‘Thunderbolts*’ Is Marvel’s Return to Form. Is It Too Late?

Sean and Amanda are joined by their superhero correspondent, Mallory Rubin, to cover the latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Jake Schreier’s, ‘Thunderbolts*’ (2:04). They praise the strong performances from Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan, and dive deep into some spoilers to project which key characters could play a critical part going forward (18:15). Lastly, they have a big-picture conversation about the MCU and debate whether this return to form is too late to course-correct the state of Marvel (1:17:09). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Mallory Rubin Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:35Sean Fennessey?

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• 2:18Sean Fennessey?

  That's LinkedIn.com/thegbigpicture. Terms and conditions apply.

• 2:33Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 2:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 2:35Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the big picture conversation show about Thunderbolts. Mallory Rubin is here, long awaited return. What was the last time you were here?

• 2:45Sean Fennessey?

  Complete unknown?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Dylan, yeah, I think so.

• 2:47Amanda Dobbins?

  But the last time the three of us were together was Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones and the Battle of Destiny.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:54Sean Fennessey?

  Is that the last time we've pawed together?

• 2:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I believe so.

• 2:57Sean Fennessey?

  Whoa.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Holy shit.

• 2:58Sean Fennessey?

  Summer of 2023? That's a long time ago.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Too long, I would say.

• 3:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so. Well, you know, Mallory and I took you to task for some of your opinions, so it seems like you didn't want to revisit that.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  We did the same for his takes on Quantumania, which the three of us also shared together because Sean was very pro.

• 3:14Sean Fennessey?

  I was mid-pro.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Very pro.

• 3:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I was like open to it. I guess Quantumania is more recent, right?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I think that was, oh, similar time.

• 3:21Sean Fennessey?

  They're in the same era.

• 3:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:23Sean Fennessey?

  It is an elegant segue, though, because Quantumania, which was...

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Quantumania was February of 2023.

• 3:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, a film that was more or less rejected despite being framed as a

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Not by you.

• 3:32Sean Fennessey?

  significant and important part of the Marvel story. I thought it was just fine, but most people didn't like it. Most people haven't liked Marvel movies in quite a while. Obviously, Mal, a lot of what you do on House of R is tracking the progress or lack thereof of Marvel storytelling.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's been a rocky road last couple of years. Thunderbolts comes to us

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:54Sean Fennessey?

  with, I think, modest anticipation, but a sort of buoyant optimism, I would say. Does that seem accurate? At least I've been projecting that towards you.

• 4:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and I would say that the community at large seems optimistic for Thunderbolts and then downright ravenous for Fantastic Four, which is another Marvel sort of, what phase are we in now?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Well, this is the conclusion of Phase Five. Thunderbolts is the last film of Phase Five, and we will be heading into Phase Six. But we're all, we're in the multiverse saga.

• 4:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and we're at like... Things are changing, right? You know, we're on the precipice and these are, these are two important films, both for, you know, Marvel's business propositions and also, as I gather, for the Marvel fandom and the story and the future of the many humans in the many multiverses. Absolutely. I had it, I had it.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  I honestly though, I nailed it.

• 4:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I was there.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  You nailed it.

• 4:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I was like, oh.

• 4:53Sean Fennessey?

  You weren't making any faces or being weird and then all of a sudden you just brain stops.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  One multiverse and lots of, lots of universes inside of a multiverse.

• 5:00Sean Fennessey?

  Why do I find myself here on this podcast, talking so sincerely about this?

• 5:03Speaker 04

  I would like to ask Amanda a question.

• 5:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 5:06Speaker 04

  How many MCU movies do you think there have been? What number was Thunderbolts?

• 5:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, um, 32?

• 5:15Speaker 04

  Really close.

• 5:16Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty close.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  36.

• 5:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, oh, interesting.

• 5:19Speaker 04

  It's a lot.

• 5:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 5:20Speaker 04

  We've been doing this together for a while.

• 5:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I have seen almost all of them.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  You've probably seen all of them.

• 5:25Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I haven't seen the Doctor Strange movies. I, I don't know, I missed, I missed the first one. I ju, I just, I don't know what happened.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  You would have so many takes on the Sling Ring. You have got to watch.

• 5:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I saw a preview for the second one.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:37Amanda Dobbins?

  And I learned that Rachel McAdams was in it, which was pretty exciting. But I was on leave for the second one. Cause I think I saw the preview at Spider-Man, uh, No Way Home. Was that the good one?

• 5:49Speaker 04

  I think all the Spider-Man ones are great. But yes, yes, yes.

• 5:53Amanda Dobbins?

  The Spider-Man No Way Home, which we saw together, remember?

• 5:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, we also potted on that together, one of my favorite big pick memories because Sean and I were honestly talking for quite a while about Matt Murdock. And you said to us, what the fuck is wrong with you? There are three Spider-Men in this movie.

• 6:08Amanda Dobbins?

  You did bury that lead.

• 6:10Sean Fennessey?

  We're just trying to make a podcast.

• 6:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sure, but I think I did that with it. That was a sensation of a movie, made a lot of money. We all three enjoyed it. And I think what we liked about it was that all the Spider-Men were there together and having nostalgia. And then you guys were talking about some guy who's a lawyer.

• 6:28Sean Fennessey?

  He's a lawyer and a superhero who's actually in the news in 2025 because Daredevil is back on Disney+ And you know, this conversation may seem like a side road to Thunderbolts, but in fact, I think what it is is like 10 years of friendship in Los Angeles going to see Marvel movies. We've seen a lot of these movies together over the years. I've certainly gone through quite a journey with my fandom of Marvel and this kind of storytelling.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:52Sean Fennessey?

  And I, I, I would love to love these movies, you know, that's really where, what, where my heart is, even when they're absolutely terrible. I'm not happy that they're terrible, but I think you gotta call a spade a spade. And the last five or six, I just don't think have been very strong. And I'm not gonna get on this podcast and tell you that Thunderbolts is the best movie of the year because I don't think that it is. But it's in the right direction. That was my take on it. So, um, the movie is directed by Jake Schreier, who has not really directed anything quite like this. The most recent big project he was associated with was Beef, the award-winning series on Netflix, which is a great show. Um, it's written by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, who is also, um, one of the co-showrunners of The Bear.

• 7:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's cinematography by Andrew Dross Palermo. I'm saying these names because all of these names are not names you typically hear when you see a Marvel movie. This is something that-

• 7:39Speaker 04

  You're doing the 24 me.

• 7:40Sean Fennessey?

  They did set us up for this. They leaned into the fact that, you know, the guy who edited this movie edited Minari. That's not something you might expect. I'm not saying that this movie is like that, but we'll get into it. In addition to that, the cast is full of some familiar faces, but also some, I guess more respected names than you necessarily see at the front of some of these movies, in particular Florence Pugh and recent Academy Award nominee Sebastian Stan. Wyatt Russell's in this film, Olga Kirilenko, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, and Julie Louis-Dreyfus. Thunderbolts, what, what, who are the Thunderbolts? Like, what is this crew? Relative to the canon that you know and understand better than anybody?

• 8:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:21Sean Fennessey?

  And who are they in these movies? Because they are a little bit different.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I would say like, that was one of my big questions heading into this actually was how pertinent would the comics canon be? Because in addition to, hey, look at all of these people associated with your favorite like Letterboxd Film Bro, uh, classics who are making this movie, it's gonna be different. Like, come cinephiles and rejoice. It had an asterisk at the end of the title, the entire time. And so there was, when are we doing spoilers?

• 8:49Sean Fennessey?

  Not yet.

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Okay, I will like not get into that, but I will say there was like pretty rampant speculation the entire time about what that might signal, what that might mean. Is that an indication that this is like, not necessarily the, uh, the Baron Zemo forge? Like it was never gonna be that at this point in the MCU, though Zemo's like, you know, he's out there, he's kicking.

• 9:09Sean Fennessey?

  Daniel Bruhl's character.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 9:11Sean Fennessey?

  Baron Zemo.

• 9:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Where, from what film?

• 9:14Sean Fennessey?

  Captain America, The Winter Soldier?

• 9:16Speaker 04

  Civil War.

• 9:17Sean Fennessey?

  Civil War.

• 9:17Speaker 04

  And then more recently, uh, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier television show?

• 9:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 9:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Which is one of the properties that has the- You probably saw the clip of him dancing?

• 9:28Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but that's okay.

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  You didn't see that series?

• 9:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm with you.

• 9:30Sean Fennessey?

  That's also the origins of the Wyatt Russell character in this film.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of things that are important to have seen before this, but in some ways, I would say The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Black Widow are like the most important prior Marvel MCU canon, which is-

• 9:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I have.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  Interesting. So what you need to know, honestly, in terms of the comics history, you know, the group, uh, forges to fill the space that the Avengers have left, right? There are many different leaders and many different formations, as is often the case with the comics canon, team up. I, I would say really, the only thing you need to know, though, is what you head into the movie knowing and then very quickly have reinforced, which is, this is like a ragtag group of rejects who have not found their place, either because it has actively been, they have been deprived of that fellowship with other people, maybe they have actively lost somebody, like Yelena has lost Natasha, Yelena also rejected the Red Room and broke free of the Black Widow mind control. Everybody has their version of that, and we'll obviously talk about the characters more as we go. And so that's the question the film is, is based

• 10:29Speaker 04

  on, is like, can people who have no fellowship find- Find it with each other. Can the thing they have in common be their loneliness?

• 10:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  And the answer is yes. And I thought it was beautiful. I really liked the movie. It was fun. I was so, I had really high hopes for the movie, but I, I was really pleasantly surprised. I thought they pulled it off and it was exactly what I wanted. This kind of movie with this group of characters at this time in the MCU to be. I thought it was a real breath of fresh air tonally. And I'm excited to see how these characters function in the wider multiversal saga moving forward.

• 11:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so the exuberant superfan.

• 11:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, loved it.

• 11:10Sean Fennessey?

  The long time, but increasingly cynical fan.

• 11:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, go.

• 11:15Sean Fennessey?

  And the general skeptic.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  But I have, I have not been high on a lot of recent MCU movies, so that's part of why I'm so relieved.

• 11:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Skeptic and also the ignorant.

• 11:26Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Participant in this.

• 11:28Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 11:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Willfully ignorant.

• 11:30Sean Fennessey?

  Mal loved it. I liked it.

• 11:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 11:32Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think?

• 11:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't dislike it. I think.

• 11:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's progress.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  Pretty good. Honestly, I did dislike it. I heard you chuckle a few times.

• 11:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, now, so that is one thing I would say. It took almost an hour. And I would say that the first 45 minutes felt very, very creaky in terms of exposition and the number of threads that they have to pull together.

• 11:57Sean Fennessey?

  Setting the table for the story.

• 11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And to their credit, I have not seen Falcon and Winter Soldier. And I, I did follow what was going on. They did, you know, kind of through brute force or like brute exposition, make it clear to me. And another thing I'll say for this movie is that I often go into these films and I'm just like, I literally, I didn't know what happened. I didn't know what was happening when it started and I have no idea what's happening when it finished. And this was, this was coherent. Like, this explained to me who these people were, the stakes of the story, the powers of everyone, like beginning, middle and end. Who am I rooting for? Are they going to figure it out together? Are they going to find chemistry, which kind of rocky for the first 45 minutes, but then David Harbour shows up.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  But in a way that's incorporated into the text of the story, right?

• 12:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. And so, and so it makes sense. I, I. I have to say, like, I thought it looked gentlemanly good.

• 12:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, which, you know.

• 12:48Speaker 04

  The void effect was awesome.

• 12:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I wish, but also they just like, they like filmed sequences outside in real life. They used more practical effects. Like, I have some notes for Florence Pugh's stunt doubles wig. But like, if that's, it was tough, but like, if that's the level I, of, of note I have as opposed to, why does this look like, you know, video game vomit for 60% of the movie? Then that makes a huge difference. And I like, you know, I feel cringey giving that note given the 824 trailer. You know, because I'm like, oh, that's what they want me to say.

• 13:21Sean Fennessey?

  They set us up for that.

• 13:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's annoying, but like, it does, it looks so much better. The storytelling is much clearer and more straightforward. Florence Pugh can act. So like, suddenly she's crying on the street.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  Cast is great, yeah.

• 13:31Amanda Dobbins?

  She and David Harbour have a few scenes where I'm like, I don't know why you gotta do this in a Marvel movie, but I'm also not mad.

• 13:38Speaker 04

  They're, they're actually magical together.

• 13:40Sean Fennessey?

  I totally agree.

• 13:41Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, I would say, it's maybe not my flavor for the first hour, but, you know, as everyone say, or any of these movies are flavor. And like, except for when the Spider-Mans point at each other, Andrew Garfield saves the day. Like, not really. So I think it's, it's pretty good. It's way better than the last 15 Marvel movies I've seen.

• 13:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, we're now 13 movies removed from Spider-Man: No Way Home. So that's a, that's a long time. It's been five and a half years, basically, since that movie. And there have been some that I have liked. Like, it's interesting that Black Widow is relevant to this conversation, because Black Widow, I think, is not that bad. And if we had seen Black Widow on a big screen, knowing what was coming.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  No question.

• 14:21Sean Fennessey?

  You'd say like, this, that, that, this movie reminds me of that movie, in that that movie was very competently made. It felt like it was a part of the history of Marvel in a clear way. It felt like it was shot in the real world. It had a dose of humor. It had some new characters that you were introduced to and got connected to. Incredibly strong performers, Rachel Weisz and Florence Pugh, and people who like,

• 14:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, and David Harbour.

• 14:41Sean Fennessey?

  are overqualified for this kind of work, so to speak. So. But there's been a lot of bad stuff and Brave New World is extremely flawed and messy. The thing is, is this movie isn't messy. You don't really feel the scenes and the storytelling the way that you have in the last few years. So I'm more or less with you.

• 14:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Very tidy.

• 14:59Sean Fennessey?

  I struggled with the first 45 minutes myself. I thought that actually the humor was actually very weak and forced. And then weirdly somehow in the middle of the movie, they kind of like, and maybe it is just David Harbour showed up.

• 15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It is. Like for me, it was when they're in the car and he's like, spoilers, I guess. But he's retelling a story about Yelena's childhood. And I didn't laugh at the story the first time, but then when he told it again, I just started laughing. And it's very funny.

• 15:24Sean Fennessey?

  It was very funny. He's just very funny in these movies, you know?

• 15:27Amanda Dobbins?

  He's the best. But it does, like the Wyatt Russell character kind of snaps in. There was, and I, and I understand to Mallory, as Mallory said, they are supposed to be at odds. And they're not supposed to click, but you know, they're fighting and their, their, their allergy to each other was not funny to me for a little while. And then Harbour shows up and they become a team. And, and then I chuckled from time to time.

• 15:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we're on, I think we're on the same page about that. Um, I'm not sure how much further we can go before we start getting into spoilers.

• 15:58Speaker 04

  I, I will say, I think I was higher on the maybe like tonal vibe and, and just sensibility of the, the first stretch than you guys were. And I think some of that is assessing, uh, the energy among the cast in a vacuum. And some of it is just again, that larger, like hearing what you're saying about, about what, how do we consider a Marvel movie inside of the larger tapestry of Marvel movies? And I think the Black, Blackwood was a very different movie, but I think the comparisons you're drawing are really interesting because like, that's the first movie of Phase Four, which means it's the first movie of this new era. Now, of course, Far From Home is technically after Endgame, right? There was another movie, but like the Infinity Saga ends, we move on to this new thing. And for the beginning of Phase Four, for much of Phase Four, we're in this era of like,

• 16:43Speaker 04

  We're filling in like the world. What's the blip? How are we passing the mantles? But that movie took place earlier in the timeline.

• 16:50Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  Natasha was gone. And then we went backwards. And I think people are like, wait.

• 16:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's like a retcon period piece.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  What's next?

• 16:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 16:58Speaker 04

  And now, if you just rewatch that movie without being in that very kind of urgent, what is the future of the MCU after Endgame headspace? It's like, this is a pretty fun movie to watch.

• 17:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we might have even talked about it, how if they had just released that movie in 2016? It would have just been another one of those

• 17:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:13Sean Fennessey?

  solid B Marvel movies where you're like, I'm glad I went. It was good.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  Yes. And like, I, a lot of what I love about that movie is present here. I think the Yelena Alexei relationship is just genuinely magical. Like Florence Pugh and David Harbour are great together. One of my single favorite things in any Marvel movie ever, I swear, is when they sing American Pie together. Like, I just, it's obviously like beautiful and incredibly moving. But also, Yelena is like a, you know, a witty, but kind of like a little bit of a dickhead, a little bit of an asshole. You know, she's got that line for Natasha about like, you're a total poser. Why do you always do the pose? And then you see her do the pose and you see her do the pose in this movie. So I think I'm inclined, especially in Yelena's, with Yelena's character, to like that energy. And like, she, I think, just works so well with everyone around her.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  I thought for like, John Walker easing him into the rhythm of Zippy Zinger trading and swapping was like a little bit tougher. And like, I just, I, the question for me heading in was like, am I gonna care about a character like Ghost returning?

• 18:14Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Okay, Taskmaster, they say is in the movie, but is in basically no individual marketing material. Like, are we gonna have any real Taskmaster? Should I care, etc.? So I was just like, oh, right away, the, the sequence with like, shit, I needed that face. You know, like, this is pretty amusing. I'm entertained and I want to see how they work their way forward together.

• 18:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, there even that sequence, because I, I liked Black Widow and another, it's Since I don't care what happens after Avengers Endgame in the same way that you do, I just came to it and I was like, well, this is sort of like

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I liked it at the time as well.

• 18:47Amanda Dobbins?

  A kitschy, you know, spy thriller, right? And starring people, and I also thought that Florence Pugh is absolutely

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's electric.

• 18:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Stole that movie from Scarlett Johansson, which is just kind of funny to watch. But even there, it's because she's playing in opposition to Scarlett Johansson. And until David Harbour shows up in this movie, she is kind of a loner, which is a major theme of the movie, as we will discuss. But she doesn't have anyone to bounce off of. And so that opening scene where she's just talking to herself and the, like, the one-liners even fall a little flat because there's no other energy.

• 19:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think that it takes a long time to bring these people together because we know that a critical figure in the story, of course, is Valentina Allegra de Fontaine.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, you gotta get the "de" in there. She's gonna, she's a real stickler for it.

• 19:33Sean Fennessey?

  Who is a Contessa and also the director of the CIA.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 19:37Sean Fennessey?

  And she is undergoing an inquiry from the Senate about her activities as the director of the CIA. And this is what has led to her being forced to clean up all of the loose ends for her time running this shadowy organization.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:53Sean Fennessey?

  And so that leads to all of these operatives that have been working for her being drawn together and with the intent of being killed. And this is the thing that obviously ultimately unites them. I think going forward in terms of the conversation, if you haven't seen Thunderbolts and you want to see Thunderbolts, we will be spoiling the movie Thunderbolts henceforth.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:10Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't say this is on the level of an endgame in terms of like things that happen and there's like dramatic consequences. So you definitely could listen to this conversation and not feel like your entire next five years of Marvel has been destroyed for you. But there are, there is an introduction of a character that I'm curious about his significance long-term. And there's an interesting sliding doors related to this character. So, once they find themselves in the middle of this vault that they have been drawn into by Val, who's played by Julie Louis-Dreyfus.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:39Sean Fennessey?

  We see Ghost is there, we see Taskmaster is there, we see Yelena is there.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:44Sean Fennessey?

  We see USAG is there. They're all brought together and they've been all sort of assigned to kill one another.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:49Sean Fennessey?

  And so we see this pretty cool, I thought, action set piece battle where we see them kind of like all using their powers.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:55Sean Fennessey?

  Ghost in particular, who's like a character I have no relationship to whatsoever, just visually is very cool.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:00Sean Fennessey?

  And I think the way that character's deployed is really neat. And then a guy like falls out of a crate. And it's Louis Pullman and he's wearing some hospital scrubs and he's like, how did I get here? I don't even, where is this, where was this bunker located?

• 21:12Amanda Dobbins?

  It's at the bottom of them.

• 21:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Topographically, it was a little confusing how they presented, but it looks like the American West.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:19Sean Fennessey?

  The American West, okay.

• 21:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. It's in a canyon that they describe as the bottom.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  This is like Val's area 51, basically, you know, for private experiments.

• 21:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredibly beautiful. Again, thank you.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  It was lovely.

• 21:29Sean Fennessey?

  It was a real place. They clearly, when they're driving in the desert, they're in a real place. Yes, I totally agree. There's no more green screen, no more fucking volume. Like, please stop making movies like that, please, I'm begging you.

• 21:40Sean Fennessey?

  Bob falls out. You know, if you knew, if you, I don't know how much you knew about the marketing. Like, I, I knew Bob was the Sentry.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:47Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 21:49Speaker 04

  Before he was recast, it was very apparent that Sentry was gonna be in this movie.

• 21:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, it was, it was literally announced. It was originally Steven Yeun.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  Steven Yeun.

• 21:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I remember that he did drop out.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  Fantastic.

• 21:59Sean Fennessey?

  It puts interesting flavor on this movie because he would have been so good because he has, he is so much turmoil as an actor that maybe, I, I actually thought Louis Pullman was quite good in this movie.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  I agree. I thought he was great.

• 22:10Sean Fennessey?

  But he brings a different energy than Steven Yeun. So anyway, it was announced that Steven Yeun was gonna play the Sentry. He was a very famous character, a complicated character. And that just got my engagement up, introducing him into the, into the movie. Because the whole time now, I felt myself feeling like, okay, what are they gonna do with him? What are they gonna do with, what are they gonna do with him? Not everyone will have that feeling if you don't know who this character is or why they're necessarily important to the story.

• 22:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Sentry with an S.

• 22:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 22:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I was hearing Sentry all, all movies.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  How about when they kept showing the belt buckle with the giant S on it?

• 22:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I thought that was a G and a C. So, and I don't know what the G was for, but. I thought like, sorry, maybe they gotta work on that logo some more.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  It's a good note.

• 22:50Sean Fennessey?

  It is a good note.

• 22:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought he's golden, so I think I thought it was golden Sentry.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  It's a good note for the marketing department, honestly.

• 22:57Sean Fennessey?

  The reason that that character.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  Before they put the merch out.

• 22:59Sean Fennessey?

  Really piqued my interest, aside from him just being a cool superhero character, is that the director of this movie, Jake Schreier, is really good at complicated, sad, depressive people. Like, that's what Robot and Frank and Paper Towns and Beef, like, these are stories about people who are like basically deeply depressed and don't know how to confront their depression. And I assume that's why he was hired to make this movie, so that when the actors are talking to each other, he can make those scenes work effectively.

• 23:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:28Sean Fennessey?

  And I pretty much from that point on, by the, from the moment that they escape the vault.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:34Sean Fennessey?

  I was pretty much in.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:37Sean Fennessey?

  And pretty much along for the ride the whole way. It's revealed, I think that the film had maybe even a little bit more depth than I was expecting thematically, and it does something that I'd not totally seen before. Is Sentry like a meaningful character to you?

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I, I was thrilled that Sentry was finally joining the MCU. I think if you polled a lot of MCU fans and said like, which character it's just, is, is like the decade and a half long absence of inexplicable to you at this point, Sentry would be high on a lot of lists. And I, I think, um, in part because of what, you know, what we see in the movie, which is it's, you're getting two characters for the price of one, right? You're get, oh, I mean, you're getting Robert Reynolds, you're getting Bob, Bobby, but you're getting the Sentry and you're getting the Void. You're getting a superhero and a supervillain in one person. And not only does that give you a lot of thematic richness to mine, the duality inside of us all.

• 24:26Speaker 04

  It gives you a lot to work with from a plot perspective inside of the movie. Now, I think one of the questions from the tra, because the Void is very clearly present in the marketing. I would say it was less clear actually how much Sentry we were gonna see.

• 24:40Sean Fennessey?

  There's a big set piece moment with Sentry that I was like, this is, this is a superhero movie. This is a good superhero movie.

• 24:46Amanda Dobbins?

  When he's in the.

• 24:47Sean Fennessey?

  He's in the costume and yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 04

  Of all the sins that Val commits, let's just get this out of the way now, and she commits a lot. Her ledger is dripping and soaked with red, to, to borrow something that, uh, Yelena and Natasha have heard a lot over the years.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  Do you use people and then try to kill them? Yes. Do you, uh, conduct secret programs and experiments to make your own super weapon? Yes. You buy Avengers Tower, you buy Stark Tower, and then you make it the Watchtower for your heinous acts? No.

• 25:16Sean Fennessey?

  Why, why is that so problematic to you?

• 25:17Speaker 04

  Because it's the, the home of the Avengers. When she's standing there at the bar, I'm like, this is where Tony Stark stood? Like, how dare she?

• 25:25Sean Fennessey?

  This offends you? I don't know. It's kind of natural.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  No, it's great, right? I love it. It's like, she is so obviously trying to fill this vacuum in the way that suits her best and to simultaneously like paper. Over and rebrand this space that like people associate with something so sacred, both inside of the universe and then for us at home as viewers, I thought was like really smart.

• 25:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Kind of asked some real estate questions. So I did recognize the building.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:50Amanda Dobbins?

  She mentions at some point that construction is only like 60% done because they shut it down. Was that renovation?

• 25:56Speaker 04

  A lot of talk about the drywall.

• 25:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 25:58Speaker 04

  A lot of talk about the drywall.

• 25:59Amanda Dobbins?

  That joke like fell flat for me because there were also a lot of armed guards.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Much like the drywall then fell flat onto the citizens of New York.

• 26:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Um, so was that like a renovation or was Avengers Tower?

• 26:11Speaker 04

  Lot of destruction in New York, you know, throughout the MCU.

• 26:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, right. So then it has to rebuild.

• 26:14Sean Fennessey?

  Little reference to the Chitauri at the Vow's little presentation.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  Lot of Chitauri Easter eggs throughout the movie.

• 26:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't know what that is.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  Sure you do.

• 26:21Sean Fennessey?

  Alien race that invaded Avengers. In the film The Avengers.

• 26:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I want to remember the names of the aliens.

• 26:25Sean Fennessey?

  Chitauri, it's a memorable name.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  I agree.

• 26:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's one of the most successful films of all time.

• 26:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 26:29Sean Fennessey?

  You and I saw it on the same day.

• 26:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 26:31Sean Fennessey?

  And we hung out afterwards. Remember that? It's part of the origin story on the big picture.

• 26:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, The Avengers, not Endgame.

• 26:36Sean Fennessey?

  The Avengers.

• 26:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, sorry. Okay. I mean, guys, that was like 15 years ago.

• 26:39Speaker 04

  It was a long time.

• 26:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Why would I remember that?

• 26:41Sean Fennessey?

  It was literally 15 years ago.

• 26:43Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a kebab scene in there?

• 26:44Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Shwarma.

• 26:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Shwarma. Sure. Okay. Well, there you go. I remember that.

• 26:47Sean Fennessey?

  Close.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 26:49Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, what were we talking about?

• 26:52Speaker 04

  Sentry. Sorry. Yeah. We switched to real estate corner on you. Sentry.

• 26:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Stark Tower is interesting because obviously this film in many ways is about the creation of a new super team that will play a significant role. In theory, I'm not actually sure if this is going to end up being a signature team in Marvel. And we could talk about that at the end of the pod.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:08Sean Fennessey?

  But, um, you know, Valentina realizes at a certain point that she needs to have more control over the world. And one of the only ways to do that is to have a superhero of her own and that there's this huge vacuum. She literally says this before Congress and Wendell Pierce, who is a congressman, one of two significant former cast members of The Wire who appear in this film. In addition to Chris Bower in a very thankless role as.

• 27:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:33Sean Fennessey?

  What is his name? Holt?

• 27:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I believe it's Holt.

• 27:35Sean Fennessey?

  Holt, a military man.

• 27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm prepped for lethal.

• 27:38Sean Fennessey?

  Who meets an absolutely grisly end as he crashes in a helicopter.

• 27:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, does he? I guess I, we can talk about the Void's powers later.

• 27:46Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay. Good point.

• 27:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 27:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Ah, see? Look who's paying attention now.

• 27:50Speaker 04

  But then if you're restored and the vessel you were in had like exploded.

• 27:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I, I put a pin in it.

• 27:57Sean Fennessey?

  Science, science, science corner is a coming. Science corner is a coming. Um.

• 28:04Sean Fennessey?

  Anyhow, she knows she needs to harness a superpower. She doesn't realize that she's harnessing an uncontrollable superpower by making the Sentry.

• 28:13Speaker 04

  She also doesn't realize that she did it.

• 28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was a failed project.

• 28:17Speaker 04

  Throw it in the trash.

• 28:18Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think about her lack of attention to detail and reliance on Geraldine Viswanathan's character throughout this film?

• 28:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I did feel like, I know that we girl bosses are supposed to outsource, you know? We're supposed to delegate and let people support us.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  I love to promote women. Great, great iconic moment in the movie.

• 28:34Sean Fennessey?

  Contestants really can have it all, including an assistant who does their job for them.

• 28:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I did think that she was outsourcing, like, maybe a little too many kill switches.

• 28:45Sean Fennessey?

  Some high-level work, yeah.

• 28:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And also, they're just leaving a paper trail or a digital trail that I had some real questions about.

• 28:51Speaker 04

  Yes, Elena was able to scoop up a lot of key documents with relative ease. I will say two things. One, Val not paying attention to the details, to the point that she doesn't even realize her experiment, Project Sentry, has been successful, is, to me, like, that tracks perfectly, right? And is, I think, very much in keeping with the hubris that we see across other governing bodies through the long history of the MCU, S.H.I.E.L.D. or otherwise. People are...

• 29:17Sean Fennessey?

  Or in America.

• 29:18Speaker 04

  Exactly. People are pursuing some sort of nefarious end, the grip on power above all, and they don't really care how that happens, who it hurts, or what even it looks like. The thing I felt much more keenly was that Mel was pulled to the light, out of a void of a different sort, by just Bucky Barnes being hot.

• 29:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was powerful. It was powerful. And God bless them for allowing some sexual tension into one of these movies. When they show up in front of the Avengers sign or whatever at the museum, they're just like, "Oh, we're doing this now? Great."

• 29:54Speaker 04

  My god, the hair length, the beard, washing the vibranium arm in the dishwasher, the chili getting everywhere. Take the tank top off, too, while we're at it, you know?

• 30:03Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really the only thing they let him do.

• 30:05Sean Fennessey?

  So, the note that I made about Sebastian Stan's performance in this film is that he's barely even trying but blowing almost everybody else off the screen. Because somewhere along the way... Sebastian Stan just got the Kwan? Like, I don't even know what happened here. Like, obviously, he had a great 2024. He was in two really interesting films, Academy Award nominated.

• 30:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:24Sean Fennessey?

  And some of it is just the erosion of star power throughout the MCU that he has risen above. But this is the second MCU movie in a row now where when he shows up, you're like, oh, it's James Dean.

• 30:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Sean Fennessey?

  Which it didn't used to feel that way when he showed up in films. He was always a fan favorite and he's great. He's been in a lot of really good movies. But this is a cut above. Obviously, he's, he and Florence Pugh are on equal footing in terms of their star power and like what they bring to a movie. But I was impressed by how little he even has to do in this movie and how much he still is able to kind of like, get your applause moments, get your like, whoa, sequences, you know, he gets.

• 30:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, he gets, he gets one that is very effective and very funny, but also definitely felt like edited in. Like, hey, we need like a Bucky moment.

• 31:08Sean Fennessey?

  You mean the driving sequence?

• 31:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, the, I mean, the Mad Max sequence, which is like, you know, and some of it is like, they're using that landscape, which like, again, thank God. But it's, you almost expect like the guy on the guitar to come out and be like.

• 31:21Sean Fennessey?

  The Dune Warrior.

• 31:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. It's really.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Sick.

• 31:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and it's cool, but it, and I, I mean, it's important that he shows up at some point, but it doesn't, it's not really necessary. Other than they're like, I guess we gotta do something with this guy.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  So I, I have, I guess, a slightly different take on it, which is like, I, I thought this was actually quite deft and deliberate and a really smart deployment of

• 31:47Speaker 04

  a character who has become and a performer who has become one of the single greatest through lines in the entire MCU.

• 31:54Sean Fennessey?

  True.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  Like, Bucky Barnes debuts in the first Avenger, which came out in 2011.

• 31:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  He has been in so many movies. He's been the co-star of a standalone television series. Like, he is one of the heartbeats of the story to this point, and people are deeply, deeply invested in him. Now, that could be true of a lot of characters in a lot of movies, but it's a, I would say, even though there is like. I think quickly forged and very sincere, deep and abiding affection for Yelena. I think people love Yelena. I think Red Guardian has a lot of fans. These are really new characters.

• 32:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Like Bucky is just a different thing from the rest of the characters who have been, you know, Ghost, you know, Ant-Man and the Wasp, like that movie's pretty old at this point. That was a while ago.

• 32:34Sean Fennessey?

  USA has never been in any of the movies, right?

• 32:36Speaker 04

  No, he debuted in Falcon and the Winter Soldier as well, and like so did Val. Val was in Black Widow, but the, you know, Falcon and the Winter Soldier or Black Widow were some timelines and then Wakanda Forever. But like, again, those are all very recent. We're talking about the last few years. So.

• 32:49Sean Fennessey?

  You're right. He's got the longest legacy.

• 32:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so he's not only like, he is suddenly the elder statesman. That's just like a wild thing for the guy who used to be the sidekick to Captain America. Like it's an, and you know, I think especially for a character where a lot of the connection that fans have to him and of course, his relationship with Steve is like, I'm with you till the end of the line. That's like what Bucky represents in the MCU. So for him to feel a little bit apart and outside of the rest of the group, I think is intentional and actually necessary because it's a meaningful thing for him to decide to do it again with different people.

• 33:22Sean Fennessey?

  Right. That's a good point. He's also an elected official and also.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  That part is still very weird to me.

• 33:26Sean Fennessey?

  A former Soviet asset.

• 33:27Speaker 04

  He's a Hydra super soldier who is now in the House of Representatives, which like actually I guess that tracks completely, but like.

• 33:33Sean Fennessey?

  Good point. Coming from the inside.

• 33:35Amanda Dobbins?

  In, in Red Hawk, what, what was that movie actually called?

• 33:39Sean Fennessey?

  It was not called Red Hawk.

• 33:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Why, what was it called?

• 33:41Sean Fennessey?

  It was called Captain America Brave New World.

• 33:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great. Um, he was campaigning, right?

• 33:45Sean Fennessey?

  He was.

• 33:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And he took some time from the campaign trail, right?

• 33:48Sean Fennessey?

  He did.

• 33:48Amanda Dobbins?

  To like give.

• 33:49Sean Fennessey?

  He did. In a desperate act of reshooting by the Marvel Corporation to wedge Bucky into the film.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  And that was the best scene in the movie?

• 33:56Sean Fennessey?

  Of course. Same example I'm talking about.

• 33:57Amanda Dobbins?

  To track his political progress. So in the.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  Do you have opinions on his political platform?

• 34:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I didn't know that he was, I've forgotten he was a super soldier.

• 34:06Sean Fennessey?

  Damn, a Republican. I mean, he's representing Brooklyn, obviously. So presumably he's, he's blue.

• 34:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 34:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 34:13Sean Fennessey?

  Not so sure.

• 34:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Independent?

• 34:15Sean Fennessey?

  Red like Red Skull?

• 34:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh.

• 34:17Sean Fennessey?

  No, come on. He's, he's standing next to AOC casting votes.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Okay, I hope so.

• 34:23Sean Fennessey?

  That's actually an interesting question. If they could, if they would of course never be so bold as to reveal the political affiliations of any of their superheroes. Uh, let's talk a little bit more about Florence Pugh.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  Okay, please.

• 34:40Sean Fennessey?

  This is a weird time for her to be coming one of the centerpieces of the MCU. Because the MCU has gotten a lot less cool. It's become a lot more clear in the public eye that it's maybe not as a, there's not as much approval for the like, "Well, I just gotta do this to kind of elevate, you know, my status and make movies that make a lot of money and make a lot of money myself." Like, the bloom is kind of off the rose on this methodology. She got involved in this five or six years ago, probably, when she signed on to do Black Widow. And she has been now, I think wisely pivoted into one of the key forward-facing parts in this world. She really carries this movie on her shoulders.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  She's fantastic.

• 35:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's. She's excellent. Yelena is a great character.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think a lot of her scenes are very well-written and her, as you said, her and David Harbour have terrific chemistry. And they're very funny and they're very touching. And honestly, there's like a girl dad moment in this movie where I was like, "This is real?" Like, this is real, which is so stupid to say.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  It's very beautiful, yeah.

• 35:41Sean Fennessey?

  But it's very effective.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Even just the fact that he has the soccer picture from their fake life in Ohio is like so sweet.

• 35:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Because it was real to them, guys. The bond.

• 35:50Sean Fennessey?

  And so it really plays to her strength of like, she's often a flinty young woman who's defiant and independent, but has this deep reservoir of pain and whatever she's pushing down. We see this, you've not seen the film We Live in Time, but I would say she is using a very similar skill set.

• 36:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:08Sean Fennessey?

  In this movie that she uses in We Live in Time, which was a kind of a modest hit last fall for 824. It is a little bit hard to imagine 10 years of Yelena and Florence Pugh in the MCU now.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  Why?

• 36:20Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but when I look at every other project that she's ever done, it feels pretty far afield from what she's interested in.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  You think it's hard to imagine that, like...

• 36:31Sean Fennessey?

  Like, her being Robert Downey Jr. now?

• 36:32Speaker 04

  Because of her being interested in it for that long? Or the character making sense in the MCU for that long? Or all of the above?

• 36:37Sean Fennessey?

  We don't get a lot of like, under 35 young women who are, I'm like...

• 36:42Sean Fennessey?

  That's the future of movies to me, you know?

• 36:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:44Sean Fennessey?

  And so I'm not, and this movie is pretty good, as I said, but for her to be kind of dragooned into Yelena through Phase Nine, just, it makes me a little queasy.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  Interesting. I think too, so even, I'm gonna assume you did not watch the Disney Plus television series Hawkeye.

• 37:02Amanda Dobbins?

  No, Hailee Steinfeld?

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 37:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Is also in that?

• 37:05Speaker 04

  This is why I bring it up.

• 37:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And listen, I, like, I guess I gotta go back now, because I'm buying in on Hailee.

• 37:10Sean Fennessey?

  She's back. She should just be her character from Sinners in the MCU, though. That would be...

• 37:13Speaker 04

  Some of that show was actually quite good. There's a great dog in it. His name's Lucky.

• 37:16Sean Fennessey?

  It was okay. I thought it was okay.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  As usual, they, they lost it at episode five of six.

• 37:21Sean Fennessey?

  Six episodes, too long, but yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  Um, it was only six episodes, so that means you thought it should have been zero episodes. But the reason I bring it up is because when Yelena shows up, spoilers for Hawkeye midway through, she's there on an assignment from Val, pursuing Clint, kinda like, again, as Val tends to do with these assets, falsely led on a revenge tour, she's seeking to take people and like recycle them for her purposes. But the scenes between Yelena and Kate Bishop, the Hailee Steinfeld character, the new Hawkeye, are incredible, electric. And one of the questions for MCU fans coming out of Hawkeye was, is this the beating heart of the Young Avengers? And I think it's really interesting that Yelena has been pulled out of that. Clearly,

• 38:04Speaker 04

  Yelena is not going to the Young Avengers. That's happening with Kamala Khan and, yeah, and, and Kate Bishop and a different set of characters. And Yelena has been, is, in the

• 38:15Sean Fennessey?

  Aren't Kate, are Hailee Steinfeld and Florence Pugh like the same age, though?

• 38:18Speaker 04

  That's why it's interesting. It's like, I think some of it is about the, the, the character, right? And who the character makes sense with, maybe, and some of these different permutations. But like, I don't know, that's obviously not gonna be, it doesn't mean that Yelena won't appear in any Young Avengers properties. And who the fuck knows if they're even doing Young Avengers? I mean, they keep teasing it. Obviously, we got some tantalizing stingers, but...

• 38:38Speaker 04

  Being the star of Thunderbolts and then having the Thunderbolts rebranded as New Avengers, with a Z, great stuff. And then having the post credits be just a setup for Doomsday, which obviously like Yelena is gonna be a meaningful part of.

• 38:56Sean Fennessey?

  Seems like she's gonna be a really good character.

• 38:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's really notable.

• 38:59Sean Fennessey?

  It is. I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm mixed on it. It's not that she can't make other movies. In the meantime, she certainly can, but this really dragged down Chris Evans' career for 10 years. And I liked him as Captain America and I liked when he was in those movies, but I was like, you kinda just frittered away like a long part of your career. So I,

• 39:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's cool that she's having this moment and it's cool that they're making, they maybe, I don't know if they realized that she should be a centerpiece of these movies at a certain point and they repositioned her into this slot, but it does then take us away from some other Florence Pugh parts.

• 39:31Amanda Dobbins?

  It was okay for Scar Joe. She made it work.

• 39:33Sean Fennessey?

  She did.

• 39:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And she still worked with interesting people and made good movies and had Oscar nominations. And you know, now she's just in a different giant franchise because everybody needs money.

• 39:43Sean Fennessey?

  She's hunting dinosaurs.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:45Sean Fennessey?

  Are you excited about Reber?

• 39:47Speaker 04

  Hmm, not as excited as Ciara is, but his passion is my passion. So I think I'll absorb some of Vivian's osmosis, you know?

• 39:54Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I do want to shift back to the void in a minute, but before we do that, can I just make a note? I don't really think Julie Louis-Dreyfus is good in these movies and I think she's a little miscast as Val.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  Tell us why. I think this is a hot, genuinely hot take.

• 40:06Sean Fennessey?

  I, I mean, she looks like Valentina, but um, this is unkind, but she's a TV actor and it feels like you're watching a TV show when you're watching her. It doesn't feel like you're watching a movie.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  What do you mean?

• 40:20Sean Fennessey?

  Her comic timing.

• 40:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Extremely rude to the Nicole Holoff Center film Enough Said, so take it back.

• 40:25Sean Fennessey?

  I'm a huge fan of that film. I'm also a fan of You Hurt My Feelings, which came out a couple of years ago. But I wouldn't describe Julie Louis-Dreyfus as a great film actor. I think she has a sensibility that is like very quippy and very quick that is all about like repartee. Now that is obviously a component of Marvel, but this is a movie. I think with a big dynamic emotional story in it. And she's a part of that story. And whenever she's participating in it, I feel like she's in the sitcom version of the movie. And a lot of the other actors are in the real version of the movie. And it kind of threw me off my game.

• 40:58Amanda Dobbins?

  She's doing V. And like, I mean, it's hard. She's, she's dressed beautifully, by the way. I, I liked the suits very much.

• 41:04Sean Fennessey?

  I got no beef with Julia Louis-Dreyfus at large as a longtime Seinfeld fan.

• 41:07Amanda Dobbins?

  But, you know, it is like professional woman, like professional ambitious woman playing ambition and all of these tropes like for laughs. And it's like different kind of laughs and slightly less sophisticated, but I know what you're saying.

• 41:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 41:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I thought that was more about the, the kind of tonal divisions of the movie. Cause it, there's, it's very quippy and then it is also, you know, about depression. So, and like recreates everyone's depression at, at, uh, for extended periods of time. So she's just in like the funny half. I think she does a good job at the funny half, but the, the mishmash doesn't totally add up.

• 41:48Sean Fennessey?

  I guess you could make the case that we do get this. So Bob's character has this ability when he makes human, when he makes physical contact with a character to draw them back to a traumatic moment in their life, to a critical moment in their life that informs a lot of the pain that they feel all the time. Almost every character in the movie gets to have a moment like this with Bob, where we see something critical to their life. She gets one of these moments.

• 42:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:13Sean Fennessey?

  And so we see something that is how, we see that her father has been murdered when she was a young girl.

• 42:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:17Sean Fennessey?

  We get a little bit of context around maybe why she, why she seeks to control power the way that she does.

• 42:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Sean Fennessey?

  But then you cut back to Julia Louis-Dreyfus and she's kind of like making a face and darting out of the room the moment she has to deal with this.

• 42:31Amanda Dobbins?

  But.

• 42:31Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm like, they're not even giving us any opportunity to get invested in whatever this character is supposed to be about.

• 42:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I would, I responded to it the opposite way, which is like.

• 42:40Speaker 04

  I'm like, Val's not a character. I'm, that glimpse into her trauma didn't resonate with me because I don't think the movie is sincerely interested in informing us about her motivation. It's like, she is where she is and she behaves the way she does. And it's not a study in actually her path to that. It's a study in like, the manifestation then of her intention. And so I think her being like a glib, myopic, a void of a different sort. Somebody who is seeking to absorb and suck and subsume everybody into her orbit because the thing that she desires is control. I think the way that she's engaged in conversation and certainly the performance is like,

• 43:25Speaker 04

  this is how I deflect and how I make my way through the world and I'm smarter than you and I see something more clearly than you and like, I'm gonna make sure that you understand the only thing of value you provide to my life is this cup of coffee. I really like that and I think at least the projects that she's been in so far, maybe with the exception of Wakanda Forever where while I was genuinely interested in the romantic history between JLD and Martin Freeman. Martin Freeman's Everett Ross, one of the just great reveals in the history of cinema. You're sort of like, wait, what is this doing in this movie? But when she comes in in Falcon and the Winter Soldier and she's like, John Walker, you were Captain America for a minute and you were disgraced and I'm gonna, I'm gonna

• 44:09Speaker 04

  use your pain with a couple of quick one-liners and then my own agenda. Like, it works and the fact that she's like, using humor in that classic JLD way, I think allows you to understand how she moves through halls of power. So I've really liked the way that she's been used in the MCU. I think that if she were in like,

• 44:30Speaker 04

  I don't know. Any number of other MCU properties, like it probably wouldn't make any sense. But the ones that she's been in so far, like it actually has worked. I mean, you could see her in like the Guardians movies. You could see her in a Deadpool movie. You could see her in Ragnarok.

• 44:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's because of her theoretical emotional importance to the movie. Like she is the agent of power, literally. She is the true villain of the movie. And

• 44:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:58Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, we don't really know why.

• 45:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm OK with that. Like, like the, you know, finality of of power and the and if anything, I, you know, I I don't need to know about her trauma respectfully. And so like the flashback of it being like, well, you know, that that was upsetting. And I thought all of those flashbacks like were pretty restrained and effective. And she, her face recoils for a second. But like I, you know, I didn't need to know anymore.

• 45:29Sean Fennessey?

  I think I'm not maybe not asking for like a one hour exploration of Val's pain. I think it's more just because of the performer, like some actors can pull this off without having to have that scene. And I and I

• 45:41Amanda Dobbins?

  What is Thanos's pain?

• 45:43Sean Fennessey?

  Thanos's pain?

• 45:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Sorry, yeah, sorry for giving it

• 45:46Speaker 04

  Destruction of the homeworld.

• 45:47Amanda Dobbins?

  The transatlantic.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, the pursuit of balance.

• 45:50Amanda Dobbins?

  OK.

• 45:51Sean Fennessey?

  Overpopulation and anxiety.

• 45:53Amanda Dobbins?

  OK. But so his his home planet.

• 45:56Sean Fennessey?

  It kind of has OCD a little bit, too.

• 45:58Amanda Dobbins?

  OK. But but that's the inciting incident, like his home planet blew up.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  Well.

• 46:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Did he blow it up?

• 46:05Speaker 04

  There's a, do you recall the the showdown where Peter gets very upset? And then everything when they're trying to take the gauntlet off, everything kind of goes to shit?

• 46:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but that's OK.

• 46:16Speaker 04

  I was gonna bring up the setting and then where we see the destruction.

• 46:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's an Infinity War.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  But it's not a, yeah.

• 46:21Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right before the snap.

• 46:23Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 46:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so there we go.

• 46:25Sean Fennessey?

  Should revisit it. I don't think those movies are good.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  They're great, yeah.

• 46:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's go back to Louis Pullman.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:31Sean Fennessey?

  So...

• 46:32Speaker 04

  He was great.

• 46:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree.

• 46:34Sean Fennessey?

  You liked him.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I thought he was fantastic.

• 46:37Sean Fennessey?

  This is Bill Pullman's son. He went from being someone I'd never heard of.

• 46:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly like him.

• 46:41Sean Fennessey?

  He does.

• 46:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:43Sean Fennessey?

  He's a good, he's a good use case for like, here's what it was like in the 90s where a guy like this could be for at least six years the most important person at the movies. So like, he was the president and he was marrying Sandra Bullock.

• 46:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And also, like, Bill Pullman, um, so Louis Pullman and then, uh, Jack Quaid, son of, is like, and who, and who does look like Dennis Quaid, but also looks so much like Meg Ryan. And so, all, they're just, the ni-, you know, the 90s are back and the facial expressions and the emotions. And I do feel like some of his emotions and some of the, like, the, his acting, looking so much like Bill Pullman, definitely affected me because I was thinking about Sleepless in Seattle, or While You Were Sleeping, or Independence Day, as he was being like, sometimes I have a hard time.

• 47:26Sean Fennessey?

  You must know what it was like for our parents to watch Michael Douglas get insanely famous in the 70s and 80s, and having known Kirk Douglas before that.

• 47:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  I mean, but he looks exactly like him.

• 47:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 47:37Speaker 04

  Like, it is shocking, the same experience.

• 47:39Sean Fennessey?

  He has a different vibe, especially Bob.

• 47:41Speaker 04

  But the middle part of his face is like, it's uncanny.

• 47:44Sean Fennessey?

  I saw Bill Pullman in person at a Gladiator 2 screening earlier this year, and it was thrilling for me.

• 47:49Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 47:49Sean Fennessey?

  It was like, he is my childhood in many ways. He looked great. Very handsome fellow.

• 47:52Speaker 04

  I find him quite dreamy.

• 47:55Sean Fennessey?

  I believe he owns a winery now?

• 47:57Speaker 04

  Oh, thank God. That sounds right.

• 47:59Sean Fennessey?

  Seems like he's doing it right. Anyway, um, his son is a, is a really good actor. And it's hard to take parts like this and imbue them with any sense of emotionality. This is a complicated part. Bob was a drug addict and, um, a lost person who found his way to Malaysia, looking to disconnect from the world and finds himself the subject of this.

• 48:20Sean Fennessey?

  I have scientific test and I guess he's injected with some sort of serum.

• 48:24Speaker 04

  The serum.

• 48:25Sean Fennessey?

  Is that the idea?

• 48:25Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly.

• 48:27Sean Fennessey?

  And it transforms him into an all powerful person. He doesn't quite realize the extent of his powers. We know he's gonna have them, but he has that very cool moment where he sort of explodes into the sky after drawing attention away from the other thunderbolts.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:38Sean Fennessey?

  In the first half of the film. Very quickly, I think maybe, maybe just like a little too quickly, he goes from being a guy trying to figure it out to the most powerful superhero in the universe.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:48Sean Fennessey?

  You felt like that was a little bit of a leap there?

• 48:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was fast.

• 48:51Sean Fennessey?

  When we get to the sentry sequence? I guess we're meant to believe time has passed or something?

• 48:56Amanda Dobbins?

  You've already watched him,

• 48:59Amanda Dobbins?

  you know, face off against like the entire, Val's entire army.

• 49:04Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 49:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, be shot like eighty thousand times and then like ascend, you know, into the sky like he's so powerful.

• 49:11Speaker 04

  I think the thing that felt fast was the control.

• 49:14Sean Fennessey?

  You're right.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  The mastery of all of his different abilities, cause like shooting, yeah, the hail of bullets falling, helpfully, um, removing the lower part of his.

• 49:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, revealed his abs for you.

• 49:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. I also clocked those and I was like, oh, I see Kyogre.

• 49:27Speaker 04

  Well, place bullets, very helpful. Um, yeah, from like then, you know, I shoot up and I shoot down and I crash and they collect me in a box. So holy shit, I can make like a glass of water heat up and explode into I can with a calm and confidence and complete poise handle every single one of you and anything you might do was like a matter of a scene and a half.

• 49:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he was like the Otani of superheroes. Very quickly, I was like, we've never seen this before.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  And there was time for some hair dye as well.

• 49:50Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of the blonde?

• 49:52Speaker 04

  I thought they did a great job of talking about the hair in the movie.

• 49:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was funny.

• 49:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 49:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I liked it.

• 49:58Sean Fennessey?

  He, God, what is the name of the, uh, lead villain in The Boys? He's giving that energy. Homelander. Homelander. There's a lot of Homelander.

• 50:04Speaker 04

  He didn't, he didn't drink any breast milk though.

• 50:06Sean Fennessey?

  Is that something Homelander does?

• 50:08Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Not familiar, not caught up on The Boys.

• 50:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It is. Is it, how's he sourcing it?

• 50:14Speaker 04

  All sorts always. Fresh.

• 50:17Speaker 04

  From the teat when he can. Also in a private store, a refrigeration unit full of bottles. Anyway, he can get it.

• 50:26Amanda Dobbins?

  But so is he like, well, what's the mechanism of stealing it? Like, is he stealing the supply? Is he attacking people? Like, does he have?

• 50:33Speaker 04

  He had a number of different providers over the course of the five now seasons of The Boys.

• 50:39Sean Fennessey?

  I fell off, I think, after season two. Although I like that show.

• 50:42Speaker 04

  Good show.

• 50:42Sean Fennessey?

  I have nothing to say about it.

• 50:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But so he's not just like sneaking into people's freezers at night and grabbing that. Okay.

• 50:48Sean Fennessey?

  He is like a Superman level power, though. Like, similar to the century where you're like, this is the most powerful person on this planet.

• 50:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 50:55Sean Fennessey?

  But he's also an absolute demon, like a horrendous person.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Yes. Bad guy. Homelander. Bad guy.

• 51:02Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is brought to you by the Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo. The Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book, your favorite hotel site, your go-to airline, and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants, and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway, from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at wellsfargo.com/autographjourney. Terms apply. This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with the big game on Prime Video?

• 51:46Sean Fennessey?

  That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like re-watching a director's entire catalog in the lead-up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. So you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Sentry realizes his incredible powers. We have this great fight sequence in the middle

• 52:31Sean Fennessey?

  of the movie where

• 52:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I enjoyed that.

• 52:32Sean Fennessey?

  All five Thunderbolts get their asses handed to them

• 52:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought that was very good.

• 52:35Sean Fennessey?

  In a very tight, tidy way. And then it becomes clear that Bob realizes he's stronger than he knows. And he, Val realizes he's too powerful and too self-aware.

• 52:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:47Sean Fennessey?

  The kill switch is engaged by Mel after he nearly kills Val.

• 52:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yep.

• 52:51Sean Fennessey?

  He dies and is reborn as the Void, the darkness that lives inside of Bob. So here's what I wrote down, because this is the reason that this movie ultimately works for me. There's a big, obvious metaphor at the center of the film that is also its core theme, that is also its villain.

• 53:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't know if I've ever seen that before. Now, obviously, it's a comic book movie, and so the bounds of our imagination can go anywhere.

• 53:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:14Sean Fennessey?

  But using all three of those things in one package to tell your story at a time when people are more aware of and confronting their own general depression than ever before. This is just something that people talk about every day now.

• 53:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:28Sean Fennessey?

  And the entire character is oriented around this idea of not slipping into this feeling. I don't know if it's sophisticated, but it is deeper than I think a lot of what these movies are about, or at least can thematically reach. Like, I'm listening to you all the time. You have an amazing ability to locate what the story represents and what it's trying to do. I don't always agree necessarily with, like, I'm not in agreement with how it gets to that place or if it gets to that place, but you are so good on theme. This was a rare case where I was like, the theme is very strong and clear and clearly communicated, and it didn't feel phony. And I'm so sick of trauma as the basis for so many horror movies. This was a rare case where I thought, I don't know if earned is the right word, but it worked.

• 54:11Amanda Dobbins?

  It developed it.

• 54:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And, like, I agree with you. And as a person who didn't know anything about this character or

• 54:20Amanda Dobbins?

  The exposition so had to have all of the pieces in place explained to me so that I could understand the central theme. But you get it. It's it. It is straightforward, but also not too heavy handed. You know, even even they are doing like the the villain's or you know, the villain's trauma, her origin story, but it's quick. And if like you don't really care about it, it's gone in two seconds. Right. So I it's there's something about it just being so like dead on where they're not trying to hide it in that many other things because the void like just is depression. Right. Like that is the that that is the character. So they just go with it.

• 55:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and really not trying to make you think. It's like, this is what it is. Right.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And they but they don't try to overcomplicate it. Right. And I think that is smart and that makes it more effective.

• 55:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think the movie is like very self assured in what it's trying to examine and convey, you know? And so like, I I think you guys are right that it is there in a clear and palpable way, but not then in a heavy handed alienating one, which is like actually quite a difficult balance to pull off. I think, again, a character like Valentina, part of the reason that she is in opposition to our heroes and our anti heroes, whatever you want to call them, is not just because she's seeking to use them, but because she is uninterested ultimately in looking inward in a way that all of the other characters eventually work themselves to a place of of being able to do and crucially, of course, in a team up movie, in a found family movie, helping each other do.

• 55:55Speaker 04

  Like, guys, the climax of the movie is literally a group hug. Honest, like, for real, like, they all go and wrap their arms around Bob and like pull him back.

• 56:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is a great little inversion of them climbing up the tower.

• 56:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there is there is a there is a a version of this movie where that is like so corny and so like eye roll inducing and it just wasn't. I was like, wow, this is actually like quite touching and I'm invested in these these people as individuals, but also now as a group and that happened quite quickly. I mean, I think in this inside of the film, like, just not a lot of time passes and you have to believe that that bond could forge. I think it's helpful when some of the characters already have history with each other, like Bucky and John do, or like Yelena and Alexi do, because you can have that conversation like the one that Alexi and Yelena have and you know there's more like depth of shared experience and awareness.

• 56:49Speaker 04

  But ultimately, I thought the pairing that crackled the most and that kind of you have to opt into and give a shit about is Yelena and Bob.

• 56:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 56:58Speaker 04

  Like, that's what the movie hinges on, is you caring that they are gonna decide to care more about each other than the things around them.

• 57:04Sean Fennessey?

  It only works, I think, because of that conversation between Alexei and Yelena outside after they've been defeated by the Sentry.

• 57:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:12Sean Fennessey?

  And she's talking about this sense of aloneness and purposelessness. And I think a feeling many people can relate to, which is sort of like, some days are good, a lot of days are bad. And when a day is bad.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 57:24Sean Fennessey?

  What is the point of everything? And that's the same thing that Bob is dealing with. And when Alexei talks to her about it, makes her feel more whole.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  Like, the light, you're dim, you're brighter.

• 57:33Sean Fennessey?

  And here's the little girl I knew, I was like, damn, this is good writing.

• 57:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is.

• 57:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Why you wanna be a goalie?

• 57:38Speaker 04

  They base it, the goalie part was great. They, she did the Star Lord, we're losers.

• 57:46Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  Like, people who have lost things, you know, speech from Guardians. That's like such a tried and true recipe, but to do it in a way that still felt fresh here, or maybe less fresh and more just like specific to these characters, I thought was impressive. Quick shout out while we're talking about that sequence on the street for the passerby, the woman who just like...

• 58:07Speaker 04

  It's like, what's going on with these people she walked by? That was hysterical.

• 58:11Sean Fennessey?

  That is what would happen in New York.

• 58:12Speaker 04

  Yes. I love that, that was a great little touch. I thought that was really, really funny. Did you guys feel that the actual maze of trauma traps was like, did you want more? I thought the Bucky coming in and being like, well, yeah, you know, I've had a calm, chill, cool, normal life, so like, it was fine for me, it was great.

• 58:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:33Speaker 04

  And we don't need to see Bucky's memories, because we know what they are, but did you wish we saw more?

• 58:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think I'm glad we didn't spend too much time in that, because this is the most Nolan-inflected MCU movie I can think of.

• 58:43Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:43Sean Fennessey?

  And that was very Inception, that final sequence. And as you guys know, I have some issues with Inception. I think it was just psychological enough to not have to worry about the logic of it. And if I start spending a little bit too much time thinking about like what they did, or how Alexei found his way to where, you know what I mean? Like the mechanics of it were kinda iffy, but it was done well enough that I understood what they were trying to do, which is basically get us to that lab so that we could, Bob and Yelena could meet and she could make him whole again. She could say, "It's not your fault," basically.

• 59:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. I think I was so relieved that the climactic, you know, like final battle, dream, whatever sequence in a Marvel movie was once like somewhat grounded in the real world and, you know, filmed on sets at least, as opposed to on green screens and was, you know, recognizable things. And like, I'll give them credit, you know, like one of the memories was like, you know, an abusive dad and a bad childhood and a, you know, and then one was-

• 59:47Speaker 04

  Meth chicken.

• 59:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, meth chicken, which was like, they weren't, they weren't too corny, they were like recognizable and they didn't dwell on them. So, but just the actual execution of this being like not CGI slop for like, you know, and a bunch of ants, um, was, was a huge relief.

• 1:00:07Speaker 04

  She loves the ants and she brings them up a lot.

• 1:00:09Sean Fennessey?

  Mentioned them multiple times over text this past week.

• 1:00:12Speaker 04

  Not even the first time this week that she has mentioned the ants to us.

• 1:00:14Sean Fennessey?

  No idea that it's all happening in the quantum realm, but she knows that there were ants.

• 1:00:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I did, it's a, I did until I saw this movie, think that the void was the quantum realm.

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  You know what? We worked through it together. I think something you're saying right now makes me think of another thing that I think the movie does very well. Let's use Yelena's, uh, trip into the void as an example. You actually could understand everything important about that character if you never saw Black Widow.

• 1:00:37Sean Fennessey?

  Agreed.

• 1:00:37Speaker 04

  And I think the MCU, when it struggles, really struggles with that specifically, is how much homework did somebody have to do before they say? Now, I'm like a completionist, I want people to watch all of this, but I don't think they should be expected to have to watch all of it. And if you didn't see Black Widow and you didn't see Hawkeye, you would understand that- Elena was turned into a child assassin and forced to commit atrocities against other people.

• 1:01:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's because you've got a lot of characters who don't know each other, so they have to introduce each other. At a certain point, Red Guardian is sitting in the passenger seat of a car and he's talking to Bucky. And he's like, you and I are the same. We're both super soldiers. I got the knockoff Soviet serum. Like, he's literally explaining his origin story, but in a humorous way. That moves quickly and you don't, it's not this overweening mythology. It is just, I'm a guy, here's what I do. I'm a lady, here's what I do.

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  You also crucially learn not to drink what's in the Big Gulp. Also important.

• 1:01:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty gross.

• 1:01:32Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  What are you, are we sure that's what it was?

• 1:01:35Speaker 04

  What do you think it is, Jizz?

• 1:01:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Speaker 04

  Some big, big, that was a big gulp.

• 1:01:39Sean Fennessey?

  Just, this is not the rewatchables for Jesus Christ.

• 1:01:42Amanda Dobbins?

  You asked the question.

• 1:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  I did. So.

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  That's, that was my second guess too. So what'd you think we were gonna say?

• 1:01:48Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about the Void, the character. I thought this might be a good time for Science Corner. I assume you have some questions.

• 1:01:54Speaker 04

  I, I have been waiting all week.

• 1:01:58Amanda Dobbins?

  That's the Science Corner music. So, but I hope we play the real one.

• 1:02:02Speaker 05

  Welcome to Amanda Dobbins's Science Corner.

• 1:02:10Amanda Dobbins?

  So is he disappearing people or is he?

• 1:02:16Amanda Dobbins?

  What happens to their physical matter is a question that I would have once you get voided. Because we see, and I actually, again, I really liked the execution in the movie, which was, you know, it was computer. But instead of, it just, things, it kind of got like stamped out.

• 1:02:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, shadowed out.

• 1:02:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, shadowed out. And that was something that you could do like fairly, like easily and elegantly within the, in the spectrum of the, like the visuals.

• 1:02:46Sean Fennessey?

  And I think, I think also visually, it, it fit the metaphor. Which is like the encroaching darkness of life.

• 1:02:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  Blots you out.

• 1:02:53Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:02:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And then they also, when. The Sentry becomes the Void and like shows up over the city of New York. He's it's like he is just dark Superman, which is what you're supposed to understand. And even I, you know, a superhero dummy got like, like it was effectively visually communicated to me.

• 1:03:12Sean Fennessey?

  What happens if Superman was super depressed?

• 1:03:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Well, which like, isn't he though? Because don't you think being Superman? Yeah.

• 1:03:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right?

• 1:03:20Sean Fennessey?

  We're gonna find out July 11th.

• 1:03:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Great. Can't wait.

• 1:03:22Speaker 04

  Can't wait. There's, you know, a dog in a dog in that movie.

• 1:03:25Sean Fennessey?

  That was a sarcastic can't wait.

• 1:03:26Speaker 04

  I was just, I was just.

• 1:03:26Sean Fennessey?

  Can't wait.

• 1:03:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Mallory.

• 1:03:27Speaker 04

  Dog in that movie, not a dog in this movie.

• 1:03:29Sean Fennessey?

  Alpha and the omega of my podcasting life right here. I love it.

• 1:03:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Mallory in Vegas.

• 1:03:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:36Amanda Dobbins?

  James Gunn.

• 1:03:37Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:03:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Talked for, I am not kidding, 20 minutes.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  About a dog?

• 1:03:43Amanda Dobbins?

  About his dog.

• 1:03:44Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And what his dog did, including eating an $8,000 laptop, which he thought would be a relatable anecdote.

• 1:03:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And then.

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  I think it is.

• 1:03:52Amanda Dobbins?

  How this, this dog inspired the other dog that's in the movie.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  Crypto. Yeah.

• 1:03:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I was wearing heels and I had gone to the bathroom and I had to run back because I didn't want to miss Superman because I know everyone cares about it.

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And so I was just like standing, waiting for him to stop talking about his dog and my feet started hurting and it was just, it was interminable, Mallory.

• 1:04:12Speaker 04

  I think it sounds great. Uh, I'm not sure if you were aware how much of James Gunn's Instagram content is about his cat.

• 1:04:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  But I find it riveting.

• 1:04:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  To follow.

• 1:04:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  I believe the hashtag he uses is Emily monster or something like that for the cat, who is named Emily and I believe behaves monstrously.

• 1:04:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Anyway, the Void turns things black. And, and so, but, so when he's the Void, he's still, he has like Bob or Louis Pullman, like out like silhouette, right? You know, he is Bob Pullman shaped.

• 1:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:52Amanda Dobbins?

  But he's the Bob Pullman.

• 1:04:54Sean Fennessey?

  Louis Pullman.

• 1:04:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Louis, Louis Pullman, Bob.

• 1:04:56Sean Fennessey?

  Bob Pullman is his grandfather.

• 1:04:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Okay. Bob's also his Top Gun Maverick character. So it's pretty stressful for me and exciting. Uh, but he is.

• 1:05:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so the void is Bob shapes.

• 1:05:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:05:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's like sitting with Carl Sagan when you get into one of these sequences. It's just amazing.

• 1:05:16Amanda Dobbins?

  But when he disappears, I'm gonna keep going.

• 1:05:22Speaker 04

  Yep. Like, James gone, keep going.

• 1:05:26Sean Fennessey?

  Just don't stop.

• 1:05:27Speaker 04

  Just keep going.

• 1:05:28Amanda Dobbins?

  He disappears, everyone, including the little girl, which was the one, like, gasp.

• 1:05:32Speaker 04

  Genuine gasp.

• 1:05:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, everyone, and I was like, ah.

• 1:05:35Sean Fennessey?

  Fabulous scene.

• 1:05:36Amanda Dobbins?

  But so these people are just gone. What was once matter is no longer matter.

• 1:05:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, and it is snap reminiscent.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  Very, of course.

• 1:05:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And there is darkness there, but the darkness does not take the shape of the people. It's not even really three dimensional, I would say.

• 1:05:53Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:05:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 1:05:54Speaker 04

  It's like a brush stroke through your life.

• 1:05:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And so then, when the void goes away.

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Amanda Dobbins?

  They're all returned to their places. But Mallory asks an important point about Holt on the helicopter.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Because he's there, and then he gets voided, and the helicopter keeps flying.

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  Now, I think the MCU invites us to ask this question, because this is, I, I don't think we can overstate how much time people have spent talking about it, asking about it, and then the MCU answering it with what happened when you, after the snap, if you, if you were part of the blip, and you came back, well, what if someone had moved into your apartment? Or what if the thing that you were sitting in or standing in wasn't there anymore?

• 1:06:34Amanda Dobbins?

  What if you were having sex?

• 1:06:38Speaker 04

  This is why.

• 1:06:39Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 1:06:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:40Speaker 04

  This is why.

• 1:06:40Sean Fennessey?

  This is not pseudo-science corner.

• 1:06:42Speaker 04

  She's the real one.

• 1:06:43Sean Fennessey?

  This is science corner.

• 1:06:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Is this, well, what is the canonical answer to that?

• 1:06:46Speaker 04

  Well, if the person you were fucking, if Thanos had also snapped that person, you would both go back to the same moment.

• 1:06:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, but.

• 1:06:53Speaker 04

  It'd be great.

• 1:06:54Sean Fennessey?

  Be a little jarring.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  I mean, sure.

• 1:06:57Amanda Dobbins?

  But also, it's like.

• 1:06:58Speaker 04

  Not as jarring as it would be if it's like. The person you were fucking had in and someone else moved into your bed.

• 1:07:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you going back to the same moment in time? Because like, what if you're like, in a public place?

• 1:07:07Sean Fennessey?

  I have an important question.

• 1:07:08Speaker 04

  Present day.

• 1:07:08Sean Fennessey?

  But does the erection hold?

• 1:07:10Speaker 04

  Well, so this is part of what they've.

• 1:07:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, they haven't answered that, but like.

• 1:07:14Sean Fennessey?

  Kevin Feige, if you're watching, if I was snapped mid coitus.

• 1:07:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Sean Fennessey?

  And I was gone for, how many years were they gone?

• 1:07:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Five.

• 1:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  Five years. And I returned.

• 1:07:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:24Sean Fennessey?

  Would my erection hold? I challenge you, Kevin Feige.

• 1:07:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, and so this is, this is also-

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  Jack, can you just clip Sean saying, "Would my erection hold?" And make sure we have that for Instagram and TikTok? Thanks. But there was a lot of explanation about how, how Hulk, when he was bringing people back, like had, had an incredible amount of control. Over, so I think part of what you'd have to confront is that Bruce Banner was like thinking about your dick.

• 1:07:49Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, could be worse, I guess. I don't know. Worse things I've heard.

• 1:07:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Wait, why?

• 1:07:54Speaker 04

  Cause he's like, should Sean come back like at full mast?

• 1:07:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, because he's in charge of all of it.

• 1:08:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Interest, so-

• 1:08:02Sean Fennessey?

  He's largely responsible for bringing us all back.

• 1:08:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, he was. And so he could decide-

• 1:08:07Sean Fennessey?

  Would you prefer to have been snapped or, or exist inside of a world where there was a snap?

• 1:08:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Definitely snapped.

• 1:08:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course. That's an easy one. Are you kidding? You wanna spend five years?

• 1:08:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I guess the answer-

• 1:08:20Speaker 04

  If you get to share a peanut butter sandwich with Steve Rogers and Natasha and talk about your grief, talk about how much you miss the Mets.

• 1:08:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:08:30Speaker 04

  Which happened.

• 1:08:31Sean Fennessey?

  As we know, Joe Russo did that once upon a time.

• 1:08:34Amanda Dobbins?

  But I mean, what happens to the kids? You know, that's like the real, like, I, I mean-

• 1:08:38Sean Fennessey?

  If my family was snapped, I would wanna be snapped. If my family was not snapped, we could hang out, figure it out.

• 1:08:43Speaker 04

  But the world is broken.

• 1:08:44Amanda Dobbins?

  But, yeah.

• 1:08:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. What if you got snapped out mid-pod?

• 1:08:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:08:54Sean Fennessey?

  Guys, like, do I keep going? Do I finish with my thoughts?

• 1:08:56Amanda Dobbins?

  We didn't go back to, so you get voided.

• 1:08:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I do like pretty much every episode at some point, you know? It's like you start talking about chicken jockey and I'm just like, fuck. Can we add those effects in?

• 1:09:09Sean Fennessey?

  How do we get that shadow effect in? Can we like, can we get, call ILM and just get you shadowed out?

• 1:09:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You know how I wanted a buzzer? Like anytime things go really bad, I'll just hit the buzzer and then I void out. Uh, and then, then I can come back. Once you stop your bullshit. Um, okay, so you get voided.

• 1:09:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And then you come back.

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Amanda Dobbins?

  But do you return to, is it?

• 1:09:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it snap rules or are there, is?

• 1:09:36Sean Fennessey?

  Who are you asking?

• 1:09:37Speaker 04

  I mean, that kid, the kid was like just there on the sidewalk.

• 1:09:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Speaker 04

  You know, so whole, like, I guess there's no helicopter to go back into because that was actually destroyed. So does he just go into the middle of the sky and then fall?

• 1:09:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I guess we have to hope so.

• 1:09:52Speaker 04

  Now, it didn't get very far. Like, we cover Manhattan, we blanket Manhattan, that's a lot of people, but this isn't like half of the universe. Like with Thanos.

• 1:09:59Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:10:00Speaker 04

  So it's a little bit more controlled.

• 1:10:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's like a thousand people and I guess it's like ultimately a million people when the whole city goes black, but.

• 1:10:06Speaker 04

  I mean, isn't it like eight million?

• 1:10:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And but like, where does that matter go? You know, is another important question.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  Into the void.

• 1:10:13Sean Fennessey?

  Or do we think?

• 1:10:13Speaker 04

  Into the void.

• 1:10:14Amanda Dobbins?

  The void.

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  I mean, Marvel is just a collection of various different dimensions and pocket universes at the end of the day.

• 1:10:19Sean Fennessey?

  Well put.

• 1:10:20Speaker 04

  You know? So part of the journey of this one was moving into your own.

• 1:10:24Amanda Dobbins?

  But the void is.

• 1:10:26Speaker 04

  Memory and then each other's.

• 1:10:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Is the void.

• 1:10:27Speaker 04

  Your pain is their pain.

• 1:10:28Amanda Dobbins?

  A villain or another dimension?

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  Well.

• 1:10:33Sean Fennessey?

  Why not both?

• 1:10:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's, I'm, I'm asking the question here.

• 1:10:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, the void is a character, is a person, is part, is part of Bob's essence and also is bringing people into these

• 1:10:47Speaker 04

  trauma prisons, you know?

• 1:10:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:10:49Speaker 04

  And then our characters on their journey to found family moved through their own individual pain into each other's pain. Because that was the message of the movie. That only together could they, could they pull themselves out of that. Beautiful. Beautiful stuff. Do you think the kid who took a shit in the middle of the field? I mean, that was Ohio, so she probably, she didn't enter the void, but if she had, what would her trauma vision have been? Would it have been when she had diarrhea?

• 1:11:15Amanda Dobbins?

  It wasn't, well, I, see, that's the thing. Was it an accident?

• 1:11:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think so. Do you think she intentionally took a shit?

• 1:11:22Sean Fennessey?

  They make it sound that way.

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  Oh, like, just like, dropped trowel and was like, fuck this, we haven't won a game, I'm taking a shit in the middle of the field?

• 1:11:29Amanda Dobbins?

  We're closer to potty training, you know, but it's just like, someone, you gotta poop, you gotta poop.

• 1:11:33Speaker 04

  Oh, I see. I thought this was like, I got the sense that this was like, you know, a pregame chili dog gone awry in the middle of the match. No?

• 1:11:41Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't given it a lot of thought.

• 1:11:44Amanda Dobbins?

  But I think also, like, the way, the way that they do the joke, I did think there was like a dropping trowel aspect in, in her, in, instead of an accident, you know? Which, and if you're getting, if you're dropping trowel, then there's intentionality. You know?

• 1:12:01Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:12:02Amanda Dobbins?

  As we've learned from others in our lives.

• 1:12:05Sean Fennessey?

  Circle, circle us back to Valentina's press conference at the end of the film.

• 1:12:08Speaker 04

  That was great. When she walked in, she just come right through here.

• 1:12:11Sean Fennessey?

  They walk through the curtain, the makeshift curtain.

• 1:12:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I need to let you guys know that, so I Googled Valentina's watch, you know, because I had some questions. So she was wearing a Cartier pen there, but I was like, I haven't really seen it in rose gold that often. It obviously is available, but now I have it up and like Cartier has been just like the AI chatbots have been messaging me for 30 minutes, being like, would you like to buy this $40,000 watch?

• 1:12:34Sean Fennessey?

  How many have you bought during the recording of this podcast?

• 1:12:39Sean Fennessey?

  Valentina very deftly introduces these characters as the new Avengers at the end of this movie. And then there's a great moment when Yelena steps up and whispers in her ear, we own you now. Which is what I whisper to Amanda after every episode. And, uh, you know, this crew has taken the place seemingly of the Avengers, but I feel like actually of Guardians of the Galaxy. Like, my take on this is that they are like still, kind of the second or third team, but they're a really likeable team. Yes, hands raised.

• 1:13:07Amanda Dobbins?

  At some point, there was speculation.

• 1:13:09Sean Fennessey?

  Why'd you raise your hand? We're on a podcast.

• 1:13:10Amanda Dobbins?

  You have a microphone. Well, I just, I didn't want you to get too far away from the naming and the reveal, because there was a lot of speculation.

• 1:13:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:13:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Am I, am I misremembering that the speculation was that they would be the Dark Avengers?

• 1:13:23Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I picked that up from you guys.

• 1:13:25Speaker 04

  That was, that was, okay. So that was definitely out there. But I think New Avengers was also very.

• 1:13:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I was mad because I thought it was, I thought it was a Dark Avengers lock. And I was like, New Avengers, that seems lame. That's like New Coke.

• 1:13:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think there is a little bit of truth to that. And that is revealed once we get into the Stingers, the first.

• 1:13:43Speaker 04

  That's why I think it works.

• 1:13:45Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see how they handle it in the future. One of the challenges, I think, of this movie is that it is very delicately on this tightrope between arch, post-Weeden quippery and sincere, at times even thoughtful drama. And I'm not sure what these other movies that are coming are gonna be. And that's a, that's a very complicated thing, whether or not they're gonna be able to meet that. And the New Avengers post-credit Stinger, which is actually like a real Stinger of consequence. That's the other thing is like, I just feel like every Stinger for the last five years has just not been about or meant anything to what, where the story is going.

• 1:14:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Sean Fennessey?

  This one actually does. It literally is connecting to the next film.

• 1:14:28Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:14:28Sean Fennessey?

  It skips ahead 14 months.

• 1:14:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:31Sean Fennessey?

  We learn via Yelena complaining that Sam Wilson has trademarked the name Avengers.

• 1:14:37Speaker 04

  Great stuff. Yeah.

• 1:14:38Sean Fennessey?

  And so they need to find a way to counteract this trademark infringement that they are engaged in, even though they are working out of Stark Tower and that they are ostensibly the real Avengers. And then they get like some sort of signal that there's a ship, an extra dimensional ship entering their atmosphere.

• 1:14:56Speaker 04

  Fantastic Four.

• 1:14:58Sean Fennessey?

  Let me see the Fantastic Four rocket ship. Do you care about this?

• 1:15:02Speaker 04

  I did that the whole drive home and Adam was like, please stop. I was like, not until July 25th.

• 1:15:09Sean Fennessey?

  It set us up quite nicely for the next two and a half months.

• 1:15:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it felt very, you know, brand-integrated in a way. They also, we saw this movie in IMAX, which was great. And they had a special IMAX countdown that was a Fantastic Four IMAX countdown.

• 1:15:27Speaker 04

  I had a minute where I was like, are we about to see like a special preview of Fantastic Four? Which was not what happened.

• 1:15:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, it was a little...

• 1:15:37Sean Fennessey?

  Suspicious.

• 1:15:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it was like a lot of synergy and like PowerPoint-y, you know, brand activation to me.

• 1:15:45Sean Fennessey?

  I did appreciate that it was not, here's a character you may or may not meet in the next 12 years. It was like, this is the next movie. So, and actually, just from a timeline perspective, I was like, alright, 14 months, that's the time when the Fantastic Four, in whatever universe they're in, when they find their way to our universe or the universe of this movie, that's when it's going to be. So it was like, not nothing.

• 1:16:09Speaker 04

  I, I thought the mid-credits with the Wheaties box at the grocery store with Alexi was just very charming and funny, and I love him, and I just think David Harbour should be in everything. That's pretty much my take.

• 1:16:19Sean Fennessey?

  He's really your type.

• 1:16:20Speaker 04

  Oh, my fastball down the middle. Oh, my god. I mean, Hopper in Stranger Things, I think, is like, one of like the sexiest characters in the history of television.

• 1:16:29Sean Fennessey?

  He resembles David Harbour.

• 1:16:30Speaker 04

  The bigger the belly, the better, you know? I just love him.

• 1:16:36Speaker 04

  The melding of a few things of consequence in the post-credits. One, Alexi coming out in like, basically, an F1 racing suit with the Z. Like, I got around the copyright by putting a Z at the end of Avengers, and also just the little touch of all of the sponsors on this, like, an Xbox, which is very funny. We learned something important, which is like, Bob is powered down.

• 1:16:59Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:16:59Speaker 04

  That is, I think, a crucial, and again, to your point, very like, not in a bad way, but you do, you understand the formula of the MCU, they have to explain that a character who has been clearly established as unbelievably powerful...

• 1:17:12Speaker 04

  When Doom comes into the mix, we'll not be using those powers, right? So that will be a part of the story. Is like, how do we power Sentry up?

• 1:17:22Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:17:22Sean Fennessey?

  That he won't be using those powers?

• 1:17:24Speaker 04

  No, but that that'll be part of it is like, when do, how do we power him up? We need you, bud.

• 1:17:27Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:17:27Speaker 04

  We need you to face Doom.

• 1:17:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's just a great idea for the most powerful hero to also be the most powerful villain.

• 1:17:32Speaker 04

  Exactly. So that I thought was great. And then like the bringing the, you know, showing us the Fantastic Four ship. Wonderful. I think the timeline point you make is interesting. Like anecdotally, I think a thing I have heard even amid the Fantastic Four excitement from a lot of people who are superhero movie fans is like,

• 1:17:52Speaker 04

  well, we know, like, we know they got to make it into the other continuity and we know we're doing Doomsday, we know we're doing Secret Wars. So like, does it take anything away from Fantastic Four first steps to just assume that they're exiting at the end? I don't really feel that way about it, but I wonder if this, I do wonder if actually anyone will bump on that aspect of the Stinger. To me, it was just like Euphoria, and I think a much better example of how to give us more detailed specificity and like clarity about a thing we know, which is like all of these continuities are melding, incursions are coming, we know what we're headed toward. The, the, the Stinger in Brave New World, which was the leader being like multiverse, as you know, I thought was just actively like insulting. It's like, we're two phases into the multiverse saga, like, yeah? This was really fun. It was an exciting end note for the movie.

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  It's an exciting way into the next one. And it's much more like in keeping actually with showing us Thor's hammer before Thor. It's like, this is actually the next thing and also then the bigger thing. It's not only like a little wink to the next individual story, but also the larger team up to come. So I thought that was great.

• 1:18:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And it's one more reason why I was like, this is kind of a 2013 Marvel movie, which was a time when I was totally at peace with 2.3 of them coming out per year and enjoying them sometimes, but

• 1:19:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:19:03Sean Fennessey?

  very rarely being angered by them.

• 1:19:07Sean Fennessey?

  So as I said, 13 movies since Spider-Man Far From Home and since frankly, since COVID.

• 1:19:15Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, this is the second best one or the best one? Maybe the third best one? Not a, not a Guardians 3 fan over here.

• 1:19:24Speaker 04

  I love, I, I love No Way Home and Guardians 3.

• 1:19:27Sean Fennessey?

  Those would be the two that I think are.

• 1:19:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I, No Way Home is, I think, better, in my opinion.

• 1:19:31Sean Fennessey?

  It has higher highs.

• 1:19:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:33Sean Fennessey?

  As a movie on the whole, I think Thunderbolt is more consistent, especially through the final hour. But the, the excitement of No Way Home is kind of unmatched.

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, incredible. Those are the top three for me in phases four and five. I, I'll probably have to see Thunderbolt a second time before setting my, my order there. I really love No Way Home and I really love Guardians 3. I just, I mean, the rocket stuff in Guardians 3, I just like, I could cry right now thinking about it. I loved it. It was great.

• 1:20:00Sean Fennessey?

  Did you cry right in Amanda's face while you?

• 1:20:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I'm glad that he's okay. I don't believe in animal cruelty, so that sucks.

• 1:20:07Speaker 04

  Break take.

• 1:20:07Sean Fennessey?

  Twist, wow.

• 1:20:08Speaker 04

  Break take.

• 1:20:09Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 1:20:10Speaker 04

  Didn't want to hear James Gunn talk about his dog, but draws the line at active animal cruelty.

• 1:20:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, basically, you guys, you do your thing.

• 1:20:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and I'll do mine.

• 1:20:19Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you for your service.

• 1:20:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:21Sean Fennessey?

  My, my somewhat tongue in cheek, but also not question in the title of this episode is, is it too late? That the feeling that I mentioned of the bloom being off the rose, that these movies are now only for super fans? That the normal movie fan who likes to go to blockbusters, but who has lost a sense of the continuity? Hasn't watched the TV shows. Movie fans not going back two, three, four times to see these movies. Is it too late? Can this be completely revived and taken us back to a place that more looks like 2014, 15, 16? What do you, what do you think?

• 1:20:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so, but I don't think that, well, I'm, I'm sure Disney shareholders won't be like pleased with, like the new adjustment, but I think it can get to a new medium ground where.

• 1:21:11Amanda Dobbins?

  The people who are fans of this, which like really sizable because right? That's the other thing. An entire generation of kids like, you know, including your sister, Sean, like grew up being obsessed with these movies, learned to go to the movies because of these movies. I think movies like non Marvel movies are now experiencing the downstream effect of like kids being trained to go at least for a big event movie.

• 1:21:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:21:33Amanda Dobbins?

  So they'll keep going and that's a sizable amount of people. I don't know if it's gonna be the most important thing culturally, like in the, in the same way with respect that like House of Dragon, which has like tons of viewers and is like a really big deal is still, it's not really a Game of Thrones level, just like in terms of cultural import, but like it's doing great.

• 1:21:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:21:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And everybody but me watches it and you know, and

• 1:21:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's a very good comparison.

• 1:21:59Amanda Dobbins?

  So, so, and like, I, and I think that that's a good outcome for basically everyone except for, you know, capitalism and the corporate interests involved in this.

• 1:22:10Sean Fennessey?

  It's a smaller piece of the pie for Disney. Yeah.

• 1:22:12Speaker 04

  I, I think the comp ultimately to like people liking this, it doing well and most crucially of all people being like characters I didn't think I gave a shit about, I've come to care about, um, both in a way that will lead me to the theater to see it and then to invest in what they do moving forward. The comps are, are much more like Guardians or Ant-Man or honestly even like something like Ragnarok, uh, though Thor was very established by that point than the Spider-Man movies or obviously any of the Avengers movies. It's just Thunderbolts was never going to be that despite being the, the Hammer film at the end of a phase, um, and despite being a big team up movie. It's just like, that's not the, the, the tier that this film's playing in. So the, the, to your core question, the test for that is still, I think, this isn't the test for that. I think that if

• 1:22:55Speaker 04

  Thunderbolts generates enthusiasm, that's just a win.

• 1:22:58Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:59Speaker 04

  The test is going to be Fantastic Four. The test is going to be Doomsday and Secret, Secret Wars and of course the test ultimately.

• 1:23:06Sean Fennessey?

  X-Men.

• 1:23:07Speaker 04

  Is X-Men.

• 1:23:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:07Speaker 04

  For as it's sustainable beyond this.

• 1:23:09Sean Fennessey?

  But see, to me, X-Men, they can't, they won't, they won't, it won't get screwed up. I, I, I think that they still have a chance to, even if they fuck up the Avengers Doomsday.

• 1:23:18Amanda Dobbins?

  So the X-Men will come again after the Avengers.

• 1:23:20Sean Fennessey?

  Probably at the end of Secret Wars would be my guess.

• 1:23:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, because they had the, um, the chairs.

• 1:23:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that'll just be like the focus of the next phase. But I mean, yeah, we've got a lot of X-Men presence already, obviously, at this point, but yes.

• 1:23:31Sean Fennessey?

  I think we'll probably see all of the Fox X-Men.

• 1:23:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:34Sean Fennessey?

  Blipped out in some way in Doomsday and whoever some of the new X-Men will be in Secret Wars would be my guess. But I, people, I, you know, I'm gonna be like 50 years old when that movie comes out and I'm still gonna be like, I want to know who the new X-Men are. Which characters did they choose?

• 1:23:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:23:48Sean Fennessey?

  What era, you know, like, I'm, I just, I care, like, I'm just invested.

• 1:23:50Speaker 04

  Same.

• 1:23:51Sean Fennessey?

  Chris and I have talked about this, like, we're getting old and we're still like, X-Men is still the only thing that matters ultimately. So, and Kevin Feige knows that. And he knows that he can prey upon that and also the fact that when you're nine and you meet the X-Men for the first time, you're like, this is fucked.

• 1:24:03Speaker 04

  It's magic.

• 1:24:04Sean Fennessey?

  This is great stuff. So even if the next three or four years are not ultimately that successful, this is a good sign. It is a smaller movie, it's tracking for 70 million dollars right now, I would say that's an under.

• 1:24:15Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:24:16Sean Fennessey?

  Perfect suggestion.

• 1:24:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:18Sean Fennessey?

  To me, it feels more like 85, 95, maybe even 100.

• 1:24:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:21Sean Fennessey?

  Um, which would, which would be a big success.

• 1:24:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23Sean Fennessey?

  I think if it's, if it underperforms 70, flashing red light.

• 1:24:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, but this should have such strong word of mouth, right?

• 1:24:31Sean Fennessey?

  I think it will have good, not great.

• 1:24:32Speaker 04

  The reviews are gonna be good.

• 1:24:33Sean Fennessey?

  We're in a different time.

• 1:24:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't you think? I feel like even just my anecdotal word of mouth today.

• 1:24:39Speaker 04

  Positive.

• 1:24:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but like.

• 1:24:41Sean Fennessey?

  My critic friends are like, this movie's good.

• 1:24:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but like, it's not bad.

• 1:24:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, certainly not.

• 1:24:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:46Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not, it's not bad. It's not a, it's not a disaster.

• 1:24:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:24:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And even parts of it were acceptable.

• 1:24:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:51Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing that we wouldn't, we're not have been counting on a few months ago, but that has obviously happened, is you've got the two biggest movies of the year are in theaters right now. So people are more likely to be in theaters.

• 1:25:00Speaker 04

  Revenge of the Sith?

• 1:25:01Sean Fennessey?

  Well, the three biggest movies of the year are in theaters right now.

• 1:25:04Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:25:05Sean Fennessey?

  You must be, are you just high on the hog right now with that?

• 1:25:07Speaker 04

  I mean, as you know, it's one of the most important movies in my life, uh, as you also.

• 1:25:11Sean Fennessey?

  And you didn't, but you didn't go.

• 1:25:12Speaker 04

  I could, I couldn't go last weekend, I was honestly despondent, but as I told you and Chris last night, uh, and have mentioned on Ringer Pods before, it is the movie. Titanic is second, just to restore our bond before I say the thing I'm gonna say next. It is the movie I have seen in theaters more than any other movie in my entire life.

• 1:25:28Amanda Dobbins?

  How many times?

• 1:25:31Speaker 04

  Can we ever trust our own memory? Who knows? My recollection is that I saw Revenge of the Sith seven times in movie theaters.

• 1:25:37Sean Fennessey?

  Like at its initial release?

• 1:25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Same movie theater or different movie theaters?

• 1:25:42Speaker 04

  Different theaters.

• 1:25:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:25:44Speaker 04

  Different theaters, but I couldn't get a, I fucking couldn't get enough. Most of our, could not get enough, and I still can't.

• 1:25:49Sean Fennessey?

  I rewatched it this week. I don't know. I don't know if there's.

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  You have a chosen one!

• 1:25:56Sean Fennessey?

  I love that final sequence.

• 1:25:57Speaker 04

  It's great.

• 1:25:59Sean Fennessey?

  So much of it is so bad. I mean, so, anytime Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman are in a scene together, it is abominable. It is one of, some of the worst ratings of all time.

• 1:26:06Speaker 04

  I'll invite you to revisit, uh, clones.

• 1:26:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's worse?

• 1:26:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:26:11Sean Fennessey?

  Attack of the Clones, that stuff is also bad. And yet, there are some fights that I really enjoy.

• 1:26:17Speaker 04

  Sure. Prequel kids, you know?

• 1:26:19Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a really good part in The Accountant 2 where Ben Affleck's character is playing with the lightsaber.

• 1:26:23Speaker 04

  I was listening to Chris and Andy talk about this driving in. I was listening to Chris and Andy driving in today talking about this.

• 1:26:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:29Speaker 04

  Because they were talking about, um, Star Wars Starfighter and like how that's actually kind of an inspired name for a movie. And Chris was like, they should just call one Star Wars lightsaber. Or actually, Andy said that, and then Chris was like, I would go! And then they talked about The Accountant.

• 1:26:40Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think Starfighter is a good title?

• 1:26:43Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:26:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's, the word star is already in Star Wars.

• 1:26:46Speaker 04

  This is like, a show I really love is Rings of Power, as you know, but the Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power is too many repeating words for me.

• 1:26:53Sean Fennessey?

  We've learned at the feet of great journalists and editors that like, titling is critical.

• 1:26:57Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's Star Wars colon Starfighter?

• 1:27:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:27:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Who's in Star, who's the Starfighter?

• 1:27:01Sean Fennessey?

  Ryan Gosling.

• 1:27:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that movie is gonna be Star Wars Starfighter?

• 1:27:05Speaker 04

  He's just gonna be in space. He's gonna be in space for the next few years, because he's also doing Project Hail Mary. Wonderful.

• 1:27:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh my god.

• 1:27:11Speaker 04

  Which is, I'm thrilled. I love that book.

• 1:27:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I can't tell you how excited I was.

• 1:27:16Speaker 04

  You're gonna like Project Hail Mary.

• 1:27:17Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know. Like, they cold opened with it. After, and it was, I'd had several cocktails, and then suddenly there was Ryan Gosling, and I was just like, oh!

• 1:27:24Speaker 04

  I sent him so many texts about it, and you had to actually at one point say to me, this movie doesn't come out for two years. Like, the implication was, please stop texting.

• 1:27:31Sean Fennessey?

  It was, it's January 2026. No, 2027. Right.

• 1:27:35Amanda Dobbins?

  It is?

• 1:27:35Sean Fennessey?

  No, January 2026.

• 1:27:36Speaker 04

  26.

• 1:27:37Sean Fennessey?

  26. Is it January or summer? I think it's January.

• 1:27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I would've said it was like March, but, um, Project Hail Mary movie, this is great podcasting.

• 1:27:45Speaker 04

  March!

• 1:27:46Amanda Dobbins?

  March 20, yeah, I was right.

• 1:27:48Sean Fennessey?

  One year.

• 1:27:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:49Sean Fennessey?

  One year away.

• 1:27:49Speaker 04

  I can't fucking wait.

• 1:27:50Sean Fennessey?

  It was unusual in the presentation at CinemaCon to open your presentation with a movie that's not coming out for a year.

• 1:27:55Amanda Dobbins?

  They had several movies, this is Amazon, that don't come out till next year. And then one movie that we all thought was totally made up about Hugh Jackman and sheep.

• 1:28:02Speaker 04

  Oh, exciting.

• 1:28:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I can imagine what happens in that movie.

• 1:28:08Sean Fennessey?

  He solves a crime.

• 1:28:12Sean Fennessey?

  Any, uh, what did you think happened? What did you think I meant?

• 1:28:16Speaker 04

  No, I answered your big goal question. I won't be making the same mistake again.

• 1:28:22Sean Fennessey?

  Any closing thoughts on Thunderbolts? You liked it?

• 1:28:24Speaker 04

  I had a lot of fun.

• 1:28:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:26Speaker 04

  I just, I don't know, I'm, I'm like...

• 1:28:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's refreshing to not be mad about a Marvel movie.

• 1:28:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, I care about, I care about the MCU deeply, and I love comic book movies, and I love the characters, and I love the story, and I'm so invested in this connected universe at this point in my life, but like, the thing I love most about it is sharing it with my friends, genuinely, not to be too corny about it, so it's like, it is actually exciting. To have a Marvel movie that people are, like, not actively dreading, discussing with each other, that's really just a wonderful thing.

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  Six months ago, I was like, I know I want Mal to be on the Thunderbolts episode, and it worked out just as I envisioned. I was like, let's not have an angry, hand wringing, like, oh, this again, like, I don't, you know, I'm so sick of doing those pods, even though they gotta do it when the movie isn't good.

• 1:29:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:08Sean Fennessey?

  How do you feel? You feel good?

• 1:29:09Amanda Dobbins?

  It felt nice to go home and be asked how the movie was and be like, "Not bad."

• 1:29:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, which, which, and I say that about Marvel movies, and also just like about our movie going here.

• 1:29:17Speaker 04

  Not bad, and here's a link to a watch I would like for Christmas this year.

• 1:29:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I'm a tank girl. I just, I'd, yeah, I can't do, listen, yeah, as I said, I thought it was a little too on trend, uh, for that character. That's okay. Uh, I liked the suit.

• 1:29:31Sean Fennessey?

  We know Val is very presentational, you know?

• 1:29:33Amanda Dobbins?

  It was a rough Q1, you know, for movies and for life.

• 1:29:37Sean Fennessey?

  We've fully come out of it.

• 1:29:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly, but it's like you-

• 1:29:38Sean Fennessey?

  We got a good Marvel movie, plus thinners.

• 1:29:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I was sitting there in Vegas on April 1st, just being like, we're like, we're struggling.

• 1:29:44Sean Fennessey?

  I was distraught.

• 1:29:45Amanda Dobbins?

  So I feel, I feel uplifted.

• 1:29:47Sean Fennessey?

  I was like, what happened to my beautiful movies? This sucks. And now I feel good. I feel, I don't know if I feel great, but I feel good.

• 1:29:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:53Sean Fennessey?

  Um, all right, great. Well, Mal, thank you. Where-

• 1:29:57Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:29:57Sean Fennessey?

  Where can we find you?

• 1:29:58Speaker 04

  Hey, check out House of R. We're doing deep dives right now on two of the best television shows that- Exist.

• 1:30:06Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:30:06Speaker 04

  The Last of Us and Andor. We're covering them at the same time.

• 1:30:09Sean Fennessey?

  You gotta catch up on Andor.

• 1:30:10Speaker 04

  Well, they're airing three episodes a week.

• 1:30:12Sean Fennessey?

  I know, it's a big burden.

• 1:30:13Speaker 04

  So you are rapidly behind.

• 1:30:14Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 1:30:14Speaker 04

  As of tonight, you will be six hours behind.

• 1:30:16Sean Fennessey?

  That's fucked up.

• 1:30:16Amanda Dobbins?

  It's their hour long, though?

• 1:30:18Speaker 04

  They're an hour long.

• 1:30:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Were they shorter last season?

• 1:30:20Speaker 04

  They were a little bit shorter. There were some more episodes last year that were in the 40s.

• 1:30:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I gotta finish the last season. I can't, because I gotta watch 45 Palm Newman movies.

• 1:30:27Speaker 04

  Cannot recommend it highly enough.

• 1:30:29Sean Fennessey?

  I love the first season.

• 1:30:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I really liked what I saw. And then I had Big Pick work to do. And then Zach went ahead.

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:30:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And so now I'm just like, really, it's fine.

• 1:30:38Speaker 04

  To move it up your list, I'm gonna send you a link to a video, the title of which is "One Hour of Man Mathma Dancing."

• 1:30:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:30:44Speaker 04

  I'm gonna send that to you. It will spoil something.

• 1:30:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll watch it.

• 1:30:47Speaker 04

  But I will also...

• 1:30:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm open to it. Tony Gilroy for life, you know?

• 1:30:50Speaker 04

  Spark your enthusiasm. Yeah, Gilroy. What a time to be the watch.

• 1:30:53Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you for being you.

• 1:30:54Speaker 04

  Thanks for being you.

• 1:30:55Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks for being on the pod. Thanks to Jack Sanders for being him, the producer of this episode. Thanks to Amanda for all of your wonderful insights.

• 1:31:05Speaker 04

  Science corner was great today. It was.

• 1:31:08Sean Fennessey?

  We will be back next week on the show. What are we doing? Oh, my gosh.

• 1:31:11Amanda Dobbins?

  35 over 35!

• 1:31:12Sean Fennessey?

  35 over 35.

• 1:31:14Speaker 04

  That's one of my favorite episodes of the year.

• 1:31:15Sean Fennessey?

  We have not done a movie star ranking for people older than 35 in two years. So the National Research Group has done whatever the fuck they do and given us yet another bit of data.

• 1:31:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Charles Holmes and I also did this. We did our... We did a summer movie star preview on Jam Session.

• 1:31:31Sean Fennessey?

  Very cool.

• 1:31:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, not a lot of movie stars in the firmament, but that's okay.

• 1:31:35Sean Fennessey?

  Not ideal. Nevertheless, we will be doing it here on Tuesday. We'll see you then.

• 1:31:57Speaker 06

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