‘Superman’ Is Here to Save the Day. Are We Saved?

It’s a bird … it’s a plane … it's the 'Superman' episode! Sean and Amanda dive deep into James Gunn’s highly anticipated ‘Superman,’ starring David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan (3:11). They discuss why they were pleasantly surprised and why they think the film works, explain why Corenswet was an excellent casting decision for a modernized version of the Superman character, and share the things they felt were ultimately not successful, like landing some of the story’s bigger themes. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY THE STARBUCKS COFFEE COMPANY. ORDER NOW | STARBUCKS. COM/MENU 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.

• 0:00Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is presented by Starbucks.

• 0:03Amanda Dobbins?

  The unofficial drink of summer is here and it's just as good as I remembered.

• 0:07Sean Fennessey?

  Starbucks Summer Berry Refresher is everything you'd want from a summer beverage.

• 0:11Amanda Dobbins?

  A blend of berry notes shaken with ice and poured over a layer of new raspberry flavored pearls. And personally, my favorite refresher is the Summer Berry Lemonade. It just tastes like summer in a cup and adds a whole other level of fresh flavors.

• 0:24Sean Fennessey?

  We are on the brink of a major heatwave here in Los Angeles and nothing would be more refreshing than a Starbucks Summer Berry Lemonade Refresher. Available for a limited time only, your Summer Berry Refresher is ready at Starbucks.

• 0:48Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 0:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:49Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Superman. There is a new Superman movie in the world directed by James Gunn. We will talk about it on this episode before we get into our conversation about the movie, which we've just seen last night. There was a small bit of movie news, which is that Dune Part III is real. It is happening. It is not called Dune Messiah. It is called Dune: Part III. Timothy Chalamet is in the movie. It's starting production and it has been dated officially for December 16, 2026. This is notable because it is the same day as Avengers Doomsday, which is after Fantastic Four: The First Steps, the next Marvel movie. There will be an 18-month gap between Marvel movies. And these two movies, which are both huge in their own way, are going toe to toe.

• 1:33Amanda Dobbins?

  For now.

• 1:34Sean Fennessey?

  For now.

• 1:35Amanda Dobbins?

  This is like, this is a real, like, you can't, this is corporate spreadsheets and that's fine. And it's our job, I guess, to like pay attention to their press releases. But yeah, this is 18 months away. I would imagine that there will be some synergies or, you know, best opportunities.

• 1:51Sean Fennessey?

  If you had to guess one of the movies moves, which one moves?

• 1:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Avengers.

• 1:54Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because of the...

• 1:57Sean Fennessey?

  But can it afford to move? Can they go two years without a movie?

• 2:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, and you don't think it'll be done in time? You don't think they could move it up to like November?

• 2:05Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, oh, well, there's, there was a report this week that there is no third act in the movie right now, which is in production.

• 2:11Amanda Dobbins?

  What's different is what I would say to you.

• 2:13Sean Fennessey?

  That is a problem. That is a problem.

• 2:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course it's a problem, but it hasn't stopped them from releasing every other movie.

• 2:19Sean Fennessey?

  That is, that is our elegant segue to Superman because James Gunn made some news in a Rolling Stone interview a couple of weeks ago in which he said that the problem with most comic book movies these days is that they go into production without a finished script. And that's not something he wants to do with what he's doing at DC Movies. He wants to have a completed script that he wants to shoot, or that he'll have another filmmaker shoot.

• 2:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Twice a day, I am the stop clock that agrees with James Gunn, I guess. Maybe once, but if we're doing military time, sure. Yeah, I think it's a good idea to go to make a movie with a finished script, just writ large.

• 2:57Sean Fennessey?

  It does seem like a good idea. I don't, I actually don't know enough about the Marvel process at this point. I have to assume someone submits something that is completed, but that everyone agrees they're not happy with, but is good enough to begin filming. 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 big game on Prime Video? 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. So let's just talk about Superman.

• 3:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 3:36Sean Fennessey?

  Superman has been described as the most important movie of the summer, maybe the most important movie of the year, certainly the most important movie, at least for now, for the comic book movie industrial complex.

• 3:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 3:48Sean Fennessey?

  We've been doing this for nigh 25 years since Spider-Man in 2000, 2000, 2002. And this has been in some ways the lifeblood of American movies and in other ways the bane of American movies. It's been a fairly dark five to 10 years.

• 4:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:07Sean Fennessey?

  Superman is written and directed by Gunn. It's his seventh feature film. Clearly very inspired by All Star Superman, which is a Grant Morrison run of the comic book from about 20 years ago. It is the first film in the DCU, now that they have shuttered the DCEU, which is the extended universe that Zack Snyder was somewhat responsible for. It stars David Corn sweat as Superman, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Holt as Lex Luthor, Eddie Gethie, Anthony Carrigan, Nathan Fillion, Isabel Merced.

• 4:40Sean Fennessey?

  The logline of the movie is this, when Superman gets drawn into conflicts at home and abroad, his actions are questioned, giving tech billionaire Lex Luthor the opportunity to get the man of steel out of the way for good. Will intrepid reporter Lois Lane and Superman's four-legged companion Crypto be able to help him before it's too late?

• 4:57Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think of Superman?

• 4:58Amanda Dobbins?

  It works. It works. And honestly, half of the movie I was pleasantly surprised by. The other half, I am famously and committedly allergic to James Gunn's brand of filmmaking and certainly most of his sensibilities. And I think some of that was my allergic, some of what doesn't work is my allergic reaction and some of what doesn't work is choices that I don't think pan out that perhaps mean I'm right, but that's fine. But I think he is great, she is great. Nicholas Holt is wonderful. I don't, you know, despite whatever's going on with that character.

• 5:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And so if you get the three main leads

• 5:47Amanda Dobbins?

  and you get the chemistry, I think, for me at least, the rest falls into place around it.

• 5:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think this is a great movie. I don't know if it's a perfect movie. It's not a perfect movie. I do think it is a really great Superman movie. And those are really hard to do, which we've seen. I think you could make the case that there has not been a great Superman movie since Richard Donner's Superman. I'm very fond of Superman 2, particularly Donner's cut of Superman 2. And the 1980 movie, which you and I both watched this week, or 78 movie, I should say, casts a very long shadow over Superman at the movies. And I give Gun a lot of credit for finding ways to echo and parallel the success of that movie and replicating really none of it. That this is, has the feel because of the John Williams score.

• 6:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 6:33Sean Fennessey?

  And the typical iconography of the suit and the hopefulness of the character. But the way that the story is told, the way that it looks, the performance style, the writing, and the desire to, I think, reflect the real world for better or worse.

• 6:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Sean Fennessey?

  Makes this a completely different kind of comic book movie. And there are a lot of things that he attempts to do that I feel comfortable saying do not work, but I'm really fascinated and interested and in many ways rooting for the fact that he did do them. And how we unpack that will be probably a big part of this conversation. But I came away just really impressed with his willingness to try a lot of things inside of what is typically considered a very boring container of Superman.

• 7:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I think what he does with Superman, the character, and how he pays homage to the 1978 and more broadly to the idea of Superman in our minds, but also updates him for 2025. Like, that is a good, smart decision. And he does something with the sincerity and almost like the dullness of the character, or that's the danger, right? If you don't figure out how to make Superman compelling. He solves it and it is, I mean, it's sentimental in the right way. Like, I think the way he positions him against both Lex Luthor and the various villains,

• 8:02Amanda Dobbins?

  but also just the world and Superman himself is smart. And I completely acknowledge that's a really hard thing to do. So I agree with you in that sense. Like, he makes the most important decisions, the right, most important decisions.

• 8:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think, let's talk about the very specific decisions. You know, I've made a list of all the things I think this movie does right.

• 8:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:23Sean Fennessey?

  And all the things this movie I don't think does very well.

• 8:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:26Sean Fennessey?

  I'd like to talk through most of them with you.

• 8:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:29Sean Fennessey?

  In general, I think this is. Pretty thrilling, a good setup for the future of these movies. I want to enjoy it.

• 8:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:38Sean Fennessey?

  As a standalone experience.

• 8:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yes, and I would argue that some of the, the, the you in DCU creeping in throughout this movie in like all the various ways that that takes shape is what is frustrating about it to me.

• 8:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 8:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Or not even, not even frustrating, but.

• 8:55Sean Fennessey?

  Less successful.

• 8:55Amanda Dobbins?

  When I checked out.

• 8:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 8:56Amanda Dobbins?

  When I was like, oh, you're doing this now. Okay. Um, and also notably when the movie gets away from Superman and from Lois and from Lex Luthor, who I thought were great. So.

• 9:08Sean Fennessey?

  Part of, part, all part of my notes.

• 9:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:09Sean Fennessey?

  Um, the first thing that it does well, and we will be spoiling this movie. This is one of the biggest movies of the year. If you like a movie podcast, I presume you're at least somewhat interested in Superman.

• 9:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:18Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe you'll see it. If you don't, that's okay. You can listen to this conversation anyway. Movie jumps in meteorus. Uh, there is no real backstory in this movie. There's no origin. There is a title card of a sort.

• 9:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And I got so stressed out. There's so much text and I, I am not, I'm a visual learner except for the title cards explaining like Baroque setups of superhero and sci-fi movies. And I like said to you, oh no, but I did my best. I sat there and I was like, I'm gonna absorb every word. I felt that, so it's styled in a like three centuries, three.

• 9:56Sean Fennessey?

  Three centuries ago, this happened.

• 9:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 9:58Sean Fennessey?

  Three decades ago, this happened.

• 9:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. So, but, um, you know, I liked the repetitive, the structure. It was, there was almost like, it was something for me to hold on to framework wise to remember what was going on, but I was nervous about the amount of information, information that was being conveyed to me via type in a short amount of time.

• 10:17Sean Fennessey?

  So to me, I was relieved by that because it was a fake out. It was, it was the suggestion that you were going to get a Star Wars-esque scroll. But in fact, like it, that actually, it operates in the same way. The same way that Star Wars kind of just thrusts you into the world. And in the first Star Wars film, you're just on a ship with Darth Vader and we're off in the middle of the story. This movie operates very similarly. There is a, a great amount of history around meta-humans and a Kryptonian who has arrived on this planet.

• 10:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 10:47Sean Fennessey?

  But the movie more or less assumes you know all that. And so. Where we start is Superman has just lost a battle.

• 10:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:53Sean Fennessey?

  Which is unfathomable in general because he's Superman.

• 10:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And by the time you get to the end of that title sequence, it's like three minutes ago.

• 11:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, it's three centuries, three decades, three years.

• 11:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And as the title sequence goes on, you realize like, okay, like I maybe I'm not gonna have to have every bit of this memorized. But I did feel that very familiar MCU comic book, like homework panic of like, oh, God. Like, I gotta, I have to. And, and it does effectively communicate by the end of the sequence that like, oh, no, you don't actually have to remember the names of both fake countries.

• 11:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Gunn has talked very openly about not wanting to do this and that he doesn't feel that we need to see the pearls strewn across the street in the Batman origin story. We don't need to see, you know, all of these images that come with superhero origins. He wants a more or less dispense with them, which is good. Now, I would not say he's subverting them. He is still working in more or less canonical mode of Superman.

• 11:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 11:52Sean Fennessey?

  Lex Luthor is an evil billionaire who wants to destroy Superman. Lois Lane is a Daily Planet reporter, who, you know, is a fiercely independent woman who also can't help but fall in love with Clark slash Superman. Jimmy Olsen is the sidekick in the office. There's a fun dog. Like, it is all still Superman.

• 12:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And also, speaking like canonically, you do within five minutes after that, you know, Superman, after the title sequence, you see a very, like a familiar image, like recreated for this movie with a funny cameo that speaks to the lore and the origin story of the super. So it like, it still is using.

• 12:32Sean Fennessey?

  The Fortress of Solitude is in this movie, for example. So all of that stuff is there. The way that it's framed is slightly different from the Donner version, for example, in that it's very pop. It's very colorful. It's silly at times. There are a lot of kind of winking asides and nudges and gags that feel somewhat reminiscent of the MCU storytelling, but I would argue maybe like a little bit less internet meme and a little bit more.

• 13:00Sean Fennessey?

  Goofball sense of humor? Which is kind of guns tone.

• 13:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, that's definitely goofy.

• 13:06Sean Fennessey?

  And that comes like really, really quickly in the movie. You find right away with the introduction of Crypto, the dog, and the way that Superman interacts with his dog, that this is a, this has been said and this is not an original thought, but this is a two hour Saturday morning cartoon. And if that is interesting to you as a, like a framework and a tonal choice for this movie, I think you will love this movie. If you liked Saturday morning cartoons as a kid, in that it's like, it's dangerous but not violent. It's epic but not stuffy. It's colorful and not washed out or overly serious. And it kind of moves and it's episodic. There's a villain, the villain needs to be dispensed with.

• 13:50Sean Fennessey?

  There will be another adventure tomorrow.

• 13:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:52Sean Fennessey?

  And it's just a good choice. It's just a good choice for Superman. It's a good choice if you like comic books. It's a good choice if you like cartoons. Not everybody does. But the MCU actually never really felt like a comic book. The way that it was serialized feels like comic book storytelling. But watching the movies, I didn't feel like I was reading a comic. This feels like reading a comic or watching a cartoon. And I give them credit for that. That's not easy to replicate. It's a unique experience, watching that stuff and consuming that stuff.

• 14:19Amanda Dobbins?

  To me, a person who occasionally watched Saturday morning cartoons, doesn't really read comic books, has lived in the last 20 years of this pop culture moment. I guess I would, I wouldn't say it scanned to me as a Saturday morning cartoon, but it felt familiar and nostalgic in a way that was pleasing as opposed to like thirsty. If that makes any sense of like trying to restructure and recreate. It's definitely someone who's like lived in the muck of this stuff and has an idea of it and, and does think it's also like really fun. And then to your point about it being pop and like being colorful, I do think.

• 15:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Half of the visual choices that are made in creating this world like are excellent. And I mean, it's obviously both stylistically and technologically like very, very different from the Richard Donner 1978, but there's a sense that like Superman is operating in a, in a real place for most of the time, even if it's a made up town. And that kind of leaps off the screen, pun intended or not intended, I guess.

• 15:37Sean Fennessey?

  It feels more real.

• 15:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And, and sets up a contrast with the other half of the film.

• 15:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we'll get there.

• 15:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 15:47Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think my single favorite choice in the movie is the characterization of Superman. This is a very contemporary way to frame this character who can be considered boring. Superman, um, you know, his origins are from Jewish creators. It's a, it's an alien story. It's a story about being an outsider. It's about a failure to fit in. It's about an aspiration to goodness that is in theory inside all people, but that he kind of represents, he kind of externalizes the potential of the human experience. This Superman is kind of like that, but also a Superman of the self. And he, this is emo Superman. And we've never really had this kind of Superman before.

• 16:30Sean Fennessey?

  And you see it very early on in the film after that first series of exchanges in Antarctica, when Clark comes back, he's been recharged and he conducts an interview with Lois Lane in her apartment.

• 16:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 16:46Sean Fennessey?

  And he conducts the interview as Superman and they're together and she knows he's Superman.

• 16:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:51Sean Fennessey?

  So we've kind of dispensed with the whole.

• 16:53Amanda Dobbins?

  They yada, yada, all of that.

• 16:54Sean Fennessey?

  All of that is gone, which I thought was a good choice. So that we don't have to go through the like, will they, won't they, will she, won't she realize what's going on here stuff. But watching them talk, watching his kind of angst, his nervousness, his frustration with the way that he's perceived in the world.

• 17:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 17:11Sean Fennessey?

  And then this is something you wouldn't know if you didn't do what I did, but last night I was looking for a song on the soundtrack and I found the official Spotify playlist. And this probably would annoy you to no end, but James Gunn made a specific playlist for every single character. And I looked at the songs that he chose as like Clark's songs.

• 17:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:30Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 17:32Sean Fennessey?

  They're all like early 2000s emo and pop punk. And that kind of perfectly made the character make sense to me.

• 17:40Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like.

• 17:41Sean Fennessey?

  This is a Superman who listens to All Time Low. And, you know, who listens to, this is, he's the Dashboard Confessional Superman.

• 17:46Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, it's in the text. They're arguing about like, you know.

• 17:49Sean Fennessey?

  They're having a punk rock conversation.

• 17:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. And, and Clark thinks that he's punk. And he's definitely not. And.

• 17:57Sean Fennessey?

  And Lois sees herself as someone who is actually punk.

• 17:59Amanda Dobbins?

  But Lois is actually like yelling about bands. Like they play that on the radio, you know? And he's like, well, that means that lots of people like them. It's, that's one of the great scenes of the movie.

• 18:06Sean Fennessey?

  Very charming moment.

• 18:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Like very funny and, and they have real chemistry. But yeah, I agree. Like, this struggle is, it like, is internal as much as it, it is, it's mirrored both like, who am I supposed to be? To myself, but also to everybody else, which in some ways is like a very familiar superhero thing of like, oh, do people want me to do this? Do people not want me to do this? Like, how do we, you know, what are my superpowers? Like, what, how, how should I use them? But it is handled, it, it's done deftly and with a lot of,

• 18:45Amanda Dobbins?

  like, care in this. So you actually do believe that Superman is just like trying to figure things out, you know? He's just like, he's, he's early 30s. He, he's trying to get in touch with his feelings. He has two different like dad figures who have taught him different ways of what to be like. It's, it's, it's very smart and, and very well realized.

• 19:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great choice. I was genu-, as you know, I was genuinely concerned about this movie. I was really down on the first two trailers. I didn't really understand the David Corn sweat thing. And now I understand it.

• 19:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I understand it so powerfully.

• 19:18Sean Fennessey?

  It was a very, he was a very good choice for this because he's not Henry Cavill. You know, he is not. Made of absolute iron and has like a lantern jaw. That's not, that's not what this Superman is. He's still the most powerful being on earth.

• 19:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 19:31Sean Fennessey?

  And is going to save the day.

• 19:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And is tall, dark and handsome.

• 19:34Sean Fennessey?

  And very handsome and fits the mold. But there's something vulnerable about him. It is, they have humanized the inhuman. That's kind of the idea of this movie. And I think it works really well. And it is like, it's the modern condition, you know?

• 19:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 19:47Sean Fennessey?

  Everyone is just more sensitive now than they were 50 years ago, than they were 100 years ago when the character was created. We don't have as much of the stiff upper lip than we might imagine was like a character of the country, or at least the American man. So I liked it. I really liked it.

• 20:01Amanda Dobbins?

  It also allows Lois to be less helpless and more just-

• 20:07Sean Fennessey?

  More the hero.

• 20:08Amanda Dobbins?

  More the hero, more Rachel Brosnahan, just abs- If Superman is having a crisis of confidence, Lois like knows what's up.

• 20:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's like, get it together, bro.

• 20:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Lois is our girl boss for forever. But, and I normally mean that in a rude way. And I think that she's, it's actually a great character and performance. I mean, obviously the journalistic ethics will, you know, we can get to that.

• 20:30Sean Fennessey?

  We should go through that at some point. Amanda's journalism corner.

• 20:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's just, there's like, there's a lot here to discuss. I also wanted to talk about their copy editing process on the ship, but that's skipping ahead. Anyway, at the end-

• 20:43Sean Fennessey?

  Journalism is done in this movie. I'll have you know.

• 20:45Amanda Dobbins?

  It is done. And she also like drives, you know, like an iMac ship. So she gets to do all sorts of things.

• 20:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, this is something that you might not like, but I find to be a fascinating component of the movie that is related.

• 20:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, it's definitely, like, I see it. I know what you're saying. I, you know, it's-

• 21:07Sean Fennessey?

  Let me say it and you can quibble.

• 21:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Not that I quibble with it. It is, it, this movie helped me understand why I am so allergic to so much of James Gunn's output, including almost all of his promo stuff.

• 21:21Sean Fennessey?

  This is the apotheosis, though, of that condition.

• 21:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 21:24Sean Fennessey?

  So in the movie, James Gunn is Superman. It's unmistakable. There is a, there is a plot in this movie where Superman comes under fire because a piece of his past related to his parents is unearthed by a vicious enemy who then uses the nefarious and boundless evils of internet troll armies to repeatedly misinterpret to the public. The reputation and standing of quote unquote, "the last good man in society."

• 21:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:51Sean Fennessey?

  And this is exactly what happened, at least in his perception, I think, to James Gunn. In 2018, he was fired from Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume Three by Disney because old tweets were unearthed. And he was roundly castigated and pushed out

• 22:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Sean Fennessey?

  of comfortable society. Now, I think better judgment prevailed on Disney's part. He was rehired. Obviously, the cast of that movie was furious because they love him. And he also helped make their careers in some ways with those movies. But this telling is simultaneously like a very personal exorcism of a publicly embarrassing moment for him. And also just kind of like revenge porn against Disney? And I think that's fascinating.

• 22:39Amanda Dobbins?

  It's no-

• 22:39Sean Fennessey?

  That happening in the biggest movie of the summer is, to me, if you want auturism, if you want a personal vision, he did that.

• 22:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I don't disagree. I think that there is

• 22:56Amanda Dobbins?

  just an undertone, or maybe not even under, of

• 23:02Amanda Dobbins?

  of main character energy and great madness that-

• 23:06Sean Fennessey?

  Some self pitying.

• 23:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And self pitying that is exasperating to me. And I do also, now that you've isolated this plot point, my issues with this part of the plot are the same issues that I had with the James Gunn issue in real life. Which is, like, how did no one take care of this tape? You know what I mean? And now we're just magically unearthing it again. Like, it strains like all belief and is also just such a fucking cellphone. You know, that I am kind of like, well, I, you know, this is all stupid. This is really, really, really stupid.

• 23:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, I can't disagree with you that it was not a good idea for James Gunn to tweet those tweets. It was not a good idea for him to not delete those tweets as he grew in stature in the industry. It was not a, you know, all of that is true, obviously. And I think him equating the naturally empathic goodness of Superman with that experience is a bit absurd.

• 24:11Sean Fennessey?

  Now, here's where I'm gonna really, I'm really gonna go for it.

• 24:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:16Sean Fennessey?

  The movie that this reminded me of the most, and I thought of it about halfway through the movie.

• 24:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:20Sean Fennessey?

  Is The Brutalist.

• 24:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I thought you were going one more. No, I mean, listen, I said great man, main character, and energy for a reason.

• 24:28Sean Fennessey?

  The Brutalist is essentially the same story.

• 24:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 24:31Sean Fennessey?

  About, in that case, a great artist who has been, who is believed to be at the absolute top of his class, who is then exiled and used by powerful forces and then discarded. And obviously, Brady Corbe sees a lot of himself in the Adrian Brody character in that film, and is applying some of his experiences as an artist and characterizing them. And also, using tremendously traumatic historical conflict as a backdrop for the story. And this movie, which we will get to, does very much the same thing. Now, are Superman and the Brutalist similar kinds of movie-going experiences? They're not. But they're kind of similar filmmaking perspectives. And

• 25:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 25:14Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously, I love, I love The Brutalist.

• 25:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 25:17Sean Fennessey?

  I think, why make a movie, why, why write and direct a movie if you're not gonna pour yourself into it? If you're not gonna pour your ideas about your experience as a living person into it? I think I have a natural empathy to that. I'm interested in what people have to say through this medium of storytelling. And so, I liked The Gun Did It. Now, is it goofy? It's a little goofy.

• 25:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Sean Fennessey?

  But it's better than just like, here's Captain America 4, you're an idiot, I hope you enjoy this. You know what I mean?

• 25:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I totally agree. I do think that baked into both The Brutalist and this. I like, I agree with you. You're gonna write and direct something. You know, tell you, right, well, you know, write, write yourself. But implied in both of these takes and this filmmaking perspective, and the, you know, the hero as the unimpeachable force, who is misunderstood or blockaded by, by everyone else. And if you could, if, if this person could just get final cut on life, then, then everything would be right in the world? Like, like lol, a little bit. And, and do you know why lol?

• 26:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I saw all the parts of the same movie you made that like, don't work, you know? So, I don't know if we can trust you with the final cut.

• 26:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Amanda Dobbins?

  And there is something in the text that they are making about their own.

• 26:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Kind of infallibility.

• 26:42Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:43Amanda Dobbins?

  That show their fallibility at the thing they are doing that makes me laugh. That's all.

• 26:49Sean Fennessey?

  The dividing aspect of those two movies, though. I think I was a little bit more frustrated by hearing you say that about The Brutalist, because I was like, this is a small movie. Like, if that part of the movie doesn't work, for example.

• 27:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's fine. Like, this is something that was really important to him, that he wanted to put on screen.

• 27:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 27:05Sean Fennessey?

  You could call it pretentious, you could say it's unsuccessful, but it is like from a very pure place to try to do that inside of a Superman movie, which is literally a, like, potentially a stock price moving venture.

• 27:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 27:17Sean Fennessey?

  Is a wild act of self-regard. And I don't mean that negatively. So I'm fascinated by that being in the movie and by it being, to me, so transparent. Now, I'll suggest one other person that I thought of while watching the movie.

• 27:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:32Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 27:32Amanda Dobbins?

  This one's funny.

• 27:34Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe it's a troll and maybe it's not, but I thought of Taylor Swift.

• 27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 27:37Sean Fennessey?

  Because Taylor Swift, this is her iconography. The most successful artist of her generation, truly beloved.

• 27:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:45Sean Fennessey?

  In many ways, seemingly infallible and invulnerable.

• 27:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:48Sean Fennessey?

  But also someone, no doubt, stricken by a kind of main character, how could this happen to me, energy, pretty much through a large, all the way up until like three years ago, I would say.

• 27:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Has made a tremendous amount of money on that particular identity.

• 28:05Sean Fennessey?

  That, yeah, that ideology.

• 28:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Sean Fennessey?

  And that is the Superman we're getting.

• 28:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. What does it say about you that when a man does it, you think it's really bold and exciting? And when Taylor Swift does it, you're one of her greatest detractors for 15 years running?

• 28:20Sean Fennessey?

  It says I have a lot to learn.

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  No, you know, I think.

• 28:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:25Sean Fennessey?

  My challenge is specifically that I just don't ultimately like Taylor Swift's music that much.

• 28:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:31Sean Fennessey?

  And I do like James Gunn movies.

• 28:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Sean Fennessey?

  And that's really all it boils down to.

• 28:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. I mean, I like same, but in reverse.

• 28:37Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, I enjoy Madonna. If Madonna.

• 28:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Sean Fennessey?

  Po- positioned herself in the same way, I'd be more forgiving because I like her music more. So, but to me, this kind of framework is very common. And it also applies to the real world. I mean, this is how a lot of our world leaders.

• 28:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Sean Fennessey?

  Position themselves to us. They say like, I'm all-knowing and all-powerful and I have everything. Why won't everybody stop attacking me?

• 29:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 29:01Sean Fennessey?

  And. It's just a smart way to frame, or at least it's representative

• 29:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:07Sean Fennessey?

  of a common psyche amongst the powerful. I think that's really what I'm trying to circle.

• 29:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That is true. And it is also, it is like the greatest weakness of otherwise deeply powerful people is being like, why don't you like me? Why don't you like me?

• 29:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 29:20Amanda Dobbins?

  So I guess there is some self-knowledge in that, though not, I don't know. I don't know whether I think it's actually self-knowledge or just accidental.

• 29:31Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know either. I don't know either. It feels unmistakable to me, but I could be wrong. James Gunn can say, I wasn't thinking of that at all.

• 29:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Sean Fennessey?

  Seems unlikely. Okay, now this might be where we diverge a little bit.

• 29:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 29:40Sean Fennessey?

  So to me, the Metropolis world building and the pacing of this movie is very good. This is a movie that I think looks good. It is not in New York, but it feels close enough.

• 29:50Amanda Dobbins?

  It's Cleveland.

• 29:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's Cleveland, okay.

• 29:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, or many of the locations are in Cleveland, and I think it's based on Cleveland because apparently Superman also has some historic origins in Cleveland.

• 30:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, maybe the founders are from Cleveland, the creators are from, I can't recall if the creators are from Cleveland. That makes sense. That's great. Not so far from Kansas. That would be logical. I think Metropolis looks pretty good, and I think the pacing of this movie is very good. This movie's under two hours.

• 30:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:17Sean Fennessey?

  We are living in the era of the two hour and 48 minute comic book movie, and we've, we've kind of whinged about it quite a bit in the last five years. And this was pretty brisk.

• 30:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Why would you think I disagree with this?

• 30:31Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's because I don't, was unbothered by the loading of the movie, I'll say, that there are a lot of characters in this movie.

• 30:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:40Sean Fennessey?

  That they are kind of like very, one of the only times I heard you sigh during the film was the introduction of the quote, "justice gang."

• 30:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:48Sean Fennessey?

  Which is Hawkgirl, Mr. Terrific, and the Guy Gardner version of Green Lantern. We can talk about Green Lanterns if you're interested at all.

• 30:57Sean Fennessey?

  But they show up on the scene to battle a kaiju with Superman.

• 30:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:00Sean Fennessey?

  And it just kind of turns into a comic book movie all of a sudden. You know, what had been like a more tightly focused character study of Superman and his battle with Lex Luthor became a lot of CGI, a lot of flying around and fighting a monster.

• 31:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:14Sean Fennessey?

  I thought that was the stuff that wasn't gonna work when I was watching the trailers. And I thought it worked really well. Now, it does do one thing that I don't like, which we can talk about in terms of getting less Superman.

• 31:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 31:26Sean Fennessey?

  But I think that those characters and the way that they're framed in this world is is pretty mild. It's not a lot of like over explication. There's a shocking lack of exposition in this movie.

• 31:38Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true, except their their job and what they have to solve is the most mumbo jumbo exposition of the whole film.

• 31:51Sean Fennessey?

  For, yes.

• 31:52Amanda Dobbins?

  So my, my problem with them, in addition to they show up and you're just like, oh, great. It's another superhero movie. And, and to me, we can talk about whether this does feel like a Marvel movie, or whether it feels like a departure. I think it can be both. But, you know, I'm trained at this point, like, oh, great. Okay, so here's the spin off for the next thing. And here's like what we're setting up. And I just, I sighed because I was tired of that. The other thing that those characters, well, they sort of represent the, the engineers, Mr. Terrific, what's, who's, who's?

• 32:26Sean Fennessey?

  Mr. Terrific, yeah.

• 32:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Mr. Terrific.

• 32:28Sean Fennessey?

  That's Eddie Gettigie's character, yeah.

• 32:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, ends up having to spend a lot of time in like another portal universe. And so just the James Gunn, the James Gunn sci fi stuff, like, like goofy sci fi, and we all have to like build up a team and like jump some portals and make up some science, uh, and have like a lot of creatures, um, who, you know, look a lot like humans that I know. But, you know, I like, I, it's, it's not my flavor. I just like, I don't like it. Um, I don't, I have no interest in it. I didn't like it in Guardians of the Galaxy. Um, I don't think it's funny. I don't, I think that it looked like absolute shit, uh, especially compared with Metropolis, which I think was like filmed so

• 33:13Amanda Dobbins?

  well, so, and those action sequences are like very exciting. So that was why I sighed. It's not because of the lack of, you know, exposition or the lack of.

• 33:27Amanda Dobbins?

  That I didn't understand. I like understood plenty.

• 33:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it is a fairly understandable movie. I think these movies tend to get pretty ornate in their plotting and in their MacGuffening. But I do agree with you. I think the biggest flaw of the movie is a big chunk in the second act where Superman effectively is extradited to a black site.

• 33:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 33:49Sean Fennessey?

  And tortured. And that's one of many real world events that he is very closely mirroring in the actions. His detainment itself is a is clearly a nod to the practices of ICE and illegal immigrants.

• 34:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely.

• 34:04Sean Fennessey?

  And the idea of like taking people, you know, government sponsored, but sort of like black shadowed.

• 34:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 34:11Sean Fennessey?

  Disappearing.

• 34:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, licensed out. And the American government is represented in this movie as kind of, they have faces, but they're just in one room. Doing what Lex Luthor tells them to do or not do.

• 34:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they're bureaucratic functions.

• 34:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and they're they're more or less being controlled by money. So we can talk about some of those aspects of the movie. I do want to talk about those aspects of the movie. But those aspects of the movie lead directly to this period where they enter a pocket universe, which Lex has created in an effort to kind of disappear his enemies. And the pocket universe is a pocket universe. It's not the real world. It's on the verge of a black hole. And it's just kind of a CGI mess. And it's like a drag in a movie that otherwise I think has a lot of invention around how it wants to look. And how it wants to represent Superman existing in the pop real world of Metropolis. And there's a, that's the only time when Mr. Terrific's exposition machine is going at all times. He has to tell Lois everything that is happening.

• 35:12Amanda Dobbins?

  There are lots of gizmos and gadgets.

• 35:15Sean Fennessey?

  It was it was definitely the sequence of the movie that I liked the least. I didn't like how it looked. I thought that the ideas, like when he's being hauled off, I was like, oh, wow.

• 35:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 35:24Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty dramatically showing us what our life is like in a Superman movie.

• 35:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And that is still like actually like in Metropolis and the people are.

• 35:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Like the, the whatever, like the mercenary crew is like, is, looks a lot like ICE. And there is someone like, it's Frank Grillo, right? Who is explaining, you know, they've, they've contracted you out so they don't have to deal with it.

• 35:47Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 35:48Amanda Dobbins?

  So, so you have no rights. Like, they don't apply to you because you're not a citizen.

• 35:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and then obviously, it's a very, I think it is what you said. It is James Gunn's predilection for that kind of story stuff. It is the most guardian's aspect of the movie. We see the most characters. We see the most like creatures. We get introduced to Metamorpho, who's a Justice League character.

• 36:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 36:12Sean Fennessey?

  Who has the power to transform any part of his body to like an element.

• 36:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:16Sean Fennessey?

  And so that's how we get Kryptonite introduced to the movie.

• 36:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, he couldn't transform himself into something that could get him out of the black site and get everyone else. I mean, he does later, so.

• 36:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very, it's a very good note.

• 36:29Amanda Dobbins?

  You know.

• 36:30Sean Fennessey?

  From Cinemasins.

• 36:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 36:31Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda, Plot Holes Amanda.

• 36:35Sean Fennessey?

  Before we get further into the things that maybe don't work as well. Let's just circle the performances. Corn Sweat.

• 36:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Lights out.

• 36:43Sean Fennessey?

  Victory.

• 36:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's so good. And, and he also just like has a thing there, like a few shots of him where I was just like, I swooned a little. You know, which like you do need from Superman.

• 36:52Sean Fennessey?

  You do.

• 36:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Not that, um, Henry Cavill didn't have that, but there is something like, like really endearing and still also, yes, that, that man is, that's a cinema star.

• 37:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Cavill didn't play Superman with very much humor.

• 37:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:10Sean Fennessey?

  I thought he struck the absolute right kind of figure for Superman. But I just think the writing kind of failed him over and over and over again. I kind, I wanted to enjoy him in those movies. Corn Sweat. I'll be curious to see what they do with Superman in the future because I feel like he can only work with James Gunn.

• 37:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yeah.

• 37:30Sean Fennessey?

  If you let someone else write him, will they be able to thread the needle of this very sensitive mega power?

• 37:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 37:42Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 37:44Amanda Dobbins?

  There are a lot of emo emo boys out there in like James Gunn's age group.

• 37:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 37:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And a lot of them are making movies now, so.

• 37:51Sean Fennessey?

  You're not wrong about that. Rachel Brosnahan, one.

• 37:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Lights out, once again.

• 37:56Sean Fennessey?

  I would like her to take me to dinner.

• 38:00Sean Fennessey?

  She's very charming. She's very appealing. I think that the, anything happening in The Daily Planet is very TV. I don't mean that as like an insult, but it's very like.

• 38:09Amanda Dobbins?

  We're, we're moving to the next scene here. We're doing.

• 38:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 38:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And in a way, like, it is doing like plot exposition. It's plot exposition about journalism.

• 38:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's at least a great part of the creation of those characters. It's like, there is literally a character whose job it is to find out what's going on.

• 38:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Sean Fennessey?

  And she gets to be the detective of the story. So she gets to draw the conclusion that in the film, the civil conflict between Baravia and Jarnapur.

• 38:38Amanda Dobbins?

  That sounds right.

• 38:39Sean Fennessey?

  Is oriented around Lex Luthor's participation in terms of arms dealing. And that's the kind of story that a big city newspaper reporter would break. So.

• 38:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Once upon a time, when we had, you know, big, one when we had big city newspapers.

• 38:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, now we just get it on Substack. Yeah.

• 38:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I was just gonna say, we just have one.

• 38:57Sean Fennessey?

  What if they made Lois Lane a Substacker? I feel like that would actually have been an even more resonant choice in these times.

• 39:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that.

• 39:04Sean Fennessey?

  Podcaster?

• 39:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I actually do think that the amount of real media that the movie works into this movie is, is tone perfect. Like, they got it right, which is.

• 39:15Sean Fennessey?

  TV, broadcast.

• 39:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And the Fox, like the fakes Fox News.

• 39:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, Michael Ian Black is a Fox, is the Tucker Carlson of this movie.

• 39:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Very funny. And there are references to social media and also like Superman not really understanding it. And then a great joke, the only funny part of the, the sci-fi world, what's the pocket universe?

• 39:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 39:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Is the, um, is Lex Luthor's trolls, who are all like, who are actually like little monkeys typing all their mean things about to read. That was, and that is when the, oh, this is about you, like, comes on, but it was still very funny.

• 39:49Sean Fennessey?

  It was very funny.

• 39:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Nicholas Holt.

• 39:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Sean Fennessey?

  Now.

• 39:55Sean Fennessey?

  He's become a bit of a character on this show. He keeps taking these parts where he is getting beta cucked.

• 40:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, in this one, he takes this part because he wasn't gonna get Superman. He auditioned for Superman.

• 40:09Sean Fennessey?

  And he has said he's auditioned for many superheroes and many big time action leads over the years. And he basically never gets the role. And so instead, what he gets is the part in Nosferatu, the part in Juror Number Two, you know, the part in Renfield, the part in Warm Bodies. Like, he's in the genre movie.

• 40:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Sean Fennessey?

  He is the star most of the time. And yet somehow-

• 40:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's essential to selling all of the movies.

• 40:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, but he is reactive.

• 40:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he is like, he's the blood bag from Fury Road. He's not driving the action. Now, in this case, he does get to drive the action.

• 40:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:48Sean Fennessey?

  Because everything he does dictates what happens. I was a little bit skeptical of this rendition of Lex all the way up until the end.

• 40:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 40:58Sean Fennessey?

  He gets a big speech at the end.

• 41:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Sean Fennessey?

  Where they're sort of, they're having a conversation-

• 41:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Sean Fennessey?

  Via FaceTime bot, no, FaceTime drone.

• 41:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it FaceTime drone, or is it when they're, oh, Face before, before they come?

• 41:13Sean Fennessey?

  When they're talking to each other.

• 41:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 41:15Sean Fennessey?

  When they basically have a philosophical conversation about the character of Lex Luthor.

• 41:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:19Sean Fennessey?

  Which is, why is Lex so mad at Superman?

• 41:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that is my, that's my actual one big note about the whole-

• 41:26Sean Fennessey?

  So you didn't think that explanation worked?

• 41:28Amanda Dobbins?

  No, the explanation did work, but it comes in at one hour and 45 minutes.

• 41:31Sean Fennessey?

  It does.

• 41:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And the, everything else that they jump right into, or the yada yada, as the case may be, I was fine with. But him just being like so big mad at Superman for, and I was just like, like, what actually is your damage? What is, what's going on here?

• 41:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 41:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think, and I don't blame Holt's performance for that. I think that is just basically like, that is a piece of character development that is missing from the movie until the very end of the movie.

• 41:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's clearly a choice that they made. It wasn't, to me, it wasn't like, like a mistake.

• 42:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Sean Fennessey?

  They were just like, we're gonna hide the ball on revealing- Any of Lex Luthor's intentions, and they're not just in the vein of Lex and Superman, the Donner Superman, like Lex and the Donner Superman is like, world domination is my goal. I'm gonna, I'm gonna set off a series of natural disasters in California so that I can take greater control of the land in this world.

• 42:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 42:23Sean Fennessey?

  That that is the coin of the realm. This is a different kind of a character.

• 42:26Amanda Dobbins?

  The thing is, they do, like, do the, they establish that plot and for a long time, and what Lois is investigating is that he is an arms dealer, he's funding this, like, this invasion of another country so that he can be like the ruler over it and also get access to oil fields, not related to anything in the world at all. And, and they sort of position that as like, that's his motivation for a while. And then you learn that the real motivation, though, is that he was doing all of that to try to trap Superman.

• 43:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 43:03Amanda Dobbins?

  But they do actually, he says a few times, no, I really hate Superman the most, like, at the very beginning, in a way that undermines that feint. And that's what I was confused about. If they'd stuck with just the basic, he's your average warlord, and, or not your average warlord, you know, he does also, by the way, resemble Stephen Miller in this movie.

• 43:24Sean Fennessey?

  No doubt about it.

• 43:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And, like, physically.

• 43:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 43:27Sean Fennessey?

  This is a story about people, James Gunn has, like, literalized this in the press, like, one day before the movie came out, and he was like, this is a movie about an immigrant.

• 43:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:35Sean Fennessey?

  And that's, it sounds like director bullshit, but it isn't?

• 43:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 43:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's a rare case where, like, when a guy is like, this is about, this is the Parallax View, but with superheroes, like, it is, which, again, we'll get there, whether that's a good idea or not, is an interesting conversation.

• 43:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Whether they, like, whether they, whether they handle it.

• 43:51Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Not what is it about, but how is it about it, is the thing I'm asking.

• 43:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 43:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyway, they undermine the feint of like, he's just doing this for power and land and money.

• 44:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Too early on.

• 44:04Sean Fennessey?

  I just really, really liked the way that, to me, this was really good gun storytelling. And I don't know if he found this in Morrison or Tom King or one of the other writers, but Lex saying, "It is envy that drives me crazy." "It is envy that drives me to want to destroy you." "Because the envy that I feel locates the fact that we're all weak." "And that that weakness is what drives us mad, and I can't live like that." "I can't..." And that is, that's a very modern thing.

• 44:33Amanda Dobbins?

  That speech and that performance was great. It was just kind of where it was in the storytelling that, and the other choices they made, giving his motivations or not, that were sort of confusing to me. But like, no, I agree with you. Everything they're yelling at each other in like, the Sunny Ship. And I also really liked the Sunny Ship, like the tower bridge that takes off.

• 44:54Sean Fennessey?

  The bridge, yes, yeah, yeah.

• 44:55Amanda Dobbins?

  But no, at some point, it's fine. Was, was great writing and worked for me.

• 45:01Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. That stuff is really good. That's somebody who gets those characters and has something to say, I think, through those characters. Eddie Gethseki is like the third lead of this movie. He's in more than Nicholas Holt is.

• 45:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:12Sean Fennessey?

  As Mr. Terrific, a character that I'm just not all that familiar with. I'm not a huge DC person.

• 45:19Sean Fennessey?

  I thought he was pretty good.

• 45:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I felt bad for him. He had to like, work with a portal for a while.

• 45:24Sean Fennessey?

  He's in a portal.

• 45:25Amanda Dobbins?

  A lot of paper mache.

• 45:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 45:26Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I wonder like, how many times they had to like redo that, you know? Because the like, crinkly stuff. I actually, like, the, I guess, the production design and the actual, like, the textures of everything.

• 45:39Sean Fennessey?

  It all feels very real.

• 45:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, until you actually get to the black hole stuff. And that's very bad. But I like, I will give them, and that was also even, that was true of Guardians of the Galaxy 3, a movie that I straight up hated, but... He is saddled with a lot of silliness.

• 45:54Sean Fennessey?

  He is. He does get one badass fight sequence that lasts like one minute where he puts Lo- they're about to get to the portal and he puts Lois in a force field bubble so she won't be injured by all of these mercenaries. And he dispatches them in a kind of a classic James Gunn semi slow mo set to a pop song.

• 46:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Here's, yes, it, cool design. All of the mercenaries have real like Broadway cast member energy to their moves. And like, I even noticed the choreography, like everyone like landing their spot and they're just like, ah! You know, and you can really, and these are choreographed and I consider it like them, you know, dance sequences in a lot of ways. But we, you could see everyone knew exactly where their marks were and was like really going for the mark.

• 46:45Sean Fennessey?

  That's the Gunn thing is like, he's kind of a hokey razzmatazz guy. I kind of like that about him. I mean, I, he's not Stanley Donovan or anything, but he does like that, um, let's slow this movie down for a moment.

• 46:57Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not the slowing down. It's like, I would have, I would have asked for another take from, from all of the mercenary actors. I would have said, let's land it a little more naturally, you know? Like hit the mark, but also make it look like you've been here before.

• 47:15Sean Fennessey?

  In general, I think with the exception of the big proton river pocket universe save, which I really was not fond of at all. I thought most of the other big action set pieces were pretty effective. I think the big showdown near the end between Ultraman and the engineer and Superman was pretty cool.

• 47:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that the one in the baseball stadium? Yeah, that was, and I think that's the Cleveland stadium as well.

• 47:39Sean Fennessey?

  Where the Guardians play.

• 47:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. No, I thought that was great though. What was, is the engineer the one with the whirring things who like magically finds, whatever?

• 47:46Sean Fennessey?

  She has, I guess, nanotech?

• 47:48Amanda Dobbins?

  We'll get to it. We'll get to it.

• 47:51Sean Fennessey?

  I also thought the kaiju sequence was pretty funny.

• 47:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:53Sean Fennessey?

  The idea of just like letting loose a little monster that would grow overnight and then it becoming. And the fact that it wasn't like, that wasn't the big conclusion to the third act of this movie. It was like eight minutes in the movie just to show, like introduce new characters and to do the thing, which is like, the movie is constantly trying to distract Superman from what's really going on in the world, which is itself a kind of load bearing metaphor about how things work right now.

• 48:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was funny. In the, in the right way, like the, at one point they're attacking the Kaiju's eyeballs and then they cut to a woman who's like both videoing it on her phone and grossed out. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. And, and I think if that had been like the only, you know, creature-based funny James Gunn thing, I would have been really into it and just keeps going. I will say that's like, that also has one of like five different dog moments in the, in the. I'm getting to crypto. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I just wanted to identify that that's, that's one of them. I don't even, is that crypto or is that another one? I think it was crypto. It does look like crypto. Yeah. Okay.

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• 51:05Sean Fennessey?

  Here's what I wrote about what doesn't work.

• 51:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 51:10Sean Fennessey?

  There is undoubtedly, and if this is me contradicting what I've just said for the last 45 minutes, please tell me.

• 51:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Do I contradict myself? You know?

• 51:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I contain multitudes. There is an inherent tension between James Gunn's joke-a-minute patter, the kind of tension-deflating dialogue with Superman's strong, silent iconography. That Superman is a representation of an ability to endure. And that the movie wants to upset that expectation, but I think it's still ultimately at its best when it is just sincere.

• 51:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:50Sean Fennessey?

  And when it is just Lois and Clark looking at each other, being real, and not making jokes, and not being like, "I was doing important stuff." You know, like the goofy lines that Clark or Superman is constantly being fed throughout the movie. He's not Starlord and...

• 52:09Amanda Dobbins?

  1,000%.

• 52:10Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know how to rationalize this in a James Gunn movie. Because I'm like, I don't want James Gunn to not be James Gunn. But whenever Superman said something like that, I was like, that's just stupid. That's just lame. That didn't, that doesn't feel right.

• 52:22Amanda Dobbins?

  He had a couple comedic moments as Clark that I did think really worked.

• 52:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think Clark is a little different than...

• 52:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Or, but I guess even in the interview when he's Clark, but he's Superman. He's dressed as Clark, but he's being Superman. And Lois is like going back and forth. And she's like, "Do you think this is going well?" And he's like, "I think I'm doing a good job."

• 52:42Sean Fennessey?

  That was funny.

• 52:43Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, that is funny. So there are moments to locate it. I, I didn't feel this tension as mu...

• 52:51Amanda Dobbins?

  As much with Superman himself, just because there weren't that many instances of it, as with the movie writ large. And I just, some of it might be that I don't think that James Gunn's sense of humor is ultimately that funny, or rather, I think the pacing of it is really off. And this movie really extends all of the jokes way past where they need to go. And part of me wondered whether that's a response to the kind of one-off, quippy nature of Marvel things. I mean, these are quippy, but it's like, quippy for a full minute. And we're not going to do it once, we're going to do it like four times.

• 53:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And-

• 53:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a sequence where the Lois goes to confront the Justice Gang and try to encourage them to help her find Superman. And Nathan Fillion, who I think is pretty funny and is like a part of the troupe of James Gunn guys, is playing a very silly version of Guy Gardner. And everything he says is a gag.

• 53:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 53:42Sean Fennessey?

  Is like, is a kind of self-attack on his own bluster.

• 53:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:46Sean Fennessey?

  And-

• 53:47Amanda Dobbins?

  But like, and then-

• 53:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little tiring.

• 53:48Amanda Dobbins?

  It is also just, like, once you have to diagram a joke, then you're in real trouble. But you could like diagram a lot of these jokes and they're like clauses and circling back and it like just keeps going on and on and on. And I was like, it honestly feels like a little condescending. I'm like, yeah, like, I get it, you know?

• 54:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It just, it is his tone, you know?

• 54:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 54:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's not untrue to what he's trying to accomplish. It just, it just doesn't always work in this framework. For the, there's a difference between the conception of the characters and then the execution of the dialogue.

• 54:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 54:16Sean Fennessey?

  And that's the thing that I think I kind of struggled with them candidly the most in this movie. We did mention the kind of second act, action sequence, which is, you know, not ideal. I do think the moment when Superman convinces Metamorpho to create a son to help him break through is very exciting.

• 54:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I think like, here's a sentence that I never thought I would say out loud. The design of the black site itself-

• 54:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 54:44Amanda Dobbins?

  -in the Pocket Universe is-

• 54:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't want it to stay cool, but effective.

• 54:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's effective.

• 54:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And it like, it works in that moment. And I did turn to you because there is like, there's a alien baby. Who is, I, I get pissed off when they create these little like cute weird creatures to put in peril to make me feel bad. Cause I do feel bad every time. That alien does not all, does not look unlike my son.

• 55:14Sean Fennessey?

  Your younger son.

• 55:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, my baby. So it there's, it's something in like the size of the head compared to everything.

• 55:20Sean Fennessey?

  James Gunn touched your heart with his alien baby.

• 55:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I, so even that worked.

• 55:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Though like then the baby was just fine, you know?

• 55:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, of course, that baby was never gonna get.

• 55:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:31Sean Fennessey?

  Never really imperiled. That's part of the reason why that sequence, I'm just like, there's no way James Gunn's gonna kill this baby in a Superman movie. Like it's just not, that part doesn't really work. And the last thing, we might get some hate mail for this, but I just thought crypto was annoying. And I didn't really like the dog stuff.

• 55:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Used too much. This is, there are like five different moments. You only get one dog saves the day moment. See Anchorman.

• 55:53Sean Fennessey?

  The, the, the best one is like the last one, but by then you had it happen five times. I know.

• 55:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You can't do that so many times.

• 56:00Sean Fennessey?

  The last one, they, they did have to set it up. So there had to be one that was like that. There could have been one that set it up and then the final like retrieving the drones thing, the dog toy sequence. I thought that was really clever and worked well.

• 56:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 56:11Sean Fennessey?

  But it was, they just killed the little.

• 56:13Amanda Dobbins?

  You needed to, yeah, just like too many, too much stuff.

• 56:17Sean Fennessey?

  Is Superman in this movie enough?

• 56:18Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 56:20Sean Fennessey?

  But I wouldn't want this movie to be two and a half hours.

• 56:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I know exactly how to get more Superman and less junk, which is to get rid of all of your spinoff characters respectfully. Goodbye.

• 56:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you need them though.

• 56:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Or they come up for the Kaiju and then they can show up in the stinger.

• 56:41Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, you need them because you need characters to save the day on the other side of the planet. So you cannot have those characters. It's an essential part of the conclusion of the movie.

• 56:52Sean Fennessey?

  Do you have less of them? I don't know.

• 56:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Do they, do you spend less time with them?

• 56:56Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe, maybe. I, I do think that there, it does feel like there are times when Superman just disappears. Now, this happens in a lot of Superman movies where Superman is confronted by kryptonite and he kind of leaves the movie for 10 minutes.

• 57:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:10Sean Fennessey?

  Because he can't move.

• 57:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 57:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a, it's a, it's an old, it's an old strategy.

• 57:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's, it's a Jesus 40 days in the desert type situation.

• 57:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it is. Um, and so sometimes you've just got to endure it. It actually feels more explicit when you're in a comic book movie that is the right length.

• 57:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, yeah.

• 57:28Sean Fennessey?

  Um, okay. So here, here's like, here's some of the bigger stuff.

• 57:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 57:35Sean Fennessey?

  I don't actually know if I think this is something that doesn't work, but I would like to speak to you about it.

• 57:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 57:39Sean Fennessey?

  So the movie is legitimately interested, as we've said, in referencing real world events, historically significant disputes, fascism, the destructive power of the internet.

• 57:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 57:50Sean Fennessey?

  Um, most of its conclusions about those things,

• 57:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think are ultimately become a kind of bromide in the vein of, try to be a good person.

• 58:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 58:05Sean Fennessey?

  If you try, if you, if you're a good person, if you're decent, if you want others, if you want to be treated the way others, if you want to treat others the way you would want them to treat you. You know?

• 58:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 58:15Sean Fennessey?

  The, like, the golden rule of character design. That would solve some of these problems that we have in the world. Now, I'm not saying that's the only way it's looking at it, but Superman is still ultimately a very limited character. And so he can't get more, he can't get deeper, which would be okay if the movie was not doing all the things I'm about to share with you.

• 58:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 58:45Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 58:48Sean Fennessey?

  This movie is an immigrant parable.

• 58:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:50Sean Fennessey?

  Like, we've clearly identified that. This is about a person coming from another place, joining our country and trying to live his life and even impose his values onto society. There are also significant parallels to Israel and Palestine. It's undeniable

• 59:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:09Sean Fennessey?

  that in even just the visual representation of Baravia, which is a militarized nation that is an ally of the United States, and Jarnapur, which is a nation that is clearly less advanced technologically and is full of brown people.

• 59:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 59:31Sean Fennessey?

  So you can't help but think of what we watch on the news every day. While watching this, it's clearly intentional. There's also very clearly an aspect of Russia and Ukraine. And in terms of the sort of rights of a sovereign nation that have been impeded upon.

• 59:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 59:44Sean Fennessey?

  That is a part of this.

• 59:45Amanda Dobbins?

  And the characterization of the Baravian leader

• 59:49Sean Fennessey?

  Prime Minister, President.

• 59:50Amanda Dobbins?

  and his relationship to Lex Luthor, who is standing in for both Stephen Miller and Elon Musk.

• 59:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. The fact that he is sort of like funded, backed by a tech billionaire and a US government official. That's the bald guy, by the way, from Triangle of Sadness, who is marooned, who plays the Baravian president.

• 1:00:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I was trying to place him, but yeah, that makes sense now.

• 1:00:14Sean Fennessey?

  So there's a little bit of Putin in there, for sure.

• 1:00:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:00:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know, there's not really an effort in the movie to explore the nature of the conflict. Like, is it tribal? Is it religious? Is it a border concern? How far back does it go? Like, it's not giving you anything.

• 1:00:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, there's the, this speech, not the speech, but the interview between Lois and Superman as Clark Kent, which, you know, is, I think, a def piece of screenwriting in a lot of ways. But the fact that I can't locate, is he Superman? Is he Clark? And that moment, like, he doesn't really know either. And that's interesting. But Lois is being the quote unquote journalist, but is also espousing, like, the counter narrative towards.

• 1:01:02Amanda Dobbins?

  He's just like, I stopped a war. And like, why wouldn't I stop a war?

• 1:01:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:01:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And so she is, she is explaining the various like diplomatic and or, you know, geopolitical concerns that you would read about in a paper of record, but that do often seem mired in, you know, national structures as opposed to like basic humanity.

• 1:01:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:29Amanda Dobbins?

  So even there, a little bit of the, it is echoing our media discourse as much as it is.

• 1:01:35Sean Fennessey?

  In a very smart way.

• 1:01:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Sean Fennessey?

  Because Lois is forced, maybe just out of concern for being sued, to represent that point of view, even though as a person, we know she doesn't believe that.

• 1:01:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  But then like one scene later, Lex Luthor leverages that concept, the idea of Superman breaking these treaties to do what he feels is right.

• 1:01:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Sean Fennessey?

  To then gain power from the US government to do whatever he wants. Just pretty savvy stuff in a comic book movie.

• 1:01:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I agree. Like I honestly, I thought that part of it, at least, between Lois and Superman and Lex, was, you know, was handled well in that it worked in the movie. I definitely thought about real world stuff. But I wasn't like, oh, this doesn't work. I was just like, huh, you did that.

• 1:02:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And I, and I see, and I see what you're doing.

• 1:02:20Sean Fennessey?

  I kept, so, you know, Black Panther is also a movie that is very much about isolationism versus interventionism. Like that's, to me, that's the, that's the thing that elevates that movie out of the mire of your work a day comic book movie is that it really has things on its mind about national identity, what, what class represents to people living in America versus living overseas, all this other stuff. This movie has some of that on its mind, too. There's not a lot of other movies that get that deep into the, into the ideas of the nation state. I couldn't tell if this movie ultimately lands on Superman's kind of Pollyanna, every human life is valuable point of view.

• 1:02:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:03:00Sean Fennessey?

  Is trying to represent like an unrealistic Obama era fallacy or what James Gunn actually believes, but maybe also recognizes is unsustainable, given all of the structures, guardrails, restrictions that define.

• 1:03:18Sean Fennessey?

  Global interaction, you know, it's like, it's, he put it on the table.

• 1:03:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  I like how he put it on the table.

• 1:03:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I don't think he really, he doesn't solve anything. He doesn't offer a solution, which, you know, I don't have a solution either.

• 1:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  Of course, no one does. That's the problem.

• 1:03:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not holding that against him. I think, yeah, the, the movie does ultimately conclude with like, with Superman is right. And Superman is vindicated with the help of his friends, who, you know, as you pointed out, they saved the conflict on the other end of the world so that he could, I don't know what he, I guess he's saving the universe. He's got to patch the universe together. I personally, I understand that the, like, the, the, the world splitting is like sort of an homage to the original Superman as well. But I could have done without that. And then maybe Superman could have just-

• 1:04:07Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty heavy metaphor about the division amongst us.

• 1:04:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:04:10Sean Fennessey?

  You're on one side, I'm on the other side of the split planet.

• 1:04:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:04:14Sean Fennessey?

  This is a movie about borders. I mean, it literally is.

• 1:04:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I know. But anyway, they, the, the good, the people who believe in good and human life, save human lives. And everybody, what happens to everybody else? Do we know?

• 1:04:31Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean by everybody else?

• 1:04:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, to like to Lex Luthor, to the-

• 1:04:36Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Lex is detained at the end of the film, likely sent to a prison of some kind.

• 1:04:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:04:40Sean Fennessey?

  He's hauled off by the military.

• 1:04:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Everyone else is released and they take-

• 1:04:43Sean Fennessey?

  People, all of the prisoners from the pocket universe are, are discovered and released. Everything just kind of, they yada yada. It's like, we fixed it.

• 1:04:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  We put it all back together.

• 1:04:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  Which-

• 1:04:53Amanda Dobbins?

  So basically, like, what we learn is that, like, believing in humanity is good. You see all of the people, like, you, you see all of the people of Jarnpoor cheering.

• 1:05:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:05:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, and then that's it. And then like, good luck to you, I guess.

• 1:05:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't mean that like bravia no longer exists.

• 1:05:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:05:12Sean Fennessey?

  Like, this is, in theory, this is a centuries-old conflict. And that's kind of my point is like, I think it is,

• 1:05:21Sean Fennessey?

  if not brave, at least interesting to try to represent these things in a movie like this. Because most people who make movies like this,

• 1:05:30Sean Fennessey?

  they got interested in this subject matter because they want to get away from the problems of the world.

• 1:05:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Sean Fennessey?

  They're not interested in the problems of the world. They want to escape. And they want to create art that is escapist.

• 1:05:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:05:39Sean Fennessey?

  And I understand that, and I think it has value. I like escapist fantasies as well, if done well and uncynically.

• 1:05:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:47Amanda Dobbins?

  We didn't meet, we didn't mention the street vendor, sorry. Think, speaking of real-world stuff, and, and the most horrifying part of the movie.

• 1:05:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, um, there is a character who is seen as the empathic human stand-in for every, everyone's relationship to Superman and the kind of like, our desire to, our innate desire

• 1:06:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  to be good and to do good, which is what Superman is all about. And he goes to Superman to help him in a moment of need during a big battle in the first early part of the film. And then that character, who is not white and not born in America presumably, the streetcar vendor, is then ultimately dragged into the conflict with Lex Luthor. And amidst a game of Russian roulette is murdered.

• 1:06:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's the only really, truly bracing violence in the movie. And

• 1:06:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And done like in, in wide shot.

• 1:06:45Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And is also what incites

• 1:06:48Sean Fennessey?

  Metamorpho.

• 1:06:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, though, you know, and I mean, and it is so upsetting that that, rather than the peril of his cute alien baby son, is what gets him into the mix, which again, I like had some, Metamorpho not developed his character.

• 1:07:02Sean Fennessey?

  I really enjoy Anthony Carrigan. He's one of two actors from the TV series Barry that are featured prominently in this film. In addition to the guy who's working with Frank Grillo in the government, I can't recall the actor's name, he's a really good actor. He played, uh, one of Barry's buddies from the military.

• 1:07:18Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, you know, I think that that's not a hard one to understand. And I think the point is taken, which is like

• 1:07:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:07:25Sean Fennessey?

  Black site torture, like Abu Ghraib style torture and murder is horrible.

• 1:07:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:07:34Sean Fennessey?

  And creates like a global precedent that is terribly devastating for our ability to be a country that in theory represents profound values.

• 1:07:45Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's a little different than saying like, I'm gonna put a movie, I'm gonna make a movie that looks like Israel and Gaza.

• 1:07:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Sean Fennessey?

  And tell you that if everybody is a little bit more nice, then we can solve it. It's like, it's kind of right on the edge of representing that.

• 1:07:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, I mean, it is. I mean, I guess it's, it's, um,

• 1:08:05Amanda Dobbins?

  it's smaller and larger scale than the, the movie does not really get its arms around the like, the modern stuff. We should also say that, you know, this script was, we are drawing things to like the present moment and also the present moment has been happening in one way or another for our entire lives. But it's like, the, the movie isn't like looking at today's newspaper, you know, or even last week, just because of when it was made. Um, so, but I, like, I, I agree. I also hesitated at the final shots just of, like, of everyone cheering with no follow-up and then just to, you know, another white superhero

• 1:08:49Amanda Dobbins?

  flies off and it's like, yay, we did it. And now I'm gonna crack some jokes. Um, I, I do admire, do I admire or am I at least impressed that he raises the questions? And

• 1:09:04Sean Fennessey?

  I frankly appreciate it. I just think it is, it is a Saturday morning cartoon, though. That's why. It's because it is like the good guys win.

• 1:09:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12Sean Fennessey?

  And we will go forward. And there will be another episode next Saturday. See you then.

• 1:09:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And I, like I said, I, I don't have at least all the answers. So I don't expect the movie to have them either. But it does feel like if you're gonna go there, then

• 1:09:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. I guess you're right. It feels a bit reductive at the end. Yeah, not a bit.

• 1:09:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's extremely reductive. It's not the job's, it's not the movie's responsibility to represent those ideas in a sophisticated way. But once you introduce them, you do have a responsibility to have more nuance. And so I'm not, I'm kind of not holding it against it. It didn't bother, it didn't bother me.

• 1:09:53Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:09:53Sean Fennessey?

  I expected it to be that way. It's a, it's a comic book movie.

• 1:09:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Sean Fennessey?

  But the, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this movie since we've seen it. And it is something that ultimately, I think, holds me back from outright proclaiming this as like my, my perfect vision of a comic book film. There, there could be a perfect vision of a comic book film that doesn't introduce any real world aspects. You know, like, or at least not so overtly that we can just draw conclusions. And you know what? A huge swath of the audience and maybe even a large portion of the audience listening to the show right now is like, I didn't see any of that stuff in this movie, guys. And I accept that. People do go to the movies to be distracted or to be taken away from these very challenging things. But James Gunn is thinking about it. He's thinking hard about it.

• 1:10:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. Yeah.

• 1:10:35Sean Fennessey?

  So, and he's, you know, he had to do a lot of structural work to make all of these things fit inside of his movie. We haven't even gotten to the point that you've made in the doc too about this being about an evil tech lord billionaire.

• 1:10:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, we went to an Amazon sponsored screening a week after Jeff Bezos's

• 1:10:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Did we?

• 1:10:55Sean Fennessey?

  Wedding. Yeah. The screening we went to last night was Regal and Amazon present.

• 1:10:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I didn't, I, I missed, I missed.

• 1:11:01Sean Fennessey?

  And Lex Luthor's in this movie.

• 1:11:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it's like, credit to James Gunn for just leaning directly into it. Now, I will say Zack Snyder did something very similar. His Lex Luthor was very similar to Jesse Eisenberg one.

• 1:11:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. I mean, like at this point, a tech billionaire without much hair and with a lot of bad ideas and, you know, self-confidence-ish problems is not, is not novel.

• 1:11:27Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's probably the easiest villain you could sketch at this point.

• 1:11:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought the way that Lex Luthor

• 1:11:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Like his tech was like pointed and interesting. He is like, he is using drones and it says, you know, and by the way, like when you look at the screen, it says like drone three or something, just so people are really aware that yes, we want you to understand that these are drones and these are people who are outsourcing and not thinking about the real or not dealing with the realities of their actions. There was also like a very video game quality to the way that he was operating all of his minions.

• 1:12:07Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I want to talk about that, too. There's an interesting component of that, which is that Lex has studied all of Superman's actions. And then this is a heavy spoiler, but one of the big reveals at the end of the film is that not just that, but he has also cloned Superman as close as he can to create Ultraman, which is essentially a clone that can do battle with Superman. And Lex literally is determining the moves that he is making, the fight patterns that he is creating to beat Superman. One of the things that went to my mind when I was watching this was sort of like the old now settled debate about saber metrics versus the feel for the game in baseball, you know, where it was like, you can't math your way through being on the diamond, you know?

• 1:12:49Sean Fennessey?

  And the movie kind of has a little bit of that, like just looking at the data doesn't solve problems for you. You have to be a person in the world and Superman is a person and his problem solving was superior to the billionaire who wouldn't get close to the fight. I wouldn't say it's like fully thought through, that part of it.

• 1:13:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And then also, which culminates in a speech of Superman being like, I'm a human and that's what makes me special and which like is like so cheesy, but in the moment I was like, well, this is kind of working for me. And then he's appealing to Lex's humanity and then in that like heavily computerized.

• 1:13:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Like drone context that they're all in. You're also definitely thinking about AI at some point, even though I don't really think there is any stated artificial intelligence, like in the, in the fabric of, of Lex's like arsenal. But it's, it's all kind of implied.

• 1:13:47Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:13:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Amanda Dobbins?

  It's doing a lot, this movie.

• 1:13:51Sean Fennessey?

  There's a lot going on.

• 1:13:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:53Sean Fennessey?

  And frankly.

• 1:13:55Amanda Dobbins?

  That's why I'm just like, did I need a pocket universe?

• 1:13:58Sean Fennessey?

  No, there needed to be a second act struggle. There needed to be something in the, in the design of a comic book movie or an event movie like this.

• 1:14:06Amanda Dobbins?

  That's fine. Just make it in the real world.

• 1:14:07Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't love how they did it. It's really the only thing that I actively didn't like.

• 1:14:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Sean Fennessey?

  When Superman is floating down a proton river, holding a baby. I was like, this isn't the movie I want to be watching. We were in, we were in Metropolis. This was, that was cool. I was having so much fun.

• 1:14:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Why, why can't that be in the real world? Why can't it be like a horrific, actual prison in the United, and you know, somewhere in the world, we know there are many of them.

• 1:14:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's a creative choice. I mean, Guns' partner, Peter Safran, is the producer of this movie. He's the co-president of the DC.

• 1:14:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:36Sean Fennessey?

  Brand of the company. Like, I presume they had a lot of autonomy to make this movie. It certainly feels like it. It doesn't feel like a movie that's been noted to death. It doesn't feel like a movie that's been hacked to pieces, which is very different from a lot of the superhero movies we've been seeing recently. It has a kind of consistent tone and it's taking a couple of chances. It's not reliant on mega star power. It's not trying to trick you into thinking something matters because it's like a famous person, like Angelina Jolie is an eternal, so it matters somehow. Like, it's not like that. So it is, it is kind of a unique product, even though it is a very, still a very corporate product.

• 1:15:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Remember that I had a dream last night that I had a book reading and Angelina Jolie was there and she performed a song. Anyway.

• 1:15:13Sean Fennessey?

  You were reading from your book?

• 1:15:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Or I was like debuting it. I don't remember what the book was about.

• 1:15:18Sean Fennessey?

  Novel or nonfiction?

• 1:15:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't remember. I don't know. And it was like maybe not written also.

• 1:15:24Sean Fennessey?

  We gotta get you back to bed.

• 1:15:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. But then, but Angelina Jolie sort of saved the book party. Anyway, thank you to her. Can we talk about the ending?

• 1:15:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:15:31Amanda Dobbins?

  The two endings?

• 1:15:32Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:15:33Amanda Dobbins?

  So the first, which should have been the ending, which is Lois and Superman making out and then flying.

• 1:15:40Sean Fennessey?

  Great moment.

• 1:15:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Wonderful. And I was like, oh, you did it. You nailed it. And then. We had to go, we had to tack another thing on.

• 1:15:49Sean Fennessey?

  We went back to the Fortress of Solitude where the robots who managed that space had been repaired. They were destroyed by the engineer in the film. And, uh.

• 1:15:58Amanda Dobbins?

  We'd, oh, yeah, the engineer, I didn't get it. Thanks. That's my, that's my take.

• 1:16:02Sean Fennessey?

  I kinda liked it.

• 1:16:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I, but I also didn't think the CGI.

• 1:16:04Sean Fennessey?

  I thought that was the AI component of the movie.

• 1:16:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yes.

• 1:16:07Sean Fennessey?

  That the, a person who is becoming subhuman.

• 1:16:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:16:09Sean Fennessey?

  And is essentially effectively being controlled.

• 1:16:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, one more thing. I also, just like, they kept being like, no, the tape is real. We know it's real. The army doesn't get it wrong. And I was like, come on.

• 1:16:20Sean Fennessey?

  The tape from his parents.

• 1:16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, this is, we live in like, deep fake, you know, America.

• 1:16:25Sean Fennessey?

  I thought they were gonna pivot back to that and they never did.

• 1:16:27Amanda Dobbins?

  They never did. They were just like, we know.

• 1:16:29Sean Fennessey?

  The thing I liked about that part of it was that, in my understanding, and in Marlon Brando's representation of his character, and many other, you know, Jor-El.

• 1:16:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Sean Fennessey?

  Superman's father, is just kind of like a patrician blowhard.

• 1:16:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:16:41Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and he's just like, Kryptonians, we're the best. And so the idea that he would be communicating to his son, like, you should dominate these weak soyboys in America.

• 1:16:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:16:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's kinda funny.

• 1:16:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, the Bradley Cooper stunt casting is, is fantastic and very funny.

• 1:16:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and immediately, as soon as I saw that, I was like, this is gonna be good. I, whatever my concerns were, they've been, they've been alleviated.

• 1:17:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, but second ending, Supergirl shows up.

• 1:17:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:07Sean Fennessey?

  Played by Millie Alcock, who is one of the stars of, was one of the stars of the first season of House of the Dragon.

• 1:17:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:17:13Sean Fennessey?

  And the Supergirl movie, I think is the, the third movie, maybe the second movie in the DCU. I can't recall if Clayface is coming before it.

• 1:17:20Amanda Dobbins?

  No, Supergirl is dated for June 26.

• 1:17:23Sean Fennessey?

  So a year from now.

• 1:17:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:17:24Sean Fennessey?

  We're getting a Supergirl movie, regardless of the, the success of this movie, directed by Craig Gillespie, director of, um, I, Tanya, Pam and Tommy, Cruella, Lars and the Real Girl. Let me see how many Craig Gillespie movies I can remember off the top of my head. Uh, I would say a talented but annoying director of movies.

• 1:17:46Sean Fennessey?

  Has incredible visual style, but I'm often extremely enervated watching his movies.

• 1:17:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. I mean, it's me but for James Gunn.

• 1:17:55Sean Fennessey?

  He might be my James Gunn.

• 1:17:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and we like, we figured it out, you know?

• 1:17:59Sean Fennessey?

  I just, every time I watch a Craig Lesby movie, I'm like, I know you've seen Goodfellas. Like, I get it. Like, you know, the editing style, the needle drops, like, I get it.

• 1:18:07Amanda Dobbins?

  This is like...

• 1:18:08Sean Fennessey?

  He directed Dumb Money, the movie we saw recently, a couple of years ago. The movie about the GameStop stock story.

• 1:18:16Amanda Dobbins?

  This, this is how I feel about the Supergirl thing, which in addition to, you know, being set up and whatever. Millie Ock seemed funny. She and, and David Corenswet had, you know, comedic timing or whatever.

• 1:18:28Sean Fennessey?

  Cousin energy.

• 1:18:29Amanda Dobbins?

  But then we have to sit and it's like, he wants to watch the tape of his family and then it's home videos from his, his Kansas parents. And I was like, yeah, yeah, you're James Gunn. You believe in family, like found family. We get it. We get it. We get it. So I was annoyed by that.

• 1:18:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You know, one of the first things I Googled when I got home, and I, I knew the answer to this, but I just wanted to be sure was, does James Gunn have kids? And he doesn't have kids.

• 1:18:52Amanda Dobbins?

  He doesn't.

• 1:18:53Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't, I have no comment about him not having kids, but the fact that he consistently returns to stories about found families, I find

• 1:19:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:01Sean Fennessey?

  interesting, fascinating. And especially because he also, you know, his, his wife is one of the stars of the Peacemaker TV series. Peacemaker makes a very funny cameo in this movie and the Michael, that's the John Cena character who shows up talking shit. Who's, that's a really good show. So his wife appears in his work. His, his brother Sean Gunn appeared in all the Guardians movies, appears in most of his movies. And he also very briefly appears as Maxwell Lord in this movie, who is the character that Pedro Pascal played in Wonder Woman 2. Maxwell Lord, I don't know if you clocked this, it's done very quickly, but he is the billionaire who funds the Justice Gang. So...

• 1:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  Hawkgirl and Mr. Terrific and Green Lantern are all kind of working for Lord Corps. So James Gunn does kind of work with his family.

• 1:19:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 1:19:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I want to be very clear that I think found families in real life are great. And I just thought this was like sentimental gilding the lily at the very end. I understood that, that Superman, he has a lovely scene with his dad and then his mom, like back in Kansas. And I was like, I get it, you know, you, you have found these people and they taught you how to be a man. I, I didn't need the, the ice fortress, like the, what's the, what's Don Draper's, um, the, the speech?

• 1:20:25Sean Fennessey?

  Fortress of solitude.

• 1:20:26Amanda Dobbins?

  No, Don Draper at the end of Mad Men, he gives the pitch and it's about the, the slideshow thing. And then he's like nostalgia is the Greek word for whatever.

• 1:20:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's called the carousel.

• 1:20:39Amanda Dobbins?

  There we go. Yeah. I didn't need it. I got it.

• 1:20:43Sean Fennessey?

  I got you. Um, I liked seeing Prue Taylor- Vince and Nivea Howell, who I'd never seen before, who played Ma Kent and Prue Taylor- Vince from the James Mangold movie Heavy and a lot of, lot of stuff over the years. Great character actor. And the, the choice even to make Ma and Pa not beautiful.

• 1:21:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:02Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like Kevin Costner and Diane Lane were Ma and Pa in Man of Steel. And they look like they could have given birth to Henry Cavill.

• 1:21:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:12Sean Fennessey?

  This is a normal family.

• 1:21:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:21:14Sean Fennessey?

  Normal farmers in Kansas.

• 1:21:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:16Sean Fennessey?

  And, uh, I think elevates like, kind of like alien aspect of the story. So I liked that too. What else? Anything else?

• 1:21:26Sean Fennessey?

  So much easier to do this when you've just seen the movie.

• 1:21:27Amanda Dobbins?

  The stinger. So we sat there like assholes.

• 1:21:31Sean Fennessey?

  I know. And I really thought he wasn't going to do it.

• 1:21:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Sean Fennessey?

  I really hoped he wasn't going to do it. I thought that would have been an interesting way to fully sever from the MCU era to say, you know what? We don't do stingers. We don't treat our audiences like clapping seals, waiting to be fed another fish treat. We trust that you sat down to watch the movie and then when it's over, it's over.

• 1:21:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:52Sean Fennessey?

  But they did do a stinger.

• 1:21:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:54Sean Fennessey?

  Which was mild.

• 1:21:55Amanda Dobbins?

  It was just for comedy? Was it setting up something that I didn't understand?

• 1:21:59Sean Fennessey?

  Not that I know of, but it's possible. I would say Superman lore is not my speciality.

• 1:22:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, what is your speciality?

• 1:22:07Sean Fennessey?

  X-Men.

• 1:22:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's it? So we haven't, you mean, we've been doing this for like 20 years now and I haven't really lived through your Well. Your lore special, like.

• 1:22:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think that's right.

• 1:22:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Area of interest?

• 1:22:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, we have been getting those movies, but they just haven't been very, I mean.

• 1:22:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:21Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like.

• 1:22:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Dark Phoenix, sure, yeah.

• 1:22:23Sean Fennessey?

  Dark Phoenix came out when the show was around. Chris and I had a very angry pot about that movie.

• 1:22:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:22:29Amanda Dobbins?

  So when are the X-Men?

• 1:22:30Sean Fennessey?

  Days of Future Past might have been, might have come out?

• 1:22:31Amanda Dobbins?

  When are the X-Men coming? And?

• 1:22:34Sean Fennessey?

  I would imagine 2028, 2029.

• 1:22:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:22:36Sean Fennessey?

  So I'll be dead by then, so not a big deal. I am very curious to see how this movie performs.

• 1:22:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:22:45Sean Fennessey?

  The reviews have been pretty good.

• 1:22:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:47Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty positive. I think Gun, aside from the strong anti-Snyder contingent, which obviously that's another aspect of this experience that the film is kind of gently mirroring, is the division between not my Superman and very excited about the future.

• 1:23:05Sean Fennessey?

  I have been following some box office analysts who have been suggesting that this is one of those kinds of movies where good reviews help.

• 1:23:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:23:11Sean Fennessey?

  That good reviews push up, walk up business.

• 1:23:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because then all you need is, I heard Superman's pretty good.

• 1:23:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:23:22Amanda Dobbins?

  That's it.

• 1:23:22Sean Fennessey?

  That word of mouth.

• 1:23:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's, and again, it's named Superman.

• 1:23:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:23:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And then it's pretty good, so people are like, okay, I'll go see Superman.

• 1:23:28Sean Fennessey?

  You're not here mad today, which I think is a big accomplishment for the movie Superman.

• 1:23:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:23:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I was even interested in half of it, yeah.

• 1:23:38Sean Fennessey?

  Whether or not you ever interested in another DCU movie is, will be interesting.

• 1:23:43Amanda Dobbins?

  We have the list here.

• 1:23:44Sean Fennessey?

  We do.

• 1:23:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So we've got Supergirl, we've got Clayface, which is coming out on September 11th. What's that about? The 25th anniversary, geez.

• 1:23:53Sean Fennessey?

  Clayface is actually an interesting character that might be appealing to you. He, it's a movie about a, or it's a story about, it's a Batman villain who was a Hollywood actor.

• 1:24:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:24:05Sean Fennessey?

  Who uses, um, gosh, I don't want to get this wrong. Like a special clay to transform into other people. So it's one part like Lon Chaney, Man of a Thousand Faces.

• 1:24:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:24:17Sean Fennessey?

  One part, um, like trying to keep your age and your beauty with.

• 1:24:23Sean Fennessey?

  You know, these kinds of influencer style

• 1:24:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Sean Fennessey?

  products. And it's written by Mike Flanagan, who is best known for his horror work. And I think they're trying to make a standalone horror movie. James Watkins directed Speak No Evil.

• 1:24:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, interesting. Who's playing Clayface?

• 1:24:38Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it's, it's an actor that I have never heard of before, but has done some television work. I was just talking to some friends about this. Uh, let me see if I can get his name right. I found this to be a really weird choice for the third movie. This is not.

• 1:24:53Amanda Dobbins?

  So this isn't going to be on the box office level of Superman?

• 1:24:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's a, it's clearly a much smaller. It probably is like a $50 million movie, but in a way I'm like,

• 1:25:01Amanda Dobbins?

  That's cool.

• 1:25:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's cool. That's cool that they're doing this. So Tom Reese Harrys is the actor's name.

• 1:25:08Sean Fennessey?

  Handsome fellow.

• 1:25:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:25:11Sean Fennessey?

  He most recently appeared in The Return, starring Ralph Fiennes and Julia Benoche. Uh, he was on Doctor Who.

• 1:25:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Cool. Uh, so let's talk about the Luca Guadagnino Sergeant Rock thing. What's so I, I've read the headlines and I've never clicked through.

• 1:25:27Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause I kind of don't want to acknowledge. Daniel Craig exited.

• 1:25:30Sean Fennessey?

  Daniel Craig exited. It's unclear if this movie is happening now.

• 1:25:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I, listen, I love Luca. Love Kritskis.

• 1:25:37Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I like it when they work together. I, you know, what, so what is, who is Sergeant Rock?

• 1:25:42Sean Fennessey?

  Well, uh, he's a military figure that was developed in, I want to say the late 50s.

• 1:25:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:25:52Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and a lot of it was, you know, so many of these characters are responses to one another. So this is not quite the DC's version of Captain America, but has some, some strains of that. It's like kind of a combination of Captain America and Nick Fury put into one guy.

• 1:26:11Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't seem like this movie is going to happen.

• 1:26:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:13Sean Fennessey?

  So I, I don't, I don't want to spend too much time on it. James Mangold is writing and directing a Swamp Thing movie. I think that's happening.

• 1:26:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. What's up with Swamp?

• 1:26:21Sean Fennessey?

  Swamp Thing is a scientist who, uh, due to an explosion in a chemical lab, transforms then the, at a, at a lab that is located near the swamp, becomes a kind of half plant, half man figure. Uh, there was a Wes Craven version of the movie in like 1982, starring Adrian Barbeau. It is very memorable to me as a child. Not a very good movie, but

• 1:26:45Amanda Dobbins?

  That's okay.

• 1:26:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's a movie. The brave and the bold would be a Batman movie. What's weird about that?

• 1:26:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that there are already Batman movies and I heard that Matt Reeves handed in his Batman 2 script and it's very good. People were really, really deadline shaming Matt Reeves.

• 1:27:02Sean Fennessey?

  How did you feel about that as an editor?

• 1:27:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I think that I've, I felt bad for Matt Reeves, even though you like do gotta hit your deadlines. But, you know, and apparently it was a long time in development, but it seems hard to write a script.

• 1:27:18Sean Fennessey?

  It now-

• 1:27:18Amanda Dobbins?

  It just seems like the other people needed to not be involved.

• 1:27:22Sean Fennessey?

  Forgive the comic book dork aspect of this question, but Gunn in the Rolling Stone interview was like, this isn't gonna happen, but I'm also not saying it's not gonna happen. I'm not, I don't, Robert Pattinson's Batman is not going into David Corenswet's Superman world, but maybe it is. Like, he kinda played that game a little bit in the interview. Where he was like, I'll never say never. Now, the tone, obviously, of the Matt Reeves Batman movie and of James Gunn Superman are wildly different.

• 1:27:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:27:50Sean Fennessey?

  The color palette, the energy, the music, the framework of the world, doesn't, they don't make sense together. And yet, I would like to see it.

• 1:27:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I would too. Team Robert Pattinson. And I would like to see Robert Pattinson and David Corenswet in a movie together that-

• 1:28:07Sean Fennessey?

  I'll bet you would.

• 1:28:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:08Amanda Dobbins?

  In the suits and not the suits. Also, like, shouldn't there, shouldn't the tone of Superman and Batman independently, like, be very different? Isn't that honoring their characters?

• 1:28:19Sean Fennessey?

  This is how you do it.

• 1:28:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And this is then you have to find someone who sees the whole board?

• 1:28:24Sean Fennessey?

  This is how you do it.

• 1:28:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think they should do that. Now, you know, these are, a lot of these films feel-

• 1:28:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Why do you know that The Brave and the Bold would be a Batman movie?

• 1:28:32Sean Fennessey?

  That's the title of a Batman run.

• 1:28:34Amanda Dobbins?

  What happens in it?

• 1:28:35Sean Fennessey?

  I can't remember.

• 1:28:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:28:36Sean Fennessey?

  Andy Machete is attached to that movie. He directed The Flash. I don't think that's gonna happen.

• 1:28:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:28:42Sean Fennessey?

  There's a Teen Titans movie, there's a Bane and Deathstroke movie, there's a Wonder Woman, there will be a Wonder Woman movie for sure.

• 1:28:49Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know. I'm not sure about the DCU. I'm glad we got this movie in the form that we did.

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think this movie is going to make $150 million at the box office.

• 1:28:59Amanda Dobbins?

  This weekend?

• 1:29:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:29:01Sean Fennessey?

  So that would be a lot, and here's why. Here's the Superman box office history. Batman versus Superman Dawn of Justice, which is your favorite Superman film, made $330 million.

• 1:29:12Amanda Dobbins?

  There were a lot of vests in that.

• 1:29:13Sean Fennessey?

  They do. They do. Ben Affleck is in it. That came out in 2016. That $330 million is the most domestically for any Superman movie.

• 1:29:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:29:22Sean Fennessey?

  Behind it, Man of Steel 290.

• 1:29:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:24Sean Fennessey?

  Then Superman Returns, starring Brandon Routh and Kevin Spacey, made 200.

• 1:29:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't remember that.

• 1:29:31Sean Fennessey?

  The Donner film made 134. Superman 2 made 108, Superman 3 59, and Superman 4, which is now a fiasco, made 15.

• 1:29:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:29:40Sean Fennessey?

  You predicted 410 million domestic in our summer movie preview. I predicted 257. Now, I obviously undershot. I don't know how much I undershot. I'm super curious to see where this goes.

• 1:29:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, the thing is, is that we still don't have... Last year, Wolverine and...

• 1:29:57Sean Fennessey?

  Deadpool Wolverine.

• 1:29:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Deadpool did 600 something domestic.

• 1:30:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:30:02Amanda Dobbins?

  So we don't have that yet.

• 1:30:03Sean Fennessey?

  And went over a billion globally. Yeah.

• 1:30:03Amanda Dobbins?

  So...

• 1:30:04Sean Fennessey?

  Meaning we haven't had a movie like that.

• 1:30:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:30:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. If this movie goes over a billion, it will be the first... It'll be the first Superman movie to go over a billion. I think it'll... Will it be the first superhero movie not named Deadpool and Wolverine since Spider-Man: No Way Home took over a billion? It might be. That's very rare now. It used to be very common.

• 1:30:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:30:24Sean Fennessey?

  Remember when Captain Marvel just made a billion dollars, even though it was trash?

• 1:30:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't.

• 1:30:28Sean Fennessey?

  It did.

• 1:30:29Amanda Dobbins?

  It did?

• 1:30:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Did... How much did it...

• 1:30:30Sean Fennessey?

  Aquaman made a billion dollars.

• 1:30:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that I remember. But, you know, that's just a...

• 1:30:33Sean Fennessey?

  That movie's fun, but...

• 1:30:34Amanda Dobbins?

  That's at Christmas, and you guys just, like, you go, and you're underwater. Not Chris, though.

• 1:30:38Sean Fennessey?

  That's what happened, yeah. Chris didn't go. He'll never go underwater. He'll never know the way of water, as we know, unfortunately for him. Someone suggested that we do a watch-along Avatar: The Way of Water.

• 1:30:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:30:50Sean Fennessey?

  Would you do it?

• 1:30:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:30:51Sean Fennessey?

  Pyrocon member of the whale?

• 1:30:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and that was very beautiful. And then I, like, when we couldn't explain what was going on with Sigourney Weaver, but like, it's cool stuff that's going on.

• 1:31:01Sean Fennessey?

  I love it. I think it's interesting, yeah.

• 1:31:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, we just, we gotta figure out the watch-along logistics in a way where I can be comfortable.

• 1:31:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. We'll get you a couch. We'll get you a fainting couch.

• 1:31:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And we need snacks and stuff.

• 1:31:16Sean Fennessey?

  I took Superman in the auction this week.

• 1:31:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:20Sean Fennessey?

  Which I now feel pretty good about. I asked you yesterday, two days ago, Oscars, Superman. What about now?

• 1:31:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, what is James Gunn's history?

• 1:31:31Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think he has a single Oscar nomination.

• 1:31:32Amanda Dobbins?

  This, like, I have to be honest. I, we talked about mostly what is good about this. And even the stuff where we're like, we're not really sure if he landed the plane on the real world geopolitical stuff, but

• 1:31:49Amanda Dobbins?

  even, even the things that don't work, we talked about them in mostly positive ways. There, like, there is a lot of space junk in this movie. There is just straight up at least 45 minutes of garbage looking space junk. And I don't know if you get that past people.

• 1:32:03Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in 2015 for Guardians. You remember when Guardians came out, it was like, holy shit, this is actually good.

• 1:32:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:14Sean Fennessey?

  And I think there is affection for him.

• 1:32:16Amanda Dobbins?

  That's cool, but they, you know, the Writers Guild and the Oscars don't always line up.

• 1:32:20Sean Fennessey?

  They, they definitely don't.

• 1:32:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:21Sean Fennessey?

  They definitely don't. I don't, I don't think this is being nominated for Best Picture or anything like that, but I'm, I'm kind of curious even for below the line stuff. Yeah.

• 1:32:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe some of it looks good and then some of it like really doesn't. And so, you know, like if you want visual effects or whatever, you still have to sit through the black hole.

• 1:32:41Sean Fennessey?

  You're right. You're right about that.

• 1:32:42Amanda Dobbins?

  It's tough.

• 1:32:45Sean Fennessey?

  Any concluding thoughts?

• 1:32:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I, you know, it seems good. It was good. I'm not mad. I'm not mad.

• 1:32:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I could tell you were not mad last night, even though we did the thing where we not, we didn't, we don't speak after we've seen a movie. We're like, we'll see you tomorrow. See you in the pod room.

• 1:33:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is a bummer because we saw it in the SGV and then we could have just like gone to dinner.

• 1:33:06Sean Fennessey?

  We could have.

• 1:33:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And that would have been delicious.

• 1:33:08Sean Fennessey?

  That would have been really late to be eating spicy.

• 1:33:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Spicy food, yeah, no, it's true. We are too old for that.

• 1:33:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. If I eat spicy food after 10:00 PM, I will die. I will, I will cease to.

• 1:33:18Amanda Dobbins?

  You can't eat spicy food.

• 1:33:19Sean Fennessey?

  In general, I can't.

• 1:33:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyone looking at you will not be surprised to learn that, but yeah, I really have to.

• 1:33:23Sean Fennessey?

  I do really like it. And it really disagrees with me.

• 1:33:26Amanda Dobbins?

  You turn away at this point.

• 1:33:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I like, I can go in.

• 1:33:29Sean Fennessey?

  I know. Yeah. You have more of a tolerance for it.

• 1:33:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:31Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think? Cause I'm, cause I'm a white man?

• 1:33:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:33Sean Fennessey?

  Is that the issue?

• 1:33:34Amanda Dobbins?

  It's true. Someone once put that we look like we don't like any spices on our food, which I think is pretty rude.

• 1:33:39Sean Fennessey?

  That we both do?

• 1:33:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:41Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I do love spices on my food. I just, my, my stomach can't handle them.

• 1:33:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I, my stomach can.

• 1:33:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Well, shout out to you.

• 1:33:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 1:33:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Superman? I don't know. Probably not a lot of spices.

• 1:33:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, as we know, there's an attempt to disrupt his organs near the end of the film. With, with the nanobites.

• 1:34:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:34:00Sean Fennessey?

  You know, they try to infest his soul.

• 1:34:02Amanda Dobbins?

  He did that.

• 1:34:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was all right.

• 1:34:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And I like, didn't really understand how he solved it, but whatever. He just like smashed it off.

• 1:34:09Sean Fennessey?

  I think the idea was that he was stronger than their science.

• 1:34:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Well, I can't really endorse that take, but you know, maybe, maybe.

• 1:34:18Sean Fennessey?

  Superman makes America healthy again.

• 1:34:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say there, there could be some raw milk in the picture and I just, I don't endorse that. But believe science and doctors.

• 1:34:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:34:28Sean Fennessey?

  So next, next week, you're not on Monday.

• 1:34:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:34:32Sean Fennessey?

  Monday.

• 1:34:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause you didn't trust me to be nice about this or because you just want to do lore.

• 1:34:37Sean Fennessey?

  I.

• 1:34:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's fine.

• 1:34:39Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think that you want to have to watch seven Superman movies. That was my thinking.

• 1:34:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, totally not.

• 1:34:45Sean Fennessey?

  So next Monday, me and Van Lathan and Rob Mahoney will talk about this Superman movie. Talk about the box office, talk about the reception of the film in general, and we'll rank every Superman movie. Now, for those listening at home, that includes Superman, Richard Donner, Superman two, as directed by Richard Lester, Superman to the Donner Cut, a recut version with Richard Donner's intended outcome. Superman three, Superman four, Superman Returns, Superman Man of Steel, Superman versus Batman Dawn of Justice, Batman versus Superman Dawn of Justice. Who got first billing there?

• 1:35:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Batman.

• 1:35:21Sean Fennessey?

  Batman did.

• 1:35:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Ben Affleck did.

• 1:35:23Sean Fennessey?

  And then Justice League.

• 1:35:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:26Sean Fennessey?

  And Justice League, the Snyder Cut. Or Zack Snyder's Justice League is how I believe it's titled. Now, I don't know how many of those I'm going to revisit. Some of them. I've already watched Superman one and two.

• 1:35:38Amanda Dobbins?

  So what was, what's Terry, uh, Lois and Clark, the TV series was Terry Hatcher and then

• 1:35:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:35:46Amanda Dobbins?

  That guy. So that's not in the.

• 1:35:48Sean Fennessey?

  That's not part of this, nor is Smallville.

• 1:35:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:53Sean Fennessey?

  There has also been very recently another, uh, Lois and Clark series.

• 1:35:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:35:57Sean Fennessey?

  Um, that people were quite fond of.

• 1:36:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:36:00Sean Fennessey?

  But was recently canceled, I think by Max.

• 1:36:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Wasn't me.

• 1:36:04Sean Fennessey?

  Um, shift back to HBO Max. How do you feel about that?

• 1:36:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Fine. I, I never deleted the original app. So do I have to download a new app?

• 1:36:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You have to download the Luther Corps app. You have to get all his tech on your phone. Uh, and you have to accept all the cookies.

• 1:36:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:36:21Sean Fennessey?

  Something that they told us.

• 1:36:22Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 1:36:23Sean Fennessey?

  And you have to use Face ID.

• 1:36:24Amanda Dobbins?

  And no, I won't. We have to use Face, people are using biometrics at Spotify now.

• 1:36:29Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean?

• 1:36:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Apparently you can log in with biometrics.

• 1:36:32Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, that makes sense.

• 1:36:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Not my biometrics.

• 1:36:34Sean Fennessey?

  You don't use a fingerprint on your laptop?

• 1:36:36Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:36:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:36:38Amanda Dobbins?

  That is, that is a company owned device. Absolutely not.

• 1:36:40Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 1:36:42Amanda Dobbins?

  They, I, they have to pay me a lot more for my biometrics.

• 1:36:45Sean Fennessey?

  But what about when you were arrested on January 6th and had, and you were fingerprinted?

• 1:36:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not there.

• 1:36:50Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. You weren't there.

• 1:36:51Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but I did, I.

• 1:36:52Sean Fennessey?

  But you were rooting along at home.

• 1:36:53Amanda Dobbins?

  When I worked at, uh, when I worked at Conde Nast, I did, I, it was at the World Trade Center. So they had to fingerprint all of us.

• 1:36:59Sean Fennessey?

  So your info's out there.

• 1:37:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm in, but I don't.

• 1:37:02Sean Fennessey?

  You need to be like John Doe from Seven and start cutting off your, your fingerprints.

• 1:37:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm not doing that.

• 1:37:08Sean Fennessey?

  Don't you feel like the pod just started? Okay. Um, thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. We will see you next week with Rob and Ben.

• 1:37:37Speaker 04

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