Hello, and welcome to this end of year episode of Superhero Ethics Friends.
This is just about the end of twenty twenty three and Paul Hoppy has joined
me to talk about a year in review. This isn't Star Wars, so
it's a lot harder to talk about just the year in review for this podcast
since we've pretty much branched out from superhero movies to include sci fi, fantasy,
chess, karate books, video games. But so I think it's more
less got be about what were themes that were explored in media this year,
as what were the themes that we kept seeing popping up and that we were
kind of drawing a lot of and kind of reviewing, Like you know,
so I think a lot of it is going to be about the media of
this year, but especially with the strike, there was a lot of attention
to media from other years. And the funny thing is Paul messaged me a
couple of days ago as we were planning for this and said, you know,
hey, have you watched Blue Beetle yet? And I hadn't. I've
forgotten that it had been that had come out. It was one of a
number of movies that I didn't see because it came out during the strike,
and that's what we're going to talk about a good deal today. But so
as part of that, and Paul mentioned that, you know, I didn't
have to watch it, but it was gonna be relevant to a lot of
topics he wanted to talk about, and I then watched the movie and realized
that I was really relevant to a lot of things I wanted to talk about.
And so we're gonna kind of use that movie as a framing device to
talk about big issues from twenty twenty three, particularly because one of the major
things that I really put together this year that has always been a theme,
but I really have kind of started to narrow in on as a major theme
in the media I'm interested in is almost completely not a part of Blue Beetle.
So even though it's sort of like everything goes to either zero or one
hundred, so there could be a lot of fun to talk about. You
do not have to have seen Blue Beatle to understand all this, but we
will be giving you whilers from that. So if that's a deal breaker,
I would check it out. It's on Max. Yeah, it's on Max.
Probably lots of other ways to get it. It is a it's a
movie, and we're not gonna make this review podcast, but I'm I'm just
gonna say this about it. The best way I think to understand it is
that they wanted to do, you know, what's kind of been being done
a lot of let's take your standard superhero template and then put it into a
different context, in this case the context of in this case the context of
the young Latino man and his family who are all Mexican immigrants. And I
think they did a fantastic job of creating characters of really I mean, I'm
not that latine, but like building that whole world in such phenomenal interesting ways.
Every family member is well developed, and just the themes of family are
so well done, and there's a lot of other things that they cover so
well, and I think they put so much time and effort into that that
they forgot to write a superhero movie, and so they just rely on every
trope you can see, and so the superhero aspects of it are completely predictable
in ways that I think would have made it a really bad movie if it
weren't just so gosh darn fun to watch, and I wasn't being so blown
away by how much. I loved all the characters. Paul, would you
say that's an accurate description of pretty much? Yeah, I would say it's
like a stencil, right, Like they have like a superhero movie stencil,
and then within you know, they kind of like put their outline with that,
just with the pen within the stencil, and then like within that stenciled
outline they put a bunch of characters who I don't feel the characters themselves were
very well developed by the writing. I feel like just the actors, just
pretty much every one of the actors except maybe for Susan Sarandon, like I
felt, actually brought a lot to those characters that like wasn't necessarily in the
script. Like I was thinking of checking, like should I see whether this
was written during the writers straight and like, no, it wasn't. It
wasn't. It was done. But and I don't mean that so much as
an insult to the writer, but like it just it feels like it really
feels like the cast brought a lot, you know, and they kind of
had to, but I'm glad they did, you know. Yeah, And
and so I feel like it works even though the story is like the funny
thing though, is for me like a lot of the movies that I was
going to talk about, and a lot of things that I've been experienced that
I've been experiencing as like a viewer in the relatively limited amount of stuff that
I've watched this year. A lot of it the plot. I'm just like,
yeah, I liked the movie, except the plot just wasn't doing anything
for me. Yeah. And this includes like, you know, you know,
movies that are basically deemed great, like everything everywhere all at once,
where I was like, could could we just like watch them at the business
more instead of like have this whole multiverse thing, and like across the Spider
Verse, whereas like can we just like hang out at the you know,
at the cookout instead of like always you know, be doing all this multiverse
stuff, and and Loki whereas like can we just hang out with the characters
instead of doing all this multiverse? The thing about the Blue Beetles, there
was no multiverse, so that was nice. It was no multiverse that time
travel, you know, I was like, Oh, it's nice to see
the Superhero story where it's like it really is just like that original stencil,
not the newer stencil that has the multiverse and a bunch of stuff that that's
also very true. That's also very true. Yeah, I think one of
thing I was thinking about as you were saying that is I kind of feel
like there's two ways to approach this. There's the we want to make a
superhero movie, and so we're gonna use that as a way to like,
we're gonna by setting it in a new context, whether that's like a new
background for the character or a new time or a new place, we're gonna
make an interesting statement about superhero movies. Where I felt like this was actually
like, let's just tell in a movie about a really interesting family and family
dynamics in the midst of difficult things. Oh hey, someone will give us
hundreds of millions of dollars if we make it a superhero movie. Sure,
let's do that. No, because this felt very much like someone was like,
what if we did in conto live action without the music, but with
more super you know, and very much of that kind of a way.
So I'm going to take a guess and we'll mention details from the movie,
but I think we're kind of, you know, let's kind of get into
some of the overall themes. One thing I know that you have talked about
a lot this year is language and the way that language is used in telling
in telling stories, particularly in like not spoon fitting things as much to white
audiences, to American audience as always in English. I thought the movie did
some really interesting things with language, and so I'm guessing that was one of
the things that they hit for you. Yeah, that was one of the
things that you know, made interested in the movie in the first place,
right, Like I might have watched it anyway, you know, like I
I watched Black Adam and Shazam six or I guess it's only two, but
it feels and you know, and and the flash and you know, various
speaking and multi verses. I left that one out of the list. But
yeah, but having having you know, a lot of Spanish in the movie
and and like Spanglish, like as you know, they've actually referred to it
that way, right, because you know, and code switching and whatever,
right, And it felt to me very natural. A lot of times Hollywood
movies do stuff like that with with bilingual characters or or even like just like
non English speaking characters, and it feels very forced, It feels very artificial.
Here, it felt natural to me, you know, and I think
I think they made an effort with that, and I think that's a front
that they largely succeeded on. You know. I liked that, you know,
his family members kind of had like different nicknames for him, you know,
like I think his dad like called him Flacco and like his uncle called
him like Gabi son, and like like, you know, it just it
felt pretty natural. It didn't feel like where just like they kind of inserted
the random you know, Spanish like someone like looks something up in a dictionary,
you know, like it. And I mean, I'm not super fluent
in Spanish. I'd say I'm like borderline like in terms of like understanding,
but just it it did feel feel natural to me, and it felt like
it was not used as a device so much as it was kind of at
the heart of the movie really you know, the language and you know,
I mean I mentioned I think some of the dialogue in English actually wasn't so
great. I don't think that's like a slight at the writer's or writers's English
skills. It's more just the you know, sometimes movie lines are just a
little a little cheesy. It's funny, Like I rewatched La Confidential, which
I think is one of the greatest movies of all time, and you know,
one best adapted screenplay, and there's a few lines that kind of I'm
like, maybe you could have written a different line there not or whatever,
but like, you know, yeah, I think people say awkward things all
the time, true, and so I don't like, it's fun to have
a movie where everyone speaks in quotable, awesome dialogue, but I don't mind
awkward characters saying awkward things. In this it was that the dialogue was so
predictable, right, Like I was often I'm able to predict a plot point.
Hero was able to predict lines word for word. Yeah, but yeah,
you're right. But the what they did with language, first of all,
because when there are long sentences in Spanish or in other languages, which
I'll get to in a second, because Spanish is not the only language featured,
and that's I think a really important point. But in longer sentences they
would translate. But when it's just like a phrase, none of the nicknames
that you mentioned there's ever a translation given. Some of them. I knew,
some of them, I guessed from contact, And I have no idea
what they mean. And I think that's better, you know, like a
lot of people said myself included that were one of the great things about Across
the Spider the into the Spider Verse, and then across the Spider Verse is
that when his mother speaks to him in Spanish, it's not translated, but
you often can really get a sense of what she's saying. I think that
was true here, and yeah, to me, I think it wasn't.
It wasn't about, hey, look we're doing multilingual. It was like,
no, we're just getting a picture inside this person's family and how they would
speak. The other language. Stuff they do is there's another character who is
so their whole family is Spanish and specifically Mexican, and they make a point
of mentioning without a hitting you overhead with it, but that some of the
family members are documented and some are not. There's another character who is Portuguese,
who is Brazilian. Yeah, and you can kind of see her like
she never interacts directly when the family is speaking Spanish, but like they they
cut to her face a couple of times and see her kind of like following
but struggling to follow a little bit. Yeah, which I have a number
of Brazilian friends now through the Judge program, and that's that's experience. They've
often talked about it. I think some of them know Spanish fluently because they've
studied it. Others, like the two languages are close enough, and she
does at one point, you know, when she has her like epic line
to the villain, she delivers it in Portuguese, which I had subtitles on,
which told me that I don't know if I would have known it necessarily
think Io had heard the difference between Spanish. And then lastly, there's one
other character who we don't get much of his background until the very end,
but we learned that he was a Guatemala he's Guatemalan and specifically that he's native,
he's part of the indigenous people of Guatemala, and that he was taken.
And the movie does not pull any punches. We have a lot of
superheroes he's made and that like the whole idea is that like he was taken
as part of like the horrible things the American government was doing in Central America
at the time of you know, Reagan and the like, and like they
have a like you hear Reagan's actual voice, so it's like very clear what's
going on. There's also a character who I think the implication is that she
ran with Chay or she was part of like number of you know, human
revolutions, you know, Spanish, uh, Latin American Civil War, Latin
American revolutionary movements at some point in the past. Phenomenal. But yeah,
but just the like I was brought to tears by just the getting to hear
this character kind of reconnect with his culture and his language and and speak in
a movie that had been so much about Spanish. It felt really powerful to
me of saying like, oh, yeah, I'm also here are other people
in like the geographic area not all Latin American because port Brazil is not Latin
American. Uh well, yeah, yeah it is, just it is colonized
by people from the Iberian Peninsula. I've heard speak a Latin language, so
right, it's yeah, it's it's Portuguese speaking. Is the Brazilians, I
know, get very offended if I call it if they're referred to with Latin
Americans. But I have no idea if that's universal. But but yeah,
but but but that being a different language, and also the Guatemalan uh and
then and specificly being the native being a different language. It just it it
really kind of summed up I think a theme that was constant in a lot
of the stuff we talked about this year of people getting to speak in their
own language, and that was everything from you know, some of the earlier
stuff we talked about where where it was literally about language, but also just
I feel like we've talked a lot about like characters getting characters in stories getting
to find their voices, but also on more of a meta level, characters
from backgrounds that are often like the objects of people's stories getting to find their
voices and be the subject of stories. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And and you know, writers basically getting to express themselves in you know,
in multiple languages in you know, in in like in natural ways that when
somebody who that's not like when you're doing this with language, right when you're
trying to write in multiple languages. And there's something that I'm attempted to be
cond just of myself as someone who grew up speaking one language, you know,
surrounded by like all the languages in New York, you know, and
acquiring to various degrees a number of language languages throughout the years, but like
as an adult really mostly I think writing there's there's like a difference between trying
to learn some words to put them in a story and like really speaking a
language and trying to include that in your story. And I think one of
the beautiful things about film as a medium, and I know, Everything Everywhere,
All at Once came out not this year, right, but the Oscars
were this year, right, it won like all the Oscars this year.
One of the things that I think is beautiful about film as a medium is
that you know the writers, even the one of them. I think one
of them is Chinese American. I think I could be wrong, but but
like doesn't really speak I think was quoted as saying like obviously we don't speak
Chinese or something like that. But they say one of the writers of everything
Everywhere at wants or of everything everywhere all at once. But that the cast.
You know that when you have a number of Chinese speaking actors, they
can basically be like no, no, no, that's not how they would
say. They would say this, you know, or they and they did
that, I believe in the production of that movie, and kind of just
naturally we're like, oh well, well, this character would speak Mandarin,
and this character would speak Cantonese, and so this character would speak Mandarin to
her husband and Cantonese to her father, and like that fits with the characters.
And in I don't think in the subtitles they told you whether it was
Cantonese or Mandarin, you know, And I think that was something you kind
of like had to just pick up on. But it for me, it
feels like it really works when because you write a screenplay for a movie,
and that's not like the list of all the lines of dialogue that gets spoken,
right, that's not really how how screened, how how film production works.
In television it can be more like that a lot of the times where
they basically just shoot the script. But in in in what's it called in
uh in films, very often there will be a lot of alteration to those
ye two to the script right during the during the process of filming, and
a lot of times the and this can happen in television obviously, but I
think it's more prevalent in in filmmaking, where where the the actors can be
like, oh, you know, my character I think would actually say this
this way, and you know, and that's one of the reasons. It's
you know, when when you cast like not like actors who can't speak the
language of the character and they're kind of just learning things phonetically or they just
know a little bit, or actors who aren't, you know, of whatever
culture or kind of adjacent to the culture that a character is, they're not
going to be able to like supply that, right. That's it's like it's
kind of like a like a like a credibility check or that's not the word
I want, but like it's like a check on the you know, does
this feel right to you? You know? It's that is is a person
Like I don't think every single line of dialogue spoken by a character has to
be written by a person who has the exact same background as that character,
because I mean it's impossible. But also I just think like there is lots
of great storytelling to be had in other directions. Yeah, but the like,
I think more and more we're coming to an understanding of a writer writing
a character whose background they have very little experience of and who has it sought
out people with that experience, right, Like, I can really suffer And
I think it was very clear to me in the writing of this as well
as looking down the list of other things I watched this year, a lot
of things that I liked most were ones where you know, it was pretty
well publicized that like the authors had either really you know, had the experience
themselves, or had brought others into the writing room who had those experiences,
or you know, whatever it might be. Yeah, and and you know,
Blue Beetles an example of you know, the the person's credited with the
screenplay because you know the writer. But like the writing of it is a
complex process and often many you know, many cooks in that kitchen, but
the you know, the the writer with the screenplay credit is you know,
was born in Mexico. You know, Gareth dunnant Alcocer and you know.
So I think that obviously helps when you're trying to write a screenplay where most
of the characters were either born in Mexico or like I think his sister was
born in a Mara city. I think, yeah, I think it's what
you know, And which I learned is like in the same way Metropolis and
Gotham are both like different sides of New York. This is basically DC's Miami.
Oh oh, this is Miami. It looks it looks like Miami,
but for some reason I thought it was like la Ish, but it makes
more sense as as Miami. We were watching it and I described it as
a happy I described it as a happy city of Blade Runner, and then
someone else described it as cyber pop cyberpunk, which yeah, I could see
that. I can see that. I don't know about super happy when like
a bunch of just like paramilitary personnel can just show up at your house and
start shooting the joint up and like there weren't any cops right like them that
Like, like Blade Runner, every scene is like dark and weary and rain
with all the neon and this was like the sun shining on the neon all
the time, right right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it feels like
a place and that place is kind of Miami, but yeah, yeah,
for sure. And they actually made that up for this movie. The character
originally I think it's from El Paso, and so they wanted to change that
for whatever reason, and kind of I think they wanted to give him his
place that's like this is the blue beetle type place, you know, right,
And the main character HAMI Reeus is the is the third Blue Beatle,
and so they kind of worked in the original I think both of the original
two Blue Beatles kind of in the story, which I thought was kind of
cool, and I thought that that kind of worked well. Yeah, yeah,
no, I really like that, And just kind of looking over as
I'm kind of talking to you, I'm like, I've been looking over some
of my other podcasts from this year, and yes, seeing this theme of
like people's voices coming out, and one particular podcast I will lift up is
what I did. Came out September twelfth. It's called Blurds and Fandom with
Caged Bishop Costplay. Caged Bishop Costplay is someone on TikTok primarily he does great,
great stuff, and he talked very proudly about being a blurd, which,
for those who don't know the term is a black nerd. You know,
he talks about a lot of the same stuff that we're talking about from
his specific perspective as a black man. And I really loved that podcast.
We really got in a lot of great things, and we actually talked about
the Barbie Movie for a while, and while we both loved it so much
and different respectives on it, but that was just kind of one podcast and
wanted to lift up. Another theme that for me really was kind of brought
out by this movie is how much the strike affected this year. And as
you said, the Productionist movie I don't think was affected by the strike at
all, but it did not do very well. And I think that,
like the way Hollywood is, a lot of people are probably taking that as
like, oh, this isn't an interesting character. People weren't interested in,
you know, a Mexican American family. To me, though, I think
the fact that like none of the stars could publicize it when it came out,
Like a lot of movies that came out during the strike were really hurt
with their marketing, and you know, I think a lot of folks like
myself just weren't going to watch any movies during that time. But also just
even people who were like you know, I'm talking to both of my partners,
neither one of them had they remembered like seeing trailers for it years ago,
but neither one had realized that they had come out because there was just
a little publicity about it. And I I don't know if that's just because
of the strike or also because DC, Like I what what DC? And
and that company does right now about what they publicize and what they don't and
you know, pulling movies off the shelf and stuff. I have no idea,
but I really think this was a movie that was hurt by And when
I say I'm blaming the strike one hundred blaming the studios, to be clear,
like I'm one hundred percent pro union, I'm pretty sure Paul is as
well. Actually, well, no, that was the whole thing that never
Yeah, yeah, I mean continue your thought that is, I'd like to
put a pin in that one. Yeah, sure, for sure. But
my point being that just I don't want to think I'm like being like,
oh God, damn those actors or writers who who caused this? But I
do think that I want more people to give this movie attention. And it
just for me brings up how much the strike was a theme, both in
terms of we did a great episode on labor stuff where you and I talked
back and forth and we did disagree on a lot of stuff, agreed on
a lot of things as well, and also that just how much the strike
wound up affecting this podcast because we spent probably like four or five months looking
for content outside of the Hollywood system, and I'll talk more about that because
I think that like we did some great content on individual things, but also
it was just fantastic to really like be like, hey, there's lots of
great content being made outside of Hollywood, and we should talk more about that.
But yeah, if you want to put your pin in the union comment.
Yeah. So just to address the last thing, I one thing I
really enjoyed as a consequence of the strike was the like the reminder, the
like very important reminder that like, Hollywood is not all of filmmaking, right,
that that filmmaking, you know, both both you know, cinema and
television extend beyond Hollywood, and that there's tons of great stuff that you can
watch from all different places in the world, and you know, and that
that's not you know, you might have a distributor that in within the United
States which is involved with Hollywood, right, but but that if you're like,
well, I don't want to watch any of these Hollywood things during the
strike because I don't want to support the companies that are the whole thing gets
very complicated. But like if you're just like I don't want to do that,
or you know, you didn't want to cover any of that, then
it's like, well, there's there's no shortage of other things to cover,
you know. And I enjoyed the opportunity and kind of the push to to
watch some more things that some things that I had seen before and to rewatch
them, like Sharps and and some other things like you know, the Hidden
Fortress and the Godzilla movie, the first one, you know, we watched
together, and a lot of people say, something we see that quickly is
that on with's idea of like, you know, people getting to speak out
of their own voice. Part of why I watched Godzilla at the time it
was coming out was it was right when Oppenheimer came out. And there's a
lot of commentary I made about like, hey, how come we're talking all
about the atom bomb completely without like a single Japanese character ever appearing on screen.
And I've now watched Oppenheimer, and I think the movie is not about
the things that the marketing campaign made it look like it was about, And
I don't think it's actually a very well made movie. That's a very interesting
story, but that shouldn't be the definitive like story about you know, the
nuclear bombs dropped under and I'm not saying god Zilla should be, but I
do think that, like I mean, and this wasn't just me my observing,
like doing a lot of reading. There's been a lot of Japanese commentary
about this that the movie was very much was made only eight years after and
basically a year after the American occupation ended, so they first could do it.
And it's very clearly the entire thing a metaphor for and a kind of
national reckoning with the you know, the horrible thing that that America did to
them and did to the Japanese, and so it's it's and then the later
movies are just a lot of fun, and some of them have really deep
themes as well, and some of them are just watching guys in rubber suits
crushed plastic buildings, which looks really fun and you to see move rubber monsters
be passive aggressive and it's wonderful. But yeah, I would that's another one
that I think came out of this. I would really strongly recommend the nineteen
fifty four Japanese version. That's particularly important because they made an American version,
which is the first thing that often come on searches, which they took out
all the stuff that's critical of America edit. Right, it's it's the edit
that was released in the United States, which was the only one that was
really available in the United States for a long time. It's the same movie,
but it's a different edit, so it's a completely different movie. Well
yeah, it's not only that, it's just in a different edit though.
They actually made new footage of a white reporter who like gets to be Yeah,
so you were making a large point. I wont because that be ties
in so much with the like, you know, hearing folks of their own
voice. Yeah, for sure. And and like I mean, I find
it interesting to see also the different stereotypings that you get from one side,
Like you know, if you see an American film and then the American film
sort of interpret interpretation of the Japanese, and you see a Japanese film the
Japanese interpretation of you know, Americans, and then you watch some Chinese films
and their interpretation of the Japanese. And then also like I watched We Did
It mon right with Donnie n and then I'm more recently watched which which takes
place during the Japanese occupation of China, and right, and but then I
watched Enter the Fat Dragon, which is also a Donni n movie that takes
place largely in Japan, and it's like, you know, there's there's this
like scene where like everybody's telling them to be quiet basically, which is I
think this you know, sort of like Chinese impression or stereotype of Japan.
But then also of this self awareness of like being called loud, you know,
particularly like Cantonese speaking Chinese from like Hong Kong. And so it's just
kind of getting to see different, you know, representations from different cultures,
of other cultures and then of themselves and like obviously no one stereotype or whatever
is going to be universal, but kind of getting to see different angles on
on the same things or whether it's the same events like the you know,
the horrific attacks on Japan by the United States at the end of World War
two, or you know, the horrific attacks on China by Japan and at
the beginning of World War two. Like, seeing different takes on things,
I think just is it's interesting, It's valuable, and to me it feels
important to just not always get one view of anything, you know, And
yeah, I would you say, I think it's really true. Yeah,
yeah, And in terms of the strike, like I don't want to get
too much into it, but just basically, unions are power structures, and
power structures by humans are used as they're used. And during the strike,
I was very conscious of trying not to talk too much about the things about
the Writer's Guild and the Actors Guild, like the way that they were doing
things that I didn't like because the producers which is it is a guild,
the AMPTP or whatever. Like for me, it was one of these situations
where it's like, you have two sides that I think are not doing things
I agree with, but one of them is doing things I like, vehemently
oppose, and the other side I'm just like, yeah, that's not why,
you know, And I feel like sometimes there's a time for nuance,
and there's a time for if not like blind solidarity, then at least like,
look right now, while you're kind of like having your moment, I'm
not going to be like, this is why I don't think you're this wonderful
organization that like everybody should just be like raw rah rah. But at the
same time, you know, I'm I'm I'm gonna let you like do your
thing and then like I'll try and give you know, come in with my
pedal, my nuance later, you know, kind of where like you know,
and this happens in Wars too, right, where it's like, well,
both sides are wrong, but one side has bigger guns. And that's
really the thing in that, you know, producers versus writers, or producers
versus actors or whatever. It's like the producers have bigger guns, they have
more money, and I mean that's metaphorical, so not as big a deal,
you know, but like overall, it's like for me, it's like
I think it's important to be able to be like, yeah, I don't
agree with everything you're doing or the way you're going about it, and I
don't think all of your motives are necessarily wonderful. You know, yeah,
but you're going up against someone who I think is dramatically more wrong than you,
so like a right, you know, it's not necessarily the time,
you know. It's like it's like during the twenty twenty protests, the you
know, the sometimes violent protests more often not violent protests, It's like I
feel like that wasn't a time to be like, well, actually, you
know, this way of going about things is not going to achieve. It's
like just to no, like, you know, let people speak for themselves.
And then I mean, and the thing about unions is sort of like
who is speaking for exactly whom? You know. And so in the same
way that Hollywood doesn't represent all film you know, the writer's skill doesn't represent
all writers, you know, and I appreciate that there are multiple actor skills,
you know. And you know, my parents were both in film unions.
My coming to this Earth actually was paid for by the Teamsters union,
and like my parents paid basically nothing of the then not quite as astronomical delivery
charges of children. But like you know, but also like the Teamsters,
like literally I think they they did like break people's legs in spots, and
like you know, like they asked me, but they're like, so do
you do that? It's like, oh, yeah, you know, yeah,
yeah, that's that's real, you know. And but you know,
but also you don't want to like portray all unions that way. In Hullywood's
had a bad history of portraying unions, you know. Yeah, and like
to bring it full circle, I'm gonna I'm gonna pitch my my screenplay idea
that I can't write entirely by myself, and I actually have a co writer
who I've never talked to, that I have in mind, and I have
a dream director and whatever. But like in nineteen eighty two, there was
a garment workers strike in Chinatown in New York, and actually before even the
writer's strike, I was like thinking, like, that's something that there should
be a movie of, you know, and my mother in law worked in
the garment you know, was a garment worker in New York, not in
Chinatown, and like just after the strike, but like I, you know,
I have an idea for a movie there. But like I'm like,
I don't think somebody who didn't grow up, you know, directly in this
w world should be like the only writer on a project like that. You
know, I don't believe that, like you can only write things that are
exactly like your own personal experience, but I do believe that, Like,
you know, one of the things that the union was talking about was preserving
the writer's room, and I feel a little conflicted about that because some of
the ways they were doing it like felt very artificial, Like some of their
very concrete demands about exactly how many staff members there had to be based on
exactly how many episodes they were for a show, And I'm like, is
this just going to lead to longer run times? Like so they don't you
know what I mean? Like if someone wants to make six hours of content,
they're like, oh, well, if we make six episodes, we
have to have this many writers and twelve outs, so we're just going to
do four hour and a half episodes. Yeah, But I do think,
you know, the strength of something like a writer's room is you can actually
get people with different backgrounds, with different perspectives, and you really can bring
a bunch of voices to one project and make sure that you have the necessary
voices you know, in any given project for sure. Well, especially because
I think sometimes when the rules become very black and white, probably very poor
phrasing, but I think that a lot of nuance can be lost. Like
Yeah, generally, if I hear a white person is writing a story about
a non white community, a part of me gets a little like, Okay,
Like if you told me you were going to write a story about something
that happened in Kenya, I'd be like, what are you doing? Buddy,
you married into a Chinese American family and I've lived in you know,
like you've had You are not Chinese, but you, to me, there's
a level of experience that you have connection to that culture that I just said,
Yes, so right, bring in other writers. I'm not trying to
speak for you. I'm just to me just the general example if someone just
heard a white person's writing about something that happened in Chinatown. Like, there
are layers to what exposure people have to different experiences and stuff like that.
Yeah, for sure, exactly. It's like I mean people can look at,
you know, someone's background on paper and things, you know, like
I I just see on you know Wikipedia. Oh you know the writer of
Blue Beetle is you know, referred to as Mexican born. I don't know
what that means, you know, like is he is he Mexican? Is
he Mexican American? Like did? Is he just American? But he was
born in Mexico and he moved when he was like a week old, Like
I don't know, right, that's so you know, I kind of threw
that out there as like, oh, that seems like a positive thing,
right that. Yeah, But like I don't necessarily know exactly what that means
in terms of like what his personal experiences. I haven't read a bunch of
interviews and done a bunch of research, you know, in that regard.
But and like, I do think that there's a danger in like trying to
judge other people's kind of worthiness or relevance to like doing any particular project.
And like, yeah, I'll write something that takes place in Kenya, Like
I can't not write something that takes place in Kenya. Like but but like
there is an awareness of like I don't personally at this point in time,
have that much knowledge of Kenya, you know, like I can find it
on a map, which I think puts me in like maybe ten percent of
people who live in the United States. But you know, sadly, but
like that doesn't really do much in terms of knowing what anyone's given experiences in
a given place. But I do think obviously, like, you know,
I could be the same person and two years from now, I could have
lived in Kenya for two years. Pretty unlikely turn of events, but like
and then like you know it, it would seem a little more reasonable.
But I do think that there's like a little bit of like I don't know.
I think as a writer it's like important to ask, like am I
the best person to tell this story? But yeah, but like not to
the point of being like, well then I like to like not doing anything
or feeling like there should be some real like you know, like the writer
of superhero movies that they're not superheroes, you know what I mean? And
I know, yeah, like I don't know, and some of this stuff
actually, yeah, there's a large conversation we had here, and I think
you and I are not you know, I think I see things pretty differently
than you, but I also hear what you're saying. I think for me,
the part of it's also that like it's the like kind of we're saying
about like you know, if the first story about the Adam Baum is being
told about American guilt about it, that seems, you know, and it's
not the first story, but one of the first Native movies by Americans certainly,
And that's like, you know, if we were getting tons of Kenyan
movies by Kenyons, which we are, they just no one ever sees them,
like you know, I'm like, sure, yeah, rite it,
but you know, but I also think, as you said, there's ways
of like I have not yet seen Killers of the Flower Moon. I'm very
curious to see it. I hope to see it. But a number of
Native Native American you know, content creators who I follow, including some of
those you know from the the tribal group, that is that the movie is
about the neighbor, which I forget, you know, have been very clear
about. Like Martin Scorsese worked with us for a very long time on writing
this movie. There was one quote that I really love where we basically said,
like, this is not the movie that someone from our background would have
written, right, but it's the best movie we could have imagined a white
man making. And right now Hollywood won't let us make the movie. So
if Martin Scorsese makes the movie, then you know, that's great, And
I think that's and I think there's something to be said for like when Martin
Scorsese makes that movie which I haven't seen or really read about, I do
think it can make it easier for the people who are saying, you know,
we can't make that movie right now, to gain the visibility and the
opportunity to make maybe not that exact movie, you know, but at other
times it makes it harder, you know, And I think it sort of
being aware of how the industry is functioning and stuff like that. I think
I think that's useful, you know, kind of knowing like is this,
you know, is this helping? Is this hurting? Like what am I
trying to do here? Like? Do I just have a story I want
to tell? And so I'm going to tell that story, and like you
can have whatever thoughts you want about my identity or this or that or whatever,
or like, you know, if it really is someone else's story,
then like, how can I make sure that whoever's story it really is,
Like if it's relating to like real people or like a very specific culture,
how can I make sure that people from that culture, are people within that
story or related to that story, are involved or at least you know,
in some capacity, right whether or not they have the written by credit,
you know, for sure for sure. Pulling back to the Union stuff,
I want to talk about a movie that we watched this year. I watched
this year. I don't know if you've ever seen it. I don't talk
to about. Let's start that again. Pulling back to the union stuff.
One more thing I want to say about that and the Strike is there's one
movie for which I broke the picket in that regard that we talked about a
Disney made movie, but it felt appropriate after seeing the actors from the movie
singing the songs from the movie on the picket lines, and I'm talking about
the movie that, as far as I can understand, is where a hell
of a lot of people, a hell of a lot of millennials and gen
Zers and even some folks of our generation got really a union consciousness. And
that's Newsy's which is Christian Bale as a fifteen year old newsboy singing and dancing
as he talks about of the very real newspaper boys strike of eighteen ninety eight
or maybe nineteen hundred. It's a ridiculous movie. It's a lot of fun,
and it's a Disney musical with all of that entails, but it's really
a beautiful story about unions and actually has a lot of like union theory in
it, and I really love getting to do an episode about it and really
using that as a lens to look at the unions. I mean, certainly,
one of things I talked about is that unions aren't perfect by any means.
But that there's a need for like like there are times where inside the
Union they disagree on tactics, but they have the strategy of like once we
decide, once the majority or the leadership besides on the tactics, then we're
all The strategy is to then all go out and hold up those tactics,
you know. And yeah, it's it's by no means a perfect movie,
and it's not completely accurate, but it was just I mean, obviously the
singing and dancing is very much not accurate. Christian Bale is a good singer.
So I heard the Batman voice hurts. But yeah, so that was
just a fun one. I want to hear more of the things that that
Blue Beetle brought up for you. But I'm wondering, can you guess what
is the topic that I really more and more became enamored of this year that
Blue Beetle gets doesn't does a completely awful job of Yeah, I see the
transition about Blue Beetle for me would be Kevin Conroy as Batman singing, am
I Blue? Oh? Okay, there you go, there you go.
So speaking of Batman singing, wait, so what what is that that it
doesn't bring up. I mean, is it the multiverse? Is it?
What's a topic that I really love talking about on this podcast that this is
not a good example of that. You love talking about relatable villains, relatable
villains, That is that it? That's it? Yeah, yeah, you're
right. Susan Sarandon's character is not. It is a two direct, two
dimensional cardboard cutout of an evil, evil, Reaganite profiteering, you know,
person. And I think Susan Sarandon did a great job of playing a terribly
written character. But the whole point was to be like, and it's funny
because like at one point said on this podcast that I think, like just
you should always have a relatable villain, and someone called me out on it.
It may have been you, It may have been just Plumber. Yeah,
uh, maybe both of you at the same time. I don't know.
But maybe pointing out like that that is great most of the time,
but sometimes you just want to focus on the hero and and don't want to
engage with that. And yeah, like to me, Student Sarandon's villain being
completely uninteresting is not at all a problem with the movie. But I think
this year really did codify for me that I think it is for the For
me, that's what makes the ethical podcast. You know, it's like dealing
with and there's some great challenges the heroes face that Blue Beetle deals with one
of my personal face two of my personal favorites. But I really like looking
back at a lot of the things we talked about this year, you know,
the stories of villains, but also the story of heroes who are really
pretty dark or characters who aren't heroes but are protagonists, like Dread to me
is a great example of that, you know of like maybe he's an anti
hero, maybe he's just a protagonist who's not heroic. Wire a whole podcast
about a dread. Oh Dread. I thought you said Red, and I'm
like the from the Blacklist. I was like, I was like, I
guess he's not a hero and he's exactly the protagonist. Yeah, Dread,
Yeah for sure, for sure. Similarly like Hunger Games, the Ballad of
Songbirds and Snakes, which you have not seen a red. Okay, I
will be very careful about this point. I don't think I care, but
okay, yeah, maybe maybe light on the spoilers. It's pretty recently came
out, so I won't but I'll just say that it is a movie about
President Snow, but it is not a villain origin story in the traditional something
bad happened to a good person and the joker was proven right, you know,
and they it was. This is a person who was on a bad
path and was given opportunities to change, and we watched them not do so.
And it's part of what makes it so brilliant to me is there's never
a moment where I don't find the character intensely relatable, you know. In
that I'm feeling like if I was raised the way he was raised and experienced
the trauma he experienced, I want to believe I would make better choices than
he did, and I think I would. But I also understand why I
would write like I can understand the urge to go into all the darkness that
he does, and it was I think both that and Dread were just both
It's funny. Dread was literally the first movie we talked about this year,
and that one was the last before we got into The one that came after
that was What is a Christmas Movie? Which is a fun genre exploration,
but Christmas movies generally don't involve villains. Sometimes I do not, I not.
I've repeatedly watched Scrooge the actually the Disney version with Uncle Scrooge. Oh
yeah, in Cantonese, but like, it's definitely Christmas y and he's definitely
a villain. And then he gets a chance to turn away from that villain
his path and he does. You know, spoilers for a Christmas Carol and
the fifteen thousand adaptations that you may find in film and television. And actually
we had someone be very critical of the Christmas Carol story, which is fun
on that what is a Christmas Movie podcast? But yeah, what's how do
you feel about relatable villains? I think they can be great. I think
making a majority of villains, there's like relatable, and then there's just like
this character as a person, you know. And I feel like and Or
did a good job of having a mix of relatable antagonists or antagonists that you
had a chance to relate to if you happen to relate to some of some
of their experiences or or you know, put them in some situations that you
might develop some empathy for them and then be like, oh no, this
is a villain, you know. Yeah, And then other characters who are
just there. They're still characters, but it's like maybe not as relatable,
but just like, yeah, that seems like a person, you know,
yeah, as opposed to like this is a cardboard cutout of a villain,
you know. Yeah. And maybe a better way of saying what I wanted
to say is that you understand that the villain thinks they're the hero, right
the villain isn't twirling their mustache because Susan Sarandon was twirling her mustache like one
of the best. Absolutely, absolutely, And you know, I think there's
room for both. And I think that there are more that there are more
relatable villains or villains that you understand believe they are the protagonist. I think
that is generally a good thing, that there are more of them. But
I also don't think there's no room for villains who are not like that.
You know, I believe there's there's space for both. And you know,
was that the best choice in this movie? Maybe? You know, I
mean she could have been maybe, you know, she could have been like
two and a half dimensional maybe, but like you know, and and certain
things felt like very on the nose. But at the same time, it's
like, yeah, maybe that's just that was fine in this movie. You
know, there's there's other there's multiple antagonists who have a little bit more going
on. Who who you know, Swan you mentioned there's there's another one who
also has a I think relatable experience by consistently not being called by his name,
you know, And I think that can be relatable to a lot of
people in different ways. Right, It was unfortunate that that led to one
of the lines that I could predict word for word. Yes, yes,
and but yeah, it was very relatable, and his like hero turn in
that regard was very relatable, if incredibly telegraphed, right, yeah, exactly,
actually totally predictable, not subtle, but like you know, it was
there, you know, and and so I you know, I think I
think sometimes I don't think hmm, some movies just don't seem to have the
bandwidth to do certain things together, you know, and maybe maybe trying to
make her character more than it was, you know, and they kind of
almost like with her off screen, sort of hand waved in that direction,
you know, where like, you know, the basic plot premise is that
you know, this guy makes a company and he has a son and a
daughter who are running the company and then the son maybe kind of goes away
from running the company, and the father dies and then he leaves it to
the son, and you know, they kind of mentioned like that seems kind
of sexist, you know, like and you know, we don't know all
the details, but it's like, you know, you can kind of fill
in, like, yeah, she didn't like that, and so not like
therefore she took a villainous turn. But that's why, you know, she
kind of maybe has a chip on her shoulder about how the company was run
and what she wanted to do with it when when she got control of it
finally, you know, and and so there's like there's something there. It's
just they didn't they didn't do much with it, and like that's that's okay.
You know, it's a choice. It's a choice for sure, for
sure. But yeah, it's definitely something I like, I have had this
idea that I've wanted to write a book about villains for a long time,
and I think more and more, Uh, it's something I hope that I'm
going to do in the new year. And I think part of it for
me is also that the better a villain is, I think it often part
of why I don't like, you know, completely evil evil villains is it
means that you have completely morally justified heroes. Because if there is pure total
evil in the world, you know, in the in the form of like
a power beatine, you know, unlimited power and all this, Yeah,
then it's very hard to ask questions about what is or isn't justified in in
against that person, you know, and and you know, you need Hitler
to have a captain America, and there is a real world Hitler, like
there is a you know, so there there definitely is you know, uh,
even he thought he was the hero in his own story. But I
think to the rest of us can be pretty clearly like yeah, anoplutely awful,
but then the feelings of just how absolutely awful led to the fire bombing
of Dresden, you know, and and the killing of hundreds of thousands of
German civilians. Yeah. So yeah, so it's just and bring it back
to Blue Beetle, I'll say. The flip side of that to me,
then, is the the villain who wrestles with their own power and did you
get some pretty strong Luke Luke Luke Skywalker at the end of return of the
Jedi vibes from from Blue Beetle's Journey in this oh, like allowing the guy
with the prostatic cansa kill the main villain, Well, I'm that kind of
at the same time, No, no, specifically in that like, oh
oh yeah, like he wanted to kill the guy and then he's like,
I'm not going to kill him because that's not who I am, who I
want to be. Well, even more than that, he starts out as
like he doesn't want to use lethal damage, and so he's fighting this machine
that he doesn't want to fight lethally. He then starts just like you know,
punching them really hard against brick walls, which as we've discussed as another
favorite theme of mine. But then later when he's really kind of like at
his lowest point, it's by embracing his anger and and and rage at what's
happening to his family that he empowers himself. And on the Star Wars podcast,
we've like to I think that the to me, the original framing of
the Force in Star Wars is that if you give into anger and hate,
that it will, you know, forever, will dominate your destiny because you
start to just see things as things you hate. And I think some of
Star Wars got a little like black and white about that, and more recent
and more recent stories, I think they've been embracing the idea of like,
no, there is some power to rage, there is some power to anger,
there's some power to hate. The problem is that it can can blind
you, it can overpower you. And so to me, having him both
be incredibly empowered by focusing on his anger and his desire to you know,
it's it's desire to protect, but like so is Anakins, you know,
but then having it be that moment where he is like, I have to
you know, I have to kill this person who's done great harm to his
family, and the machine stops him in some way, but because them,
Sheine knows like, no, that's not what you want to do. I
just thought it was absolutely brilliant and but also gave me it was like,
oh, here's one of my favorite themes is like how do you be?
How do you use great power to fight evil without becoming just a killing machine
yourself? Right? And like and you actually tap into your anger to I
mean, I feel like this relates a lot to you know, our world
problems where there are a great many things that we can be very angry about,
and that anger can drive us to action. We can allow anger to
drive us to action and motivate us and push us to take action. But
like somewhere there's a like there needs to be some you know, the the
I can't drive the train the whole time kind of right, like like there
needs to be some amount of like sort of like supervising ourselves of like Okay,
wait, yeah, that's that's not going to actually either that's not who
I want to be, that's not what I want to do, or like
that's not going to achieve the ends I want, you know. And like
so I think like using anger as a motivation without letting it be a like
the only driving force, you know. I think like having it, having
it supply the fuel, but not drive the bus. You know. I
think it's like can can we do that? And it's like I think that's
hard, but I think it's it's possible, you know. And and so
I think he kind of manages to do that a little bit where you know,
he is that anger and you know, the anger at something bad happening
to people that he cares about, driving him to take action, but then
still having the wherewithal to be like, okay, hold on, let's yeah,
you're right, you know, I'm not because it is u kaji Da,
right, the voice the blue beetle of the machine, you know,
yeah, whether it's or it's like I think it's Ai, but it may
also be a spirit. We don't have any idea, right, right,
it's not. It's not really gone into deeply here, and you know,
and telling him like, wait, but this is what you said before.
It's like, oh, yeah, I did say that. Okay, yeah,
thanks. You know. One other just cool thing that harkens back to
the language set, yeah, is that as the Kaji Da and like him,
they start out very much at odd and over the course of the movie
they they quite literally synchronize. And one of the ways that the movie shows
that is that the Kaji Da starts speaking him in Spanish. Yeah very much.
Again, you really's talking to him in Spanglish like and I just thought
that was such a brilliant way of showing like this is now and I think
without that that helps me to buy that it is so you know, connected
to his head. Another just quick shout out of you know, this is
just like a connection, not a theme. But what's the name of the
actor who plays Hime Okay du Yeah, yeah, Marie Duinya. Yeah,
okay. This isn't really a theme of the show, although it's a topic
we talk about a lot. But it's funny that this is so much of
a connection. Is this is now the second time we have talked about the
actor dealing with wanting to fight without using lethal force and being scared of the
possibilities of his force because of course, he plays Miguel in Cobra Kai,
who goes to many of the exact same struggles. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I was like, you mean a little bit typecast, my friend,
You're you're a great actor, So I love it. Yeah, I'd like
to to give a little shout out to Soolo Marie Duenya where he like there's
things that and there's like certain just very Miguel things that Jime does here,
you know where like both in like when he's like talking to a girl and
like not be like somehow he managed to come off as like very likable,
charismatic. He can like be visibly interested in someone, but it doesn't feel
like a like a you know, trying to like wean a right, but
also like it's like he's not I don't know, like that like sort of
sliminess or the kind of like aim to be possessive or something like that,
Like that's not there, Like there's he just has a very particular sort of
charisma that I think comes out in this role that also does in Cobra Kai,
and just he works on his attitude of like he's a round, a
beautiful woman and he's just so happy and honored to be in a presence and
he wants to keep doing that, you know, without like you said,
without it being the like your mind now, Yeah, and like a certain
level just kind of like respectfulness without like being like super deferential. It's like
it just works. He's just got a vibe and it comes out here and
yeah, and it works. I think, yeah, it really does.
It does. And then also just a couple of other cast members. I
mean, it was it's cool to see George Lopez gets to like play like
I think a Mexican Doc Brown is how yeah what I think that was a
line from the movie, right, that is a line yeah, yeah,
a Mexican Doc Brown combined with like are you so there? Yes? Yeah,
no, I'm here a Mexican doc Brown combined with a like survivalist super
paranoid. But it's the fun thing where the super paranoid guy gets to be
gets to be right, So that's fun. And and uh Damian Alcasar who
plays his father, And I've actually recently said I was watching I'm halfway through
a movie kvi Va Meko on on Netflix where he plays maybe more than one
character. But and uh, and he's in a bunch of other stuff,
like like Mexican movies, you know. In his bio, I think it
refers to him as being in six four in Productions and twenty seven Mexican movie.
I like that. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, and just overall,
like I thought, I mean, I liked Bruno Markensing as Mark Marquessing,
Marquessing as Jenny Cord the kind of like love interest but also like maybe
the real protagonist of the you know, like in terms of in terms of
the plot, you know, like he's the like she's the wasp to his
aunt man quite literally, Yeah, she's the daughter of the guy. And
it gets passed over like you know, yeah, and like he kind of
accidentally becomes, you know, the the hero here right, Like he wasn't
meant to like like the Blue Beatles, just like oh yeah, I'm gonna
you're gonna be my host now, you know yea. But yeah, just
over overall, I felt like the cast brought a lot that I think if
if if you filmed this movie with a bad subpart cast, I think it
would actually be quite bad. You know. Yeah, but it wasn't you
know, there were parts that you know, Okay, we're doing this now,
you know. Yeah, there were there were some moments. I won't
get into those stuff. I'll focus on the part that I liked, which
was like just you know, just the performances and just seeing like, you
know, the peoples as people. You know. Yeah, I think it
really highlights that, like I love ensemble hero movies and that clearly this is
like there's one named hero, but he's off screen for like twenty minutes of
one of the biggest action scenes in the movie, and yeah, it works.
And I think like this is a couple of years now ago. Now
he has a bunch of years ago now because when Rogue one came out.
But we had a great discussion with Becky Allen about like moving away from the
like you know, one strong man of history stories all the time to be
much more like ensembles and found family, and this isn't really found family,
although one person kind of gets adopted into it. It is a blood family,
but it is such a strong story of family. Yes, when I
first compared it to Encanto, in my mind, I kind of stepped back
for a second and being like, am I am I kind of just doing
this because it's about to you know, Latin American families, and but I
think there are a lot of connections there of things that are very related,
you know, very connected to the Latin American experience, but like you know,
not exclusively to but the way it's told, particularly in terms of like
family and the way the family interacts with each other and that being very much
extended family, but also just in terms of like the history of colonial violence
being a big part of both of those stories and stuff like that. That's
the bigger connection for me and kind of family vibe, right, like,
yeah, yeah, very much so. Less the singing and dancing, Yeah,
less the singing and dancing, but also the strong grandmother figure and as
for the memory of the grandfather being being a part of the Yeah, sure,
were the other themes that really hit for you. There's one of them
I want to talk about that's not connected to Blue Beatle, but with any
others that connect that you want to talk about from this year, either connected
to Blue Beetle or not. So, I mean, just one one series
that I'd like to just throw out there that I watched this year, I
think during the strike, because I was like, am I going to just
not watch anything? It's like, oh, I'm not paying for any of
these things, so so so it's not like my my money is going to
the companies or whatever. But just something that I watched that I really appreciated
was American Born Chinese that was a you know, that's a Disney production,
Like it's you know, it's not even Marvel. It's like it's Disney,
you know, And it's a it's a superhero ish you know. I mean,
it's definitely you know, supernatural. It's inspired by partially, I mean,
it's it's actually it's it is an adaptation of you know, graphic novels,
and it's got like half the cast of everything everywhere, all once who
are all fabulous and not the best part of the series for me. Yeah,
In terms of acting. And one thing that I felt like that series
really did a good job of without getting deep into it, is letting a
lot of different characters, you know, have their stories and be protagonists within
their own thing and be heroes really without like characters who you wouldn't necessarily expect
to see that to get that chance, you know, And I really enjoyed
that aspect of it. And now I'm rewatching it that my Mandarin isn't as
terrible as it was when I first saw it. Nice, It defaely something
I want to say that there's a big backload. Yeah, no, you
watched it. You watched it, We talked about it. You're right,
you're right, Thank you. No, we did watch it. Yeah,
that's right. Now talk about all the podcasts. But I was talking about
that's right. I thought, what do you talk about it on a podcast?
Did we? Oh? My goodness? Is my Yeah? I was
thinking. I was thinking of a TV show. I thought there was a
TV show that was kind of like an updated version of the Fresh off the
Boat idea, And that's what I thought you were talking about. And then
I realized, No, it was a movie that was really good. No,
it was a series this is a series of eight. Yeah, it's
definitely not like I mean, I guess there are similarities to Fresh off the
Boat, but it's a very different feel. I mean, it's a you
know, it's a it's an action story, superhero story, yeah, exactly,
supernatural story certainly. Yeah. Yeah. And oh no, there is
another thing that I then watched the Yeah, the legend the New Legends of
Monkey, which is like the same kind of character group of characters are based
on the same you know, I think sixteenth century Chinese novel which but but
this one is an Australian sort of remake ish of a nineteen eighties Japanese TV
series that was based on this much older Chinese novel. And I but I
watched it dubbed in Mandarin, which was like a weird experience. I was
like, instead of watching things dubbed in English, not watching English things dubbed
in Mandarin, which and it's it has like a bit of a like Xena
Hercules vibe, so you know, it's it's it's it's different. It's different.
Yeah, I like it. I like it. One small thing and
then one of the bigger theme that I wanted to bring up just back to
the subject of villains again. Because of the strike, we got to re
explore some of the some much older works. And you know, I've always
known that superhero movies did not invent the idea of the relatable villain by any
means, but I think I got a really powerful reminder of just how deep
some of these ideas go. And they go far, far beyond what I'm
about to mention, far far older than that, but still the novel Moby
Dick. Mobi Dick was a book that I kind of had skimmed a little
bit when I was much younger, didn't really get into. I've heard eight
million allusions to it, you know, and I knew the kind of you
know, the Moby Dick and the White Whale and things like that that are
used as like metaphors for things you know, often about like you know,
sort of a hopeless quest or a quest that obsesses someone. And I got
to do a phenomenal podcast about Moby Dick with someone who'd done their master's work
on the novel, and her screen name is Akaahab, and we really talked
a lot about the character of Ahab and how he is, you know,
the very much one of the main protagonists of the novel, and in some
ways very much a villain in I mean, he certainly leads you know,
a whole bunch of people to their ruin because of his obsession with his whale,
but also he's presented in not relatable ways necessarily in that like he becomes
clearly deeply you know, mentally troubled, but also the path he gets there,
like actually, you've ever experienced mental illness is completely understandable, and he
just he became such a fascinating character to me in a way that I think,
you know, it is by no means the most accessible of works,
and the movie versions of it have never been done quite well. And I
kind of hope now that we just have the the the CGI abilities to really,
I think, do the movie right. I would really love to see
it done. But the larger theme I was going to talk about was shit,
what was it? We had it here? And I just, oh,
yeah, actually, let me ask you, have you seen the TV
show The Last of Us? I have not. Okay, I guess I
don't really care about spoilers because it really doesn't feel like something I want to
see. Okay, that's really fair. I think it might not be particularly
in what I'm going to say. I did watch the Super Mario Brothers movie,
which is then parodied by what's his name on snl oh Pedro. Yeah,
okay, cool, I'll find a way. Yeah. Yeah. So
the one other thing I wanted to talk about, and there really only is
only one example of it that I used, although now I'm having another example
of it. Actually I can restart that. So the other thing I want
to talk about is I feel like this year I really discovered an entirely new
medium, and a lot of people I'm very late to the bus on this,
A lot of people have found this already, but it's video games.
I had heard and understood a lot about video games as narrative and people using
the video game to tell stories in a different way, but and I really
experienced it twice this year. One is Balder's Gate. That have been playing
is pretty much taken over my life. A big reason why I haven't caught
up on a lot of the things I wanted to see was Balder's Gate came
out, I think towards the end of the strike, and so most of
the time I used to spend watching things has been spent playing Ballder'sgate with my
partner. We're now on our third run. It's just that good of a
game. And every time you like, there is a story, but every
time you play it through, you can play it from different characters and thus
see the story from a completely new perspective. And so that is I think
a thing that a video game can do in showing you a story from all
these different perspectives. And that's amazing. But that's not to me. I
knew that could happen. I just had to experience it so well. Until
Balder's Gate three. The thing that really blew my mind was The Last of
Us. The Last of Us TV show I think is incredibly dark and is
not for people, but it's a brilliant piece of filmmaking, you know,
in TV form, but I think filmmaking is the right word. The acting
is amazing, the writing, the cinematography, everything is just phenomenally done,
particularly because it is not a zombie show. It is a show that uses
zombies as the plot device to get us thinking about what the kind of massive
trauma of you know, a cataclysmic event that wipes out ninety percent of the
population and leaves the rest of us in this desolate healthscape, what that would
do to people. So the TV show already was amazing, But then I
played the video game, which I mean I watched my spouse play the video
game because I don't have the hand eye coordination for first person shooters. You
experienced the video game. Yeah, it's not a first person shooter necessarily,
but yeah, I experienced the video game. It is a hand eye coordination
game, which I'm terrible at. And Paul said, they're okay with me
not spoiling it, so I'm gonna use some I won't spoil any details,
but just general themes. You know, if you've seen the show or the
video game, you know it is about heroic It is about people doing heroic
things. But the main protagonist winds up doing things that are deeply understandable and
completely understandable, and probably wind up fucking over the entire world because of like
I'm gonna go ahead and spoil it, like he winds up. They get
into a situation where the girl he's been protecting this whole time, who's formed
this very strong bond with this beautifully told story, they believe they can cure
the zombieism. But the only way to get the cure is basically to drain
her of blood, like to kill her. I'm sorry, no, it's
because it's in her brain actually, And he finds out about this and he's
like, fuck no, and he kills everyone to stop them from doing it,
and in so doing kills the only people of any idea how And we
did a whole series of podcasts on the show, and so I'm not going
to reiterate it, but I think the game the show to end the game
both do an incredible job of not clearly saying he's right, not clearly saying
he's wrong, just saying here's what he does, and making you be in
it and to watch it as a TV show was powerful. But in the
game, which is like the thing that the game does is the story itself,
is completely on rails. You don't get to make choices. You get
to like play out the things they do, but you don't get to make
choices. And you know, we talked about how when you get to that
point in the game and you realize not only is this what Joel gonna do,
but you have to be the one pushing the buttons as he does it,
and you are. You are therefore kind of complicit in his story in
a way. It's a kind of storytelling that a lot of people hate it,
and I totally understand, because if you're really into like wanting to control
the narrative, this is not for you. But the idea of telling a
story about a person who's driven to do what I think are supposed to be
understood as terrible things, and that's not the only thing by any means,
but where you have to be complicit in that way because you're playing the character.
I'd never seen someone use a video game as that kind of medium,
and I thought it was, you know, maybe not the way most I
don't think. I really don't want most video games to be like that.
I don't want most stories to be like that. But as a way to
use this media to tell a kind of story in a way no other media
really could, I thought it was utterly brilliant. Yeah, I find I
think I find that deeply offensive and disgusting, but you know, interesting,
like something can be brilliant and disgusting, you know, like like flying the
trade Center. I was like, oh, that's clever. You know that
that? Yeah, I wouldn't have thought of that. I mean, you
know, killing a lot of people. I'm not a fan of that,
you know, I mean that was that took a lot of you know,
a lot of science to make that happen. But you know, not good,
not a good thing to do. Yeah. The whole time I was
describing, you know, I was like, oh, Paul, yeah,
Paul, yeah, every part of this. So first of all, I
probably, like I would ask her, I'd be like, so, you
know, how do you feel about getting murdered in order to save everybody?
Like it's your call, like very clear, like no pressure, you know,
it's up to you. What do you want to do? You know,
Like I believe an agency in that way. But like if she was
like, yeah, no, no, I'm not. I don't want you
to let them do that, be like oh okay, pop pop you know,
yeah in the game, I think in the in but the game is
the show. But pretty in the game as it matters here of the agency,
she has said on a number of times that she's willing to die if
it leads to the cure. Hmm oh okay, then he's like making a
bad decision in my view. But yeah, I think what is clear is
that he is not doing it for her right, he's in it for him.
I mean, part of what it's about is how love can be incredibly
possessive, Like in that way, it's a wonderful parallel with the Anakin.
But it's also like you've seen him. He I'm going to spoil all of
this. He has a daughter die at the very beginning of sure, sure,
so you understand like where he's coming from and whatever. Yeah, it
sounds like a cliche, but it's incredibly well told. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean most cliches, like somewhere along the line were a good story and
then people just kept telling the same story, and it's like if you can
do it while, you can do it well. But yeah, I mean,
to me, like the point of a video game is like that you
have. I mean, I was gonna when you started going to stories,
I was like going to say that. You know. One of my other
pet projects that I'm definitely never gonna do, well, not definitely but almost
definitely, is like I feel like someone should make a maybe an animated series
of Mora Wind, you know. I mean, you could do it with
like any of the Elder scrolls. But like, to me, the great
thing about a video game, like you know. That one in particular is
like how open ended it can be, how the player gets to make choices.
So the idea of railroading really bothers me, you know. I mean
one the other thing that I thought at first was like Ninja Guiten, you
know, which was like one of the first games available in the US to
feature like a lot like cut scenes. It might have even been the first
one, but like, you know, there's a story, you just play
through the story. But also you're just like, you know, a little
eight bit character side scrolling, just killing everything on screen, you know.
So it's like it's a it's a very specific type of game. You're not
making moral choices, Oh do it? Well? This guy? Actually I
wonder his motivation? Should I be killing him? No? You just you
just stab everything, you know. Yeah, so that's a little different.
But like, yeah, I do feel like somebody was describing to me another
game where you know, you have to do something and then it's actually like
the opposite story. You know, the protagonist has a character that they care
about, and then they have to let them die or something in order to
save everyone else, and that's the choice that they make. And I think
you don't get a choice, but you have to like press the button,
you know, And like, I don't know, I think that's kind of
just like messed up and manipulative and gross. Like I don't like it.
I haven't played either games, so maybe the actual exact context of the game
I might feel differently, but like, it's certainly clever. It's certainly a
way to get people to experience things, you know, it's interesting. I
think the best way I can describe it is a discordant note. Like most
of the time it just sounds like someone hit a string wrong, all right,
right, Yeah, but sometimes in a very particular circumstance, it can
work, you know, because yeah, I have stopped playing video games when
I realized that I was going to have to do something I didn't I didn't
want as a player to do, or didn't believe the character would do.
And I feel like, to me, this is kind of the person because
yeah, I love Balder's Gate, particularly because it's basically Skyrim in Dungeons and
Dragons. Well, okay, like it is that I've tried not to tell
you about how awesome it is because I know you don't have time to really
get into this game think so deep into this, no doubt, no doubt,
but like yeah, I'm like, yeah, that is the kind of
game I love so much. And that's when I realized that the on railsness
of the game is very intentional, like and they're using that as a way
to be like, we know this is going to make you uncomfortable, right
right, But that's because like it's not it's not a video game, it
is a playable novel. Yeah, Like I think they really were trying to
do And yeah, I hope that doesn't become a very popular genre because I
really only want to watch maybe one over three years and only if it's done
really well. Yeah yeah, yeah. But in the fact that the game
came out probably like eight years ago and it hasn't tried I mean maybe there
are many games that have tried to do it since, but I haven't heard
of them. I mean the game I just mentioned, which is a very
well known game, but I won't spoil it in case people want to experience
it. Fair fair. Yeah, So I think, Yeah, that's all
of twenty twenty three in an hour and twenty three minutes. Yeah, that
was the whole year. Nothing else happened I'm good, Paul. Where can
people find more of you? I guess I like tweet on Twitter as Zen
Madman, and I really hope by that soon there will be like other places
that people can find me. I technically have a website, Zendmadman dot com.
There's still not much there, but if you're listening to this sometime in
twenty twenty four, maybe there will be. I don't know. You can
like roll the dice in it every now and then if you want. Paul
and I are talking about a couple of podcasts we might launch. We are,
I think in a state of talking about it. I think we've been
either creating podcasts together or talking about podcasts we might create together for about seven
or eight years. So it doesn't mean the new podcast is coming by any
means, but there may well be some good things, so keep your eye
out for that. In twenty twenty four, certainly there should be some interesting
poker content come from Paul. Of course, I'm the Ethical Panda. You
can find all of my content at the Ethical Panda dot com or by going
to true Story FM and searching for either of my two podcasts, this the
Superhero Ethics Podcast or the newly renamed Star Wars Generations podcast, which I thought
was mostly going to be me talking to two millennial or gen zers and then
calling me an old person for the way I think of Star Wars. Mostly
though, it's the two of them arguing and me threatening to turn this podcast
asked around if the kids in the backseat can't stop fighting with each other.
So it's a lot of fun. We're relooking a lot of things. Paul
will hopefully be able to come be a guest on some part of that podcast
at some point again soon. It was so good to have you on this,
but of course you can check all that out. We love what you
think. What are your thoughts about what twenty twenty three was all about?
We'd love to hear more of them. All the contact information is in the
show notes on the website, and of course the best thing you can do
is become a member five dollars a month, fifty five dollars a year,
AD free content, bonus content. We're about to do a bonus section about
twenty twenty four and I'll see you just get to support the podcast and it's
a great, great thing to do. So on behalf of myself Paul,
thank you all so much for listening. Stay Classy, Gotham class