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Speaker 7: Hello, Welcome back to Superhero ethics. We are primarily on
Speaker 7: hiatus in part because I have just become a father
Speaker 7: within five days of us recording this. We just came
Speaker 7: home with my new baby yesterday and we have lots
Speaker 7: of family around, and I figured I needed to go
Speaker 7: see this new Superman movie so that I can talk
Speaker 7: to you some wonderful people, Jessica Plumber and Riki Hayashi
Speaker 7: about it. So we are still someone on hiatus with
Speaker 7: this podcast, but we wanted to make sure we got
Speaker 7: to talk to you a Superman because something has happened
Speaker 7: that I didn't think was gonna happen. Jessica Plumber, I
Speaker 7: think I really liked the Superman movie that I didn't
Speaker 7: see as a little kid.
Speaker 6: It's a miracle.
Speaker 7: I really love this version of Superman, and we're gonna
Speaker 7: talk about it. This isn't a movie review podcast. It's
Speaker 7: an etex podcast. This movie has a lot of great
Speaker 7: ethical questions to discuss about, completely hypothetical and some that
Speaker 7: are real world parallels. But let's you kind of start with.
Speaker 7: For you, Jessica, you're not even a fan of the
Speaker 7: Crystal Reeve movies the way I am.
Speaker 8: How did you? How did you like this movie?
Speaker 6: I you're right.
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 6: Never seen a Superman movie that I thought was a
Speaker 6: good movie. I've seen many good Superman actors, but I've
Speaker 6: never seen what I thought was a good Superman movie
Speaker 6: until now. I loved it. I thought it was wonderful.
Speaker 6: I walked out of that theater just so happy and
Speaker 6: just feeling so upbeat and joyous, and I thought I
Speaker 6: was gonna like it, but I didn't realize I was
Speaker 6: gonna like it this much. And I've just been riding
Speaker 6: that high ever since.
Speaker 8: That's awesome. That's awesome, Riky, What about yourself?
Speaker 9: So a lot of people have been doing the whole
Speaker 9: ranking thing. Is this the best Superman movie, Is this
Speaker 9: the best Superman portrayal.
Speaker 1: Et cetera. These movies are like.
Speaker 9: Talking about Christopher Reeves Superman. These movies are almost fifty
Speaker 9: years apart, like literally a lifetime, and so it's very
Speaker 9: hard to compare. But I think in terms of impact
Speaker 9: and meeting the moment of society, they are both perfect
Speaker 9: for the time that they were created. Like that's my opinion.
Speaker 9: Like I don't know how to rank or compare things
Speaker 9: that are fifty years apart in terms of movies, Like
Speaker 9: just everything is different about the industry, how movies are made,
Speaker 9: how we perceive them. But for like what we needed
Speaker 9: from the Superman character, this in twenty twenty five is
Speaker 9: just perfect, just as it was in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 9: That's how I feel.
Speaker 7: I think that really works. And I'll say I went
Speaker 7: back and rewatched the Christopher Reeves the first the Christopher
Speaker 7: Reeves movies. But I've seen all three of them pretty recently. Well,
Speaker 7: I say all four. I've always technically a fourth, but.
Speaker 6: Four is better than three.
Speaker 7: I love three in a It's awful and campy, but
Speaker 7: really a lot of fun. Kind of a way less
Speaker 7: said about that the better. Perhaps it's kind of like
Speaker 7: the rocky horror of Superman movies as a terrible commerce,
Speaker 7: but you know what I mean. And I will say
Speaker 7: I have recently watching what I think is some of
Speaker 7: the best superhero content I've ever seen, and certainly the
Speaker 7: most emotionally intelligent show where the characters have the highest
Speaker 7: level of emotional intelligence I've ever seen on television, which
Speaker 7: is Superman and Lois So the last the CW shows
Speaker 7: that sanded a year ago. That show is amazing. I
Speaker 7: love that version of Superman. Superman and lois in their
Speaker 7: like late thirties forties, raising two teenagers in Smallville, and like,
Speaker 7: it's fantastic, and I really love this version of Superman
Speaker 7: as well. It had hopeful to me more than anything.
Speaker 7: And I'm I'm gonna try and make this a comparison
Speaker 7: of difference, not of better or worse. I am glad
Speaker 7: that Man of Steel is a movie that everyone that
Speaker 7: a lot of people really love. To me, it made
Speaker 7: me realize what even that title feels wrong because in
Speaker 7: this movie, for me, his fighting ability, his being superhumanly strong,
Speaker 7: he's being a man of Steel is probably the least
Speaker 7: important thing about him. It's his hopefulness, it's his goodness,
Speaker 7: it's his as someone who grew up in punk rock scenes.
Speaker 7: He is not punk rock, but he thinks he is.
Speaker 7: And you know, there used to be a T shirt
Speaker 7: that said falling in Love is totally punk rock, and
Speaker 7: now it's being nice as totally punk rock, and that
Speaker 7: I can to agree with.
Speaker 8: And I just it just was really hopeful, you know.
Speaker 7: And Jessica, to me, this was the movie you'd always
Speaker 7: told me about about like Superman being the antithesis of
Speaker 7: the grim Dark and all that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it really like I want to take everybody to
Speaker 6: the theater and point at the screen and be like this,
Speaker 6: this is the guy. This is why I love him
Speaker 6: so much. Like I feel I'm like proud, I'm like
Speaker 6: I loved him hard enough that this movie got me.
Speaker 6: Big job me.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And I think a Man of Steel, like that
Speaker 9: title of Superman is fine. But to me, the contrast
Speaker 9: is that in that movie Man of Steel, that embodies
Speaker 9: power and especially like punching power right, like the he
Speaker 9: and zad are just like constantly punching each other through buildings.
Speaker 9: And in this movie, I don't even know if they
Speaker 9: use the phrase man of Steel, but if I were
Speaker 9: to try to embody what that phrase means to this Superman,
Speaker 9: it is his ability to shield people, to use his
Speaker 9: man of Steel body.
Speaker 1: To protect Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, I think I think it makes sense.
Speaker 7: And for me also, it's the we're gonna get it
Speaker 7: into spoilers. We probably always had some spoilers, but this
Speaker 7: is not a spoiler free discussion. We're gonna talking a
Speaker 7: lot about the details. I love that a number not
Speaker 7: only does he on numerous occasions rescue people and save
Speaker 7: people and save us like not even a dog, a
Speaker 7: squirrel for God's sakes, but he inspires others to do so,
Speaker 7: you know. And the fact that by the end the
Speaker 7: Justice Gang are going in and are saving people, like
Speaker 7: they're still literally killing people, including you know, Net and
Speaker 7: Putin as I've been referring to the Dictator character in
Speaker 7: this movie, uh, you know, and like that they're not inspired.
Speaker 7: He's not inspiring them in that way, and I think
Speaker 7: that's just fine. But like the fact that Green Lantern guy,
Speaker 7: Guy Guy what's his last name Gardner winds up like
Speaker 7: protecting and putting up a wall between the two nations
Speaker 7: and saving the little boys holding Superman flag and John
Speaker 7: and poor like and clearly they're inspired by Superman.
Speaker 8: I just was. I just loved every bit of it.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I think the movie got so much about the
Speaker 6: characters right. And one of those things is consistently like,
Speaker 6: it's not that other people in this movie aren't good,
Speaker 6: and it's not that other people in this movie aren't
Speaker 6: trying to do good. Like the Justice Gang. They're not villains,
Speaker 6: they're not like they they are heroes. They are stopping
Speaker 6: Kaiju and saving people, but they are inspired by Superman
Speaker 6: to be better. Lois is inspired by Superman to to
Speaker 6: have more hope. You know, all the staff of the
Speaker 6: Daily Planet, they are all good people doing the right thing.
Speaker 6: But every single character who's not an outright villain is
Speaker 6: inspired towards goodness by Superman. And then you have other
Speaker 6: characters like Lois. Lois Is role is to speak truth
Speaker 6: to power, and she repeatedly does that over and over
Speaker 6: again with Clark, with the Justice Gang, with her expose.
Speaker 6: Like those through lines of the characters are so clear
Speaker 6: and they're stucked, they're so just correct to what the
Speaker 6: core of those characters should be.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm going to push back one small part because
Speaker 7: there's one character who's ethical decision making.
Speaker 8: He's positioned as a hero. But I need to know.
Speaker 7: What do we think of leading someone on and letting
Speaker 7: them think you are ready to commit to them romantically
Speaker 7: for the rest of your life in order to get
Speaker 7: them as a source. Because I think Jimmy Olsen is
Speaker 7: a player in this and a honeypot and he's great
Speaker 7: at it. But like I was like, oh, miss tech Maker,
Speaker 7: you're not going to find true love.
Speaker 8: I'm so sorry for you.
Speaker 6: I will say this is the first movie ever that
Speaker 6: has known what to do with Jimmy Olsen. They've never
Speaker 6: like in the movies. Usually he shows up and he's like,
Speaker 6: and I'm also here, and then he leaves for the
Speaker 6: entire rest of the movie. And this one was like, Okay,
Speaker 6: why is this guy in this movie? And I appreciate that.
Speaker 6: I will also say Jimmy gets action in the comics.
Speaker 6: Jimmy has got a list of girlfriends as long as
Speaker 6: my arm. Okay, very accurate. Good for him, I get it.
Speaker 6: I didn't. I will admit I really like the reveal
Speaker 6: that Eve was the whistleblower. I did not, And I
Speaker 6: thought the first time, like, we see that she's super
Speaker 6: into him and he's not into her. It was funny
Speaker 6: when we kept getting that joke, I was like, this,
Speaker 6: this just is starting to feel mean spirited in a
Speaker 6: movie that should not be means spirited. So that joke
Speaker 6: did wear a little thin for me on the ethical front, though,
Speaker 6: I do think that if the entire planet is about
Speaker 6: to be split in half, it's okay to leave someone on.
Speaker 6: That's the case where the ends justify the means.
Speaker 7: You know, he's a lot better than James Bond about it,
Speaker 7: so those we can give him that, And I do say,
Speaker 7: I thought, yeah, I agree with you.
Speaker 8: It felt like a.
Speaker 7: Little misogyny to like, you know, have that repeated joke.
Speaker 7: But the idea of her being this very attractive woman
Speaker 7: who's kind of played off, like on the surface level
Speaker 7: as a stereotype, I think that a lot of people
Speaker 7: have of like the female influencer you know, who takes
Speaker 7: all these pick selfies and gets you know, like simps
Speaker 7: as the term would be, you know, to to to
Speaker 7: to follow them. And the fact that she uses her
Speaker 7: like looking at how sex ai am selfie is always
Speaker 7: taking them with like the important documents in the background
Speaker 7: as like some spy level shit. I was like, oh,
Speaker 7: test Macker's brilliant. I love this so yeah, I was
Speaker 7: off for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And you can you can tell how good she is
Speaker 9: at this from the very beginning when she takes the
Speaker 9: selfie at the perfect time, timing it with Superman falling
Speaker 9: from the sky right like she gets him in the
Speaker 9: frame as he's falling, So her selfie game is super
Speaker 9: oh point.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and even when she's thrown in prison, Lex still
Speaker 6: does not realize what she did. He thinks she was
Speaker 6: just texting another guy. Yeah, he has no idea that
Speaker 6: his plans were leaved.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean she and she doesn't break.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And for me, as like one I did, I
Speaker 7: am definitely the generation that grew up. I think Riki,
Speaker 7: you're the saying that grew up with Christopher Reeve movies.
Speaker 8: I really love them.
Speaker 7: I'm very okay with things going in new directions, but
Speaker 7: I did want a little bit of nostalgia, and I
Speaker 7: will say they gave it to me in in part
Speaker 7: with her character because of course spoilers from movies from
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy eight. But you know, one of the things
Speaker 7: that helps Superman is that miss Tech test Macker. She'sn't
Speaker 7: referred to Eve, She's Missed Testmcker. But like when she
Speaker 7: realizes that Lex's evil plan is going to hurt her family,
Speaker 7: she rescues Superman and kind of betrays Lex. And so
Speaker 7: there was that thing. But also the way that they
Speaker 7: used the original John Williams Superman score from those seventies
Speaker 7: and eighties movies. It just like they didn't overdo it,
Speaker 7: and it was often kind of like a new version
Speaker 7: of it, but like I could hear it so clearly,
Speaker 7: and when there's like the big powerful reveal of Superman's back,
Speaker 7: it hits the music that plays is that exact theme.
Speaker 8: It just regat how is that for you?
Speaker 7: Like, it felt to me like it was really saying,
Speaker 7: we are paying homage to Christopher Reeve and all the
Speaker 7: versions of Superman over the years, while still doing our
Speaker 7: own thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I how I feel about this is that some people
Speaker 9: might feel like it's like pandering to nostalgia, But in
Speaker 9: my opinion, it's that John Williams is a generational talent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what he.
Speaker 9: Has done in terms of scores for movies is just
Speaker 9: like in the DNA of the movie industry so deeply
Speaker 9: that at this point to have Superman without hints of
Speaker 9: that melody feels wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so like he has.
Speaker 9: Just added that to the mythos of this character. I
Speaker 9: think it's the same with Star Wars. Anytime you hear
Speaker 9: that Imperial March, you're like, this is a bad guy.
Speaker 9: And like so many other movies, it's just his music
Speaker 9: is so integral to their DNA that to not use
Speaker 9: them is kind of kind of criminal.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think this movie does a really good job
Speaker 6: of taking I mean, it definitely synthesizes a number of
Speaker 6: Superman sources. There's a ton from the comics. There's stuff
Speaker 6: from Smallville, for sure, there is a lot from the
Speaker 6: Christopher Reeve movies. Like it's in conversation and it has
Speaker 6: a lot of very strong DCAU vibes, like it's in
Speaker 6: conversation with Superman's sort of entire multimedia history over the
Speaker 6: course of eighty seven years. But I think in particular
Speaker 6: it's particularly noticeable with the stuff that it's taking from
Speaker 6: the nineteen seventy eight film, And I think it's really
Speaker 6: smart about choosing when to homage it in a way
Speaker 6: that feels fresh, but it's still like very much in
Speaker 6: the same vein, like with the Superman theme, and when
Speaker 6: it plays on your expectations to flip them on their
Speaker 6: head in a fun way, like the reveal about Eve
Speaker 6: actually not just being a bimbo who follows Lex around,
Speaker 6: and like, I know, she saves Superman at the end
Speaker 6: of seventy eight, but that's just because she thinks he's cute,
Speaker 6: Like it's not. It's not the same level of intelligence
Speaker 6: and heroism.
Speaker 8: She wants to kiss him and she wants to save
Speaker 8: her family.
Speaker 6: Right right. And then there's times that it really contradicts
Speaker 6: what's laid out in seventy eight in a way that
Speaker 6: I think is really important and really powerful. And I'm
Speaker 6: thinking specifically about like the Fortress of Solitude existed in
Speaker 6: the comics for a long time before the nineteen seventy
Speaker 6: eight movie, but that's the movie that made it like
Speaker 6: a crystal structure, And that's the movie that introduced the
Speaker 6: idea of holograms of Superman's parents talking to him. And
Speaker 6: this movie takes that idea and absolutely reverses it in
Speaker 6: a way that I really really loved and I thought
Speaker 6: was desperately needed, as you know, in a Superman story.
Speaker 6: So I think James Gunn was very smart about how
Speaker 6: he used what he was taking from that film.
Speaker 7: Like, to me, one of the most powerful visual c
Speaker 7: references was it is an intergalactic thing instead of just
Speaker 7: the San Andreas fault. But there's a little literal fault
Speaker 7: line going through the movie exactly like there's the end.
Speaker 6: I mean, the part Lex's whole plan is still a
Speaker 6: real estate scheme. He's still real estate games of.
Speaker 8: Well, there's no Odisberg, which made me a little sad.
Speaker 7: I did get Otis, we did get Otis, we did
Speaker 7: get notice let's talk about what you brought up, because
Speaker 7: I think it's one of the first interesting ethical issues.
Speaker 7: You know, a lot of the versions of Superman that
Speaker 7: I've seen, there's this sense of his parents imbued him
Speaker 7: with all this sort of moral teaching, and that Ma
Speaker 7: and Pa can't echo it. And here, as you said,
Speaker 7: it's really not that the Kryptonians were sending him there.
Speaker 8: They have a benevolent idea.
Speaker 7: It's not like you know, some of the stuff of like,
Speaker 7: you know, go repopulate Krypton and kill all the humans,
Speaker 7: but it's it's more kind of like Red Sun. If
Speaker 7: anyone's seen that, it's we want you to rule the
Speaker 7: people of Earth and help them through you know, force,
Speaker 7: and kill anyone who gets in your way because you're
Speaker 7: superior and better to them. What what was your guys
Speaker 7: take on that? As like, I think you're right, it's new,
Speaker 7: it's fresh. It felt very like I think I liked it,
Speaker 7: but it was so jarring to me because so often
Speaker 7: I think one of things I've always really liked is
Speaker 7: the idea of this immigrant story of yes, he learned
Speaker 7: these great values from mon paw Kent, but they echo
Speaker 7: what he was learning from his Homeland from Krypton. How
Speaker 7: do you think I felt about that that being so
Speaker 7: turned on its head?
Speaker 6: I have a lot of thoughts. Do you want to
Speaker 6: go before I.
Speaker 9: Correct me if I'm wrong? But this is an element
Speaker 9: they've kind of borrowed from Smallville, right, This idea that
Speaker 9: Jorel's message is more of a we want you to
Speaker 9: rule over humans.
Speaker 6: It's in Small Villain. I think you see like something
Speaker 6: similar in My Adventures Superman. Not Joryl specifically, but Krypton
Speaker 6: is like a very aggressive, warmongering culture.
Speaker 8: Interesting. Interesting.
Speaker 9: So for me, I still think there's the element of
Speaker 9: what he inherits from his Kryptonian birth parents, right, because
Speaker 9: like he has watched the first half of the message
Speaker 9: for all his life and he has this belief of
Speaker 9: what they tried to imbuw and then when the second
Speaker 9: half message is revealed, there's the subversion and he realizes
Speaker 9: he was wrong. When I watched the movie, actually I
Speaker 9: didn't believe it until like the movie was over. For
Speaker 9: pretty much the whole run time, I thought that Lex
Speaker 9: Luthor had still manipulated it because it's kind of what
Speaker 9: happens in the comic Bookman birthright. I think where he
Speaker 9: fakes this Kryptonian invasion to kind of frame Superman, So
Speaker 9: they were barring a lot of elements of that comic.
Speaker 9: So I thought that was just going to be the
Speaker 9: reveal at the end that he had manipulated the footage,
Speaker 9: and it wasn't. So I'm like, oh, Okay, I guess.
Speaker 9: I guess the l's are bad in this one, and
Speaker 9: I'm okay with that, And I think it fits fine
Speaker 9: with the idea of the immigrant story still, because immigrants,
Speaker 9: especially like this first generation that is either born or
Speaker 9: raised in a new place, has these disconnects with their
Speaker 9: home culture. And you know, as an Asian, that disconnect
Speaker 9: can be so big, like you see it in movies
Speaker 9: like Crazy Rich Asians where people try to go back
Speaker 9: to their home countries and it's like, oh, I actually
Speaker 9: don't fit in here at all, and so like that's
Speaker 9: to me, like that's the culture shock of the immigrant
Speaker 9: story that Superman is feeling in this is like, oh,
Speaker 9: like everything I thought I knew about my home is wrong,
Speaker 9: Like everything that like I thought growing up is wrong.
Speaker 9: And then to connect that back to the Kents, I
Speaker 9: think is the most powerful thing about this story, and
Speaker 9: just like the best one of the best scenes in
Speaker 9: the movie is like his talk with Paul Kent.
Speaker 8: Mm hmm, yeah that no good.
Speaker 6: Go ahead.
Speaker 7: I was gonna take you a little diff director of
Speaker 7: the Pot can't quote, so please go ahead.
Speaker 6: I was gonna say. They took so much from Superman
Speaker 6: birth Right, which is written by Mark Wade, that at
Speaker 6: one point you literally see a street sign that says
Speaker 6: Wade Street, which made me really happy because he's one
Speaker 6: of my favorite writers. Yeah, I mean, for me, one
Speaker 6: of the biggest problems with Jorel in really all of
Speaker 6: the movies, especially Superman seventy eight, is that having that
Speaker 6: long speech from Jorel where he just tells Clark what
Speaker 6: to do and how to live his life, takes so
Speaker 6: much agency away from Clark as the protagonist, like Clark
Speaker 6: is in no previous movie has Clark become Superman or
Speaker 6: been a hero because he decided to. He did it
Speaker 6: because the hologram of Jorel told him to, and in particular, like,
Speaker 6: not only does it take agency away from Clark, but
Speaker 6: in particular if you're looking at the Superman seventy eight timeline,
Speaker 6: which would also encompass Superman returns, because that is the
Speaker 6: same backstory. Then it's complete, Like we have this hologram
Speaker 6: of Superman's dead biological father that gets all the power
Speaker 6: and like one percent of the raising of him, and
Speaker 6: we have his living adoptive mother who is completely disregarded
Speaker 6: by the movies, and like that we like she dies
Speaker 6: off screen. I think it's in Superman three that he
Speaker 6: goes home and it's like, yeah, anyway, she's dead. Like
Speaker 6: it's just I I am so tired of Jorel and
Speaker 6: I am so tired of lengthy speeches by Marlon Brando
Speaker 6: being repeated in movie after movie after movie, and like
Speaker 6: holograms of Russell Crowe doing you know, Kryptonian jiu jitsu
Speaker 6: on a dragon, like I'm over in it. So that
Speaker 6: the fact that this movie took that and was like, no, no,
Speaker 6: we're not doing that. And in fact, we're explicitly stating
Speaker 6: that Clark is a hero because of who he is
Speaker 6: as a person. It's not even because Mat and Paw
Speaker 6: can't raise him to be that way. It's his decision,
Speaker 6: it's his choice to act in that way. And that's
Speaker 6: what's important. I think is so much more powerful now
Speaker 6: framing it as an immigrant narratives and as a story
Speaker 6: of adoption. Yeah, like in my ideal world it would
Speaker 6: there would be more of a balance, right, showing that
Speaker 6: there are values coming from Krypton and their values coming
Speaker 6: from the Kent. But in reaction to eight movies that
Speaker 6: go way too hard in the l direction, I'm was
Speaker 6: really really pleased to see this, although I'm very curious
Speaker 6: to see how all of that plays out in the
Speaker 6: Supergirl movie because I guess you like never asked her
Speaker 6: what his parents were like, which.
Speaker 7: Interesting, and I like, I'm not getting the Like I
Speaker 7: love the CW Supergirl show, but in it, she's very
Speaker 7: much like a blonde Clark Kent in that she has
Speaker 7: so much purity and goodness, and so I am interested
Speaker 7: to see her as a party girl, uh, you know,
Speaker 7: who hangs out on Red Sun planets because she can
Speaker 7: get drunk easier. I'm curious to see where that's gonna go.
Speaker 7: Two things that came up for that as you're talking.
Speaker 7: One is that I really love what you're saying about,
Speaker 7: like him having more of the choice, especially because you're
Speaker 7: like in the second Christopher Reeves movie, the whole point
Speaker 7: is that Clark Kent doesn't want to be Superman. He
Speaker 7: wants to have this life with Lois. He tries to
Speaker 7: stop being Superman, and he has to be Clark Kent.
Speaker 7: He has to be Superman. I mean, like I always
Speaker 7: thought that was like honorable and heroic and noble as
Speaker 7: an eight year old, and then as a fourty year old,
Speaker 7: I was like, this is kind of awful. And for
Speaker 7: that reason, one of my favorite scenes. And this in
Speaker 7: part comes from as someone who's worked in the nonprofit
Speaker 7: sector for all of my life, but also just in
Speaker 7: activism and all that, but also just in anything. Like
Speaker 7: the idea of you are a good person if you
Speaker 7: constantly sacrifice yourself in order to help others is really
Speaker 7: kind of dangerous, and like, I think it's good to sacrifice,
Speaker 7: but also like there's a huge amount of burnout in
Speaker 7: the nonprofit industry because if you never take care of yourself,
Speaker 7: you can't take care of others. And like, as a
Speaker 7: new father, me and Mary are talking about this that
Speaker 7: we want to be awake every single moment and watch
Speaker 7: every single thing this kid does because he's turned blue
Speaker 7: once or twice on us, you know, because he couldn't breathe.
Speaker 7: But also we know we have to take care of ourselves.
Speaker 7: And so Superman saying to like Superman having this emotional
Speaker 7: conversation with Lois while the super Gang, the Justice Gang
Speaker 7: is fighting what clearly Starro, I think.
Speaker 6: It's it's a mister Mix's pedol, like he says, it's
Speaker 6: an interdimensional imp specific.
Speaker 7: Okay, okay, it looks like Starro, but but I'll take
Speaker 7: your word for it. And like we're seeing the like
Speaker 7: I want. I want to know about like the big
Speaker 7: baseball bat that uh, you know, Guy Gardner is creating
Speaker 7: to hit the thing over the head with.
Speaker 8: But Superman's like, no, they got it. I don't need
Speaker 8: to go rush to their help.
Speaker 7: I can focus on this emotional conversation with you I
Speaker 7: thought was just phenomenal. The other thing, I'll say a
Speaker 7: little bit in defense of the the l Family, I
Speaker 7: think that, like, to me, there are two things I
Speaker 7: got out of it. One is that I think that
Speaker 7: they did have fundamentally good intentions, but their means to
Speaker 7: it was terrible. And and in terms of the kind
Speaker 7: of like because their whole thing was we want you
Speaker 7: to help, like we sent you to they say, they
Speaker 7: sent you to a planet where you can do the
Speaker 7: most good. But it's these sort of like might makes right.
Speaker 7: You know, what's the one where he puts, like all
Speaker 7: of Metropolis in a bottle?
Speaker 6: Oh uh, Brainiac puts the bottle city. Well, it puts
Speaker 6: a city of candor in a bottle?
Speaker 8: Right, what's what?
Speaker 6: Oh, Superman, I'm bound? Is that what it's called?
Speaker 8: No, it's something.
Speaker 7: But because the whole point is that like Superman kind
Speaker 7: of like decides to become kind of a benevolent fascist
Speaker 7: and like rule everything.
Speaker 1: Well, he becomes fascist and injustice, there's a lot of stories,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of bad Superman.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the idea that that's what the Kents want, which
Speaker 7: is not good, but it's also not like ruling for
Speaker 7: He's certainly not lax. He's not doing it for a
Speaker 7: real estate scheme or for you know, something like that.
Speaker 7: But also I thought it was also a really interesting
Speaker 7: commentary on our social media world where like, yeah, well
Speaker 7: they can't say is bad, but.
Speaker 6: It's taken what the els say.
Speaker 7: The l say, yeah it is bad, but there's no
Speaker 7: context given to it. It's just assumed that Clark would
Speaker 7: be exactly what they found. You know, it feels like
Speaker 7: that kind of like a lot of social media today
Speaker 7: feels like We're going to take the worst moment connected
Speaker 7: to you and shout a million times out of context
Speaker 7: in order to like, you know, tarn feather you in
Speaker 7: the modern sense. And I think that you know, a
Speaker 7: person's worst moment can often say a lot about them,
Speaker 7: and I'm not against that, but I feel like it
Speaker 7: raised some answering questions of what does it mean to
Speaker 7: take only that half of the cent. Well, I mean
Speaker 7: they play the whole message, but like to take that
Speaker 7: part specifically, and then also to blame Clark for it,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 6: Just going back to the scene where the Clark and
Speaker 6: Lewis are in Clark's apartment in the Justice Gang is
Speaker 6: fighting mister Nix's Piddolick, which was my favorite scene in
Speaker 6: the movie, and oay it everything about it was so good,
Speaker 6: Like the Clark and Lewis conversation was so good. The
Speaker 6: gag the recurrent, like that was a case where a
Speaker 6: gag kept repeating, like every time you saw that thing
Speaker 6: at the window, it was still funny, and the longer
Speaker 6: it went, the funnier it was. But also like Clark
Speaker 6: saying maybe that's the real part Rock made me cry,
Speaker 6: Like yeah, I loved absolutely everything about it. But one
Speaker 6: of the things I love so much about it was like,
Speaker 6: as you said, yeah, like he can take a beat
Speaker 6: and not go fight that thing because it's handled and
Speaker 6: that's important for like self care, but also he can
Speaker 6: take a beat and not go fight that thing because
Speaker 6: this movie takes place in the DC universe, and it
Speaker 6: feels like it takes place in a larger universe, like
Speaker 6: a Kaiju shows up and nearly tramples buildings and that's
Speaker 6: just kind of Wednesday for them. Like this just feels
Speaker 6: like a movie that exists in the middle of something,
Speaker 6: Like there was Superman stuff before this, there was Superman
Speaker 6: stuff after this. There's all sorts of heroes. It's like
Speaker 6: a really fleshed out world. And even though I think
Speaker 6: that means it's kind of an overstuffed movie, and like
Speaker 6: I'd like to see Lois get more screen time. I
Speaker 6: think some of the ethical questions we're going to talk
Speaker 6: about don't get really thoroughly explored because the movie had
Speaker 6: to be over. Yeah, but for me, that's a trade
Speaker 6: I'm willing to make because I love the DC universe
Speaker 6: and I really like I felt like I was living
Speaker 6: inside of it for two hours and nine minutes. And
Speaker 6: that's like the greatest thing it could possibly experience, unless
Speaker 6: it was also a musical, which would be the actual
Speaker 6: greatest thing.
Speaker 8: We'll get there.
Speaker 6: We'll get there someday.
Speaker 7: So let's start talking about some of the ethical stuff.
Speaker 7: First of all, I think this movie really plays up
Speaker 7: journalism and the importance of Clark and Lewis being newspaper people,
Speaker 7: especially Lois, and it starts in kind of a weird
Speaker 7: place with that. You know, Lois kind of teasing him
Speaker 7: about the journalistic ethics of interviewing himself and then giving
Speaker 7: him this pretty hard hitting interview where she's pushing him
Speaker 7: on should he have intervened in this you know, one
Speaker 7: big strong country invades this one small week one.
Speaker 8: He's just like, no, We're just not going to do that.
Speaker 7: What'd you think of that scene, like what was being
Speaker 7: said about journalism as a whole, but also especially that
Speaker 7: picular scene, because like, I kind of liked that they
Speaker 7: didn't specifically say by the end like Clark was right
Speaker 7: or Lois was right, They're kind of sittings in some
Speaker 7: of the tension. But I'm curious how that that all
Speaker 7: played out to you guys.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that scene was so good and For me, I
Speaker 9: agree with Jessica that I wish I had gotten a
Speaker 9: little more Lois. But then I read this statistic that
Speaker 9: that interview scene is ten percent of the runtime of
Speaker 9: this film, and a like that is kind of a
Speaker 9: startling thing to think about for a Superman film. But
Speaker 9: then I was like, yes, like it was just like
Speaker 9: a long scene. Yeah, that went on for a while
Speaker 9: without cutting. I mean, they had like camera cuts, but
Speaker 9: the scene stayed with those two characters for the whole time,
Speaker 9: And I think that was so important because we need
Speaker 9: to see this interaction between Lois and Clark, like we've
Speaker 9: talked about it on this podcast in the past, us
Speaker 9: that like a strong lowest character is one of the
Speaker 9: most important things, and how hard it is to fit
Speaker 9: that into a Superman movie as opposed to a TV show.
Speaker 9: And yes, Matthew said that that scene both emphasizes their relationship,
Speaker 9: which we are in the midst of, but is also
Speaker 9: finally like emphasizing journalism, their jobs and what that means
Speaker 9: in this universe. And it was just I don't, I
Speaker 9: don't know, like I was. It's not like a jaw
Speaker 9: dropping scene the same way some of the action set
Speaker 9: pieces are, but it left me just going wow, like
Speaker 9: that happened. That whole scene happened, and like all of
Speaker 9: the little, the little things that happened in that scene,
Speaker 9: like when when Clark raises his voice, and I think
Speaker 9: the phrase he says, like people were dying, Like that
Speaker 9: was so great for the character development, Like that's what
Speaker 9: makes him upset, is that people were dying and he
Speaker 9: has the power to do something about it. And of course,
Speaker 9: like get raises these questions about like how far should
Speaker 9: superheroes go, especially when it comes to international jurisdictions and laws, right,
Speaker 9: and and I think like Lois hammering those points on
Speaker 9: him was so good because like that's that's what a
Speaker 9: journalist would do. They wouldn't ask, you know, like oh,
Speaker 9: what's your favorite ice cream flavor?
Speaker 1: Superman? Like, hey, should you have done that? Like was
Speaker 1: that right?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I loved that scene and I thought it was phenomenal.
Speaker 6: I thought the writing was phenomenal, the acting was phenomenal.
Speaker 6: The chemistry between the two of them is so good.
Speaker 6: The way that they kind of like talk over each
Speaker 6: other and it's like, yeah, of course you two are journalists,
Speaker 6: Like you can't neither of you can like shut up
Speaker 6: or let it go or stop arguing for two seconds.
Speaker 6: And I really loved that, Like we saw him get
Speaker 6: more and more flustered and like saying things and then
Speaker 6: going wait, no, that was off the record and turning
Speaker 6: the recorder off and just like being really like he
Speaker 6: was not prepared for this conversation and he doesn't handle
Speaker 6: it well, Like he's kind of being a big baby
Speaker 6: for some of that scene. And it never feels like
Speaker 6: it never makes him unlikable. It just makes him feel
Speaker 6: really human and much more like accessible and relatable as
Speaker 6: a character. And especially like you said, like ending on
Speaker 6: that like mic drop of people who are going to die,
Speaker 6: like that's it. That's that's the end of story for him.
Speaker 6: And so even though he is he did not think
Speaker 6: this through and even though he is not handling being
Speaker 6: questioned about it, well, you can't like, I don't think
Speaker 6: that that scene is about I agree. It's not like
Speaker 6: he's wrong or she's wrong. You can't argue with the
Speaker 6: the importance of his point, even though Lois is also
Speaker 6: making valid points. And it just felt like a like
Speaker 6: it was such a good scene for showing why these
Speaker 6: two work, even the fighting, because they have such a
Speaker 6: good balance and because you know, her pressing him to
Speaker 6: question like what he's doing and why and how he's
Speaker 6: doing it makes him a better superhero.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and it's so interesting.
Speaker 9: It's so interesting to me that she calls him out
Speaker 9: on I think she used the word torturing the president
Speaker 9: of Bravia, right, like pushing him up against a cactus,
Speaker 9: and by the end of the movie, Hawk Girl straight
Speaker 9: up murders that guy by dropping him from a high altitude.
Speaker 7: I want to get into his character and Bravian all
Speaker 7: of that, but just just focusing on that one scene,
Speaker 7: right Like, for me, I think we could a whole
Speaker 7: episode just on that one scene because it captured so
Speaker 7: much and we try and just like rapid hit a
Speaker 7: bunch of things. You guys have said, please stop me
Speaker 7: any point. First of all, just like we've all talked
Speaker 7: about how we love rom comms, and Jessica you said that,
Speaker 7: like the best Superman story is a rom com and
Speaker 7: I wanted that out of this. But I think, especially
Speaker 7: like as I said, in Superman and Lois, they are
Speaker 7: an established couple, but there's still a huge amount of romance,
Speaker 7: and that show helps remind me that I don't like
Speaker 7: that most romance on TV is just the courtship, and
Speaker 7: then once you're done with the courtship, either I have
Speaker 7: problems or we just forget about them. And at first
Speaker 7: when they were kind of like flirting in the office
Speaker 7: and maybe she doesn't know who he is, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 7: we're gonna get this again. And so it was who
Speaker 7: quickly revealed she knows his secret and they are already dating.
Speaker 7: The courtship is over, we're now in the like can
Speaker 7: this work? Is relationship? I loved that. I was so
Speaker 7: happy for it, And you're right, it felt like some tension.
Speaker 7: It felt like I could see like they're not sure
Speaker 7: if they're going to make this relationship work, but they
Speaker 7: have so much respect for each other. They're pushing each other.
Speaker 7: And yeah, the interview hit me on so many levels.
Speaker 7: First of all, like, I already love that this isn't
Speaker 7: an origin story. It's instead like a milestone movie. You know,
Speaker 7: it sets up so well, this isn't the start of Superman.
Speaker 7: This is the start of him being challenged because this
Speaker 7: is the first time he's ever lost a fight, And
Speaker 7: an interview with Lois felt so in the same vein
Speaker 7: you know, this is the first time he's really been questioned,
Speaker 7: and I am always the cynic I am always the
Speaker 7: one who doubts Superman's hopefulness, and so during a lot
Speaker 7: of her interviewing with him, I was like, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 7: it's not good for one random guy to decide what
Speaker 7: foreign policy of the world should be. And then I
Speaker 7: support all of the things Lois is saying until he says,
Speaker 7: but people are dying, and that should just be the
Speaker 7: flat out part. And it it reminded me of how
Speaker 7: frustrated I am with so much of modern journalism, where
Speaker 7: it's just always we gotta have both sides, and we
Speaker 7: got to we can't be inspired. We always have to
Speaker 7: look for the cynical, we always have to look for
Speaker 7: the dark side. And I really love that it just
Speaker 7: sort of sat in that tension, like, you know, of
Speaker 7: like I, you know what, maybe it's not the best
Speaker 7: thing for all these other stuff reasons for Superman to
Speaker 7: decide foreign policy for other nations, but damn it, people
Speaker 7: are dying, and so he's going to do it. And
Speaker 7: actually I'm pretty happy he does it, you know. And
Speaker 7: I just watching the evolution of journalism in this movie,
Speaker 7: watching his evolution, watching her evolution. To me, that one
Speaker 7: scene captures so much of all the things I loved
Speaker 7: about it.
Speaker 6: Well, that argument I keep. The thing I keep coming
Speaker 6: back to in the context of that argument is a
Speaker 6: civil war the movie, which in a way sort of
Speaker 6: revolves around a similar question, which is, can these American
Speaker 6: superheroes go into a foreign country and do whatever they want?
Speaker 6: Or is that not cool? And it's I mean, essentially
Speaker 6: the same question, but it's framed so completely differently for
Speaker 6: a number of reasons. But like, right, first of all,
Speaker 6: it's one thing for Superman to say I'm not representing
Speaker 6: America even though he is a resident of America. It's
Speaker 6: another thing entirely for Captain America to say I'm not
Speaker 6: representing America Like that is just like Steve, there's no
Speaker 6: plausible deniability there. This is nonsense. And there's also a
Speaker 6: difference between well, we went into this foreign country to
Speaker 6: be superheroes and we actively caused harm while we were there,
Speaker 6: and Superman went into this foreign country and stopped harm,
Speaker 6: and then a guy followed him home and caused harm.
Speaker 6: He can't like it's not fair to hold him. I mean,
Speaker 6: I guess someone, but like, it's not really fair to
Speaker 6: hold him responsible for what somebody else does. Like if
Speaker 6: you try to save people, I'll come threaten people where
Speaker 6: you live. Is like responding to that is just obeying
Speaker 6: an advance. So I just thought it was interesting these
Speaker 6: two movies kind of hang a hook on the same
Speaker 6: central geopolitical question and they take such divergent paths. But
Speaker 6: I also think a big part of it is we
Speaker 6: are supposed to sympathize with Clark but not think that
Speaker 6: he is unequivocally right, because that conversation frames it as
Speaker 6: an argument where they both have a point, Whereas we
Speaker 6: are supposed to think that Steve is right because he's
Speaker 6: really nice and handsome and sad, and I don't think
Speaker 6: he's right, and that movie sits really poorly with me
Speaker 6: because of it. Yeah, I'm we are grown ups, and
Speaker 6: we don't just punch each other to ever escalating levels
Speaker 6: of like destroying parking garages because we can't deal with
Speaker 6: our emotions. But yeah, team Tony.
Speaker 7: And I have discussed the idea that there should be
Speaker 7: complete and total accountability to this one corrupt government.
Speaker 8: There should be no accountability whatsoever, that there might be
Speaker 8: some discussion in between those two rather than just.
Speaker 6: Much, much, much well and then and this movie had
Speaker 6: a discussion remarkable how much that helped.
Speaker 7: Like I found myself kind of thinking of that Superman
Speaker 7: in this movie is what I wish the United Nations was,
Speaker 7: you know, something that isn't a nation state telling other
Speaker 7: nations what to do, but just an overall body that's
Speaker 7: just like, no, you're You're just not gonna do this.
Speaker 7: This kind of slaughter, this kind of genocide, this kind
Speaker 7: of you know, steal, literally is just ceiling from another
Speaker 7: nation for your own financial gain or your own political
Speaker 7: gain or whatever it is, is just not okay. And
Speaker 7: to me, the movie had like, as someone is very
Speaker 7: politically invested, I'm really frustrating. I'm the person who wants
Speaker 7: to go ten levels deep with the analysis, but I
Speaker 7: feel like this movie was kind of challenging me on
Speaker 7: that and kind of reminding me of a place of
Speaker 7: sometimes it's hard to go into ten, fifteen, twenty levels
Speaker 7: of analysis when people are literally dying, and even if
Speaker 7: it's not the best, like if you can put something
Speaker 7: in between the two people and say stop shooting them,
Speaker 7: that's what you do, even if it's not perfect.
Speaker 9: You know, all right, so we're gonna we're gonna talk
Speaker 9: about these fictional nations.
Speaker 1: Now, I think that's where we're going.
Speaker 8: Sure, let's do it.
Speaker 9: I in this discussion, like it watched the movie, I
Speaker 9: was just like fine with everything, but in this discussion
Speaker 9: about the situation, looking back on the movie, like, I
Speaker 9: have a lot of problems with how this has been
Speaker 9: framed because we are not given any context that I
Speaker 9: recall as to like who these nations are and why
Speaker 9: they are doing the things they are. Like we're given
Speaker 9: a very weak caricature of a dictator in the President
Speaker 9: of Bravia, and it's like, obviously he's the villain because
Speaker 9: of like the way he is, and then obviously he's
Speaker 9: the villain because he's working with Lex Luthor, the villain
Speaker 9: of the movie. But nations are complicated, and I do
Speaker 9: think like they oversimplified it to manipulate.
Speaker 1: Our emotions, and it works.
Speaker 9: It absolutely works, because when that kid raises the Superman
Speaker 9: flag in the middle of a battlefield, like, someone save
Speaker 9: that kid, do something like stop this right, like and
Speaker 9: that's that's fine. Like I have said in the past
Speaker 9: that I'm okay being manipulated in this way, but here
Speaker 9: on this podcast, like we got to talk about the
Speaker 9: fact that we don't know anything about this fictional geopolitical situation,
Speaker 9: and to some degree, I'm okay with that. And I
Speaker 9: like the fact that the DC universe has fictional nations
Speaker 9: and fictional cities because it allows us that separation from
Speaker 9: our real world. And I think that's that's absolutely very
Speaker 9: important here because we can just be like, yeah, Bravia
Speaker 9: is just like this comic like literally comic comically or
Speaker 9: comically bad evil nation, and we don't have to sit
Speaker 9: with that too much.
Speaker 1: But when you have.
Speaker 9: Situations like Captain America Brave New World where Japan, like
Speaker 9: I I was there watching that movie, and like, what
Speaker 9: why is Japan in this movie?
Speaker 1: Like why are we the.
Speaker 9: Questionable like bad guys or like the opposing the US,
Speaker 9: like we're supposed to be allies? And I was like,
Speaker 9: I wonder if they wanted to use China as this
Speaker 9: like Asian opposition, and then at some point just decided
Speaker 9: we can't do that because China would be mad and
Speaker 9: then like ticket sales, right, so they just decided to
Speaker 9: pick on Japan just like okay, fine, but but the
Speaker 9: that's like the level of complication when you use real
Speaker 9: places and real names and nations, and I'm glad that
Speaker 9: in movie can just ignore that and be like Bravia bad.
Speaker 9: So that that's my entry point into this discussion is like,
Speaker 9: I think it's great that we just had this fictional conflict.
Speaker 7: I will just say I've never been more I've never
Speaker 7: been as aware that Metropolis is literally New York as
Speaker 7: someone who grew up in New York as I was
Speaker 7: in this movie, down to the Justice Gang hanging out
Speaker 7: in what is quite literally Penn Station.
Speaker 8: But yes, other than that, you never hear your point.
Speaker 6: Yeah, apparently it's like there are specific Cleveland landmarks in
Speaker 6: this but yeah it's new.
Speaker 9: Like the original Hall of Justice was based on like
Speaker 9: a Cleveland building, and they actually filmed the outdoor scenes
Speaker 9: for this movie in Cleveland, so like a lot of
Speaker 9: the visuals are Cleveland. I Thinkolis is supposed to be
Speaker 9: in New Jersey.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean Gotham there at one point.
Speaker 6: Well know real quick though, Matthew, you like this. The
Speaker 6: building that Luther's little flying headquarters is like kind of
Speaker 6: the middle of is a real building in Cleveland, and
Speaker 6: it's apparently nicknamed the Batman Building because it's got the
Speaker 6: pointy little ears which is pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 6: mean I think it's there is. It's a very hard
Speaker 6: needle to thread, right when you are talking about superheroes
Speaker 6: and uh, geopolitical conflict in general, but really anything that
Speaker 6: has a bearing on a real world problem that that
Speaker 6: is causing harm because on the one hand, if we
Speaker 6: aren't using these larger than life figures to talk about
Speaker 6: real you know, meaty questions like if we aren't using
Speaker 6: figures that are meant to represent justice to talk about
Speaker 6: issues questions of justice, what are we even doing here?
Speaker 6: And like what's the point of this podcast? But if
Speaker 6: we get too real about it, like if it gets
Speaker 6: too specific, especially with a character like Superman, it can
Speaker 6: feel disrespectful. Like during World War Two. You know, Superman
Speaker 6: was created in nineteen thirty eight, so the US wasn't
Speaker 6: part of the war yet, and after the US joined
Speaker 6: the war, they had to do a story. They had
Speaker 6: to acknowledge that, like Clark Kent is of you know,
Speaker 6: an enlistable age. But they couldn't just have Superman go
Speaker 6: fight in the war and either just like be a
Speaker 6: private and not accomplish anything, or go immediately end it
Speaker 6: like there is actually before before the US joined the war.
Speaker 6: There is a story where Superman flies to where that
Speaker 6: war in Europe is happening, and he grabs the leaders
Speaker 6: of those two nations and we don't know which ones,
Speaker 6: and he's like, if you guys want to fight, you fight.
Speaker 6: Which did the grabbing the president of Brabia did remind
Speaker 6: me of that, but that that was not going to
Speaker 6: read well when Americans were fighting and dying overseas. So
Speaker 6: what they did was they have Clark go to enlist
Speaker 6: and his X ray vision accidentally kicks on while he's
Speaker 6: reading the eye chart and he reads the one in
Speaker 6: the next room, and they're like, oh, this guy cannot
Speaker 6: see at all, and so he gets four F and
Speaker 6: he's he can't join the army. And it's like it's
Speaker 6: a neat solution to be like, and that's why he didn't,
Speaker 6: you know, just immediately end the war, right, It doesn't
Speaker 6: really you know, they're thinking about too much. But it
Speaker 6: was like nineteen forty one, and so in this case,
Speaker 6: I think, you know, like you're saying, like, these are
Speaker 6: fictional countries, and I don't think we're being invited to
Speaker 6: read them as close analogs of any real world conflict
Speaker 6: because I think if they were, that would be again
Speaker 6: pretty disrespectful because people are still dying in like Green
Speaker 6: Lantern is not showing up to put a green wall
Speaker 6: around anyone in Goza or Ukraine.
Speaker 7: So I think I somewhat disagree with you too, But
Speaker 7: I think it's a really good conversation. I love the
Speaker 7: movies raising the conversation, and I'm not entirely convinced by
Speaker 7: my own argument. To be sure, this is a quick
Speaker 7: aside though, just where I thought you were gonna go
Speaker 7: with the World War two stuff that I think is
Speaker 7: also relevant as a here's why it's a little dangerous
Speaker 7: sometimes to have the superheroes fight things that are exact
Speaker 7: mirrors of what is happening.
Speaker 8: In the real world.
Speaker 7: Some of the most viriantly and Riki you probably speak
Speaker 7: on the Spent and Night ten, but some most currently
Speaker 7: anti Japanese propaganda that comes out of World War Two
Speaker 7: was the portrayals of Japanese that Captain America and other
Speaker 7: superheroes were fighting and deeply racist.
Speaker 6: Superman covers mostly covers, not so much in the comics,
Speaker 6: but they're right. I'm not going to repeat anything that's
Speaker 6: on them.
Speaker 8: It's yeah, and I'm not sure.
Speaker 7: My hero Batman, I know, goes after you know, spies
Speaker 7: and stuff like that. That being said, I I'm always
Speaker 7: so torn because I think you're right. I think it
Speaker 7: is good to have some fictional distance between things. But
Speaker 7: I do think there's there's power in acknowledging the metaphorical,
Speaker 7: like it makes you think of things, you know, And
Speaker 7: I think I went into this movie having been told
Speaker 7: that for a lot of people, they really saw it
Speaker 7: as a very clear like critique of Israel and what
Speaker 7: it's doing in Gaza with Palestine. I thought that was
Speaker 7: there a good deal, but I also thought it was
Speaker 7: just as much a like like I made a joke
Speaker 7: about the villain in being putin Yahoo as like a
Speaker 7: mix of net Yahoo and Putin, because I also think
Speaker 7: is just as much like Russia invading Ukraine, and I
Speaker 7: think it's clearly inspired by both of those things. But
Speaker 7: but it's not that and like a point I'll say,
Speaker 7: on kind of your side.
Speaker 8: At first, I was.
Speaker 7: Annoyed that the dictator was just clearly a mustache twirling
Speaker 7: like rubbing his hands working.
Speaker 8: With lex because that's less realistic.
Speaker 7: But I then later, as you guys are talking, I'm
Speaker 7: like that's probably actually better to make it feel like
Speaker 7: more of a separation. I think the way in which
Speaker 7: to me like to me, if I think there's a
Speaker 7: message about this that is relevant to those situations in
Speaker 7: the world today, but you're right, doesn't have to exclusively.
Speaker 8: Be to them, is.
Speaker 7: Like, I think one of the frustrations sometimes because you're right, RIGI,
Speaker 7: as you said, we don't have all the context in
Speaker 7: this situation, and there is more context, but I feel
Speaker 7: like this is the people are dying argument for me,
Speaker 7: If a whole bunch of people with mass very good
Speaker 7: weapon weapons are shooting people who don't have good weapons,
Speaker 7: I want to know the context so I can figure
Speaker 7: out the long term solution. But I don't give a
Speaker 7: damn about the context. People are dying. That should stop,
Speaker 7: you know. And I kind of feel like that was
Speaker 7: the here and on most of you. Maybe I'm more
Speaker 7: inspired by that part of Superman than I should be,
Speaker 7: But to me, that really felt like the message of
Speaker 7: is like, yes, the complexity matters, the nuance matters. All
Speaker 7: the questions Lowis is asking him are important. But when
Speaker 7: we get so locked in to the complexity and the
Speaker 7: nuance that these horrible situations happen for years and years
Speaker 7: and years. That's not okay too. And Superman's kind of
Speaker 7: having a what I think is kind of a naive
Speaker 7: attitude of people are dying. I don't care about the context.
Speaker 7: I'm going to stop it. I think you can believe
Speaker 7: in that message without applying it to those real world situations.
Speaker 7: I think God is saying, like, I think you should
Speaker 7: apply to these real world situations. But whether, but whether
Speaker 7: or not you play it in these specific instances. That's
Speaker 7: the overall message that the movie had, and I really
Speaker 7: like that one as an ethical message for a movie,
Speaker 7: which is the weird because it's so against everything that
Speaker 7: I've said before in some ways, I mean, I.
Speaker 6: Would be hesitant to try to totally draw conclusion about
Speaker 6: what exactly gun is trying to say because all of
Speaker 6: these big budget action movies have like funding from the
Speaker 6: US military. So true, I find it hard to believe
Speaker 6: like whatever is in James Gunn's heart, whatever his personal
Speaker 6: political beliefs are, like, I think whatever he wanted to
Speaker 6: say would probably have been edited and filtered somewhat through
Speaker 6: what was permitted by Warner Brothers and the US military,
Speaker 6: which is a sad state of affairs, But like I
Speaker 6: always want to kind of take these these types of
Speaker 6: or is with that grain of salt, and I think
Speaker 6: it doesn't change like what we take away from it
Speaker 6: and the resonance that the messaging has for us as
Speaker 6: an audience, But in terms of intention, I think it
Speaker 6: can be hard to parse when you have to navigate
Speaker 6: those filters, if he was even navigating them, which I
Speaker 6: don't know.
Speaker 7: And this's point Riki, You've made to me a bunch
Speaker 7: of times, and I think I've come around on you,
Speaker 7: right that, like I want to think that's what guns
Speaker 7: point was. I really have more of the postmodern idea
Speaker 7: of like that's an interprettion I got from the text
Speaker 7: at least, and whether or not that was Gun's intention,
Speaker 7: it's probably a better way of describing it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean I would agree with your point that
Speaker 9: if we break this conflict down from what we are
Speaker 9: shown from an ethical standpoint, one side Bravia has modern
Speaker 9: mechanized weaponry like tanks and machine guns, and the other side,
Speaker 9: I don't even remember if we were shown, which are
Speaker 9: hand poor having any weapons, like maybe a lot of
Speaker 9: who just had pitchforks, right, And that's that this is
Speaker 9: like the most extreme example of like, oh, like one side,
Speaker 9: one side is like very powerful, the other sides not.
Speaker 1: And drawing that line of like.
Speaker 9: If you, if you are a mechanized modern military, maybe
Speaker 9: you shouldn't be turning your your weapons of war on
Speaker 9: what are essentially civilians with hand to hand weapons. And
Speaker 9: if if you want to draw like real world parallels,
Speaker 9: I'm sorry to say, like that's the story of the
Speaker 9: United States.
Speaker 8: Yeah, very much so, very much so.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm gonna think in some ways what we're seeing
Speaker 7: in Ukraine and in Gaza, you might say, is kind
Speaker 7: of like the most modern iterations of this, but are
Speaker 7: by no means unique moments of history that have never
Speaker 7: happened before. And I will say, like I keep mentioning
Speaker 7: the Russia thing because I in terms of looking at
Speaker 7: the discourse, I think there is an awful lot of
Speaker 7: discourse of naming this movie as like a very pro Palestinian,
Speaker 7: anti current Israeli government kind of thing, and I see
Speaker 7: where that's coming from. But I do think that that
Speaker 7: a lot of that is going a little too far,
Speaker 7: and as sometimes happened, someone's getting down right anti Semitic
Speaker 7: is that are really problematic. But like to me, it
Speaker 7: felt like, yes, it's a nation of round people in
Speaker 7: a desert area, Like there's a lot of things that
Speaker 7: look an awful lot like that. There's a map of
Speaker 7: John and Poor that looks an awful like the gods
Speaker 7: a strip, but then also having like the language of
Speaker 7: Bravia sounding a lot like Russian, and like the capital
Speaker 7: city having these literal onion domes. I was like, okay, okay,
Speaker 7: so where this is as much about Putin as it
Speaker 7: is anything in Israel right now?
Speaker 8: And I appreciated that as a like, don't this isn't
Speaker 8: a one to one comparison of anything right now.
Speaker 6: I think it's just generically foreign. And I think that
Speaker 6: the uh, the impoverished people with no modern technology who
Speaker 6: need help are generically brown, because those are the stereotypes
Speaker 6: that American audiences kind of expect and are easy for
Speaker 6: us to digest. Like, I really, I don't think it's
Speaker 6: that pointed. I don't think it's that specific. I think
Speaker 6: we're just grabbing out of the box of.
Speaker 8: You know, that's the lens we're seeing it through, because yeah, I.
Speaker 6: Think this is right out of a commercial for you know,
Speaker 6: some philanthropic organization with Sarah MacLachlan playing over the credits
Speaker 6: like it's you know, I don't think I just it
Speaker 6: just doesn't feel like, yeah, this is the venue for
Speaker 6: specific pointed political commentary about specific current political events.
Speaker 9: To add to that, the actor who portray is the
Speaker 9: President of Bravia. His name is is Latko Burich and
Speaker 9: he is listed as born in Croatia and residing in Denmark.
Speaker 9: So if I were to guess, like the accent that
Speaker 9: he uses in this movie is probably like very much
Speaker 9: close to his natural accent, so Croatian, like a Southeastern
Speaker 9: European Slavic accent, and maybe to us, like I don't
Speaker 9: know any of these European languages, so yeah, like I
Speaker 9: could understand if people are like, ah, yes, like this
Speaker 9: sounds kind of Russian, but maybe to Russians they listen
Speaker 9: to that.
Speaker 1: And that's that doesn't sound Russian at all.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, even the names Bravia and jar and
Speaker 6: per are so linguistically completely disconnected from each other, like
Speaker 6: they don't sound like they come from the same region
Speaker 6: of the world. And you know, DC has plenty, like
Speaker 6: Riky is saying, DC has plenty of fictional countries in
Speaker 6: the comics that they could have used that are not
Speaker 6: subtle about what they're meant to be. Like there's a
Speaker 6: country called Quorak with a Q, Like they're not subtle there.
Speaker 6: They have tons of countries that are like somewhere vaguely
Speaker 6: in the Balkans, like they there were these two.
Speaker 8: New countries or these country names from older.
Speaker 6: I believe they're new. I have to dig into it,
Speaker 6: but I don't remember reading anything.
Speaker 9: In terms of in terms of fictional DC countries, I
Speaker 9: will say I'm surprised that Jarhanpoor was in conduct because
Speaker 9: then then you still have like this kind of impoverished
Speaker 9: brown people. But if it's invaded by a mechanized force,
Speaker 9: then eventually it opens up the avenue of having black Adam.
Speaker 6: To get away from that on purpose, well, no, because
Speaker 6: the movie was not. I mean I say that someone
Speaker 6: who's played the movie. But that's part of the problem.
Speaker 6: Like we can't do it in Flatava because Count Vertigo
Speaker 6: will show up. We can't do it in uh Moldova
Speaker 6: because Sonar will show up. We can't do it in
Speaker 6: Markovia because Geohorse will show up.
Speaker 1: In DC have too much history.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they all have a superhero or a super villain
Speaker 6: who's like the Grand Duke or whatever.
Speaker 7: What what's the Latin American nation that they make up
Speaker 7: so they can invade it in the first one of
Speaker 7: the second best Suicide Squad movie.
Speaker 6: Oh I don't remember, I know that Bain is from
Speaker 6: Santa Prisco, which is another made up right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well with all that, then let me throw one
Speaker 7: other modern political situation.
Speaker 6: At you, Corto Maltese.
Speaker 7: Are we also going to say that Lex Loose putting
Speaker 7: as much invective as he can to say you are
Speaker 7: an alien has nothing to do with the modern day
Speaker 7: immigration discussions.
Speaker 6: This movie is so woke.
Speaker 9: No, I mean, I'm gonna say it doesn't like again
Speaker 9: to me as an immigrant. It resonates deeply. But Lex
Speaker 9: Luthor has been anti alien, anti Superman in the comics
Speaker 9: for ages, like including the President Luthor storyline, which if
Speaker 9: that happens then it will become like even more pointed.
Speaker 9: But the people who are trying to say that, like
Speaker 9: somehow this is a critique of right now, like the
Speaker 9: Superman story in Lex Luthor have been critiquing this for decades.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I was talking about this with a friend
Speaker 6: and we were comparing Lex in this movie to Jesse
Speaker 6: Eisenberg's Lexman.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the rich HM or the rich joker, I should say.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's like what if Mark Zuckerberg was he
Speaker 6: fled to his choker, which is a choice, but that
Speaker 6: also feels like, you know, he was very clearly cast
Speaker 6: because he had played Mark Zuckerberg, and he was very
Speaker 6: clearly being directed to sort of evoke that's like a
Speaker 6: specific person. And what I said to my friend was,
Speaker 6: I feel like there are elements of Les that will
Speaker 6: make you think of plenty of you know, public figures,
Speaker 6: Like there are elements of him that you know are
Speaker 6: reminiscent of Trump, or reminiscent of Elon Musk, or reminiscent
Speaker 6: of various other people. But Tariki's point, I don't think
Speaker 6: it's so much because either James Gunn or Nicholas Holt
Speaker 6: was specifically going to those people for inspiration.
Speaker 9: I think it's.
Speaker 6: Because that kind of like small, petty, greedy bully of
Speaker 6: a man is timeless, and you know, if you dial
Speaker 6: into that kind of villain there, you know, twenty years
Speaker 6: from now, somebody will watch this movie and go, oh,
Speaker 6: he is just like and talk about a current figure
Speaker 6: like it's unfortunately Evergreen.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I get that, and I like, while I do,
Speaker 8: I do think that the.
Speaker 7: Situation with John and Poor and all that is more
Speaker 7: inspired by current events that you guys are saying. The
Speaker 7: immigration thing felt to me more like it's not that
Speaker 7: they were like, let's let's have Superman have a pro
Speaker 7: immigrant message because of politics. It's that Superman has always
Speaker 7: had an incredibly pro immigrant message that just resonates a
Speaker 7: lot more right now because of the current anti immigrant
Speaker 7: situation that we're in.
Speaker 6: I will say the one thing that I did think
Speaker 6: was like, oh, this is taken from right now, it's
Speaker 6: a commentary on right now was the Monkeys Oh on
Speaker 6: Twitter social media. I was like, that is a a
Speaker 6: commentary on what is specifically happening right now. And it
Speaker 6: was very fun and I appreciate.
Speaker 1: In a beautiful Simpsons reference right yeah, Oh.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I didn't catch that, but that's awesome.
Speaker 1: It was the blurst of times I definitely had.
Speaker 7: I think, like, at first, I wrestled with this version
Speaker 7: of Lex a little bit, in part because I love
Speaker 7: Nicholas Holt, because he's my favorite Romeo that I've ever seen,
Speaker 7: which if any of you seen the movie Warm bodies.
Speaker 7: He's zombie Romeo, but it is like he professes his
Speaker 7: love to j while she's standing on a balcony and
Speaker 7: her best friend is a nurse. Like I was, it's
Speaker 7: a great movie, and it's a Romeo and Juliette story
Speaker 7: in such a wonderful way. And he plays r are
Speaker 7: uh and I very much got vibes of the Smallville
Speaker 7: version of Lex.
Speaker 9: And Michael Rosenbaum, yea who has a cameo in this.
Speaker 7: I kind of first wanted him to have more of
Speaker 7: a high minded like he really is scared for humanity.
Speaker 7: But when I heard his final villain of monologue and
Speaker 7: it's that it's envy, I realize it is so because
Speaker 7: you're right. He is small, he is greedy, but in
Speaker 7: some ways he is just as human as Superman is.
Speaker 7: And like I felt like that scene of him saying
Speaker 7: I'm human to me, it was like very much a
Speaker 7: kind of like the good and bad sides of who
Speaker 7: we can be, you know, in that we can be
Speaker 7: hopeful and inspirational and look for the best, and we
Speaker 7: also can be incredibly envious if anyone we think is
Speaker 7: doing better than us, you know, I mean every time
Speaker 7: they told me like, how did my baby score on.
Speaker 8: Some particular scale. Some part of me is thinking like,
Speaker 8: oh good it.
Speaker 7: You knows better than that amount of babies out there,
Speaker 7: you know, because we're envious stupid creatures on some level,
Speaker 7: and Superman asks us to rise above that.
Speaker 6: And I.
Speaker 7: Gene Hackman will always be my favorite Lex luthor and
Speaker 7: he's a terrible villain. He just has he just wants
Speaker 7: to get rich, but he's so smart and neat. I
Speaker 7: love him so much. But in terms of like, oh,
Speaker 7: like the kind of weighty villains we talk about, I
Speaker 7: really love this version of Lex.
Speaker 8: I really do.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would put him on par with Michael Rosenbaum.
Speaker 6: If not, like he might have the edge. I haven't
Speaker 6: finished Small Dell. I've seen the season and a half
Speaker 6: of Small Villa. But like before, now I would say, well,
Speaker 6: Michael Rosenbaum, there's absolutely zero competition for me. He is
Speaker 6: by far the best Lex, and now there's a competition.
Speaker 6: Like Nicholas Holt, who you know, stated that he was
Speaker 6: taking inspiration from Michael Rosenbaum's performance is so good and
Speaker 6: he has such a perfect balance of humor and menace,
Speaker 6: where he's always menacing even when he's funny, and then
Speaker 6: all of a sudden, like when he shoots that guy
Speaker 6: when they're in the pocket dimension, like the whole the
Speaker 6: whole theater recoiled. It was really even though he does
Speaker 6: have that creeping menace all the time, you were not
Speaker 6: expecting it. And it's really like, even though he's at
Speaker 6: this point already tortured a dog and you know it
Speaker 6: like it's right. It's a really brutal moment. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: thought it was an incredible performance. I was just looking
Speaker 6: for It's driving me nuts because I cannot find the
Speaker 6: source on this quote. There is this fantastic quote about
Speaker 6: Lois and Clark, not the show with the characters, and
Speaker 6: that relationship works, and I can't. I wish I could
Speaker 6: remember who said it. It's gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: dig it up after we're done recordings. But the person
Speaker 6: who said this said that the crux of their relationship
Speaker 6: and why it works is that she's a better reporter
Speaker 6: than him. Clark Kent can do anything. He's stronger than everybody's,
Speaker 6: faster than Anybody's always been able to vest everyone in
Speaker 6: the world at everything easily. But you can't, like superpowers
Speaker 6: don't make you a better writer. It can make you
Speaker 6: a faster typist, it can help you get sources, but
Speaker 6: it can't make you a better writer. She is perfect
Speaker 6: and she is better than him and Superman. The difference
Speaker 6: between Superman and Lex Luthor is that Superman looks up
Speaker 6: at somebody above him and he feels love, like his
Speaker 6: response to that is to fall in love with her,
Speaker 6: and Lex Luthor looks up at someone above him and
Speaker 6: he feels hate. It's such a good book. I wish
Speaker 6: I could find I will find the source on it
Speaker 6: because it's wonderful. But what you were saying just really
Speaker 6: reminded me of that that it's it's that grasping jealousy
Speaker 6: that really is the core of who Lexes.
Speaker 9: So for me, my Lex Luthor is Clancy Brown from
Speaker 9: the DC animated shows, and it's because Clancy Brown is
Speaker 9: a great voice actor and a live action actor and
Speaker 9: he brings so much gravitas to that Lex Luthor or
Speaker 9: but maybe too much gravitas, maybe too much confidence. And
Speaker 9: I do think like this Nicholas Hold portrayal now might
Speaker 9: be my favorite portrayal of Lex Luthor because it gets
Speaker 9: his vulnerability so right like that it is all a facade,
Speaker 9: like the confidence that he puts forward is fake, and
Speaker 9: he's so insecure.
Speaker 1: He's deeply insecure.
Speaker 9: And when it finally comes out, when he loses and
Speaker 9: it finally comes out and he sheds that tear, I
Speaker 9: was like, oh my gosh, like this is amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's well, because that's what Lex that like.
Speaker 1: People people are like, oh, like Lex would never cry.
Speaker 9: He was utterly defeated revealed to the world. I mean,
Speaker 9: he's not gonna like ball, but I found that tear
Speaker 9: rolling down his cheek like very believable.
Speaker 6: I was just gonna say, this is a man who
Speaker 6: locks up all of his ex girlfriends in an intern
Speaker 6: dimensional prison. So like, yeah, insecure is the word for it.
Speaker 8: Right, Yeah, very much?
Speaker 7: And in some ways and that like in the same
Speaker 7: way that I felt like that this wasn't an origin
Speaker 7: story for Superman, but this was a important milestone of
Speaker 7: how does Superman evolve when he faces his first real challenge.
Speaker 7: I felt like this is similar for for Lex. You know,
Speaker 7: like this is not I don't want Lex to be
Speaker 7: the only villain we get, but I think we'll absolutely
Speaker 7: get if we get more of these movies. Lex coming
Speaker 7: back being changed from this experience, I will also say
Speaker 7: that I keep praising Superman and Lois. One of the
Speaker 7: most interesting villains they have is someone who could best
Speaker 7: be described as like a biker daddy who's also a billionaire.
Speaker 7: And it's played by played by Michael Kodletz, who's been,
Speaker 7: he's been a lot of other great things, and he's
Speaker 7: a fascinating character. And he comes across one hundred percent
Speaker 7: as like biker daddy, look like that's his thing. He
Speaker 7: looks like he should be the head of a Harley
Speaker 7: Davidson crew. But his name is Lex Luthor, and that
Speaker 7: just made like it is such a weird portrayal of
Speaker 7: Lex Luthor. So with that in mind, I think I
Speaker 7: was a prime to like almost any Lex Luthor, but
Speaker 7: this one especially. The three of us love to talk.
Speaker 7: We're already going so long, but I do want to
Speaker 7: make sure we hit some of the other things.
Speaker 8: How did you guys?
Speaker 7: We had Mister Terrific, we had a Hawk Girl, we
Speaker 7: had uh Guy Gardner, and we had a bunch of
Speaker 7: other little cameos, but those three were kind of the
Speaker 7: main other parts of the other superheroes we had.
Speaker 8: What'd you think of their portrayals, so we had.
Speaker 6: A pretty big role for Metamorpho too. That's he's the
Speaker 6: guy Rex in the cell who can turn his hand
Speaker 6: into kryptonite.
Speaker 7: Okay, cool, Yeah, who maybe joined the Justice Gang solely
Speaker 7: because he likes the name Justice Gang.
Speaker 1: Well, he likes he likes helping people.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I al will say, like as a Green Lantern fan,
Speaker 9: not so much a Guy Gardner fan, but he's in
Speaker 9: a lot of the stories leelling, so I know him well.
Speaker 9: I have no notes on Nathan Fillion. It was just
Speaker 9: like perfect in just about in any way imaginable. I
Speaker 9: don't think, like given the actor's age and kind of
Speaker 9: like where the character sits in DC Lower, I don't
Speaker 9: think he'll get his own movie. But if he keeps
Speaker 9: showing up in things and just like doing his like
Speaker 9: one or two jokes and like being smarty, perfect like
Speaker 9: let him keep coming back.
Speaker 1: I loved it.
Speaker 6: I am a Guy Gardner fan. I have literally cosplayed
Speaker 6: as Guy Gardner. Like that's how hardcore of a Guy
Speaker 6: Gardner fan I am. And I agree, no notes, absolutely perfect.
Speaker 6: I don't think he should ever be the lead. I
Speaker 6: think he's designed to be a supporting character and he
Speaker 6: does it. Beautifully here. Like, I'm very interested to see
Speaker 6: if he shows up in the Green Entering TV show,
Speaker 6: which seems totally completely different. That would be to yeah,
Speaker 6: which I have no idea what that's going to look like.
Speaker 6: Very excited. I'm much more excited for that show now
Speaker 6: than I was before, and I was like cautiously optimistic
Speaker 6: about the show one. So my big concern about the
Speaker 6: Justice Gang going into the movie was that they were
Speaker 6: going to be like, not bad guys exactly, but kind
Speaker 6: of antagonists that they were going you know, they're corporate funded.
Speaker 6: They're funded by Maxwell Lord, who's billionaire and he's a
Speaker 6: villain in the comics, like it's the Petro Pascal character
Speaker 6: in Wonder Room in nineteen eighty four, and we do
Speaker 6: get like a very brief glimpse of him in this movie.
Speaker 6: He's played by Sean Gunn, who's James Gunn's brother. So
Speaker 6: I was worried that they were going like they were
Speaker 6: going to be scenes where Superman had to fight them
Speaker 6: because he needed to do the right thing and they
Speaker 6: were getting in his way, and I was so I
Speaker 6: didn't want to see that, because they didn't want to
Speaker 6: see these characters portrayed that negat guy. Okay, Guy, he's
Speaker 6: an asshole, that's his whole thing. But I didn't want
Speaker 6: to see mister Terrific or Hawk Girl that way. And
Speaker 6: they're not they're his friends, Like, yeah, they know his
Speaker 6: secret identity. They're heroes. They still, like you know, are
Speaker 6: inspired to do better because of his actions, like I
Speaker 6: was saying, but they are heroes, they are good people.
Speaker 6: And one moment that I really loved was there's a
Speaker 6: scene where it's after they found out the Lex's broadcast
Speaker 6: the full message from Clark's parents, and he's really upset
Speaker 6: and people in the crowd are like yelling at him
Speaker 6: and throwing garbage at him, and he goes into a
Speaker 6: building and the Justice Gang follows him in, and we
Speaker 6: see a shot of this in the trailer, and we
Speaker 6: can see that guy is like lighting up his ring,
Speaker 6: and I thought, I think most people watching that thought, oh,
Speaker 6: they're going to fight, But what is actually happening in
Speaker 6: that scene is Guy is using his ring to block
Speaker 6: out the windows to give Clark privacy because he's really upset.
Speaker 6: And I was so touched by that, and like, guy
Speaker 6: is a complete asshole in all of the dialogue, but also.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then immediately, dude, do you have a harem?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Like it was such, it was such a good
Speaker 6: balance of that character, and it just it brought me
Speaker 6: so much joy. I'm so happy. Thank you, James Gun
Speaker 6: and Nathan Fillion.
Speaker 8: He was so good.
Speaker 7: And one thing, one thing I've been thinking about ever
Speaker 7: since the last time you and I talked about Superman, Jessica,
Speaker 7: you talked about how it could like at its best,
Speaker 7: it's a workplace rom com and frankly I could have
Speaker 7: dealt if you had taken out all the stuff about
Speaker 7: like multi galaxy whatever, throw all of that away and
Speaker 7: give us a lot more of the Daily Planet.
Speaker 8: I love it.
Speaker 6: I would have got forty five minutes of Clark and
Speaker 6: Jimmy doing their stupid little handshake the planet ball.
Speaker 7: Then I don't understand how a person who lives happily
Speaker 7: in space can suffocate, but we'll move right past that.
Speaker 7: But to me, it made me realize that some of
Speaker 7: my favorite Justice League stuff. What I like about it
Speaker 7: is that it's also a workplace show, where it's like
Speaker 7: it's about people who have workplace rivalries would also always
Speaker 7: have each other's back. And to jump to yet another thing,
Speaker 7: guy in that moment, being like, look, I'm gonna harass
Speaker 7: you all the time, but when it's when it's like
Speaker 7: it's us against each other, except when it's us against
Speaker 7: the world, and him kind of having Clark's back in
Speaker 7: that moment reminded me a lot of like the other
Speaker 7: Mandalorians who are always giving dnjar in like they're beefing
Speaker 7: with him until he's kind of like got problems with
Speaker 7: everyone else, and then they're like, we got your back.
Speaker 7: You know, this is the way, And I really love that,
Speaker 7: and I could also to me it contextualized I like
Speaker 7: Superman best in the Justice League when he's not the
Speaker 7: only hero.
Speaker 8: Because he does feel a little ridiculous to me, you know.
Speaker 7: And so Hawk Girl being like, cool, you wanted to
Speaker 7: save the life of the Kaiju. That's adorable, this dictator,
Speaker 7: I'm just gonna kill him, and the movie's not like, well,
Speaker 7: Superman is clearly because I'm watching the Kaiju do incredible damage,
Speaker 7: and I'm thinking, Clark, it's really cute you want to
Speaker 7: save it, but every minute you try to save it,
Speaker 7: it's killing more people.
Speaker 8: So maybe we just fix the problem right now.
Speaker 6: Well, no, it didn't kill anybody.
Speaker 7: If the evacuation was it was causing a lot of
Speaker 7: damage to a lot of things. That like, I'm if
Speaker 7: Daredevil's not killing people by hitting people in the head
Speaker 7: with sticks, then maybe the Kaiju wasn't killing anybody, but
Speaker 7: it I certainly had a like I don't feel bad
Speaker 7: about trying to take this thing down right now.
Speaker 8: Kind of moment there.
Speaker 7: But my points being like, I like that it puts
Speaker 7: Superman's like protect every life we possibly can, not as
Speaker 7: the only superhero perspective, but as one perspective among many.
Speaker 7: And maybe in this movie you were rooting more for him,
Speaker 7: but like, no one ever goes to a Hawk girl
Speaker 7: and was like, oh, you're a bad superhero for doing that.
Speaker 7: You know, Nathan Fillen is like killing soldiers from the
Speaker 7: invading army and giving them the finger with au the
Speaker 7: green fists, and Superman's not lecturing them. It's just like, yeah,
Speaker 7: they're doing their own thing.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and now let us talk about mister Terrific. In
Speaker 9: my opinion, this is the character that stole the show,
Speaker 9: like the unexpected character that stole the show again. I think,
Speaker 9: like Nicholas Holt, his lex Lutor was spectacular, but an
Speaker 9: unexpected I didn't know how big his part was gonna be.
Speaker 1: This was great.
Speaker 9: Edie gathegi Yep who was in X Men First Class
Speaker 9: as Darwin and was supposed to be invincible but unceremoniously
Speaker 9: done away in terrible fashion. What a redemption for him, Yeah,
Speaker 9: what a redemption for him in the in the comic
Speaker 9: book movie circles. And this guy might be deserving of
Speaker 9: like a solo movie down the line, or a TV
Speaker 9: show or something like. I was just everything out of
Speaker 9: his mouth, every all of his actions, like his typical
Speaker 9: James gun like set to music, fight scene like one
Speaker 9: wonder take fight scene, which we've seen in all the movies. Still, like,
Speaker 9: I enjoyed it so much, and it was perfect for
Speaker 9: him to use the tea spheres in that way.
Speaker 1: Just just fun.
Speaker 9: And you also like got a sense of his intelligence,
Speaker 9: which is important to his character the third smartest person, yeah,
Speaker 9: DC universe, and it showed like when he was working
Speaker 9: the computer and all the all the calculations stuff and
Speaker 9: oh god, damn, mister perfect.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: He was great.
Speaker 7: And I know he's been in other things, but I
Speaker 7: think for a lot of people like myself who aren't
Speaker 7: huge comic book people, our only point of reference for
Speaker 7: him is from the CW shows and Supergirl, and it's
Speaker 7: Arrow actually the one he most shows up in. And
Speaker 7: I to me that also felt like a bit of
Speaker 7: a nice homage to yet another portion of the DC
Speaker 7: universe that's been out there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think he's the character that people are going
Speaker 6: to be well Ham or Metamorpho is the character people
Speaker 6: are going to be least familiar with. And I really
Speaker 6: appreciated that he got such a chance to shine, he
Speaker 6: got such a showcase, and it was really like, he's
Speaker 6: a great character and he's absolutely, I agree, the one
Speaker 6: who could get a solo movie coming out of this.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I think there is talk to already of him
Speaker 8: getting a solo TV show. Excellent, I'll watch it, yeah,
Speaker 8: which I'd really like.
Speaker 6: I will say for Hawk Girl, that was a case
Speaker 6: where I did feel like she is she has the
Speaker 6: least amount of screen time and dialogue of all the
Speaker 6: other superheroes by far, and the least amount of character development.
Speaker 6: And that's pretty repeated motif with female characters in this movie,
Speaker 6: Like we have mon Pa, but Pa gets the big
Speaker 6: scene and you have you know the like it's right.
Speaker 6: All the women in this movie were great but their
Speaker 6: screen time and the things they got to do in
Speaker 6: the movie did tend to be pretty limited. And it's again,
Speaker 6: like you know, I keep saying, I felt like this
Speaker 6: movie was embedded in the DCU, and I'd rather feel
Speaker 6: like it was in the DCU and have less time
Speaker 6: to spend on specific things because we were putting so
Speaker 6: much in it. And I still feel that way, but
Speaker 6: I would have liked to see her do more. And
Speaker 6: when she does just kill the president of Bravia, I
Speaker 6: was like, Oh, we're just completely disregarding all the questions
Speaker 6: we raised for the sake of a joke because the
Speaker 6: movie's almost over, which felt a little bit like they
Speaker 6: didn't really know how to get out of that, so
Speaker 6: they just did a joke and moved on.
Speaker 7: And Yeah, I would have liked if she'd had more
Speaker 7: interaction with Superman, like if she'd been the one who
Speaker 7: is the most like pro killing the Kaiju or something
Speaker 7: like that, you know, and they've had some establishment of that.
Speaker 7: I was also thinking in terms of other female characters,
Speaker 7: like I've seen Superman fight a clone of himself so
Speaker 7: many times. I found the Engineer so fascinating, and she
Speaker 7: has that one line where she talks about how she
Speaker 7: has sacrificed herself to become this thing just to fight
Speaker 7: Superman and she has this tension with Lex and then
Speaker 7: they never do anything with that, and I was like,
Speaker 7: you could take out everything about you know, the Superman
Speaker 7: clone and just give me a lot more of the
Speaker 7: Engineer and I would have been really happy.
Speaker 6: Well, good news, because there she's from the authority and
Speaker 6: there's an authority movie or TV show or something planned.
Speaker 6: So I think there, she's already, she's booked, she'll be
Speaker 6: doing more.
Speaker 8: Okay, good. So the actress was great and I really
Speaker 8: liked her power set and HER's a character.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she was really she was. She was fun. She
Speaker 6: was really interesting visually. But yeah, like she's like I
Speaker 6: did all this so I could kill Superman and I
Speaker 6: was like why, Like why, Yeah, I just I wanted,
Speaker 6: you know, that little bit more from her. I agreed
Speaker 6: that the Ultraman thing was the most interesting thing to me.
Speaker 6: That Ultraman was that they dressed him like Doom's day
Speaker 6: the whole time, Like that's a little outfit, and I
Speaker 6: was like huh, but you know when they went into
Speaker 6: the fortress with him, I was like, well, that's a
Speaker 6: clone of Superman.
Speaker 9: Really if if you if you're kind of paying attention
Speaker 9: in a in a metal way.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, that's.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then they were like oh uh. That was
Speaker 6: another one where it was like, uh oh, movies almost over.
Speaker 6: Better do something about this black hole.
Speaker 9: And I the most speculation now is that this this
Speaker 9: is also a Bizarro origin story, yeah.
Speaker 6: Which I would be interested to see Bizarro come back
Speaker 6: and be like, dude, you threw me into a black
Speaker 6: hole or I guess dude, you did not throw me
Speaker 6: into a black hole.
Speaker 9: That that character is so hard to have any consistency with.
Speaker 9: Because of all that, I would be okay if they
Speaker 9: made like a more realistic Bizarro who is able to
Speaker 9: talk in complete sentences that aren't backwards, because I think
Speaker 9: that would be more more compelling.
Speaker 7: So I'll be curious because I will say another recommendation
Speaker 7: for Lois and Superman. For Superman and Lois, he is
Speaker 7: probably the most commonly recurring villain antagonist maybe teammate, and
Speaker 7: they do let him have a lot and they give
Speaker 7: him a lot of backstory and like they really make
Speaker 7: him a very interesting character and so yet, but also
Speaker 7: he is so used in that show that a part of.
Speaker 8: Me was like, oh god, no, not more bizarro. I've
Speaker 8: seen so much bizarro lately.
Speaker 1: You don't have to pay a second actor.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, Tyler Hecklin was already there, Yeah, in Canada, so.
Speaker 8: We'll see you in original to this movie. Or was
Speaker 8: that also.
Speaker 6: I didn't recognize him from anything, which is not to
Speaker 6: say that he's not, but I I had no immediate like, oh,
Speaker 6: that's Bob the Kaiju.
Speaker 8: I like what you said, It's just a kaiju because
Speaker 8: it's Tuesday.
Speaker 6: You know. Yeah, It's just that's just how we roll
Speaker 6: here in Metropolis.
Speaker 8: Michael robots on Thursdays, Kaiju on Tuesdays.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and from the guy, Yes, thank you, that's okay,
Speaker 9: Malik right, Molly, Molly's Molly as much as like mister
Speaker 9: Terrific stole the show. That was the like emotional center
Speaker 9: of this whole movie for me, because like, the scene
Speaker 9: with him where Lex shoots him is just shocking, and
Speaker 9: I was so conflicted because Lex Luthor cracks a joke
Speaker 9: right after and it's it was so uncomfortable in the
Speaker 9: best way because you kind of want to laugh, but
Speaker 9: you are also like crying in that moment. And then
Speaker 9: to see how much Superman cared for that man and
Speaker 9: remembered him and honored him at the end the article
Speaker 9: at the end written by Clark Kent like calling him
Speaker 9: like the true hero or whatever, Like I all the
Speaker 9: stuff we talk about, like Superman and kindness being the
Speaker 9: theme that through line of that character and what they
Speaker 9: did with him and the portrayal was part of that
Speaker 9: story of kindness, but also just honoring the small heroism
Speaker 9: because he didn't have superpowers, but in that moment in
Speaker 9: the first battle with the Hammer of Barraba, he stopped
Speaker 9: to help Superman in this dangerous situation and ultimately like
Speaker 9: that's what got him killed.
Speaker 7: Yeah, just like I had this moment of John Wick
Speaker 7: being so happy with Superman because like he is when
Speaker 7: it's his dog that is, and I remember being like
Speaker 7: a little like there's that scene at the beginning where
Speaker 7: the dog is at the Fortress of Solitude and Superman's
Speaker 7: kind of mean to him, like it's just like I'm
Speaker 7: just walking away from you, and the reveal at the
Speaker 7: end that it's not even his dog. Basically he's just
Speaker 7: like dog sitting for the weekend and he doesn't like
Speaker 7: this dog very much. Like this is not his beloved pet.
Speaker 7: He doesn't like this dog, but he like, he doesn't
Speaker 7: like the dog, but he loves the dog. When the
Speaker 7: dog's danger, like you know, he goes full on John
Speaker 7: Wick about it, and it just and he says, a
Speaker 7: god damn squirrel, and like that's I can't I was
Speaker 7: so annoyed that I liked that moment so much because
Speaker 7: it felt so silly, but it was so well done.
Speaker 6: But I think that's why it works, because it if
Speaker 6: you play it too straight, then a lot of people
Speaker 6: will bounce off of it, right, But if you turn
Speaker 6: it into a joke, then it's it's a lot easier
Speaker 6: to accept. But at the same time, like I was
Speaker 6: iffy when I heard that James Gunn was going to
Speaker 6: be making a Superman movie, because I think he's a
Speaker 6: very talented director and he's a nerd and he gets superheroes,
Speaker 6: but his sense of humor always seemed too cynical to me.
Speaker 6: I was like, I don't know how he's going to
Speaker 6: pull this off. And he manages to make it so
Speaker 6: that you're laughing with Superman and not at Superman. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and it just works. He nailed it. And I've all
Speaker 6: like I've said for years that Superman is laughing most.
Speaker 6: Like Superman's kind of control and that's part of what
Speaker 6: I like about him, and like his little like you know,
Speaker 6: digs at Lois and at the post credit scene like
Speaker 6: that's yeah, he's he has a sense of humor, and
Speaker 6: this movie really dialed into that and got you to
Speaker 6: sort of swallow the pill of sincerity with life after
Speaker 6: not you specifically, but a little bit you specifically.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, not very much for me specifically.
Speaker 9: That's one of the things that people bring up as
Speaker 9: like a core memory of Superman nineteen seventy eight is
Speaker 9: that Superman saves that little girl's cat who is in
Speaker 9: the tree, Like that is one of the core.
Speaker 1: Things about Superman that you remember that he did.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think that is the the origin of
Speaker 7: the save the Cat trope that like they talked into
Speaker 7: writing about Hero movies, they often used Jessica's shake your
Speaker 7: head that it's.
Speaker 6: I mean correct, No, I forget I own the books
Speaker 6: Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, and I think it's
Speaker 6: some Al Pacino movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know what, Yeah, Scarface.
Speaker 6: I don't remember which one, but yeah, the character like
Speaker 6: literally saves the cat and like he's a terrible person,
Speaker 6: but he saves the cat, and so you'd like him anyway.
Speaker 6: And I don't remember which one it is, sorry, but yeah.
Speaker 9: Then and then in this one, it's like even the squirrel.
Speaker 9: It's like, yes, even the squirrel. And that is that
Speaker 9: fits so consistently with a Superman who says golly, Like
Speaker 9: he literally says golly in this movie. And and those
Speaker 9: two factors together is like, this is the character.
Speaker 1: This is what you get. It's like, oh, I get
Speaker 1: it now.
Speaker 6: At one point when he scolding Crypto, he says, what
Speaker 6: the hey, dude, I.
Speaker 7: Keep wanting to wrap up this interview that I keep
Speaker 7: wanting to wrap up this podcast, guys, but you keep
Speaker 7: saying more things that I just want to mention. I
Speaker 7: love that they present him as incredibly wholesome, incredibly sweet,
Speaker 7: like a nerd in like not like the cool way,
Speaker 7: but in just kind of like that, hey, listen is
Speaker 7: to pop punk, not punk rock.
Speaker 8: But also Superman fucks.
Speaker 7: Like there is some hotness in the scenes between him
Speaker 7: and Lois and some of those kisses. I'm like, oh
Speaker 7: that we're getting back into c W steaminess here like this,
Speaker 7: And I love that for him being and again, that's
Speaker 7: something that like there's a big old about how Superman
Speaker 7: has these like romantic getaways that when like the kids
Speaker 7: are asleep, he like flies lowesst to like an Italian
Speaker 7: villa to make love to her and Superman and Lois
Speaker 7: it's really sexy and they're.
Speaker 8: Both like in her forties at this point, and it's great.
Speaker 7: And yeah, I just like that he is the super sweet,
Speaker 7: super wholesome golly g and you know that he is
Speaker 7: doing very good things with Lois that she's very happy about.
Speaker 8: And I just love that they captured all of that.
Speaker 6: Listen, Superman and Lois have been horny since nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 6: They've been horny on screen since Christopher Reeve x rayed
Speaker 6: Margot Kidder's panties.
Speaker 8: Like, I love that she did ask him to She did.
Speaker 6: She asked him too. It was consensual. Yeah, consensual X
Speaker 6: ray consensual panty x ray.
Speaker 8: Yea, And what a.
Speaker 9: Relief that not only does Lois know, but Perry and Jimmy, No,
Speaker 9: they don't know that he's Superman, but they know that
Speaker 9: they are. Superman and Lois are in a relationship.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he does a big deal. We have to go
Speaker 7: hide and like do an interview and then yeah, the
Speaker 7: Bunk are either of you the Wire fans, I haven't
Speaker 7: seen it. So the actor who plays Perry White is
Speaker 7: very famous for having been the bunk, which a detective
Speaker 7: in is a bunk. Morland is the full name of
Speaker 7: the character in the TV show of The Wire, and
Speaker 7: I just love him to death. Wendell Pierce believes the
Speaker 7: actor's name, and so yeah, he was.
Speaker 8: I would have loved. I want now a TV show
Speaker 8: about the Daily Planet, you know, That's what I want.
Speaker 6: That's all I ever want, every minute of my entire life.
Speaker 9: Yeah, because some of some of those characters feel so
Speaker 9: lived in, but we just didn't get to see enough
Speaker 9: of that.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like poor Ron Truth named in this movie for
Speaker 6: his one single line, but they do let him. He
Speaker 6: does get a real seat in mister Terrific's flying Egg thing,
Speaker 6: which Steve Lombard does not.
Speaker 9: That was such a perfect Steve because Perry is like
Speaker 9: counting off right, He's like how many seats are there?
Speaker 9: It's like I don't know, five or six? Is like
Speaker 9: all right, Steve, you can come.
Speaker 6: To all right. I guess we'll save Steve.
Speaker 1: But it turns out and that's just like.
Speaker 7: And well, I agree the movie could have been a
Speaker 7: lot better about female characters. We have very little of
Speaker 7: Cat Grant, but they don't play her as the like
Speaker 7: there's a lot of versions of Kak Grant I have
Speaker 7: seen recently, Lois and Clark uh being I think by
Speaker 7: far the most egregious, where she is just like every
Speaker 7: bad stereotype of the woman who's at the office to
Speaker 7: find a man kind of things.
Speaker 8: And granted they kind of fixed her a lot already with.
Speaker 7: The Supergirl TV show, but I appreciate it, like, yeah,
Speaker 7: she's very fashion college.
Speaker 9: That was also like every stereotype of the girl boss,
Speaker 9: though well a.
Speaker 7: Different bad direction. She wasn't an airhead bimbo. She was now, yeah,
Speaker 7: the girl the terrible girl Boss. She was the Devil
Speaker 7: Wears product kind of instead. But she wasn't terrible because
Speaker 7: we never saw anything about her. But they didn't take
Speaker 7: two seconds to establish through some bad stereotypes, So I
Speaker 7: at least appreciated that well.
Speaker 6: And I appreciated that like she and Lois, I mean,
Speaker 6: for her, like one line of dialogue, she and Lois
Speaker 6: are clearly friends and get along because historically both on
Speaker 6: Lois and Clark and it's alluded to on the Supergirl Show,
Speaker 6: but also in the comics that has been very much
Speaker 6: like Lois Roberty does a rivalry and like Lois doesn't
Speaker 6: like Kat because she's too sexy or whatever, and that
Speaker 6: was not present here, which I appreciated.
Speaker 8: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 7: I'm going to close out by just saying, as someone
Speaker 7: who became a father literally five days before I saw this,
Speaker 7: there were two moments that just hit me so hard. One,
Speaker 7: I hated everything about the Hidden Universe, the Pocket Universe.
Speaker 7: I just didn't care. The anti proton river thing didn't
Speaker 7: seem to make sense to me. But watching that little
Speaker 7: green baby bounce around and Superman like protecting it so
Speaker 7: much as someone who now has a child with, I
Speaker 7: think my child is just in wonderful and perfect and
Speaker 7: it looks like a little alien because its.
Speaker 8: Head is weird shape, because that's what five day old
Speaker 8: babies look like.
Speaker 7: I had so much affection. But really the sort of
Speaker 7: like message of parenthood that I saw that I just
Speaker 7: My favorite line in the movie is pad Kent saying
Speaker 7: parents aren't for telling their children who they're supposed to be.
Speaker 7: We are here to give you all tools to help
Speaker 7: you make fools of yourselves all on your own. Your
Speaker 7: choice is Clark, your actions that would make you who
Speaker 7: you are. I teared up because it was at first
Speaker 7: I kind of like grimaced a little when I saw
Speaker 7: the portrayal of the Kents, because they were very much
Speaker 7: clearly like ash like backwoods, like you know, like not sophisticated,
Speaker 7: almost like at one point I thought they were kind
Speaker 7: of going for like they might be like developmentally disabled
Speaker 7: in some way, but no, they're just they're not city
Speaker 7: folk at all. They're very much like good American you know, uh,
Speaker 7: farm folk. That sounds incredibly condescending. I'm a New York
Speaker 7: City person trying card not to sound like that, but
Speaker 7: I just can't not do it.
Speaker 8: Salt of the Earth, yeah, but that's yeah.
Speaker 7: But like that, I think that Lione had the most
Speaker 7: wisdom of anything I heard in the show in the movie,
Speaker 7: especially that idea of not like so often is just
Speaker 7: all praise.
Speaker 8: The idea of we're giving you the tools to make
Speaker 8: a fool of yourself.
Speaker 7: To me, that was so beautiful as well, because it
Speaker 7: wasn't a I think you're gonna go be perfect. It
Speaker 7: was I know you're gonna screw up and that's okay.
Speaker 7: I don't want you to be perfect. I want you
Speaker 7: to I just I was like, okay, that's the father
Speaker 7: I want to be, and I agree.
Speaker 6: With all that.
Speaker 9: And this is where I don't understand the criticism of
Speaker 9: the idea of Superman as an immigrant story. And it
Speaker 9: just feels like people are being outraged for no reason
Speaker 9: without watching the movie and understanding this character. Because what
Speaker 9: is more American than this immigrant being adopted and being
Speaker 9: given these values by as you said, salt of the earth,
Speaker 9: just like the most like basic American mother and father
Speaker 9: you can imagine, and because of that he becomes a hero.
Speaker 9: Like why why isn't that the narrative of like America
Speaker 9: is where like we you know, I don't want to
Speaker 9: I don't want to say like terrible, as terrible as Jorel,
Speaker 9: like as the l's right, but where we take people
Speaker 9: and we forge them into something different and new and
Speaker 9: strong like that that I, of course I teared up,
Speaker 9: and that seem like it's amazing. And the actor Pruett
Speaker 9: Taylor Vince is like was so perfect, Like he's this
Speaker 9: character actor that you've seen in everything. He's all over
Speaker 9: the place in small roles and having someone like that,
Speaker 9: who from our perspective of like movie stars, isn't nobody
Speaker 9: like no disrespect, but like he's not Kevin Costner, right,
Speaker 9: But to have that type of person deliver that message
Speaker 9: really resonated to me, and I love the casting for
Speaker 9: that reason. I immediately recognized him.
Speaker 1: I was like, but I couldn't.
Speaker 9: I couldn't have told you his name without looking it up.
Speaker 9: And I can't really off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: Like tell you any other roles. But he's just everywhere.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that scene. I also I
Speaker 6: also peered up. I think everybody, everybody I know cried
Speaker 6: at that scene. I so my first thought is how
Speaker 6: thick must Clark's natural accent be? Like how hard is
Speaker 6: he code switching all the time? And if Lois had
Speaker 6: stayed in Smallville for five more minutes, she would have
Speaker 6: heard it, uh, because you know he did not grow
Speaker 6: up sounding way that sounds in this movie. But I
Speaker 6: actually to your point Whereankie about like, you know, him
Speaker 6: being from the heartland and also an immigrant. I actually
Speaker 6: wrote about this in my undergraduate thesis, how like Superman's
Speaker 6: origin makes him simultaneously like every sort of American narrative.
Speaker 6: He can possibly be because he is an immigrant, but
Speaker 6: he is also like he is a story of an
Speaker 6: immigrant coming to America, but he is also the story
Speaker 6: of a kid from the heartland moving to the big city.
Speaker 6: And he embodies urban and rural and immigrant and native
Speaker 6: born all simultaneously because of this really delicate juggling act
Speaker 6: that he's doing. And I think that's you know, like
Speaker 6: that's getting swallowed up by like the use of immigrant
Speaker 6: as sort of a flashpoint, but it really is a
Speaker 6: very multi layered He has a very multi layered identity,
Speaker 6: which many many Americans do, I mean many people from
Speaker 6: all over the world, I'm sure, but like that is
Speaker 6: a huge part of our narrative.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I obviously I'm not adopted in any way,
Speaker 7: but like I as someone who is a you know,
Speaker 7: grew up in New York City and has a very
Speaker 7: New York City worldview and used to you know, we
Speaker 7: used to joke like could go to Kansas, I would
Speaker 7: need my shots and a visa. You know, I'm now
Speaker 7: living ten miles from where a little house on the
Speaker 7: prairie took place. You know, in Minneapolis is a big city,
Speaker 7: to be sure, but this is much more the heartland
Speaker 7: than you know, anything east of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 8: So yeah, I get that. Really glad we had the discussion.
Speaker 7: I actually had a lot to say starting to Eyuiki,
Speaker 7: any last comments you want to make?
Speaker 1: What a movie? What a time to be alive?
Speaker 9: As I said in the opener, how can we rate
Speaker 9: this against other Supermans, especially like nineteen seventy eight, so
Speaker 9: distant and so disparate. But to me, this is the
Speaker 9: best and perfect Superman for this moment in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 9: And as a movie, like I think it has its
Speaker 9: ups and downs, like if we just examined it as
Speaker 9: a as a piece of media, but like what this
Speaker 9: character means to us as as just humans, right, goes
Speaker 9: so much deeper than anyone portrayal.
Speaker 1: And this is just it did it. It did every like.
Speaker 9: It fulfilled my very very high expectations in that regard,
Speaker 9: and I'm just very thankful that it exists and that
Speaker 9: I got to watch it. Like it's weird to talk
Speaker 9: about a movie that way, but I don't know, Like
Speaker 9: I just I needed this so badly.
Speaker 7: I'm gonna respond to that actually, because Jessica, I want
Speaker 7: to let you have the last word, as our like
Speaker 7: super Superman expert here, I very much agree what you're saying, Rieky,
Speaker 7: and I kind of feel like this is a movie
Speaker 7: you're gonna look back on as a watershed moment in
Speaker 7: the history of comic of movies. And you all know
Speaker 7: what a huge fan of The Dark Knight I am.
Speaker 7: And I think that The Dark Knight fun mentally changed
Speaker 7: Superhero movie making and I really like the change it made,
Speaker 7: and I think the pendulum swung too far the other
Speaker 7: in that direction. And I think this movie and like,
Speaker 7: I don't want this from Batman, and same way I
Speaker 7: don't want dark gritty from Superman. I think this movie, though,
Speaker 7: kind of put back down that flag of like Batman
Speaker 7: is great and I want to see a lot more
Speaker 7: of Robert Pattinson, but Superman is just as great. And like,
Speaker 7: to me, dark gritty works if it's not all dark gritty,
Speaker 7: and this in some ways I always felt like it's
Speaker 7: not that this this is a dark Superman is in
Speaker 7: a dark gritty world, but he's not dark. It doesn't
Speaker 7: get to him the way it got to him in
Speaker 7: Man of Steel, and I just it's a movie with
Speaker 7: a sense of hope that you don't get in so
Speaker 7: many other things. So yeah, I just I think ten
Speaker 7: years from now, we're gonna look back at this as
Speaker 7: I think Dark Knight's a better movie. But I think
Speaker 7: that it's going to be regarded as like the first
Speaker 7: you know, Sam Raimie Spider Man movie, a real kind
Speaker 7: of like watershed moment in superhero movies.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I mean I agree with everything that Riki said.
Speaker 6: This is this was the movie we needed. This is
Speaker 6: the movie I needed. I you know, I love Superman
Speaker 6: so much, sitting here in my Superman T shirt, like
Speaker 6: I it's not a perfect movie. You know. We sat
Speaker 6: here and we picked apart a lot of it, and
Speaker 6: I think when you when you do that, when you
Speaker 6: take the pieces apart and you examine each one, you
Speaker 6: can find places that that are maybe not what not
Speaker 6: perfect on their own. I think it is so much
Speaker 6: greater than the sum of its parts. It just it
Speaker 6: made me feel good to watch it, like, which is
Speaker 6: not a feeling that I have had for most superhero
Speaker 6: movies for you know, since Adventures, and it's not a
Speaker 6: movie like I had a long conversation with my brother
Speaker 6: the day after we both saw it, because he's also
Speaker 6: a huge Superman fan, and we both agreed it's the
Speaker 6: only time in our lifetimes we've gone to the movies
Speaker 6: to see a Superman movie and we had fun, and
Speaker 6: that shouldn't be a thing. It's the first time that's
Speaker 6: happened to me, and I'm forty one years old, but
Speaker 6: it is, and it finally happened, and I'm yeah, I Riki,
Speaker 6: I agree with you. I'm thankful for this movie. I'm
Speaker 6: so thankful that it exists.
Speaker 7: Yeah, me too, well Son, Thanks, thanks, super thankful to
Speaker 7: both of you. Thank you so much for being a
Speaker 7: part of this. Thankful to you the audience. Both Wreaky
Speaker 7: and Jessica obviously have so much more to say about
Speaker 7: these kind of things. Jessica has written books and articles,
Speaker 7: and also, she mentioned, has a whole podcast about Superman
Speaker 7: called Fights and Tights. All the links to that will
Speaker 7: be in the show notes. Riiky has been my guest
Speaker 7: on this podcast on the Star Wars podcast him and
Speaker 7: his partner Sarah for a long time. We're our co hosts.
Speaker 7: There lots of great stuff to find his thoughts on,
Speaker 7: and we're probably gonna a lot more to say about
Speaker 7: dc the DCU, because there's just I'm I was never
Speaker 7: a Snyder fan.
Speaker 8: Everyone knows that. I'm glad people liked it.
Speaker 7: I we don't even to talk about this, but I'm
Speaker 7: just now super excited about where the DCU is going.
Speaker 7: So I think these are characters we're gonna talk about
Speaker 7: a lot more with these guests. Thank you all so
Speaker 7: much for listening.