We all know that, Like those.
That's like millions of dollars a year. Like, I, yeah, this is an important question. This is exactly the kind of question that nobody at Marvel wants answer because it's completely ridiculous, but it's very important to us.
I think it's actually important world world building question. I need to know more.
I need to know more.
Yeah, Oh, let's talk about the action sequences are so good, Like I think the stunt coordinators Joe McClaren, who did Doctor Strange to an.
Overlord, which I love that movie.
And it is like so there's so much fun and personality in these fight sequences. They tell us so much about the characters. We get to see this yeh, quantum entanglement mega fight between Saber Kamala Khan's house and wherever Carol is maybe her own ship, and we yet to see that Kamala has like really no idea how to use her powers compared to Monica, who's just learning to use them, compared to Carol, who's an old hand at this point, and there's just so much fun to be had.
I think that's one of the big reasons why. You know, another thing we kind of talked about in the pre production stage of this episode is the movie didn't make a lot of money, right, It came in that phase of oh superha fatigue blah blah.
Blah, but now it's some dizzy, dominating narrative. That was the dominating narrative of it.
But as we kind of said, it's a it's a flawed narrative. It's not a holistic narrative in any way. And once this hit Disney Plus, the conversation about this movie changed, and suddenly every single person who watched this movie on Disney Plus went, wait, why didn't I go and see this at the cinema?
It was so good?
Like why did I miss out seeing this on the big screen? And I think a big part of that is those incredible fight sequences and the balance between comedy and action, which feels a lot more akin to that first phase of the MCU.
And to your point, what also felt a kin to that first phase was were you watching Monica and Kamala take their first steps in learning how to use their powers. There's a there's a wonderful like level up feel where throughout these set piece action sequences, you see Monica and Kamala get a little better, a little better, a little better each time at using their power, figuring out the synergy, like how to use their power together, all three of them, Yeah,
and to enhance each other. That's really cool. And that made the you know, the entanglement thing could have been really annoying really fast.
Yeah.
I just felt like I'm not getting to feel my heroes.
Like we're putting this artificial uh ceiling on how powerful our heroes could be in order to drive the plot, but feel like that it's not like, yes, there was this thing that was making it difficult for them, but also they were very creative in figuring out how to use it and how to how to work around it and when to when to actually use their powers in a way that would trigger the entanglement, that wouldn't become important to do that, And I thought that was really cool.
It really worked, It really worked.
And also I think that Nia da Costa, who's the director of this, director of Candy Man, just a great, great director. I think she did a really fantastic job. You know, post ant Man three, Quantumnia, everyone kind of had that fear of it looking like that murky purple overcged kind of space, and actually what we ended up getting had so much fun practical setwork, whether it was on Saber, whether it was on these different planets.
The use of the different planets.
And getting to visit different places gave it so many different flavors. And I understand that making one of these movies is never easy, and there was a lot of conversation about reshoots and all that kind of stuff that always happens with these big movies.
But I felt like the movie that we got Nia just.
Did such a good job bringing it all together and making it feel like a really fun, quick, great adventure. Like I can imagine for a lot of people this could be their first MCU movie and they would just get really really into it, and then they can go back and discover everything else.
Part of what was so joyful was the extended musical numbers like Alattna. Of course, the song and Dance and Alatna that first of all brings out an entirely different dimension to Carol's character and Breeze performance like a wonderful Like you know, Carol is a hard ass character, both in the comics and these movies. Yeah, she's very all business and still tell me to smile, don't tell me, Yeah,
and I will do it myself. Yeah, you know, and you could kind of extrapolate that all the way out to again her her unwise to kill the Supreme Intelligence. But this brought another aspect to her. While indeed it was a political marriage important for the kind of stability of internal Ladna politics, the way she carries out her role is so delightful and it's also worthy.
Sands with Prince Ye. Yeah, like there's no way, it's like beautiful, there's a love.
I was a big fan. But let's talk about Aladdina because you look, so what's up with the Latin? Is it just dry? Now? It was one hundred percent?
More?
Where's that gone?
Like?
Is it now twenty percent? Is it completely dried out?
Like?
What's going on? What's occurring?
I am I am very I'll just say that I'm hopeful that in the way that Carol flew into the Krea Sun in order to restart it, that she will also say, well, also, okay, a Lotna, we've got to do something for a Lotna. We got to figure out the water situation. I'm hopeful that we will see the heroes double back and do something for because what I don't want to see happen is we just forget about them,
and that will one hundred come back on them. Like the people of Aladna, who are wonderful, warm, generous, very happy and contented in what appears by all accounts to be like some sort of space utopia, I think they will be very furious at what has happened to their planet, and it will be a bad thing for our heroes.
They'll be doing an a dance number.
Yes, they'll be coming with like a more gothic like furious revenge. So I mean, look, Carol, she just flew into the sun cash, maybe she can like do some like Captain Marvel fracking.
She can just fly down into the.
Movie.
Yeah, I mean, and then she can just let the water back up from the depths of a ladina. I believe she could do it. She flew into the sun.
She's basically the most overpowered character we've ever seen, So.
She can she can fly into the she can fly into the depths of a ladiner and allow.
The beautiful springs that potentially bloom under there to come to the top of the service. Come on, Carol, and then work out the clean air one next. Come on, this is on you.
Post credits, we get a vision of an X Men in the MCU your thoughts about what this could possibly mean.
So if you listen to joompod Mia and Jason did x then episode talk about X Men two thousand, So sorry if you've already heard us vaguely talk about this, But generally my feeling is, and I think this actually aligns with what we are seeing in the Fantastic X Men ninety seven animated series also on the Not So Beligued Disney Plus. And I believe that what we're essentially seeing here is a version of the X Men that is heavily based on this cosmic space law. So I
think this is a she R X Men. This is an X Men where the X Men are in space, they are exploring space. That fits in with binary which we'll get into a little bit later. And the fact that we have a Hank McCoy played by you know, Frasier.
We don't have the young Hank McCoy, j we have the Fraser Hank McCoy, So we're in a situation where I think this is I think that doing a Shia Milandra, this kind of alien space exploration side of the team makes a lot of sense because it's never fully been explored. It was kind of half explored in Dark Phoenix, but they did darb Adr over the top, so it wasn't
the Landra. And the interesting thing is this is lining up potentially with what we're seeing in X Men ninety seven because we've seen glimpses of Lelandra in the opening credits spoiler alert, cover your ears.
That might be where Charles is probably in that.
So we could be seeing them use the X Men ninety seven series as a way of seeding more of a general knowledge of this era and then having us explore it in live action, as it would be a relatively unique take. So I think this is going to matter. It could lead to all of that. The question is are they going to stick with this? I think this is a very cool direction, So I hope that they are going to stick with them.
Yeah, you mentioned binary, So let's do Who's Who. Every show we close the show with a variety of fast moving segments. Today it's Who's Who, in which we talk about some of our favorite weird characters from are given universes. Not a weird character at all, really, it's a weird episode in a character's evolution. I would say in this episode, Rosie, oh, I ask you, I implore you, tell us about Binary, Maria Rambo's code name in the post credits scene, who is Binary?
Well, this is a very interesting and complex story. So first of all, let's start by saying in the comics, Carol is binary rather than Maria Monica's mother. Right, So that's the start. We'll get to why I think that's a cool choice a little bit later. So binary appears in Uncanny X Men one sixty four legendary important part of the story, and that is a new name for Carol. Carrol's already existed at this point since Marvel Superos thirteen, And basically what we learn.
Here is that.
Carol has gained these unbelievable new powers. In the words of Chris Claremont, a freak accident combined the best genetic elements of a human and the ancient starfaring race of the Cree. But that did not make Binary. For that to happen, Carol had to lose her powers to Rogue, which is very interesting because we're kind of seeing a version of Rogue that has gained some of Carol's powers. In X Men ninety seven, without them getting that side.
The ability to fly and the super strength that Rogue has that's not her natural power. That's the result of her contact with Carol, and she siphoned off some of Carol's powers and those powers stuck for reasons kind of unexplained.
Yeah, so what we learn is basically that the Brood kidnapped the X Men, including Carol, because this is when she was hanging around with them a lot, and they experimented on her and her modified genes thanks to the Cree experimentations, reacted to the Brood's meddling, and in the
depths of space, created the hero known as Binary. Now that's kind of the on page story, but there was an off page story that kind of shaped it as well, which was that Chris Clermont wanted to give Carol Danvers aka and Miss Marvel a kind of new heroic story because her representation on the page had often leaned into like misogyny objectification. Yes, and there was a story decisions
with real bad decisions. Well, yeah, there was a storyline in Avengers where Carol discovers she's pregnant and the baby is growing a lot faster Twilight Renezme style. You know. Three days late, three issues later, Carol gives birth, but she loses all of her agency and control over her body, and it turns out that the Sun that she has given birth to is actually a man who raped her to get her pregnant and forced her to give birth so that he could be reborn.
So lots of bad stuff.
Basically that led to Claremont then going, well, I'm going to include Carol and the X Men and give her a new story. I'm going to fix this, and he loved Miss Marvel. He actually loved the character. But he was like, I want Binary to be given this. I want her to be given this whole new role as this kind of superstar space hero who can do anything, who's super overpowered.
So that's who Binary is. Now.
What's really cool about them making Maria Binary here is
in the first Captain Marvel movie. One of the critiques that some of us had was it ignored the fact and actually kind of took from the storyline of the first female Captain Marvel in the comics, which was Monica Rambo, who gained her powers in a very similar way to the way that Carol Danvers gained her powers in the first Captain Marvel movie and Stephanie Williams, a great comic book writer and cultural critic, did a really good thread about this, and we were kind of it was one
of those things that fans were kind of bummed about. It felt like it ignored the great storyline and the fact that was quite a radical moment to have, like a black woman as your first female Captain Marvel. So giving Maria this part of Carol's storyline is actually a really cool way to recognize that and to expand her role, especially because she could have easily have just got the
powers that Carol did. And this is kind of we would assume an alternate world where in that scenario where they were both, you know, in flight school, it was Maria who got.
The powers rather than Carol.
So it's really cool binary as a super rad, incredibly powerful space character who would lean very heavily into that realm that we're talking about of that kind of sher space Starjammas Corsair kind of X Men, And I really hope we get to see that binary going forward, because I think that this is an interesting and good way for the X Men to to work in the MCU, And I think this is a really cool reimagining of the character because you don't need our Carol Danvers to
be binary anymore, because she is Captain Marvel and she's fantastic. But let's let binary have this other world. There is this really fun old universe reimagining that also kind of gets to be a little bit of a correction of a not a mistake, but a choice that the first Captain.
Marvel movie made. So yeah, that's binary. She's great.
Thanks for listening to this episode. See you next time.
Yeah, see you next time, guys.
X ray Vision is hosted by Jesus Gets and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Laude, Kenny Goodman and Heidi our discoord moderator.