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Man-Thing (2005)
311 Plays2 years ago
Marvel's Werewolf By Night Holiday Special surprised many with the surprise appearance of Man-Thing...but that wasn't the character's film debut. Daniel Hastings of Reel Good Films joins me to discuss the 2005 direct-to-video Man-Thing that basically turned the character into a slasher villain.
Listen to Dan on the Reel Good Movies and the All New, All Different Number One Comics podcasts.
Want to tell us what you think? Have any questions or comments for Perry about superheroes in media or comics? Leave a voice message to play on the show. You can also apply to be a guest on the show.
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Transcript
The Mystical Swamp and Its Guardian
00:00:30
Speaker
He... I need to ask you some questions about Renee LaRocque. He told me he doesn't believe Ted Silas sold that land. Not many who knew Ted do. What about you? Ted Silas was my elder. He knew this land was sacred. When Shist took it...
00:01:00
Speaker
It was the end. Our stories will die with me. Hey, come on. Pete, listen to me. You're not dying anytime soon. Do you remember when I took you to the dark water as a child, Terry? I remember I was scared. Yes. It is full of magic.
00:01:30
Speaker
both light and dark.
00:01:53
Speaker
It protects what our ancestors called the nexus of all realities. The Guardian has become very angry.
00:02:25
Speaker
Pete, I'm a cop. I can't believe in Indian spirits and magic. What you believe doesn't matter. You're not from this place. You're not from any place. Where's Ted Salas, Pete? Is he the one killing people? Kyle, wait. Is he killing people with or without Renee? Kyle, I didn't bring you here to do this.
00:02:53
Speaker
Maybe he is in the swamp. Maybe the swamp is in him. Whoever or whatever is out there, Pete, I saw it. What did you see? I don't know. You know what you saw. It is chosen who will die. Who? Who will die, Pete? Everyone.
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:03:23
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, and welcoming a new guest today, and that is Daniel. Daniel, how you doing today? Hey, man, doing wonderful. How about you? I'm doing pretty good. Maybe not so good after we start jumping into the movie for today, but we'll get there. But before we get too much into that, why don't you tell people a little bit about yourself?
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, hello, everyone. Absolute pleasure to be here. My name is Dan. I am not as cool as a lot of your guests that I've heard on some episodes. I've heard some professors and some doctors and a cool comic creator so far. So there's definitely, I'm up quite against
00:04:10
Speaker
quite a bit there, but I'm okay with that. I'm just a podcaster. I do a podcast, a weekly podcast called All New, All Different Number One Comics, where my co-host and I review a brand new comic book each week that comes out into local comic book shops, and we talk comic news and all of that. I also do a bi-weekly podcast that's movies. It's called Real Good Movies with Jer and Dan.
00:04:36
Speaker
That's pretty much where I am, huge comic collector, but nothing professional in the field like you and most of your guests.
Daniel's Comic Journey and Podcasting
00:04:45
Speaker
Well, you got quite a backdrop there. So we don't do video on the show, but we do it when we're recording. And so people who are listening, he's got all these different comics mounted on the wall behind him. I see a new Mutants poster there and some Marvel Legends figures. So definitely got a nice little backdrop going. Yeah.
00:05:07
Speaker
a big collector been collecting since I was around eight years old got really big into that first Robin mini series and then just escalated from there got big into turtles and then Marvel stuff and everything so yeah I have a nice gigantic collection have a lot of toys have a lot of graded books have
00:05:25
Speaker
all kind of stuff, hope to open my own comic book shop in a few more years. So that's where I was going to say your backdrop kind of looks like a comic shop already. It was a virtual one for a little while. I did some online selling on like pop shop and whatnot.
00:05:42
Speaker
So you'd mentioned that you know when you were eight you got into collecting with the first Robin miniseries That was the the Tim Drake one back in the late 80s early 90s So how did you get into comics? Why did you end up? Why was that? Why did that end up being your first comic? so such a weird story when I was around that age my grandfather was
00:06:06
Speaker
kind of, I don't know, he was he was reaching the end of his life to put it nicely, I guess. And he was starting to find like little things around to give to his kids and grandkids and stuff like that, starting to kind of finalize his will and all of all of those things. He had a really big coin collection, big coin collector. So he decided to pass those coins down to me. I lived in a neighborhood where I was able to ride my bike to this cool little coin shop.
00:06:32
Speaker
And right across the street from the coin shop was a comic book store. So I would go take my coins, you know, kind of one by one or whatever to this coin shop and then get a nice 10, 15, $20, go over to the comic shop and buy some comic books. Kind of that that Robin mini series was was fresh on the new stands right then. And
00:06:56
Speaker
I don't know, it just looks so cool and flashy to me. I've never, believe it or not, I've never been a huge Batman fan, but I do really like DC stuff a lot. So I like a lot of the Batman villains and tie-in characters and stuff. Just not huge on Batman himself. For some reason, Robin just spoke to me. Me and my cousin were obsessed. We dressed up like Robin for Halloween like four years in a row and just, yeah, just kind of took off from there.
00:07:22
Speaker
That's awesome. That was Tim Drake. That was my Robin, too, growing up. Still my favorite Robin to this day. I like Damien. I like Jason and Dick, but it'll always be Tim. It will always be the favorite.
00:07:35
Speaker
Well, at least you like Damien. I can't say the same thing. And that's the one we're going to get, apparently. That's the one we're getting, yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see what they do, how they play around with it. Because you probably know, but in the series when he was introduced, Tim was already robbing at the time. So maybe they'll have some back and forth. We'll see how it all plays out. I'm hoping, anyway, because, yeah.
00:07:58
Speaker
Sure. We're getting a version of him on Titans right now, although that's ending soon. I was glad that we got him for at least a little bit.
Balancing Films and Comics in Podcasting
00:08:06
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, I'll take what I can get. Anything that's not DC that's just going to be canceled two years from now or rebooted or whatever is fine. You didn't have any association with Robin before that comic book, not from the Batman 66 show or anything like that. It was just you saw the comic and it kind of appealed to you type of thing?
00:08:26
Speaker
Oh yeah, it was definitely just walking into the shop and seeing that comic and thinking, I don't know, I guess probably that was the youngest hero I could identify with. That's probably the only thing I can think of. And again, being on that opposition of thinking, hey, I really like some of these characters. I really like the villains that they're going up against, but I don't like the dude dressed up in the bat suit. So who else is there?
00:08:50
Speaker
That's pretty cool, because most people who end up getting into Batman or Batman-related characters usually have that entry point from somewhere else first. Not often these days you find someone whose entry point was actually the comic, so that's pretty cool.
00:09:08
Speaker
And that led you to into DC and to then Marvel. And tell us a little bit about your podcast and what you guys do on there. And I know you kind of talked about it a little bit, but how did they kind of start up and, you know, tell us a little bit more about them type of thing. Sure. Well, it had been a huge dream of mine to get into podcasting. I love just sitting around and talking.
00:09:33
Speaker
I love talking about movies, comic books, all of those things, music, whatever. I'm a huge, really big into all that kind of nerdy culture stuff. There's not always a large group of people to talk about it around my area, at least, given my age. I'm at the end of my 30s, so it's kind of...
00:09:55
Speaker
You know, you don't find a lot of people who want to talk about comic books or whatever, at least around here. Right. So it always been like a really big dream of mine to be able to just sit around, record conversations about comic books version foremost, but also movies and things of that nature. So I just happened to be browsing around looking at forms, looking at Reddit, looking at anywhere I could to see people who were looking for a co-host for
00:10:22
Speaker
any type of podcast that I thought I might be interested in. And I found one, a guy, my co-host named Jer, who wanted to start the Real Good Movies podcast. And he just wanted to talk about movies. He didn't have any real, I don't know, anything like really fleshed out, you know, in the world of podcasting, you usually have to find like a niche or something. And he was just like, hey, I just want to talk about movies. I don't really care what we talk about, whatever. And I was like, well, that sounds great. I love movies.
00:10:49
Speaker
I love genre film, whatever he's more into. He likes genre film and all of that as well, but he's definitely more into the award-winning movies and stuff like that. So I figured we'd be a really good balance on one another. I'm not really into that kind of stuff. I hate the godfather and things like that and would rather watch like a Kevin Smith movie or something instead. So, so I thought we'd have like a cool balance with one another and we do, we have a great dynamic with that. We kind of.
00:11:18
Speaker
see things differently and then are able to see eye to eye on certain things. So anyways, that's, that's where I started. I got into podcasting that way. That was kind of his podcast idea that he brought me into and I, I'm the co-host of and it's great and I love it more than anything. But again, like I really wanted to be able to branch out on my own, have my own podcast, edit it myself, do all of the uploading, all of that stuff.
Navigating Comic Book Podcasts
00:11:43
Speaker
So I got into this, uh,
00:11:47
Speaker
I sorry, I got this idea to do a comic book podcast where I would take a brand new comic book each week and kind of review it. I actually got really lucky because I work with a guy who's really into comic books. So I talked to him about the idea and he loved it.
00:12:03
Speaker
So we ended up making this happen and we kind of just started out. We just released our fourth episode. So this one's a brand new podcast, but I just wanted to be able to talk about comics and break them down. I really love the comic vine podcast that ended a few years ago. I listened to comic book club and the stack and all of that. I listened to a lot of different comic book podcasts. I find it hard to find a podcast that really focuses on
00:12:30
Speaker
on breaking down issues that are coming out that week and really going in depth and talking about them. So that's what we decided to do on our podcast. That's cool. Yeah. I wish I could find more comic book podcasts, but my whole thing is I read by trades and I typically only get them when they're on sale. So most of the comic book podcasts, they talk about
00:12:51
Speaker
they're focusing on single issues a lot. So if I try to listen to it, then I'll end up getting the stuff spoiled months before I can actually read it. That's why like, but we've had a host of digging for kryptonite that that's a great Superman podcast that is going back and like doing stuff a lot that is easier for me to access.
Exploring Man Thing: Comics vs. Film
00:13:11
Speaker
And so I don't feel spoiled when I read those type when I listen to that one.
00:13:14
Speaker
Sure, there's some really good ones out there. I don't know if Jay and Miles are still doing the Explain the X-Men podcast or not. I listened to that for a while and it was really great. Kind of went into a lot of the uncanny X-Men stuff and then the spin-offs and then went really deep into New Mutants, which was really cool. It's one of my favorite series. But yeah, I like ones that are able to kind of take that deep dive and really explain something.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So what are some of the the best comics you've read recently, then? Oh, God. Well, I just read New Number One that came out from Dark Horse, Where Monsters Lie. Phenomenal, phenomenal comic book. I think it's just going to be a five part mini, but it is so insanely good. I've actually been kind of like digging back into the
00:14:07
Speaker
I haven't been reading too much new stuff other than the stuff that I'm reviewing, so I've been going back to Kevin Smith's run on Daredevil. I love that. I can read that one. I just love to pop in and out of Uncanny X-Men. I don't even care where. It doesn't even matter to me.
00:14:24
Speaker
in the 100s go all the way back to the 450s or whatever. There's some great stuff in there. I'm always down for reading New Mutants. And then, of course, I suggested Man Thing because that's one of my absolute favorite comic books of all time. I love reading Man Thing. I probably try to go back and read a Man Thing comic book at least every other week or so. I really love all the classic runs on Man Thing. I even like the horrible R.L. Stein run.
00:14:54
Speaker
Yeah, I can get down on all of that stuff. So that's kind of the stuff I've been reading lately. I have been really enjoying the dark web, amazing Spider-Man stuff that's been going on. The Wonder Woman stuff over at DC has been really, really great. So that's kind of where I've been with comics lately. OK, cool. Yeah, I just finished reading the, I think it was the second volume of that Spider-Man run. That's Zeb Wells, right?
00:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, I just finished reading the second run of the after the Beyond stuff, the second run of the second book in the after the post Beyond era. And I enjoy it. I'm looking forward to sort of seeing what comes next in it. But like you mentioned, also, I'd had that same type of thing where kind of one of the reasons I wanted to start this podcast was because I'd also wanted had that thing where I wanted to talk more about comic books and superheroes and all this kind of stuff. And
00:15:51
Speaker
It's just, you know, it's tough to find people to talk about that stuff. And it's even harder for me because I live in rural Japan, so nobody knows about that stuff here.
00:16:02
Speaker
And my wife can only put up with me for so long before she just tunes out. And that's also one of the reasons why I started the comic book Patreon show as well, so that we could have more discussion of the comics and that kind of stuff too. But like you mentioned today, we are talking about Man Thing, the 2005 version of it.
Origins of Man Thing and Swamp Thing
00:16:26
Speaker
So I had to track this movie down at a rental store here in Japan. And they've got an app for the rental store. And I was looking on the app, and it shows you which stores has the movie in stock and everything. And they also have reviews. And almost every single review of this movie was mentioning the fact that it was not the same as the werewolf by night special that had Mad Thing in it. And everybody was just so disappointed because it's like, this isn't the same man thing.
00:16:53
Speaker
I thought that was kind of funny that this had spread so far that now people are actively seeking out man thing content Yeah, I find that really interesting. That's that's really cool to hear. I think that you know That that werewolf by night special is very successful people really really enjoy that Not so much with this 2005 movie I know that that's kind of
00:17:20
Speaker
forgotten thing. A lot of people forget that that even exists. I definitely don't. I it's something that I try to watch every now and again every every, you know, couple of years or something. I think that it's a really, really interesting, interesting movie that kind of stands on its own. But yeah, it's definitely not not what you'd expect.
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah, it is completely forgotten. Like I told you when you would email me about this, every now and then I remember that this movie exists. And I'd never seen it before, but I do remember that it exists. And I had always kept wondering. I'm like, I wonder if anyone's ever going to request man thing. I'm like, probably not.
00:18:00
Speaker
And I think I actually just had that thought like maybe a day or two before I got your email. And so I'm like, Oh, okay, so someone finally is gonna ask to watch this movie. So then I was able to track it down. Because I'd always been curious about it. I remember back when it was in production, I saw some of the
00:18:20
Speaker
OK, so yeah, like I was saying, I remember seeing articles about it, maybe in Wizard magazine or online or something like that. And I remember seeing some stills of the man thing design. And at the time thinking like, oh, that looks pretty interesting. That looks kind of cool. So I was kind of curious about it. And then they said that it was it was being pulled from the originally planned theatrical release. It was just going to be released
00:18:47
Speaker
And then it ended up being premiering on sci-fi channel, actually, which I don't think I even had cable at the time, so I never actually saw it when it first came out. And then it wasn't, and then, you know, just kind of flew under the radar and never popped up on anything. So I just kind of forgot about it, probably like most people.
00:19:03
Speaker
and only saw it last night when I picked it up for this episode. But before we dive too much into the movie itself, you had mentioned that you're a big man-thing fan from the comics. So tell us a little bit about your introduction to the character. Yeah, so look, I couldn't even tell you where this comes from, how it was such a big deal to me, other than I remember being a kid and seeing some man-thing books in my local shop
00:19:32
Speaker
thinking they looked really cool. And of course, like everybody else, knowing about Swamp Thing first, even though Man Thing was created a few months before Swamp Thing, still Swamp Thing always gets all the credit and everybody thinks that Marvel ripped off DC and created Man Thing as, I don't know, a response to that, which, of course, isn't the case. The actual case is that there
00:19:59
Speaker
There's a character called the heap and an air boy comic from like the forties. And that's where both characters kind of come from. So I think that I just, you know, being really into the monster side of the Marvel universe and.
00:20:13
Speaker
I really liked Hulk a lot and then I got more into kind of seeing these cool creatures and stuff, these monsters in the Marvel universe.
Man Thing's Abilities and Media Portrayals
00:20:22
Speaker
Seeing those man-thing books, I was just really intrigued by them, started picking them up and reading them as a kid and they're just, they're so out there. Of course we know that
00:20:31
Speaker
you know, you get introductions like Howard, the duck was first in in man thing books. Some of those that first savage tales, you know, definitely isn't for kids, but but I remember picking that up and reading through it. And then whenever a man thing essentials came out when I was a little bit older and some of those omnibus and stuff, just some really, really cool, great stories in there that they really kind of dug deep and really did some
00:21:00
Speaker
crazy off the wall stuff with that really worked. I love Swamp Thing too, but I feel like these two characters are in such a different universe and they tell such different stories and they're just really, really interesting. So that's why I'm more intrigued by Man Thing and that's why I got really into the character. That's why I'm a big fan. I remember, like you were saying, I remember this movie being announced and everything. I can't remember if it was in Wizard Magazine or wherever
00:21:29
Speaker
wherever we got that information from. But I remember it being announced and just being so excited about it. I don't even remember thinking it was going to theaters. I remember hearing it was going to sci-fi, and I was like, great, I've got sci-fi channel. I'm watching this the second it dropped. I was so excited about it. Yeah.
00:21:47
Speaker
talking about the Swamp Thing connection, because it was actually, you know, like you said, a lot of people think that you know, man thing was ripped off the Swamp Thing, even though you look at it, and it actually man thing actually came out earlier. But and they both seem to have been heavily in drawing heavy inspiration from the heap, which now is actually in public domain. So if they just waited a few years, they could have just taken the heap. But
00:22:13
Speaker
And it's really interesting when you look at it, because apparently, so Man Thing was created by Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, and Jerry Conway, and Ray Marlin. The name, at least. Right. Stan Lee came up with the name, and he came up with the basic, some of the basic origin sketches, like Roy Thomas said that Stan had called him back in the early 70s, and he had just had a couple of sentences, like the notion of a guy working on an experimental drug for the government.
00:22:43
Speaker
and then you know getting fused with the swamp and becoming this creature and And and that was basically the that was basically what Stan had given Roy Thomas and and Thomas and kind of ran with that concept and took it a little bit further but what was interesting is you know, he brought on Jerry Conway to work on it too and Len Wien who
00:23:10
Speaker
came up with a created swamp thing. He was actually rooming with Jerry Conway at the time. So they had probably had...
00:23:20
Speaker
They just kind of had this, it was like a serendipitous thing where they were both kind of just simultaneously kind of working on the same thing, I believe. And something similar happened with X-Men and Doom Patrol, right? Those are another two properties that came out pretty much at the same time. People always say, you know, Doom Patrol was a ripoff of X-Men or X-Men was a ripoff of Doom Patrol. But the lead time for the production back then probably wasn't possible for them to have been ripoffs. It was just one of those weird coincidences that happened.
00:23:50
Speaker
Yeah. Can you imagine at that time in the, at least when we were talking about man thing and swamp thing here, like in the, in the seventies like that, I guess mid seventies, whatever, trying to come up with a character, character designs, origin story, all that, get it to the presses and everything, get it out within months of one another. And then, I mean, I agree with you. I think that there was most likely, you know, these, they were roommates. So of course they were kind of talking about the projects they were doing. One another was seeing what they were doing. Sure. Whatever.
00:24:20
Speaker
But I think it would be fair to be like, I don't know. Here's my swamp creature. Here's my swamp creature and kind of, uh, kind of run with it. I had heard too, that Marvel did consider taking DC to court over it, but then, you know, they knew that it was going to get shot down because of the heap. So that's why it was kind of left it alone. But yeah, just interesting thing, a really interesting time.
00:24:47
Speaker
to come out with two of those characters that are so similar, but then they're very similar to people who don't read comics. You go in and read the comics, they're not similar at all. They're just swamp creatures. That's the only similarity.
Critiquing the 2005 Man Thing Film
00:25:00
Speaker
Right, yeah, yeah. And Thomas said the same thing. He said like, you know, after the origins, they kind of diverge pretty drastically from that point on. Yeah, very. Swap thing, you know, he has his own,
00:25:14
Speaker
They're very different types of characters beyond just the swamp similarities. Swamp Thing is, you know, he's much more human-like in terms of sentience and all that kind of stuff, whereas Man Thing isn't really able to communicate like a human or anything like that. Now, I'm not as- You can be just based on emotion. Right.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, my experience with man thing is I don't know much about his, his original, his original comics, though, I've read him and other stuff that he's popped up in, like, fairly recently, there was, I think it was, it was Jeff Parker, who did a run on Thunderbolts, we had him as one of the characters in there. And
00:25:55
Speaker
a bunch of other comics he's popped up in here and there and obviously he was in the werewolf by night special although i do have um the steve gerber complete collection and uh yeah and i i picked those up on one of the the comixology sales a while back so they've just been sitting there on my kindle i'm like along with like you know don't even get me started on how many i have in my to read pile but it's a lot of stuff and
00:26:21
Speaker
So I was looking through it, and I was thinking last night after I watched the movie, I'm like, you know what? I want to actually have some more context for the character before we go into this discussion. So I opened up the first volume, which has its first appearance, as well as a bunch of other stories, and started reading it. And yeah, that first issue, it definitely has a lot of the same trappings as Swamp Thing. But then after that, it diverges pretty much. And there's now the whole thing with
00:26:51
Speaker
I'm not sure exactly when this happened in the comics, but he ends up being the nexus of realities and is able to transport himself and anyone else and across time and space and all that kind of stuff. So there's that aspect of him too, whereas Swamp Thing
00:27:07
Speaker
It's almost like, and I could be wrong here, so you could correct me if I am, but my understanding seems to be that man-thing is less connected to the swamp itself, and it's more about the nexus-type thing, whereas swamp-thing is much more connected to the environment and all that kind of thing. Yeah, and that would be something that's a little hard to tell if you only saw this movie and weren't reading the comics. Not to say you personally, but anyone.
00:27:34
Speaker
The the thing about man thing is is, yeah, like you noted at the beginning with his origin story, he's he's kind of coming up with this next super soldier serum, this next Captain America serum. And obviously, I can't remember if it's aim or whoever somebody comes into. Yeah, same. Yeah. OK, so a breaks into his lab or whatever to take it. And he is kind of like
00:28:00
Speaker
Okay. The only thing I can do is hop out this window and check myself with the serum and see what happens. You know, that way nobody can get it. And then yeah, he does. It's not that he becomes infused with the swamp. I think that that is a misconception that a lot of people think of. They don't really look into it. It's the fact that, and maybe this was retconned. I can't really remember off the top of my head, but it's that he was so close to that nexus of all realities right there in the swamp.
00:28:28
Speaker
that that's why it had the effect on him the way that it does. And that's why he is kind of the gatekeeper and protector of the Nexus of all realities on earth. So yeah, just some cool off the wall out there psychedelic 70s stuff. Yeah, I could be wrong here, but I think that the Nexus stuff was a retcon because I did not see any mention of it in the original stuff. And that may have been an intentional choice to try and
00:28:55
Speaker
pull more away from Swamp Thing as well. So maybe that was what they were thinking. And that sounds like a Gerber idea. So I bet it was Gerber who introduced that. Gerber's got some great ideas. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I love his Defenders run is like one of my favorite comics ever.
00:29:15
Speaker
And that I'm saying that without having really read his man thing other than what I just started reading or without having read Howard the Duck Which again is also something I've got and will get around to hopefully at some point before I die So Yeah, he's an interesting character.
Evolution of Marvel's Film Licensing
00:29:37
Speaker
He's got a very interesting backstory and and even me going into this movie with only those kind of
00:29:44
Speaker
you know, much more vague ideas about him, not as well developed. When I was watching this movie last night, the thing I was, that kept jumping out to me throughout it is, well, two things. First off, it's weird to see Rachel Taylor in this because she would go on to play Trish in Jessica Jones. So, yeah, she's Hellcat. Yeah, pre-Hellcats. You can kind of do a mental retcon and say that she was, this was before she became Hellcat.
00:30:15
Speaker
But the other thing I was thinking is that it feels like someone took a generic monster movie script and just kind of laid Man-Thing over on top of it because, you know, the stuff about the Nexus, like you said, that's not really in there. And yeah, Man-Thing, you know, he's killed people in the comics, but it's usually some sort of reason. He seems like a bit more almost kind of just like, you know, a traditional monster. He does seem much more like the villain in this movie.
00:30:45
Speaker
Um, and, and just like the way he, the way his, his tentacles move. In fact, one of the reviews I saw on letterbox was pointed out, you know, um, you know,
00:30:57
Speaker
about you know whatever the man thing touch you know you know fear burns the touch of the man thing whatever the the exact line is and it's like how can you have that that is the character is one thing and you don't use it at all in the movie well yeah it's really funny that you say that too because they they took a lot of things that are really important to the character of man thing and kind of threw those out the window so obviously the origin story is completely different this is now in this movie a
00:31:26
Speaker
Native American Instead of just a I mean Dr. Ted Salas is just like a normal white dude He's not like a Native American or anything in his normal origin story in the in the comic. So so now he's a Native American Look, that's that's fine. I don't mind that part. But so there's no super soldier Serum there's
00:31:52
Speaker
There's nothing about, like you said, the Nexus that's completely taken out. The way that man-thing operates is, like you said, whoever knows fear burns at the touch of the man-thing or burns at the man-thing's touch. So essentially, the man-thing runs on emotion. He is kind of bothered by any high emotion. If you're scared, if you're fearful, if you're angry or whatever,
00:32:19
Speaker
then the man thing touches you and you catch on fire basically. That's what happens in the comics. It's funny because sometimes you'll see the man thing fighting alligators or whatever and I don't know that anything can be said. I don't know where we stand on if we feel like animals
00:32:36
Speaker
You know, sense fear or whatever, but I, I at least kind of feel like they do. So, so sometimes you'll see these battles and there's not really anything happening with the alligator. And then all of a sudden the alligator catches on fire and dies. And, and it's just, you know, kind of like an interesting thing that happens in the books. Um, but yeah, one of the, one of the biggest things that caught me off guard with this movie was the fact that this takes place in Louisiana.
00:32:59
Speaker
Um, the main thing is, is from Citrusville, Florida. That's where everything exists in the comic books. Right. And not for the life of me, figure out why they decided this needed to be set in, in New Orleans. It makes absolutely no sense to me. I don't know why they switched that up. Um, but yeah, that was, that was also a very interesting thing that happened in this movie.
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's another that that jumped out to me. And I believe Swamp Thing is actually, is Swamp Thing said in Louisiana? I think he is. I cannot remember. I can't remember. I believe so. But that was an interesting thing I noticed too. I also, you know,
00:33:39
Speaker
looking at the appearance, I was looking at the effects on the man thing creature in this and like the tendrils flying around everywhere. And then, and I'm thinking, I'm like, okay, so it's got the eyes. It looks very familiar. And I was thinking, it looks familiar, the man thing. And then I, you know, I compared it back some, and then when I opened up the book afterwards, I'm like, Oh, wait, no, the man thing in the comics looks completely different. And then I realized what it was is I was thinking, I was thinking of Swamp Thing. Yeah, man things definitely more.
00:34:09
Speaker
Kind of built I mean not that this isn't like a big creature, but he's he's bulkier He's a little more hunched over he has this great big trunk That's his trademark kind of trunk that splits off into threes. Yeah, and this this character doesn't have it now. I
00:34:26
Speaker
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a really cool character design. It's a cool looking monster, and it's practical until they add the CG with the vines and everything coming out, the tendrils or whatever we might call that. So I think that it's an amazing, really cool looking design, but it does not look anything like Man Think from the Book.
00:34:47
Speaker
Yeah, I remember thinking I'm like, you know what, maybe I think what it kind of looks like is it's almost like Swamp Thing with a beard. Yeah, pretty much. So now I find myself wondering if maybe this was like a proposed Swamp Thing reboot or something that then they couldn't get the rights for Swamp Things, they decide let's use Man Thing instead.
00:35:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. There's not really enough history or anything, stories about the production or anything out there. I did listen a couple of years ago. There was a podcast that I was listening to. It might've been from comicbook.com, but don't quote me on that. I can't remember. But there was no special features really with this DVD release or sci-fi channel release. So the director came on and did a director's commentary. So he sat through the movie and watched it. And he even stated himself
00:35:37
Speaker
He was proud of this movie and everything, but he had not watched it since it came out. And I guess this was, you know, somewhere around like 10 years later or something, I would say 2015, 2016, something like that.
00:35:47
Speaker
And so as he's going through this, he's he's talking about how he had a completely different story in mind. And this was at the time this was 2005. So so the MCU was a completely different animal than it than it became. Right. Well, it didn't even exist back then. Yeah, exactly. But you still had your your.
00:36:08
Speaker
I don't know, Marvel logo right at the front of the movie. I believe this is the first time we see that, I think. I could be wrong, but I don't remember. No, because that would have been the first time. The first time was in Spider-Man.
00:36:23
Speaker
OK, so the same. Yeah, the the flipping pages logo, the first time they had that was in Spider-Man. OK, excellent. X-Men. Yeah, it was after X-Men. Then Spider-Man was the first time they introduced it. I'm pretty sure about that. Either that or it was X-Men 2 that was the first one, but it was one of those two. Well, yeah. So so this is early on there. They're just kind of I don't know, figuring out what what works and what doesn't. But the the head of Marvel at that point,
00:36:53
Speaker
Kevin Feige is still involved. I don't think he's the head of Marvel. I think that Avia Rod, is that his name? Yeah. Avia Rod was like the executive producer on all the pre Feige stuff and he was going to run the show. Yeah. Yeah. So he had had a big hand in this and he, he kind of took that, what they had in the script and was like, Nope, this isn't going to work and, and, and send it back for rewrites. And so at the very least, this director is kind of pending the failure of this movie and what happened to it on, on him.
00:37:24
Speaker
So I find that really interesting. I'm not sure, obviously, we don't have Avi Arad's side of the story, so who knows, but yay.
00:37:35
Speaker
Yeah, back then Marvel was in such desperate straights because, you know, they declared bankruptcy in the mid late 90s. It was like 97, I think it was, or 98, somewhere around there. And it wasn't until Iron Man that they actually finally got out of bankruptcy. Iron Man was kind of like their Hail Mary to finally get out of bankruptcy. It was one of those types. It was like a do or die situation. It was like, you know, we're going to try this. If this doesn't work, that's it. We're done.
00:38:00
Speaker
And that was what, 2008? 2000? That was 2008. Yeah. So like in the early 2000s, after like all throughout the 90s, and the early 2000s, Marvel was just licensing out their, their IP to anyone who would who was willing to pick it up. That's how we got things like, you know, the Roger Corman Fantastic Four. That's how we got the, you know, the Generation X TV movie and you know, all this type of stuff that was just kind of like churned out and
00:38:30
Speaker
Blade even, right? Blade was just like, well, we've got this character. Let's just see if anyone wants to do anything with it. And that ended up working out great. And then finally, after sitting on the rights for about 10 years, Fox finally made the X-Men movie that hit
Analyzing Man Thing Film's Flaws
00:38:43
Speaker
it big. And then after that, you know,
00:38:45
Speaker
They had finally worked out the rights with Spider-Man. Sony was able to release the first Spider-Man movie. Again, hit it big. And then Marvel just kind of went on a... And that got so many other studios interested. And then all these studios just started going to Marvel. It's like, hey, what else you got? What else you got? And Marvel's like, oh, we got this, we got this, we got this. And they just kept giving it out to anybody. And the result was while you have this slew of Marvel movies that came out in the early 2000s of...
00:39:12
Speaker
very varying degrees of quality you had stuff that was you know earnest but you know didn't quite hit the mark like you know the director's cut a daredevil or um ghost writer spirit of vengeance or the fantastic four movies you had stuff that was just you know utterly terrible like electro and and it was just or one of the things that i thought of when i was watching this is this feels like this totally feels like one of those 2005 marvel movies where it's just kind of
00:39:42
Speaker
It's there, there are some things to admire about it, but ultimately, I think the biggest sin of this movie is kind of like the biggest sin of Morbius, where it's just, it's not bad enough to be entertainingly bad, but it's also not good enough to rise above mediocre. It's just kind of there, is what I felt throughout most of the runtime.
00:40:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's, look, I probably said this five times already. It's a very, very interesting movie. It's a very interesting project. It's very interesting that Marvel or whoever would take this property and think in 2005, this is something that's going to generate us any type of revenue.
00:40:26
Speaker
I of course am there for it. I was going to be there for it no matter what because it's man thing so I'm there but I think the problem is you take this completely unknown character set it up against a
00:40:40
Speaker
a very well-known DC property that people know and kind of love. Whether they like those movies or not, I think it doesn't matter either way, but the name recognition of it. So then you take that, and then this wasn't really marketed to anyone. It was a sci-fi channel original at that point. So who's really tuning in to watch this thing? What are other sci-fi channel originals around the time? They're kind of these weird,
00:41:07
Speaker
one and done things that you just kind of catch if you're like sick home from school that day or whatever like right it's not really for anybody i don't even think they had come out with their their big kind of uh sharknado type of stuff or whatever they were doing at that you know a little bit later on yet so so this movie comes out and it's just
00:41:30
Speaker
It's it's crazy. It's out there. And then it completely takes the origins and everything you know about the character. If you read the character and flip it on its head, the only thing that you keep in is the character's name. The you know, Dr. Ted Salas's name, who's not a doctor anymore. And right. He's a shaman and chieftain now, apparently. So so he's he's essentially a completely different character. You take away the powers of the man thing like we talked about.
00:41:58
Speaker
And kind of what are you left with? And again, the biggest thing to me, the biggest, most glaring thing, you take him out of Citrusville, you take him out of Florida, put him in Louisiana. So it is just a completely different thing. Again, that director was talking about how he had a different movie planned. He had something different in mind. The studio kind of shoehorned in the romance of all of it, which was not in the original script.
00:42:25
Speaker
kind of that ending too. He wanted everyone to die. So that was also a studio note, which that one makes sense. I could understand why you don't want your leads to die or whatever in the movie, but it needed to end for him on that kind of somber note. Like this man thing just kind of went on this killing spree because of what was happening in the swamp, because he was the protector of the swamp. And then the studio took that away from him too. So I can see both sides of the story here. I can see how it fell apart. He had a vision.
00:42:54
Speaker
Now why he took that vision to Australia, built a giant tank and put a fake swamp in it and then set it in Louisiana with people with Australian accents trying to do a Southern American accent, I don't know. But yeah, there's some very interesting aspects of this.
00:43:11
Speaker
Well, yeah, and also they, you know, they don't even include any of the characters or even similar type characters from those man-thing comics. Like, you know, Jennifer Kale, right? There's no mention of her. You know, she's a sorceress character from Marvel who shared a psychic link with man-thing. And then, you know, from what I, even from what I was reading in the origin story last night, you've got, you know, Ellen Brandt, who's, you know, posing as Ted's love interest, but she's really working for AIM.
00:43:38
Speaker
Um, then you've got, you know, Barbara Morse eventually becomes Mockingbird. You've got K-ZAR in there in those early issues. And while you can't, you probably can't use all those characters directly. You probably can't have AIM. You probably can't have, uh, Mockingbird. You probably can't have K-ZAR. But you could probably do Jennifer Kale, and you could probably at least have
00:44:00
Speaker
versions of these characters, even if they have different names, right? So if it's not AIM, it's like some other terrorist organization. If it's not Barbara Morris, then you just come up with some different name and just but have her fill in that same role. Oddly enough, I think the the the original West Craven movie actually seems to be more like Man thing's origin than this movie does.
00:44:25
Speaker
Yeah, well, look, this definitely strays completely from man things origins. I think that's always going to be the question on my mind. Anytime I think of this movie is why. Why did they feel the need to to completely separate it from from what it was and make it something completely different? And I don't think we'll ever get really an answer to that. I could see why they they weren't able to tie in a lot of those things based on on the fact that they changed so much of it. You bring it over to Louisiana.
00:44:55
Speaker
all of this stuff. You add in the Native American aspect to it and the kind of protectors of that land. They did bring over one character though. One important man thing kind of villain and that is
00:45:10
Speaker
Frederick schist so FA schist mr. Fascist so he is from the comics So so that's a cool character that they brought over and of course they they brought over the director plays I cannot remember the last name but Val who's one of the he's the coroner in the movie and he is one of the
00:45:32
Speaker
famous man thing artist, Mike Plouge, of course, a famous man thing artist and then Steve Gerber, the photographer there who's the writer of man thing. So they tried to throw in like a little a little bit of fan service, I guess here and there a little bit for us, but they weren't able to tie it into to Marvel like to to the entire Marvel universe. This was very, very standalone in man thing. And then on top of that,
00:46:02
Speaker
completely flipped on its head too. So yeah, I see it. That's Val May Eric. I think I'm pronouncing it right. But yeah, they get Yeah, that's that seems to be like the only really thing like, you know, I didn't realize about the the schist character. But yeah, the other things. And they also have a photo of Stan Lee on the board of missing people. Yes, that was pretty
00:46:23
Speaker
Um, but yeah, other than that, they just, and it's, it's a weird thing to do when you're like, okay, we've ignored everything about this character, but we'll give you three of the creator's names instead. It feels like a weird kind of, that's not really the compromise you think it is. Um, but yeah, and that's why I think I keep coming back to the fact that it feels like this was a complete, this was, you know, intended to be something completely different, or at least it feels that way. And then it's just, they just kind of slapped the man thing branding on it. And to your point,
00:46:52
Speaker
you had made before you don't really not really knowing who this movie is for I was feeling I was thinking the same thing because and you're right Sharknator came out in in 2013 so it was almost 10 years after this but even still you know those sci-fi originals they've got a certain reputation right they're very schlocky very kind of low budget stuff and if you're gonna go for that
00:47:19
Speaker
you know, that, that swing for the fences, right? You know, let's, you know, and the opening, you know, kind of does have a little bit, you know, get, you got the, you got the camper who, who's naked, who's, you know, who's naked for no reason, the blood splatters all over her chest and all that. So you got some of that, but then after that, sorry. I can give you a reason for that. Okay. And listening to the director's commentary there, he said that in order to get this film sold to foreign audiences,
00:47:46
Speaker
It's very, very big in Germany that if you have a movie, especially like a horror movie or any type of slasher, the very first thing they ask is how much female nudity is in it. They're not even gonna pick it up unless it has, unless it has breasts in it. So that's exactly what that was there for.
00:48:10
Speaker
That's hilarious. That makes sense. But it's weird that it has such a schlocky opening like that. But then the rest of the movie just kind of slows down right after that point. And it doesn't feel like it ever... That's what I thought going in, because I knew this movie's reputation.
Challenges of Superhero Film Adaptations
00:48:27
Speaker
And I thought, okay, well, you know, I know it's basically a low budget horror film is essentially what we're looking at here. And when I saw that opening sequence, I'm like, okay, well, maybe at least it'll be like some schlocky bit of fun or something like that.
00:48:40
Speaker
it didn't really have that, you know, like that asylum sharknado feel to it. And it just felt very kind of, very kind of bland. And I think, like I said, if you're going to go for something like this, then and you're not going to have like the big budget to do, do it properly.
00:48:57
Speaker
and you want to lean into the monster movie aspect of it, then really lean into that. But instead, we get this story with the sheriff who, I mean, he's decent enough. The actor is Matthew Linneves. He's decent enough in the role. Rachel Taylor, you know, she's decent enough. This is her first gig anyway, too. She does a pretty good job with what she's given, but it's just their story is, the characters are just, they're just so blandly written. And, you know, you'd mentioned about the romance aspect. Like when that came in, it's just kind of like,
00:49:27
Speaker
Okay, I kind of expected this but I don't see any reason why these two characters would get together Yeah, I don't either and then on top of that you look at some of the times that they're together Some of the times they're they're making out or whatever. They're making out right after somebody's
00:49:43
Speaker
killed right in front of them by the man thing. They're making out like right after the man thing kind of disassembles himself and phases back into the swamp and everything. It's very awkward at these points where they feel the need to just grab one another. Yeah, you can tell it's very forced in the script because it just wasn't there in the initial script. I think that that's pretty obvious. And I think if you take, look, I'm all for having fun. So to me,
00:50:11
Speaker
I definitely don't consider this movie as bad as most reviewers do. A lot of people would say this is garbage and just completely skip it. I wouldn't even say that. I think this is worth watching. It's a fun time all the way through. It definitely has its ups and downs.
00:50:33
Speaker
take it at face value, you can have a lot of fun with it. I think that if you stack it up against man things, origins in the comic books and everything, you're of course going to be very disappointed. It did a lot of things for no apparent reason. And you're just never going to get an answer to. I was saying before that I listened to that commentary. The main reason I listened to that commentary, I was really, really hoping that the director would
00:50:56
Speaker
would tell us why some of these things happen, why some of these choices were made, especially why man thing was moved from from Florida to Louisiana. And there's just, it's not even mentioned, there's no answer to any of that. You're not gonna get an answer. It just kind of is what it is. And you're either along for the ride and having fun. Or you're just, hey, this is a bad movie, stay the hell away from this. There's, you can be in one camp or the other, I guess.
00:51:23
Speaker
I think I fall somewhere between those two. I agree with you. It's not a completely worthless movie. I think it's, I think there's a lot of competent things in there. I think it's the direction is pretty is pretty good. It's pretty well shot. The performances, you know, we get, like I said, we have some decent performances from from Rachel Taylor from Linneves.
00:51:46
Speaker
Blake and I'm one of the other guys too. But Steve Bastoni, he was also not too bad. I thought he was pretty convincing in it. When you get some of the villains in there, like the the Fibidos, then they just kind of get over the top and then you start getting into like, they're like cartoon characters. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was thinking about like the the yokels in like, you know, Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Friday the 13th or something like that. But
00:52:11
Speaker
And that's why it almost feels like this movie doesn't really know what it wants to be. It doesn't know if it wants to be that kind of like schlocky horror film or if it wants to be something that's aiming to be something more serious. It's like this weird middle ground. It's like, pick a side.
00:52:27
Speaker
Yeah, and I think a lot of that has to do with the rewrites. The director did say that this was just a completely different thing, but what I do gather from that being a completely different thing is that it still wasn't going to be a good thing either way. It's not like he had a good idea in mind and it got changed to something bad. This was going to be bad in a way either way. Again, it's just...
00:52:51
Speaker
how you look at it whenever you go into it, if you want to have fun with it or if you want to just say, this is this is absolute shit. You know, that's kind of up to you. And that's what I think that we do with a lot of movies or a lot of media that we consume. Look, for me personally, I have sat down no less than six times and tried to watch the Matt Reeves Batman movie and I can't make it 30 minutes. And it's to me, it's like unforgivable. I can't even watch it. Now, this is like a highly acclaimed film that a lot of people really love and they think
00:53:20
Speaker
that Matt Reeves did a wonderful job and Robert Pattinson is wonderful in the role. And then you have me who's not trying to be pretentious and act cool or anything. I just, I can't make it through it. It's not connecting to me at all. It's, it's dark and it's not going anywhere and it's just.
00:53:34
Speaker
I hate it, but that's that's probably me sitting down. Like I said, at the top of this episode, I'm not a Batman guy, so it's hard for me to go in sometimes. Now, the Christopher Nolan trilogy, I can sit through. I got no problem with all those 90s Batman movies are super fun. I have no problem with any of those. I can watch the Batman animated series. Something about this newer incarnation just isn't for me. And I think that that can happen to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons.
00:54:03
Speaker
But you take something like this and you have to remember this is a low budget movie. This is not your Hollywood MCU movie. This this is a very low budget movie and a lot of this movie was spent on a lot of the budget for this movie was spent on recreating a swamp.
00:54:23
Speaker
that's supposed to look like it's in Louisiana over in Australia. They completely had welders, they had builders, all these people out creating these giant massive tanks and filling them with things to make it look like a swamp, which looked pretty cool, but it doesn't look like an actual swamp. No, I get what you're saying with that. I mean, there are definitely some movies like that that I'm with.
00:54:48
Speaker
A lot of people love the Snyder Cut of Justice League. I despise that movie. I just, it's just so fucking, to me, it's just like, it's just so fucking long. And it just, it doesn't really, and it's needlessly long. It feels like it's just, you know, it feels like he's just masturbating on screen actually for a long stretch. And so yeah, I totally get that. I totally get that. And I mean, I love the Batman, but you know, the,
00:55:17
Speaker
The Dark Knight Rises, I think I'll be very satisfied if I go the rest of my life and I never see it again. I don't need to see it again. And there are movies also that other people despise that I think are completely underrated. Like I mentioned, the director's cut a Daredevil. I will defend that movie to my grave. Oh man, I love Daredevil. Yeah. And a bunch of other ones too that I think... So yeah, it's that whole thing about opinions are like assholes. We all got them and they all stink.
00:55:47
Speaker
So, um, but yeah, and I couldn't, and like I said, I don't think this is completely worthless. My whole thing going into it was just, I didn't feel that it was bad enough to be entertaining and it wasn't good enough to be entertaining. It was just this kind of like bland middle. Like if you're, you know,
00:56:07
Speaker
If you have a nice cooked steak that's cooked really well, it's nice and pink on the inside, it's got nice flavor into it, or if you've got something that's just been burnt to a crisp, either way, you're gonna have an experience. This is just something where it's like, it's a well done steak, but it's not bad enough to be like, oh my God, I gotta tell you about this worst steak I ever had type of thing. But it's also, it's not enjoyable either. It's just kind of like there.
00:56:35
Speaker
And that's why I actually compare this movie to Morbius because Morbius kind of disappointed me, not because I expected it to be good, but because I expected it to be spectacularly bad and then I watched it and I thought it was just boring.
00:56:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's not memorable enough for you to really even comment on it. That's yeah, I completely agree with you on that. This is again, this is a it's in between for me as well. It's a fun watch, but it's also hard to watch. I find myself sitting there for 20 minutes kind of really intrigued. And then after that, I want to pick up my phone and start seeing, you know, what's going on in the news or something and then wait for something.
00:57:17
Speaker
out of the corner of my eye, wait for a man thing to show up or something like that. It's a hard watch. It's still fun. It's all over the place. It's a really, really weird movie. It's a weird experience. Yeah, and I was comparing it in my head to the West Craven swam thing, too, because that movie has its flaws. It's definitely not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination. But it was, there's a certain charm to that movie.
00:57:44
Speaker
that it just feels like this movie just doesn't quite have, you know? And there are other superhero movies like that too. I mean, you know, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has a lot of problems with it, but there's a certain charm to it because you got Andrew Garfield, you've got Emma Stone in there, and just the charm of those two alone makes you want to sit through the bad parts of that movie.
00:58:06
Speaker
I love that you bring up the amazing Spider-Man because that's a whole different ballgame or whatever, a whole different topic, but that's kind of the same thing if you think about it. Andrew Garfield should never have been Spider-Man, Peter Parker. He doesn't work in that role, but at the same time,
00:58:26
Speaker
He's so cool and I just want to see him as Peter Parker because I really like him a lot. But he's not Peter Parker. He's not Tobey Maguire. He's not Tom Holland. He doesn't have that same energy that they bring out as Peter Parker. But he's so cool and I just want to watch him in the role. I don't know. I'm so conflicted by it. You know what? He feels more like Ben Riley. Uh-huh.
00:58:50
Speaker
I mean, I think if you did a Scarlet Spider movie and had Andrew Garfield, I think that would be perfect, because he does feel a lot more like Ben Riley. I was thinking about this the other day, actually. Yeah, and I'd love to see him somewhere else in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I know we had a little bit of him in the last Spider-Man movie, but God, I would love for them to cast him as somebody else, because he's just so cool. I just want to see him more in these movies. He's such a cool actor.
00:59:19
Speaker
I'm still waiting for Emma Stone in a Spider-Gwen movie. I'll be holding out hope for that until the day either she dies or I die.
00:59:36
Speaker
Yeah, and it's just this movie, it just it doesn't have enough going for it to really keep me interested through those bad parts or through those slow parts. I mean, it's one thing if you had, you know, really intriguing characters, but the characters are just out of, you know, stock horror movie characters. It's one thing if you had inventive death scenes or something like that. But, you know,
00:59:58
Speaker
you don't really have any of that. And it's, and I, and even like some of the themes, there are some interesting themes that this movie kind of introduces, like, you know, the idea of, you know, you know, taking over native lands and all that kind of stuff, or, you know, corporate exploitation of small towns, or just like the pollution of the environment. All this are really interesting ideas, but they never go anywhere. They just kind of sit there.
01:00:27
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead. No, you're good. You're good. I think that that's another really interesting part. They they kind of they don't go anywhere with these themes. They don't know kind of what they want to do with them. And and you have some of these characters that some of these half baked ideas that could be really interesting. I think before I was talking about the original stuff like Sharknado and stuff like that, you have to think to yourself,
01:00:56
Speaker
sharknado sitting through a whole sharknado movie it's kind of the same thing you want to see all the crazy shit go on with the sharks and stuff like that but the stuff in between where the where the characters are sitting there talking or whatever like those are the boring parts and that's that's the same thing here this is the boring parts of this movie this is what really suffers and makes it you know less than a b movie or whatever with this really low budget without you know
01:01:21
Speaker
any really good editing or anything going on without anyone taking a second look at that script and saying, hey, this doesn't work. This doesn't narratively make any sense here. This needs to be cut out. You can tell a lot of that's missing. And a lot of this was just kind of the director going back and forth with with. Avi, I can never say his name.
01:01:42
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. And kind of what was happening back and forth there. I think it really, really suffers from that. But again, I can't say for certain that this would be a better movie without any interference because it sounded like he didn't really have a plan either way. Yeah. And just from what you said, it sounds like he wasn't someone who was
01:02:04
Speaker
interested in the source material or Or interested in finding out about the source material because you can have someone who maybe doesn't come in a fan but they're interested enough to To do their research and do a pretty decent job.
Man Thing's MCU Future Amidst Superhero Fatigue
01:02:17
Speaker
I mean, you know, Brian Singer, you know the fact the fact that he's a monster aside he you know what he came in the x-men movies and he wasn't a fan of the x-men, but he read up on it and
01:02:29
Speaker
There's still plenty of criticisms to have about those movies, but for the most part, I think he got more right than he got wrong. At least with the original movies, let's not talk about Apocalypse. But again, that's another story. We're gonna start a fight here any minute. But then and then you've got other directors who
01:02:52
Speaker
You know, they come in as a fan and maybe they're too much of a fan, right? So someone like Mark Steven Johnson with Daredevil and Ghost Rider or Tim Story with the Fantastic Four. You can tell they're obviously like the stuff, but they're not able to get over their fandom and to really, they're more concerned with like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if we did this, if we did this? But they're forgetting about the fact that, yeah, but you got to have a good story that's going to appeal to more people.
01:03:22
Speaker
that was kind of a problem with a lot of those movies. And then you've got, you know, this where it's you bring in someone who probably similar to Josh Trank, who doesn't seem to be a fan of the movies, doesn't seem to be a fan of the comics and just kind of wants to put his own stamp on it and doesn't really care about what this character is to other people.
01:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, it was so interesting and eye-opening to listen to that commentary track. I really suggest that anybody do that if you can. Again, I'm not selling it too well because I don't even remember which podcast it's from, but it was just really cool to listen to hear his side of it because, yeah, like you're saying, I never heard him really express any interest in the character.
01:04:05
Speaker
I never heard him really express any interest in working on a Marvel project or anything like that. It was just kind of another paycheck to him. Now, what I did hear a lot of was that he was really, really intrigued with Australia and wanted to go on vacation to Australia. And that's why he set up shop in Australia and convinced the studio to take it there because it would cost a lot less and whatever.
01:04:31
Speaker
And he really ended up staying there for five years after this movie. There was nobody checking up on him other than him like sending the script and then dailies or whatever. Um, so, so it's, it's really interesting. What kind of comes across as like, Hey, I just wanted to go out to Australia and they kind of paid me to do that. So that's what I did. I ended up staying there and making a few other movies. This is the same guy that made virtuosity and the lawnmower man. Like he's not.
01:05:02
Speaker
passions into a film, I think that some of it looks great. I like the cinematography, some of the cinematography and some of the stuff, I'm gonna say all of it. And obviously he likes to work with like, you know, the cutting edge technology at the time, the computer animation and all of that on Mom or Man that looks interesting as hell. But then again, you know, what they did with practical and then CG effects here in this movie. So it's just, it's such a mixed bag for me. There's so many bad things to say about this.
01:05:20
Speaker
great at adapting other people's
01:05:32
Speaker
And then there's some good things that I really like too. That's what kind of drew me to it. That's why, look, I'm not going to lie to you. I didn't even look through your list of movies of what had been done and what hadn't been done. I just sent in, let's do man thing. I guarantee that no one has ever suggested doing this movie and you haven't covered it. And you were right.
01:05:50
Speaker
It's just an interesting movie. I feel like it's something to talk about. It's definitely, it's not my favorite movie, but like I said at the head of this, it is something that I go back to. I do try to continuously watch this, you know, at least every other year or so, just so it's kind of fresh on my mind. I was really happy and I haven't gotten your spin on it yet, but with the werewolf by night special, with the depiction of man thing on that.
01:06:16
Speaker
I think it was, it was really cool. It was really interesting. It was really nice how they brought him in as a secondary character in this. And he really, I'm not going to say stole the show because I feel like Elsa and, and, and, uh, you know, yeah, really, you know, held their own too. But, but this kind of brought the character
01:06:39
Speaker
to a lot of people's attention. A lot of people were trying to learn more about Man-Thing. If you look at any of the recent sales on Savage Tales 1 or even Man-Thing Volume 1, Number 1, Man-Thing Volume 2, Number 1, they've really, really gone up, even those Adventure Into Fear books and everything.
01:06:58
Speaker
really spiked after this and they're really holding as well so it's a character that has been brought to a lot of people's attention now and they're very interested in very interested in at least collecting and then learning more so i think that there's there's obviously something there with the character but yeah you're right this director wasn't able to bring that over in his vision at all he kind of just made
01:07:21
Speaker
something that seemed like the script to something else and then just kind of laid this on top of it, I wouldn't be surprised at all if that's actually what happened. Yeah, I mean, because that's exactly what it feels like. Now, as far as man thing in World Final, I loved it. Like I was not expecting that at all. And so when he pops out there, I'm like, holy shit, it's a fucking man thing. And like me, like I said, I'm not even a big fan of the character, but just seeing them, you know, pop about a stream like it's fucking man thing. It's the giant sized man thing.
01:07:51
Speaker
And my wife, she's like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, it's man thing. I'm like, forget it, forget it. This happens all the time. But yeah, I thought it was great. And for me, actually, I thought he did steal this show. Because, you know, I mean, I like Marvel's horror characters, you know, Werewolf by Night, interesting enough, but I wasn't that
01:08:11
Speaker
intrigued by the idea of the werewolf by night special, I thought, oh, this is kind of cool. But I wasn't like, you know, oh, I'm so looking forward to this. And so when I watched it, and just like, yeah, yeah, let's go along, see what it is. And then once man thing popped up, that added a whole new spin for me, that got me really a lot more invested in it. So, so he definitely stole the show for me. But your point is taken, though, like, you know, bloodstone, and, and Jack definitely held their own too. And I think
01:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, that character is definitely kind of blown up from just that appearance because, like I said, even here in Japan, you know, all the reviews on the rental site for this movie were just like, this isn't the same man thing, what the hell is this?
01:08:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's so interesting to take something like this, this werewolf by night special and see what they did with the character. They didn't focus on the character. They didn't make him the central point. But once he was involved, everyone was very intrigued by him. Everyone's very invested in what was going to happen to him. They even kind of did something different with the man thing here. And he refers to him as Ted.
01:09:15
Speaker
Um, which is really cool. It kind of shows their relationship outside of that, you know, he's just this hulking monster man thing or whatever. He knows him as Ted. He knows them as, as Dr. Theodore Salas. And, and, and I think that that spin was really, really cool. I really hope that there is a future for, for a man thing in the Marvel cinematic universe in some way or another. And I think that.
01:09:38
Speaker
Marvel smart enough to at least kind of exploit the character a little bit do something a little bit more with them with all the hype but like you said they're in Japan people are talking about
01:09:49
Speaker
the character, comparing the character to what happened in this movie. And yeah, there's no way you can even set these two against one another. The way that Man-Thing is depicted in the Werewolf by Night special is completely night and day as to what happened here in Man-Thing 2005. They really, really screwed up everything. They screwed up his whole origin. Everything that they could possibly do wrong with Man-Thing, they did wrong.
01:10:20
Speaker
Absolutely. But this is not a man thing movie. No, I mean, and yeah, there's and there's validity to that. Like, there's there's something to be said for movies that are bad adaptations, but you still like them anyway. I mean, the Keanu Reeves Constantine movie is a perfect example of it. It's a terrible adaptation of John Constantine. But, you know, as a movie in its own right, it's entertaining. It's a fun movie. It's definitely a fun movie. I'm with you on that. I mean,
01:10:45
Speaker
And there's a bunch of other ones, too. Spirit of Engines, right? I mentioned Ghost Rider Spirit of Engines before. Not a great Ghost Rider adaptation, but that is a damn fun movie. It's a it's a it's a pretty fun ride. But yeah, then, and that's why that's, again, I keep coming back to this, this idea that it just feels like they're, you know, the
01:11:07
Speaker
Nobody, he doesn't really know who this movie is supposed to be for. And I think part of it is, you know, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head when you talked about how he wanted to go to Australia. I think he was just kind of doing this as a way to get to Australia and that was it.
01:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, it looked like a $7 million vacation. And that's kind of what it was. He made some friends. I mean, almost that whole commentary is just talking about these actors that he worked with, these friends that he made, how he just had such a wonderful experience in Australia. Everything was about Australia. Now, why would you take something that takes place in a swamp, somewhere that doesn't have a swamp? Like, what would be the purpose of that?
01:11:47
Speaker
Now you could easily, I mean, I don't know, I don't understand filming well enough to understand things like tax credits and stuff like that. I understand that that plays a big part in things. Obviously paying actors in the States probably costs a lot more than paying actors in Australia where they're
01:12:06
Speaker
I don't know, they don't have a Hollywood scene or whatever, or the same kind. So I could see how that's probably more easy to convince a studio to do or whatever, but yeah, you're taking these central points of what makes the character, these people that are in the South, and you're taking Australian actors who have to learn a Southern accent on the fly, and who break it a lot. I remember the first time watching this movie, and all I could think of was,
01:12:34
Speaker
What are these accents? They're going in and out of a southern. They have a little bit of it there, but then it breaks or it's just not quite there. They don't get it all the way. The only character I can really recall that really kind of nails that is the the.
01:12:49
Speaker
Frederick Schist character. He's kind of able to nail that accent in a way. And then the other characters really just go in and out, especially the secondary ones, especially you've got that character whenever the sheriff is first being escorted over to the swamp area. And he's in the boat and he says, why is it called
01:13:10
Speaker
the by water and he goes, because it's by the water. That was that was a fun little line. But yeah, even that character just went in and out of his Australian accent. So just that line. That line struck me as just he was writing the script and he was like, I got to think of a name for this place. Oh, I got this great idea for a joke. Yeah. And it's a great joke. That's a that's a good dad joke. I like it. I'm a fan. Yeah.
01:13:36
Speaker
I can't find myself in any situation where I'd be able to reuse it. So I got to take points out for that. I mean, I will say like you talked about man thing, what his role might be in the MCU going forward. I mean, we are getting secret wars and, you know, he's the guardian of the nexus of reality. So I think there's definitely something we could tie in there.
01:13:54
Speaker
Another thing too is I, this is just my personal thing, but a few years ago, Marvel did a Howling Commandos comic book with a bunch of the monster characters. It had Dum Dum Dugan, who was the same mind, but his mind was basically in an LMD body. So it was just like completely robot body, but his mind is still Dugan's mind. He was leading this team of monsters.
01:14:21
Speaker
And Man Thing, I think, was in that lineup, too. And it was such a fun series. And I'm like, that would be so cool to do. You can get Man Thing in there. You can get Jack Russell in there. Bring back Neil McDonough. Have him play Dugan again. I think that would be a really cool MCU project to see. And that's what I would love to see. Yeah, I think there's definitely a way to continue to have Man Thing in the MCU without focusing on a solo film. I think that, obviously, that's
01:14:51
Speaker
something that's not going to happen. I don't think there's really any hope that we would get another man thing movie. This was really the only shot at that, I believe, but.
01:15:02
Speaker
I mean, you never know. We got we got an Eternals movie. So well, sure, sure. But the characters been introduced. And like you said, throw him in on a team. There's there's a lot that he can do in a team. There's a lot he can do in Secret Wars. He can he can be involved with champions. There's just a lot that that. I mean, well.
01:15:25
Speaker
Yeah, I mentioned the Parker Thunderbolt, they're doing Thunderbolts now, that's definitely somewhere else you could pop up to. Yeah, absolutely. Even if just, you know, small, small little parts or whatever, there's I feel like there's definitely a future for for man thing in the MCU. And I hope that that we continue to see some of that. I think that that would be really cool. I, I had always kind of proposed this anytime I talk about the future of the MCU. And and whenever we were waiting on the
01:15:53
Speaker
the news from James Gunn and whoever else is in charge of DC right now to come out with their slate and everything. There's a lot of superhero fatigue right now, at least that people talk about. I don't know how true it is because box office money still speaks and everything. But a lot of people, you have a lot of these acclaimed directors coming out against the machine that is the MCU, against superhero movies. You have Martin Scorsese, you have Quentin Tarantino
01:16:23
Speaker
saying whatever they think, their old man speech about how movies aren't the way that they were back in their day and all of that.
01:16:35
Speaker
a lot of people are saying there's a lot of superhero fatigue out there. Again, a lot of people are saying that, you know, something like She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel was bad, but yet you look at the ratings for them and they're rated pretty high, whatever. I loved all of those projects. I loved both of those. Yeah, She-Hulk was probably my favorite of the Disney Plus shows today. Yeah, exactly. Watching that stuff week to week was amazing. It was just like reading a comic book and waiting for the next one to come out. I loved it. But, you know, whatever.
01:16:57
Speaker
If it's just the trolls on the internet or whatever, then that's what it is. But a lot of people are saying that superhero fatigue exists is my point.
Horror Potential in Superhero Films
01:17:05
Speaker
And if it does exist, if people really are tired of these projects and tired of seeing these things, well, what have we not explored yet? And what does the DC universe and the Marvel universe both have like in mass, like, you know, they have, they have so much horror, they have so much sci-fi, they have so much stuff that's not superhero related at all that they can do something with.
01:17:24
Speaker
My take was, why doesn't DC come out swinging with their horror stuff? Why don't they come out with some of this witching hour tales of the unexpected swamp thing, which they are, which I applaud them for the swamp thing and calling it a horror project and everything. But why not take a different angle? We've already seen the Trinity a million times. I don't need Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman again. Unfortunately, as different as everybody thinks that
01:17:54
Speaker
you know, what James Gunn and company have announced here, it still involves Superman and Wonder Woman and Batman, whether it's Elseworlds or not. So it's still the Trinity. And yeah, there's some deep cuts there with creature commandos and some different stuff. But I just felt like, you know, why not just come out swinging on a completely different angle? You have so much IP that you could do something with that's not superhero related.
01:18:20
Speaker
If you've really got a good idea and you have some good story behind it and good actors behind it and everything You don't need that name recognition of Batman Superman Wonder Woman We don't need the Avengers on the Marvel side like we can do something different Well, I mean I think Marvel's proof from that like the name recognition now isn't necessarily with any of the characters It's with that Marvel brand is what the name recognition is now. I mean, I see, you know, I teach university here in Japan I see you know
01:18:51
Speaker
young university co-ed students walking around in like Marvel sweaters. And, you know, I've asked some of my students like, oh, you like Marvel? And they'd be like, like, oh, no, no, I just like the I like I like the logo. But it's ridiculous. I'm seeing, you know, when I was in college, I wish there were there were there were cute college girls walking around with Marvel shirts, but it never happened. Yeah. But even Marvel shirts at all. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but it's it's
01:19:19
Speaker
That is the brand now. I think Marvel has proven that, you know, people will give anything a try if that Marvel name is on it. I mean, you know, everyone thought Guardians of the Galaxy was going to be Marvel's first big flop. It ended up being one of its biggest successes. You know, the Eternals, you know, didn't do that great, but it still did respectable. It didn't fail completely. Shang-Chi as well. Right. That's, you know,
01:19:43
Speaker
who outside of comic book fans have ever even heard of Shang-Chi. And that did really well too. And all these types of projects that everybody's like, oh, this is gonna fail, this is gonna fail, and they end up being successful. I mean, to the point about superhero fatigue, I think a lot of that is just a prime example of Twitter is not real life, right? Because again, yeah, I see that all the time with, you know, people have been saying that for, I remember seeing headlines about that back in the mid aughts when people were saying, are people tired of superhero movies?
Criticism and Genre Blending in Superhero Films
01:20:13
Speaker
And obviously not because now it's almost 20 years on and we're still getting superhero movies. And the directors...
01:20:23
Speaker
My late co-host pointed this out because we had talked about it when the Martin Scorsese stuff first came out. And he had pointed out and he's like, notice how every one of those articles, the director is talking about some new film they're promoting. And he's like, I think that's what this is. They want to talk about their new film, but they know the way to get people to click on the articles is by bad mouthing superhero movies. So that's why they do it.
01:20:47
Speaker
And that makes a lot of sense. That's the clickbaity stuff. If you're interviewing Martin Scorsese, if you're interviewing Quentin Tarantino, if you talk to any of these people who have no stake in the game, there's never a chance that they're going to make a Marvel movie so they can burn whatever bridge they want or whatever.
01:21:06
Speaker
But yeah, you kind of say that. What do you think about the Marvel movies? What do you think? Of course, these high cinema pretentious filmmakers have to say something. They can't just say, hey, it's cool that people like it. It's not for me or whatever. They have to kind of come out against it and against that form of art, call it not art, call it not cinema, whatever. But yeah, I think you're completely right. That's an angle that I hadn't really looked at before.
01:21:33
Speaker
It must be clickbait, it must be a way to generate views to their articles so they can push their product in less about what is going on with with superhero movies or Marvel movies. I think another part of it too, and this it's a similar thing with like Alan Moore, every time Alan Moore comes out bashing superhero comic books. And
01:21:54
Speaker
someone pointed out on Twitter, I think it might have been Dan Slott who said, Why do you people keep asking Alan Moore about superhero comics? It's clear he doesn't want to just stop asking him. Sure. I think that's probably part of it, too. And I think that's why Alan Moore's answers get more and more combative because he's just so sick of hearing the same fucking question. And I think that might be enough. That could also be an element of to why you keep hearing, you know, Martin Scorsese or or Coppola or any of these other people bashing
01:22:19
Speaker
superhero movies just because they're like, I don't want to fucking talk about it. I mean, like you guys like whatever you want, but just stop asking me about it. And so when they're asked about it constantly, they're like, fine, fuck it. I'll have to give you the answer you want to get clicks.
01:22:35
Speaker
But you do make another good point there when you said that it's a way to show something different with the superhero genre. And I've long maintained this myself. I think that the key to superhero movies is that you don't look at superhero movies as a genre in itself, which may be kind of contrary to the thesis of this show, I realize. But you look at superheroes as kind of like window dressing for other genres.
01:23:03
Speaker
And I think Marvel kind of really hit on this when they started out with some of their movies. You've got Iron Man, which is a standard superhero origin film, but it's also a lot more focused on the tech side of stuff. And then when you get, I think The First Avenger was really the first movie that they really kind of hit on this. And they're like, no, it's a superhero film, yeah. But more than that, it's a pulp World War II adventure.
01:23:32
Speaker
yeah and it's completely different right and then when they did the second one they're like well he's not in that pulp setting anymore so now we're going to make it a modern day political thriller and it i mean those two movies are just both great movies you know they both have a lot of there's a lot of consistency between them but totally they're very different um but it works because they have those they stick to those different approaches um and i think
01:23:59
Speaker
And I think, I will say this for this movie. This movie was one of the first that really kind of leaned into that idea. Let's take this superhero concept and put it in a genre film. And, you know, other movies have done this to varying degrees before, but I think they really leaned into it. And I think of its era, I think this was the first movie that really kind of heavily leaned into it. It's like, we're not making a superhero movie, we're making a horror movie. And, you know,
01:24:28
Speaker
even though it's, you know, I think, I think, you know, we may differ to the extent, but I think we'll both agree, the execution didn't quite live up to that premise. But I can admire the attempt and that I can admire the idea behind it of let's take this superhero concept and put it into a horror movie. And, you know, in some way, maybe this did. And this has been proven true, because then we got stuff like like Brightburn, which I thought was a great movie that took that superhero concept and put it in a hardcore
01:24:56
Speaker
very entertaining horror film and it was great. Yeah and and I would I think that I could even cross this over into something like look to me this even feels more like a slasher movie than a horror movie it's it's got a lot of those elements to it um I can I can definitely put it up against something like like Friday the 13th 13th not saying that
01:25:20
Speaker
It's as good as Friday the 13th or anything like that. But but it shares a lot of those elements to me. It seems more like a slasher type of thing. And I think there's a place for for stuff like that. I think that it's very hard. We have something like Marvel under the Disney banner. We have T.C. Studios under the Warner Brothers banner. It's going to be hard to. To to take any of that stuff to to that extreme anymore to have like, you know, a hard R rating on anything or or whatever.
01:25:50
Speaker
I think that there's a place for that. Now maybe you have to exclude some of the nudity that was in this movie or whatever and just stick to killing and stuff like that. I think there's a place for slashers in the MCU somewhere. I don't think we'll really
01:26:10
Speaker
evolved to that point I don't think we'll get that again but but I would like to see that I would like to see some real horror I think that I was really really disappointed and not in the movie I think the movie was wonderful Dr. Strange 2 in the multiverse of madness I love it but I remember it coming out I remember it being announced and it was pegged as this is horror this is gonna be the first
R-Rated Superhero Films and Narrative Depth
01:26:30
Speaker
installment of a scary Marvel movie and and while I love the movie it's not that at all it's not scary and it doesn't even dip into horror at all for me in the slightest bit
01:26:40
Speaker
I think there's some attempts there, but it definitely doesn't go far enough. I will definitely agree with you on that. I mean, you could definitely see Sam Raimi leaning into some of his horror influences. And if you're going to get someone to direct a more horror type Doctor Strange movie, I mean, Sam Raimi is really the perfect guy to do that. He's right there in that we that's right. That's like the
01:26:59
Speaker
his like dream project right there. That totally combines like, you know, his love of superheroes, which he clearly has from the Spider-Man movies, but also his love of horror. And yeah, that was, it was a little bit disappointing too, for me, because I also was kind of hoping we'd see him lean in more to the horror aspect. Maybe, I mean, hopefully we'll get him to do a third Doctor Strange movie and maybe that one can be more like Guardians 2 or Black Panther, World of Wakanda, or Wakanda Forever, where it's,
01:27:28
Speaker
It's not as tied to the overarching plan, and maybe then we can get something that's a little bit more horror-infused, I think would be great. And I think there's definitely room for that harder R stuff. And again, Joker, I wasn't the biggest fan of Joker, but again, it did make that attempt to do something different with the superhero concept. And that was a pretty intense movie. They leaned in pretty well to that R rating. You got the Deadpool movies.
01:27:57
Speaker
They weren't at Disney at that time, but Marvel is pretty committed to keeping them in the same tone as those first two movies. So I think there's definite room for this. And I think we could see more of it. There are certainly some characters that could fit in that vein. It's a shame Sony still has the lock on Venom, because I think that is a perfect place where you could easily do that. Depending on what we see next with the Punisher, that's something else where we could lean into more of that.
01:28:25
Speaker
taking it back to this movie, I was also clocking those slasher movie tropes a lot. And even down to the fact that there's so many bland characters, it's such a trope of slasher movies. And the thing that kept pulling me away from this is in a slasher movie, you've got to have at least one character that you have some attachment to.
01:28:51
Speaker
or you've got to have very inventive death scenes. Otherwise, the audience is just going to lose interest. And I don't feel like this movie really had either one of those. Yeah, I think some of the kills visually looked kind of stunning. I think that they, I do believe that
01:29:06
Speaker
They did a good job with that, especially given the budget and everything. The way that the kind of vine tendrils came out of the man thing and stabbed through people and and especially that end kill. The oil one. I did like that one. Yeah, I did like. Yeah, that was a nice kill. I think. Yeah, as far as inventive. Yeah, not really. There's not much there. They did look kind of cool on screen. But again,
01:29:31
Speaker
That gets us away from the entire point that, that really you had everything already built in. All man thing had to do with basically go up and touch one of these people and catch them on fire. And that's what was supposed to happen. But instead we got something different. I can't comment on that. There's nothing I can say. I don't know why that happened. I don't know why that was different, but yeah.
01:29:49
Speaker
other than maybe that was just a note that happened or maybe, like you said, maybe the writer director there wasn't even familiar enough with the source material that he just kind of was like, okay, here's vaguely what the character looks like and he lives in a swamp and okay, he kills people, cool. It could have been that too. Given the budget, maybe there wasn't much research involved in it or whatever and it was kind of out there. But yeah, I think that
01:30:17
Speaker
I like this as a pointless slasher. I like this as just a dumb, fun, horror-esque movie. It's not really scary, but yeah, it's fun enough for me to watch.
Promoting Podcasts and Conclusion
01:30:33
Speaker
I don't see myself going back to this movie any time soon, but it wasn't definitely an interesting topic of conversation, so I will give you that.
01:30:42
Speaker
But we're pretty much at the end of the time now. So, Daniel, why don't you tell people where they can find you? Yes, please, please check me out on wherever you get your podcast from. We're on Stitcher Overcast, Apple, Google, Spotify, Anchor, wherever. That is
01:31:01
Speaker
all new all different number one comics that is my comic book podcast if you want to hear me and my co-host Bob talk about comic books and if you want to hear me talk about some more movies I do a bi-weekly podcast with a friend named Jer and it is called Real Good Movies with Jer and Dan and that's real like a movie real R E E L because we're just that clever
01:31:25
Speaker
Um, yeah, you can find that anywhere as well. The comic book podcast is also on YouTube under the comic book channel, uh, where I posted the podcast and then my weekly comic book hauls as well. So yes, please, please check me out. Give me a rating or review, whatever you can do. And I would greatly appreciate it. Yeah.
01:31:44
Speaker
Uh, we'll have those links in the show notes. So people just go and click on those and they'll be able to find those easily. Uh, but Daniel, thanks so much for coming on. Um, thanks for finally giving me an excuse to watch this movie that I had been curious about for a while. Yeah. Thank you for having me on greatly appreciated. I'm glad to have you, uh, anytime you want to come on back, but that does it for this episode of superhero cinephiles. Superherocinephiles.com is the website. We are super cinema pod on Twitter and Instagram.
01:32:11
Speaker
And remember, if you sign up for our Patreon, patreon.com slash supercinemapod, you get these episodes a week in advance and you also get access to the Patreon exclusive Superhero Cinephiles book club where we talk about comics and graphic novels. Thanks so much for listening and we will talk to you next time.
01:32:30
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
01:32:50
Speaker
If you're interested in reading some comments and don't know where you should start, plus you'll get access to all episodes of the main show a week before everyone else. On all of this, for as little as just a dollar a month, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash SuperCinemaPod and you can sign up at any subscription amount to get started. Thanks so much for your support and please don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:33:34
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.