FDTC 164 What Happened to Heroes?

Transcript

Speaker: For as long as the world has needed saving, it has an needed hope.

Speaker: Heroes are the spark in the dark. The reminder that even when the night feels endless, someone, somewhere, is willing to stand up and say, not today.

Speaker: They make our hearts race and our spines straighten. They make us feel seen, protected, and capable of more than we ever believed possible.

Speaker: In their presence, fear shrinks and courage finds its voice.

Speaker: Heroes shape societies long before they change history. They challenge injustice, defend the vulnerable, and pull communities forward when apathy would rather hold us still.

Speaker: Sometimes they wear capes, sometimes they wear uniforms, and sometimes they wear nothing but quiet resolve.

Speaker: But their impact ripples outward, inspiring acts of kindness, sacrifice, and moral courage that outlive the moment itself.

Speaker: Through them, social good stops being an idea and becomes an action.

Speaker: What defines a hero isn't perfection, it's character. Courage in the face of risk. Compassion when it would be easier to turn away.

Speaker: Perseverance when the cost is high and the outcome uncertain.

Speaker: Heroes choose responsibility over comfort. Purpose over safety. And hope over despair.

Speaker: They stumble. They doubt. But they rise. Again. And again.

Speaker: And perhaps their greatest gift is this. Heroes expand our imagination. They show us who we could be.

Speaker: They dare us to dream bigger. Stand taller. and believe that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

Speaker: Through their stories, we borrow bravery until we find our own.

Speaker: We learn that courage isn't the absence of fear, it's the decision to move forward anyway.

Speaker: Because in the end, heroes don't just save the world. They awaken it. Hello and welcome to From Dublin to Cleveland. I am Logan Howard and I am joined by the one and only Brendan Thomas Merritt. How are you today, Brendan?

Speaker: I'm great. Always great. I've just come off a 12 hour prayer and fast, but I'm not starving I'm not going to turn to skeleton and just triple up and I have heads in her.

Speaker: will make it through the night. How are you? I am doing well. I'm doing well. um Yeah, today I had to get up early before the sunrise for working out with my sister, which was...

Speaker: yeah But I feel better now, so maybe that was a good thing. um Anyway. Right now that it's over. Yes. And we have a whole weekend of massive snowstorms. So for those of you listening, if if we can get this out in the next few days, while you're sitting at home in super cold, we have over 160 episodes of this lovely podcast that you can listen to.

Speaker: I know. I know. Today might be the longest podcast we will ever put out because there is so much information on the topic we're going to talk about. ah We might have to do a part two or a part three as part ten.

Speaker: There is so much content in this world that we could go through to make our point. um But today we are going to be going through what makes a hero.

Speaker: What is a hero? um What are some heroes from the past versus heroes today? What has changed? What is the difference between the two? And maybe even look at the actors behind those characters. That's dangerous.

Speaker: It is dangerous. It is very dangerous. are bar Because I think one of the things that i I know I have experienced, I have gone to movies. I have gone to the movie theater to watch movies. I watch movies at home. I enjoy watching movies.

Speaker: i still asked What was that? What did you say?

Speaker: He's just interrupting me. Sorry, everybody. said you're so original. you were like, you know, I love movies. I love watching them. just doing my home my watch that I'm just doing my YouTube. I love movies. You know, uh, boy.

Speaker: Yes. when I am a white boy, a basic white boy. All right. I get it. Um, anyway, uh, as I'm sure a lot of you do as well, you guys enjoy movies as well, but, um,

Speaker: What I've been noticing, and I think Brendan has noticed this as well, is as time has gone on, the characters and the movies are not as good as they watch them. And I would say for most of movies I've seen um lately, the highest grade I could give them is it was a C. I was kind of entertained.

Speaker: You know, i was it was a it was a time. The time was had. Am I going to remember anything that happened? No, I will forget all of it. you um But that's kind of how our culture has has progressed is it seems like we just repeat movies over and over again. We try to bring back old things and it's completely new and different and nobody likes it.

Speaker: And so why we we kind of want to go, what is that? And I think a lot of people immediately jump on the, well, bunch of liberals. And there is some truth there, yeah and but they're not wrong.

Speaker: um What we want to look at today is a deep dive into what it is that they're changing, what it is that they're trying to present now in the heroes.

Speaker: and specifically heroes. So it's a hopefully a tighter sco scope, but at the same time, it is a wealth of information. So let's start with what I have. So I have this meaning of a hero. I found this quote. It's not necessarily a quote, but I kind of went through what what does a hero look like? What are some qualities of a hero?

Speaker: And some of the things I found was they're courageous, right? They are selfless. ah They don't really think about themselves. They're not focused on what they can do to make money or be rich or um you know get ahead in life. They are selfless. They are worried about others. They're caring for others. They're noble.

Speaker: um Noble is a word that I don't think is used as much as it probably should be. And really, for me, as I was thinking through it, a hero is somebody who does what's best even when it's hard.

Speaker: Even when things don't go well, even when life gets thrown at you, even when you're distracted and you live in a culture that's different than you, you do it's you do what's right.

Speaker: You do the hard thing, even even when it's hard, even when it's difficult. You do the right thing, even when it's hard. So what do you think about that, Brendan? do you how do you What do you think about heroes? What is your maybe definition of a hero as you're working through it?

Speaker: I think you've given a very... beautiful and accurate description of Jesus. but but It was our hero. um So yeah, no, most definitely.

Speaker: um I mean, i e grew up being, you know, a massive Marvel fan. You've been wearing a Spider-Man jumper right now. Can you see it?

Speaker: Yep. I saw the Marvel logo on the front. Indeed. I actually had an epiphany today and I realized

Speaker: even if Avengers Doomsday gets phenomenal reviews from the biggest haters of the MCU this winter.

Speaker: I have no intention of watching it. And I literally got all my Marvel clothes by this jumper because it's really nice and warm and Spider-Man's on the back. And a Black Panther one.

Speaker: And got three massive bin bags and just chucked them all today. They're currently out in my car. Either going to give clothes for cash somewhere or give them a charity shop. um Because what Marvel in particular has done, as has Doctor Who, Rings of Power, um Star Wars, so many, is they've just given the middle finger to the fans and they've gone out of their way to subvert the iconic heroes what it means to be a hero.

Speaker: um It's all about people, you know, what they're with their trauma and their anxiety and their pain and their offenses and their bigotry and condones their bigotry.

Speaker: Because it's not a about bigotry towards in-world characters. It's actually aimed at the audience themselves. um But actually a real hero is someone who's loving, someone who's sacrificial.

Speaker: It's someone, yeah, who is brave, who's willing to take the hit if it means rescuing someone else, even if it's thankless, even if there's no gratitude, even if there is no reward, but someone who inconveniences themselves to make the world, or at least someone's world, a better place.

Speaker: Yeah. either full-time or in the margins of the day, and at thrown expense, because it's the right thing to do. And we can all think of heroes in the natural.

Speaker: Certain professions might come to mind. Certain people in your life might come to mind. Certain people in your nation's history might come to mind. Maybe it's fictional characters, um Bible heroes, or heroines.

Speaker: But then yeah, we definitely live in days when Western world leaders are hellbent on bringing in a civilizational winter, and a lot of the cultural elite, um they despise Western culture. They really do.

Speaker: So they're actively trying to destroy the whole courageous, heroic, noble archetype, and it instead just replace it with nihilism.

Speaker: and And that's something that as Christians we need to fight against. yeah um I have a quote that kind of drives that home a little bit is the difference between a hero and what they're classifying as a modern hero. Yeah. For the non-existent modern audience. Yeah.

Speaker: Yes. And this was a quote by William Chu. And he says, a modern hero is someone who keeps their word and never gives up on the things they promised themselves or to their loved ones.

Speaker: A modern day hero is someone who doesn't wait for others to change and fit their needs. Rather, they take responsibility and embody change they want in the world. Oh, responsibility is a dirty word today.

Speaker: It is. And truthfully, if you just read that quote, you might go, well, that sounds pretty fair. I mean, that's that's kind of what a hero should do. Right. They should keep their word and um they should they shouldn't, you know, go back and forth about what's right and wrong. And, you know, you know, they should stand up for what they believe in.

Speaker: Those are good concepts. But the reality of what that looks like is completely different. Right. um We are dealing with in America here an issue with Minnesota, especially with immigration and ICE.

Speaker: And one of the things if you look at this. um the modern definition of a hero. Is it courageous to stand up to ice?

Speaker: Sure. That is courageous. Maybe dumb is another word to say as well, but courageous, right? um That's where this, we have to keep the promise to ourselves and our loved ones. You know what? Sometimes people make a promise and they let us down, but I don't think that means you're no longer a hero.

Speaker: I think even when people make mistakes, it doesn't mean that they stop being a hero. It means that they're human. and And what this ideal of a modern hero is somebody who is not a human.

Speaker: They're not somebody who is fallible, who makes mistakes, who doesn't, they don't really grow. I don't see anything in this statement about growing. um they They don't wait for others to change, ah so they don't try to encourage change or try to help the culture. they They just take responsibility, meaning they take control of the situation, and then they be the change that changes everything.

Speaker: They be that force. And we can see how that can be dangerous and how it's completely different. this It has nothing to do with about selflessness. this this could be This actually sounds very selfish to me.

Speaker: The way this reads is is very much about self. It's very much about you be the one to change the world. You, you, you. It's all about you. And that's really what our culture is, right? Our culture is ah have it your way.

Speaker: It's about you. Cross the board. Whether you're ordering food or whether you are watching a movie, it is about you. That is what Satan wants us to believe. That's where he wants us to be. um But that doesn't make these people heroes.

Speaker: What do you think, Brendan? What do you think about that quote comparing between modern hero and a hero?

Speaker: Yeah, well, i mean, the reality is i grew up reading... Spider-Man comics, the X-Men, Fantastic Four. Kind of got into the Avengers, probably about the time when the movies hit it big Before that, believe it or not, there was a time when the greatest Avengers were all C-list Marvel superheroes. No one really cared all much about them in comparison to the others.

Speaker: um And I know growing up, it used to amaze me personally, let's say it was Spider-Man, how despised he was.

Speaker: You know, he was Peter Parker was hated at school. He was tormented at work. um He had this whole other life that those in his world just didn't understand. And they'd be like, you know, you're never around. You're always late. You said you'd be there and you weren't, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker: But yet he he'd make sacrifices for the greater good. He knew that he had a significant power advantage over others. And that brought a certain responsibility. And so therefore, he was willing to take the hits.

Speaker: Not from the Green Goblin, Octopus's venom and carnage, Hobgoblin, but from his aunt. from whoever his girlfriend happened to be at a given time, from the bosses, from friends, whenever he stood them up.

Speaker: But he made all those personal sacrifices, even of his own reputation, on behalf of a city that despised him and called him the villain. Whereas today, and most mainstream media...

Speaker: The heroes, or if we didn' even call them heroes, it's all about self-indulgence. It's all about building themselves up. It's all built on arrogance. It's all built on subversioning what a hero actually is in order to put up someone who otherwise would have been despised.

Speaker: I would never have been a hero by traditional standards. And even, let say, with, you know, comic books, let's say, is it Miss Marvel? That little Muslim girl?

Speaker: Her comic book keeps on getting cancelled. Because Marvel has been infiltrated by... It's not called D-E-I, it's D-I-E, it's D-I-E, it's the death of your industry.

Speaker: Diversity, inclusion, and equity. um And trying to build up this character that people just aren't interested in. And no one's buying the book, so it gets cancelled, then they bring it back. Oh wow, it was so popular, here's a volume 2! And no one buys if they cancel it. It was so popular, here's a volume 3!

Speaker: But the whole thing is about indulgence. Either of the character or, to be honest with you, the creator. The person making it. They want to see themselves represented. They want to be the hero of their own story. They want to be the hero of the story that that they're trying to tell.

Speaker: So you see self-insert, self-insert, self-insert, self-insert. And the whole thing just feels inorganic. It feels inauthentic. And your lived experience...

Speaker: is not as interesting as Peter Parker's girlfriend getting thrown off a bridge by mine a man a costume. He's going to jump off the bridge and try save her life.

Speaker: It's just not the same. and It's not half as half as interesting. So, um yeah, it's a lot of self-indulgence nowadays on behalf of the creators.

Speaker: They want to be, they're so self-obsessed, so self-absorbed that they want to be the hero of their own story. And the self-insertion has killed the superhero comic book industry.

Speaker: Not all of them know that it's dead yet, but in its present form it is. And the same can be said for movies, and the same can be said for Doctor Who, Rings of Power, which I know we're going to talk about later on, um Star Wars, and just about all the big brands out there.

Speaker: What I want to do next is I want to get us into comparisons a little bit. um Comparing two different ah two different kinds, two different types of these heroes. um And we're going to start with some of our older heroes when they you know came into being, the time frame. And then we're going to compare to what are our heroes we have today.

Speaker: If we can say they're actually heroes. Yes. Yes. f we'll We'll leave that up to you whether you think they're heroes or not, but there I tried to draw some some close parallels and keep it in between franchises. so we're going to start with the Marvel franchise. We're going to start with Captain America versus Captain Marvel.

Speaker: He is – just – it gives it away when you look at the shield. He is all about America, right? It is – he is the the captain. um if you watch If you've ever watched the the first Captain America movie, um it is a story about Steve Rogers who is this –

Speaker: Small town guy from Brooklyn. He's a small guy. He's trying to join the military and it's not going well. He's not big enough. He's not tall enough. He's not...

Speaker: Physically able to be in the military. But we see a scene where he ah throws or where grenade is thrown and that is supposedly live.

Speaker: And he's the one who's on top of the grenade, willing to sacrificially lay down for those who were around him. And it wasn't a real bomb. It didn't kill him. But that was what they wanted to put the super serum into was somebody who had all of the good qualities of a hero, somebody who was selfless, who would care for others.

Speaker: And that's who Captain America is, is he was willing to sacrifice for others. Yeah. He is debuted in the comic books back in 1940, so he is around back around the time of World War II.

Speaker: That's where he comes into. That was the purpose was to, um i guess, give a little bit of propaganda for the Americans. But at the same time, he is a hero that has lasted throughout the decades to the point where He is probably a lot of, if not almost everybody's, favorite Marvel hero because of his um his courage, his resiliency, his selflessness, his being noble.

Speaker: This is what we would have as a hero. But let's let's now look at Captain Marvel. but For Captain Marvel, right she comes onto the scene and is basically...

Speaker: a superhero from day one and is just this super crazy, awesome woman who solves everything. She shows up and she just wins everything in end game for the good guys. Doesn't really have any much of a character. doesn't really have much of anything other than she's overpowered and she just wins everything. Yay. Go captain Marvel.

Speaker: Um, yeah, None of it is really so is really built on her ability or you know any of her goodness or selflessness or courageous. Even when we get to some of her quotes, it just sounds like she's a stuck-up white lady. like It doesn't sound like she actually...

Speaker: cares about what other people think. Um, whereas when you, when you hear Captain America is, you're going to be like, wow, that's like, that's encouraging. That gets me through. And, um, she doesn't have a backstory that you would say, oh, I can relate to, or, oh yeah, my life's a mess. Like Captain America's was, and that I was bullied and I was this or that.

Speaker: She just, she just wins and she's kind of nasty about it. It's, So, Brendan, as we compare Captain America, Captain Marvel, what what do you see are the stark differences between the two?

Speaker: Well, firstly, i don't even know if you're allowed to call him Captain America anymore because woke Marvel has absolutely despised that name forever.

Speaker: for for years. So now he's Captain Rogers, or at least last recent Marvel thing I read, that's what he was. He was Old Man Rogers or some nonsense. yeah They actually feel embarrassed by that title for him, that pseudonym, because they've lost all confidence in their own nation, and they hate their nation much.

Speaker: um But the reality is, you know what? He was written, sure, yeah, okay, to propagandize the Americans into, you know, that was the Nazis. And yes, his first villains were the likes of Red Skull, who was a Nazi, and even Adolf Hitler himself. and But you know what? He still exuded the qualities of liberty, of freedom, and then you have the incredible Civil War saga.

Speaker: ah Not Civil War 2, which was basically just a contrived money grab on Marvel's part, but the original Civil War story. Yeah. um Which ran for a ridiculous number of months across all of Marvel's books, which is phenomenal.

Speaker: And you really to see the extent to which he would go against other heroes, even heroes hiring villains, and the governments of the world, and S.H.I.E.L.D., just to preserve the civil liberties of other heroes. And I know when I was reading that, I kind of read it as, okay, well, you know, we've a lot of people out there who say that they're good people, but they're actually really, really evil.

Speaker: the only people who genuinely do good for the sake of goodness, at least theoretically, would be Christians, would be the church. So should the church all have to register with the government in order to do what we do? No, of course not. We just do we do because it's right, because it's Jesus.

Speaker: So I kind of looked at it through a religious lens. And i like, yeah, I totally see what Captain America is doing here. He's going against the grain, he's going against the government, he's going against... all the bastions of power to do what's right.

Speaker: In the end, he died in assassination. Bullets could totally have pinged off his chest, but he actually absorbed the bullets in order to protect some vulnerable citizen behind him.

Speaker: And was willing to risk reputation and his life and just literally gave it all up for the innocent. And that's the kind of hero you're supposed to aspire to become. That's the kind of hero you're supposed to vouch for.

Speaker: Captain Marvel, well, firstly, what a lot of people don't realize is's for longest time in the comics, she was Miss Marvel. um They literally renamed her Captain Marvel because, one, feminism, and two, to give her... That was an excuse to give her an ugly haircut.

Speaker: Um, but in the movie, let's go with the MCU or MCU. Now that's more accurately named now. It starts, I'm bit hating the details. It's the one movie I actually fell asleep through in cinema.

Speaker: But from my few mate waking moments, she started off all powerful. and was more powerful than her leader, who was the guy who became the villain of the story because, you know, he was a white male.

Speaker: She's hunting the Skrulls, shape-changing aliens, on behalf of the Kree Empire. At the end of the movie, it's revealed that the Skrulls were innocent and the Kree were the villains.

Speaker: She has literally hunted down and killed God knows how many Skrulls. And there is absolutely no consequence on her whatsoever.

Speaker: No apology. No remorse. No one wags a finger and says naughty Carol. tot tut-tot She gets off scot-free. In fact, as a reward, she gets a power upgrade.

Speaker: And her superpower is self-actualization. Because she is a woman, the power was in her all along. You never see her fly a plane apart from the one time she flies in and crashes, but we're told that she is the best pilot in the world.

Speaker: You never see her with the woman who's apparently her best friend, but apparently she is the best friend this black chick has ever had. You don't really see her relate to the black woman's daughter.

Speaker: But don't you know, she is the best aunt. That black girl. And I say that because I don't know how she's the aunt black girl. But like I said, I fell asleep. She is the best aunt this child has ever had.

Speaker: Even though she seems to have spent the last number of years in outer space. And I don't know how much time she spent with the child or the child even remembers her. But you're told she's the best.

Speaker: She's the best. She is the best. Because vagina. Because she's a woman. And it's like, Steve had to work for it.

Speaker: Steve would get beaten up. Steve would get looked down on. He looked sickly. um But when it came to it, in his weakness, he was willing to be blown to smithereens to save innocent people.

Speaker: Carol is amazing because she's a woman. It doesn't make for a good story. It just doesn't. There is no character to me there is no character arc.

Speaker: um her Her story is she was fabulous all along and one day she realized it. And then she was able to fly through spaceships and was rewarded with a power upgrade.

Speaker: it just, it's <unk>s it's embarrassing. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll get a little bit deeper. i have a couple quotes here from Captain America and then we'll switch to to Captain Marvel. But for Captain America, even if the whole world is telling you to move, it's your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye and say, no, you move.

Speaker: And it's this ah being steady in who you are, being found firm, being courageous, being able to stand up to people who the government who is telling him things he could and couldn't do. And he was telling them, no, you change. I'm not the one who's going to change. And ah yeah, it was a very, very moving part. You have other things that he said. The price of freedom is high. It always has been. And it's a price that I am willing to pay.

Speaker: that is a hero who's willing to sacrifice for others and be able to lay down and die so that they can they can live. um it Right before the final battle of Endgame, he says, we've lost friends, we lost family, we lost a part of ourselves. Today, we have a chance to take it back. This is the fight of our lives, and we are going to win whatever it takes. Yeah.

Speaker: The fact that he, in a moment that it looks like we've got one chance, it might not work. It's not a great chance, but we're going to do it. We're going to, we're going to win the day.

Speaker: Um, that again, points to what a leader should be. Somebody who is willing to encourage and build up others and do the best he can to, to win the day.

Speaker: And that was, that was Steve Rogers. Um, he was He was a great hero, and they did a great job with his character. It's sad to see how they've gone so far down since he was put out there.

Speaker: So that's – as you think about that, that was Captain America's quotes. um For Captain Marvel, I can tell you it's about half half the size. There is – Again, like Brendan was saying, there's not much to her as a character. It is she's all powerful and she's better than you.

Speaker: And so even her most memorable quote is, I have nothing to prove to you. That is her most memorable quote.

Speaker: Sounds like a white woman. Because she's a woman. Yes. doesn't have to explain herself to you. She doesn't. She doesn't validate her existence and her power.

Speaker: I mean, if you are a woman, you might be thinking, well, we're just, we're just tacking women. No, it's, it's not, it's not the women that they are the problem. Women can be heroes. It's, how they are shown on the screen.

Speaker: That's really the problem. It has nothing to do with your skin, your gender. Everybody can be a hero. It's about how you're presenting your heroes. And this is not the right way to present a hero. Just because of who you are doesn't make you a hero. It's it's what's inside. What is inside of you, the qualities that you have that shows you whether you're a hero or not.

Speaker: She was a horribly written character played by a deeply unlikable actress. And the reality is the writers had a seething hatred for the main demographic of MCU fans.

Speaker: And they pumped their poison into the movie. And the only reason people think that movie was a success was is because her appearance was teased at the very end of Infinity War.

Speaker: And then her movie came out. Now it was set

Speaker: Chronologically, at the second movie in the MCU, like after Captain America, a significant number of decades later, but before Iron Man. But people were told, oh, you have to watch this movie.

Speaker: It's imperative that you watch this because it's going to play its end game massively. It's so important. It's a must. Oh, yeah. Yep. And the reality is, it probably was.

Speaker: And then the Russo brothers probably found out just how much she was despised, and I bet they changed the ending. Because I'd say her is showing up and killing Thanos was 100% on the cards.

Speaker: Not earned, not bought. Well, maybe purchased. and Not earned. um But I'm convinced that there's probably a script out there with that idea on it.

Speaker: And then when they saw how unlikable she was and how badly received, they changed it. But the only reason that it made such a killing in the box office is because people had been told that it was super important to Endgame. And Infinity War had been so revolutionary, so fantastic, such an absolute masterpiece of cinema.

Speaker: That many characters, that many integrated storylines, that many payoffs. And then for that ending, where 50% of the heroes...

Speaker: just disappeared into dust. Yeah. Phenomenal. um So it was right in the back of Infinity War, but it if it had been a standalone movie, it would not have gotten half as much money as it did.

Speaker: um Because, yeah, an unlikable writer, unlikable actress, and unlikable character. I mean, she rocks up, eyes at a bar, and some guy is like, hey, I'm done.

Speaker: I think we all know which Don that was. Hello. It ends in Arnold Trump. And next she physically assaults him, unprovoked, for no reason whatsoever, and then steals from him.

Speaker: But it's okay, because she's a woman. Don't you know?

Speaker: Not a hero. Not a hero. a villain. Not a hero. So our next franchise we want to look at is the Lord of the Rings franchise. So um this is, we're going to look at the comparison between Samwise Gamgee versus Nori Brandyfoot from the Rings of Power. um Now,

Speaker: Let's already start with the fact that Lord the Rings was written by Tolkien. um He did a great job writing the books. They made a wonderful job of transferring it to movies.

Speaker: And Rings of Power has come out within the last few years. And it's... ah I guess to put it mildly, it is a mess.

Speaker: um It takes everything that Tolkien did, all of the heart and soul behind it, and dumps it down a blender and that ends up in a trash compactor that ends up in a toilet that goes down the toilet and ends up in a waste disposal place because it's horrid. um Now,

Speaker: As somebody who has ah watched both of these films or shows, um you can tell the difference pretty quickly between these two characters. they are They're both the same type of character, meaning they both come from the same maybe even descendancy, if you want to say.

Speaker: as they're both elves or dwarfs or whatever you want to call them, Harfoots, whatever she's calling herself, whatever it is. um That's their lineage. and ah But they they can't be any further from the truth. You have Sam, who is a hero. You have Eleanor, who just wants you to do bad things.

Speaker: And we'll get to her quote. But ah for Sam-wise, he is um Frodo's friend who goes with him to the ah goes with him on the journey of getting rid of the ring.

Speaker: um The ring that was hunted and sought by Sauron and his forces. And so these two men have to trek across and try to throw this ring into a volcano is the way to destroy the ring. And Samwise is helping Frodo along the way.

Speaker: And Brendan and I were just talking about it. We kind of saw him as a bit of a jerk sometimes because we, we're younger, we see ourselves as the main characters. And so we see ourselves um carrying the ring. And then here's our friend coming along and just saying all these kind things when your life sucks and you're like miserable. And so you're just like, shut up Samwise.

Speaker: But in reality, Samwise is the friend that Frodo needed to get there. Like Samwise is a, is a great character. And as you, as you go back and watch it, you see his heart for Frodo. he He cares about Frodo. That's really his purpose. He doesn't really care about the ring, but he is, he cares about Frodo and he cares about getting him to wet and going on the journey with him.

Speaker: Um, You then have Eleanor Brandyfoot. And she is introduced as a brand new character. She is not somebody who is in anything of Tolkien's creation. she is a aium She is a whole new character whose purpose is to, um I guess, give a bit of a spin off of the main the main story. It's basically so that you it gives you like a bit of a...

Speaker: a different taste. And um she works with a wizard that she finds and tries to help him go to his kind and his people. And um she tries to help out when he gets captured at times. And it's, it's a meandering story that doesn't go a whole ton of places, even though she's on the same journey with him and she's going with him. She's not Samwise Gamgee. She is,

Speaker: they They want to make her on the same level as Samwise, but she falls quite short of that. So, Brendan, you have you watched both? You've watched both them. a because hobbits are tiny?

Speaker: Yes, hobbits are tiny, right? um So, as you um watch, because you watch both of these, right? On principle, I refuse to watch Rings of Power. That's right. That's right. I remember you saying that. Yeah.

Speaker: But... I'm not being demeaned.

Speaker: What do you think about the comparison that's drawn between these two? Yeah, well, look, Sam ticked me off as a child. And you're right. we We see ourselves as the main character. We see ourselves as Frodo. We see the trouble he's having with the ring, the weight of the ring.

Speaker: And then Sam is there making the most unhelpful comments. um And it's like, shut up. You don't know what we're going through. Yeah.

Speaker: We've become like Gollum. We're talking to the third person identifying with Frodo, you know? yeah um And also I hated how he treated Smeagol. And, you know, calling Stinker and calling him names.

Speaker: um Because, of course, we have the... We, the viewer, have the privileged access of seeing that incredible montage. I mean, you would not see anything like it in cinema today.

Speaker: Of Schmeagel talking to Gollum. This full-on conversation. no Nobody likes you and all this. Just phenomenal. Annie's circus.

Speaker: Artistic genius. um And again, sam is just projecting all this horrid and venom and and and bile on him with no real understanding of what it what a burden it is to be the ring bearer.

Speaker: Um, no, of course, obviously, Schmeagle later goes dark full on Darkseid. And it looks like Sam's been vindicated. But, um, nah, he used to really bug me.

Speaker: But I watched Lord of the Rings again in 2024. It's kind of bit a Christmas tradition.

Speaker: And I don't know what it was. I don't know what mood I was in. i don't know what I'd gone through emotionally. But I found myself saying...

Speaker: We all need a Sam in our life. And I think... I think it was particularly when they're Mount Doom and he just says, I can't carry it for you.

Speaker: But I can carry you. And there are times we all need a friend like that. You want to be one who says, listen, that I don't really understand what you're going through. going to carry you through it.

Speaker: Everything that's on your plate... We live in very different lanes.

Speaker: But going to my part to get you where you need to go. going to lift you up. And it's kind of like of the Rings version of that Christian song Footprints, where the four footprints become two.

Speaker: it's because a brother in arms is there to get you to the top, to get you to your destiny so you can do what you need to do. yeah. um and yeah You know, he's not not a perfect guy.

Speaker: He sees things very much from his own perspective. He doesn't understand the full weight of what's happening around him, the full magnitude of the mission that he's on, necessarily, or the impact it has on Frodo and Schmeagel.

Speaker: But what a guy. What a best friend. Loyal to the to the very end. and And just how beautiful it is at the very end when Frodo hands him the book, The Lord Rings, and says there are some pages left, and then you finish off the story, you write the next chapter.

Speaker: And yeah, that was really, really beautiful. As for Rings of Power, as soon as I found out Amazon was making it, I knew to avoid it. I just knew straight away that they would not do it justice.

Speaker: I think I watched five minutes of Amazon show at one point during the lockdown. i forget exactly what happened. I think it was like there was an explosion in America or the world blew up or something happened.

Speaker: i And basically. i mean, there was a nuclear war. I don't know. I watched five minutes of something. And basically the main character blamed Donald Trump.

Speaker: So. for starting with the nuclear holocaust and I just said, what nonsense. So that was all i needed to know.

Speaker: After that I said, okay, nothing that Amazon produces is going to be free of their bend, their slant, their corruption. It's going to work its way in there somewhere.

Speaker: I didn't think it would be as terribly bad as it actually has turned out to be. But I feel vindicated for not having watched it. And to be honest with you wicked, evil people losing money getting humiliated makes my day.

Speaker: Go woke. Go broke. um But Lord of the Rings is by all means my favourite trilogy of all time. it is just darn near perfection. And I think at some point actually we should do um um a viewing of it for the channel where we're going to give our our reactions as planned. I think that'd be very, very cool.

Speaker: Because it's just... It's probably phenomenal. I don't have enough adjectives to describe how good it is. Because it was made with attention to detail. it was made with care.

Speaker: Even when changes were made, there was a rationale behind them. um Like Faramir, for instance, is a really noble character all throughout the books.

Speaker: But he was given more complexity in the movies just for the sake of giving him something to do. Giving him some sense of a character arc. Some people are like, you know, Glorfindel should have brought Frodo to Rivendell. I do not trust any person on Earth who says that their favourite character in other rings books is Glorfindel.

Speaker: Hardly. Arwen, played by Liv Tyler, deserves all the screen time she got and more. That woman is drop-dead gorgeous. And you need to...

Speaker: You need her to help rescue Frodo from the ring rates because you need to vouch for her and really like her in order to really want her and Aragorn to end up getting married at the end. You know, you can't just have her sit in the background.

Speaker: But any changes that the movies made, they did it for a reason that you can justify. Not one change that was made in that TV show is justifiable.

Speaker: It was all made for that message. Yeah. Yeah. So as we compare these two, I've got some quotes um from them. And so from Samwise, we have, ah I made a promise, Mr. Frodo promise. Don't you leave him Samwise Gamgee. And I don't mean to, that is a friend that you can go, go to war with.

Speaker: He also was really good for Frodo in terms of giving him things to fight for. He said, there's good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for. Now, is that's one of those comments that, as the main character, you're like, ah you know, I'm dealing with all this crap, but it was encouraging. He he was out to encourage his friend.

Speaker: um And he says, it's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it will shine out the clear. Of giving him some perspective.

Speaker: um Now as we look at Nori Brandy Foote's quotes, her most her most known quote is, if we didn't do everything we weren't supposed to, we'd hardly do anything at all.

Speaker: Iconic. Yeah, iconic, right? Do all the wrong things because otherwise we wouldn't do anything.

Speaker: Without friends, what are we surviving for? If we don't have any friends, we might as well die.

Speaker: There's no purpose. There's nothing. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so that was... ah there's quite a difference between the two of them. Even though they're both there's some similarities and they're both going on a journey with their their friend and trying to help them along, the way they talk and the way they speak are completely different. and in there Samwise is encouraging. Eleanor Brandyfoot is just... We didn't have any friends. what do we What are we even doing this for?

Speaker: like Friends is the only thing. That's that's the message we're or putting. Friendship is the best thing ever! now like It sounds like apart from tagging along with your BFF, that's where the similarities end.

Speaker: Yeah. um So my my next point I have here is we're going to look at Star Wars. We're going to look at Obi-Wan versus Master Soul from The Acolyte. Now, this is another show that Brendan did not watch. So hes he refused, which is completely fair. I, again, am the guinea pig who goes and watches episode. um at the time i'll be honest it was a relief when for a certain stage in my life to be able to know that star wars was coming out every week and i could sit down on a weekend and watch star wars so that was fun now what they did with the story bad bad bad not a good story but there were some intriguing moments that if they had done it better

Speaker: maybe they could have saved it. But for the most part, the people who were running the movie, the people who were doing the movie, all of their thoughts and ideals seeped into the movie and and show and made it all the worse.

Speaker: So, as we look at these two characters, we have Obi-Wan Kenobi versus Master Soul. Now, Obi-Wan Kenobi is... He was created way back in the ah in the first film. He was created as a master for...

Speaker: Luke Skywalker. And his purpose was to encourage Luke and to teach him and give him the wisdom and be the mentor character.

Speaker: We later see when they do the prequels that he is also a mentor for Luke's father, Anakin Skywalker. Even though at the time Obi-Wan is a lot younger and learning how to be a master at the same time as being a master.

Speaker: And i guess some of the differences between these two is when you get to Master Soul, is that Master Sol is this character who is a ah master. he has he He seems to, at the beginning, have a good heart and wanting to take in these these two girls who are part of a commune, and he wants to mentor them even though they are older than the age that the Jedi normally take, just like Anakin.

Speaker: And so he wants to help them. He wants to bring them along. But what happens is these witches end up... infesting and taking over some of the Jedi's minds and leading them to start to kill each other and fight each other. Um, and a whole fire is caused and, um it causes a huge mess and they, the Jedi end up hiding what happened. And part of the person hiding it is Master Sol.

Speaker: He hides everything that happened so that the girl that survived, Osha, she knows nothing about of this horrible tragedy other than she can remember bits and pieces but she doesn't know what the whole story is because it was hidden from her by the jedi so obi-wan made some mistakes with anakin in the fact that anakin becomes turns the dark side and master soul makes some mistakes with osha because osha turns the dark side at the end

Speaker: But the difference is their responsibilities and what what they take in the situation. For Obi-Wan, he realizes that Anakin made a mistake. Every time you watch any of the shows, he still loves Anakin.

Speaker: He still cared for him. And he still wanted him to to turn and become... Back to the light. But that wasn't going happen. Anakin had made his choice of what side he was going to pick. um But it doesn't mean that Obi-Wan just gave up or that he tried to hide anything.

Speaker: He doesn't necessarily tell Luke that Anakin is his father. um But he focuses on perspective. And so while both are wise characters for the supposed heroes of their stories...

Speaker: um There's a huge difference in their accepting of responsibility, in their courage, and you see in Master Soul there's a lot of fear, and um that's not really something that's becoming of a Jedi. Whereas for Obi-Wan, I don't think you see a moment where he's actually afraid of anything.

Speaker: He's maybe upset or sad about some of the tragedies that happened, but he's not scared. other than he doesn't want to face Anakin in Revenge of the Sith. So that's the next comparison, is these two Masters who have very similar situations, but handle things completely differently as their characters.

Speaker: Now, Brendan, what ah what do you want to add, or what what would you like to add on the discussion of Star Wars? I know you don't have much to add about Master Soul, but how about Obi-Wan?

Speaker: Yeah, well, look, I mean, Obi-Wan, was my favorite growing up. a Partly because I couldn't stand Anakin, I just thought he was a whingy whiny prat. a And then, even like again, the the Phantom Menace. like i was very I was a child when that came out.

Speaker: Maybe about his age, maybe or two years apart. And...

Speaker: The big battle at the end with the lightsabers was phenomenal. Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul. Phenomenal. fan Fantastic to choreography. Overall, I didn't like the movie too much.

Speaker: And I kind of think... I don't know if children really like watching big, epic movies about children. If Anakin had been like a little bit older, maybe like 14, 16, even changed storyline...

Speaker: and the jane the storyline actually think kids would probably enjoy it more. i probably would have enjoyed it more. um I thought it was a bit like, oh yeah. ah i I'm pod racing, so I'm going to make a comment that's really not going to age well. It's going to be cringy when you watch it back 20 years from now.

Speaker: I didn't think that think thing too highly of it. But that scene, though, with Obi-Wan, when he just absolutely halves Darth Maul, was just phenomenal. That whole choreography was just absolutely yeah epic.

Speaker: And then I actually, a present for Christmas, I think it was, I got his lightsaber and just had it for years and years and years. So I was like, okay, I felt obliged. Prince favorite. Plus his was blue and my favorite color was blue, something like that.

Speaker: um And then, yeah listen to his fighting style choreography in Revenge of the Sith. Again, just absolutely excellent. yeah um And that heart-wrenching scene at the end when he screams, know, you were the chosen one.

Speaker: And how much he had loved Anakin and just what a real wretched betrayal it was. Heartbreaking stuff altogether. um So he was very definitely a hero through and through, no matter what went on, the good times and the bad. Did his best to honor Qui-Gon's wishes of raising up and training Anakin.

Speaker: What I kind of got of the impression of with the Acolyte is, again, because Disney, like Amazon, is all about subversion. It's all about subverting expectations.

Speaker: And I'm okay with surprises if they're organic. Yeah. I'm okay with taking the viewer by surprise so long as it's earned.

Speaker: But based on the feedback I've heard from other people who've seen Aqua Light, it really felt like... Disney hate righteousness and holiness and goodness and purity. And I'm not saying the Jedi were perfect in yeah Star Wars. They weren't.

Speaker: that's not worth it prelude gelogy The the they were very arrogant. They didn't actually think that anyone could ever really topple their order, they had these rules and they didn't like to be questioned or challenged.

Speaker: And that kind of led to their detriment, led their foot to their downfall. But the accolade, it felt very much like, oh, well, don't you know that the Jedi are actually responsible for this origin story for a villain? So it felt like all the Jedi were basically being set up to take a fall because they won't just let villains be villains.

Speaker: they can You can't be a baddie because you're addicted to power and your own vainglorious ambition. Someone one must have wronged you. Something must have happened.

Speaker: You have to be a victim of circumstance or a system that needs to be torn down, that deserves to be torn down. So it felt very inorganic. It didn't feel... you know in their minds, they would have like, oh, well this is our version of Obi-Wan.

Speaker: No, it felt very much like they wanted to blame the Jedi for how the villains' lives turned out at the end. That sam you almost had to excuse evildoers doing wicked things, because look at what the Jedi had done.

Speaker: So to me, that's the wrong kind of subversion. It's all about not accepting responsibility. It's all about putting blame on the righteous establishment if you will the righteous law enforcement if you will and to excuse the wickedness that other people do and the reality is your country is experiencing that right now you know the whole the woman who ran in front of the in front of ICE and um that's like oh no she died well that's kind of what happens when you get involved in the crime scene chick you know

Speaker: Yeah. You mess around and you find out. Yeah. Yeah. So um as for quotes, I mean, we could probably be here for all day with Obi-Wan quotes because it is a laundry list of quotes. You have hello there. You have you are my brother, Anakin. I loved you. Heartbreaking.

Speaker: Heartbreaking stuff. You have it's over, Anakin. I have the high ground. which is In more ways than one. Also a good one. They have this the one with the death sticks. You don't want to sell me these death sticks, which is a great one as well.

Speaker: um ah you have you These aren't the droids you're looking for. But I think, honestly, where where he hits his ah high point is definitely in episodes four and five and six, where he gives Luke what he needs perspective-wise in order to move forward.

Speaker: um You have him saying things like with Anakin, only a Sith deals in absolutes. He very much focused on perspective. Yeah. And realizing that there are other perspectives. For the Sith, they deal in absolutes. it is every It's this way or it's that way. And it's not always that.

Speaker: The case isn't always extremes. um He also pointed out that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. Many of the things that we think are right is because of our viewpoint.

Speaker: That doesn't necessarily mean they're right. That means we need to do more work. um And so he gave Luke quite a good perspective towards the end. um And then this was a blink and you'll miss it quote that he has in episode four. He's talking to Han Solo and he says, who is more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?

Speaker: Which is probably something you could find from the Bible. It's something from the Book of Proverbs. Yes. Yeah. So that is some of Obi-Wan's quotes. That's, like I said, there's a whole laundry list if you want to go out there and find them. But for Master Soul...

Speaker: His key quotes were, we are not defined by what we lose. We are defined by what we survive. And you have survived a lot, which was his way of being very sympathetic as a character, even though he's hiding what actually happened.

Speaker: um And ah he said, you want revenge. Look what revenge did to your sister. it couldn't I couldn't save her when you were children. Let me try now.

Speaker: And of course, she doesn't listen to him. She knocks him out and keeps going. um And yeah, he he was very much... it was It was on him. I mean, even his line of, I must face her alone. That didn't go well for him. But he doesn't doesn't take help. He's not trying to...

Speaker: I think he's trying to more brainwash than he is actually help in the situation. And you can see he has a heart, but he never really sits down and tells her the whole truth. She has to find the truth from somebody else, which makes him not a good mentor like he could have been.

Speaker: He's a good he's a interesting character, but that doesn't mean he's a good character. Interesting characters can be bad characters. So i I think I'm going to save my actors chat for a separate video. I think that keeping it as the fictional is probably the way to go. Plus, gri you guys don't want to listen to me to us go on for four hours. So with that, that's that is what studied and what I went through. How about you, Brendan? What was some of the the points or things that you want to go through?

Speaker: Sure, yeah, well, that's why i actually a good idea. and I'll cut this part out of the video, but yeah, we can save ah the behind-the-scenes actors and directors and a follow-up video, actually, that could be good idea a good Yeah, well, I'm just going to show some clips from some of my favorite movies and TV shows when I was growing up. Some of them, you'll all I've seen, I should hope. and Some of them, you might be like, this is supposed to be Christian channel. Why are you promoting that show? I said I watched it when I was a child. Relax the cacks, people. but

Speaker: and I'm going to start off with a superb clip from Spider-Man 2. kind

Speaker: i kind of prefer Spider-Man 1. one I'll be honest, just because I think the Green Goblin is, he is my favorite Spider-Man villain, being the arch nemesis and his attacks against Spider-Man are just so personal and so wishy and so c clever and so creative.

Speaker: But in Spider-Man 2, Peter kind of begins losing his superpowers. It's kind of psychosomatic. um He doesn't feel like he should be Spider-Man. So therefore, he begins to lose his powers. His body emulates how he feels.

Speaker: um And then there's one scene where aunt May is cleaning out her house. she's She's moving somewhere else. Hmm. And Peter at this stage has said, Spider-Man, no more. He's just given up.

Speaker: He's taken one too many punches in every area of his life. um Personal, professional, academically, super heroically.

Speaker: And Anne-Mae just gives him the most beautiful speech about what constitutes being a hero. So ah here are some clips from that.

Speaker: Spider-Man. Why? He knows a hero when he sees one. Too few characters out there flying around like that, saving old girls like me.

Speaker: Lord knows kids like Henry need a hero. courageous self-sacrificing people, setting examples for all of us. Everybody loves a hero.

Speaker: People line up for them, cheer them, scream their names, and years later they'll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them to hold on second longer.

Speaker: I believe there's a hero in all of us that keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, and finally allows us to die with pride.

Speaker: Even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most.

Speaker: Even our dreams.

Speaker: Spider-Man did that for Henry and he wonders where he's gone. He needs me.

Speaker: You can see even in her eyes, she knows who he is. at that point, yes, you very, very definitely get the impression that she does. and it's cleverly undercut, though, because the next thing she's like, here, carry over that table if you're not going to strain yourself, and if you're not going to hurt your back, if you're going to OK.

Speaker: Yeah. ah Yeah, but she she nailed it. That's exactly, it's a a standard and a person to look up to so that when you're going through the rain, you can you cant you can keep going.

Speaker: And that's that's good. That's right, but you know, I even noticed used words that you've used earlier in the video. Steady and noble. I mean...

Speaker: Noble is not a word people use too often today because, yeah well, it's not something people aspire to be today. It's a quality people would rather people demonstrate to them then demonstrate themselves.

Speaker: And as for steadiness, I mean, let's be honest, there are two fruit of the Holy Spirit no one ever prays for. one is self-control, the other is steadiness. and But the Lord loves steady eddies.

Speaker: yeah um When someone actually is going at his pace, at his rhythm, if they say it, they do it. Men and women of their word, and men and women of their word, ones who won't be shaken, ones who are stable inside and out. It's a superb quality, but not one that people typically think of.

Speaker: But what I really like about that scene is it gets echoed later on in the movie, where Dr. Octopus tries to create his um miniature sun, um and all of a sudden it gets magnetized and everything metal begins to move towards it and effectively brought to fullness.

Speaker: It would destroy all of New York city

Speaker: And Peter, having gone on this incredible journey throughout the movie, and kind of reaching a point where he says, you know what, even if I don't get the girl in the end, even if I don't achieve my dreams, I'm still going to the right thing and because it's the right thing, actually uses Aunt May's words to the villain of the piece.

Speaker: And actually leads to a character arc in which Dr. Octopus becomes a hero. It was my dream. Sometimes to do what's right, we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most.

Speaker: Even our dreams. And with that, Dr. Octopus has a change of heart and actually destroys his own machine. He says, well, it can be destroyed in the river. So Peter is just about two destroy himself and Dr. Octopus says, no, I'll do it.

Speaker: And he very... victoriously and sacrificially actually pulls it into the river, killing himself in the process and actually saves the entire city.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that that is a good, they did a good job in that of bringing a callback and using it as the main thrust of the conclusion of the movie.

Speaker: Of tying that, this is it's it's almost like you could even say what that movie was about was how to be a hero. Even when you make mistakes and you become a villain, how do you become a hero?

Speaker: It's true, and the reality is a lot of people liked the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies when they first came out.

Speaker: But even while I was watching it, I just said to myself, this movie does not have rewatchability quality. And I tested myself at some point after it came out.

Speaker: And I watched it, and I felt every minute on the clock. And then when the Amazing Spider-Man 2 came out, that movie... Well, firstly, the trailer was very different from the movie.

Speaker: And they obviously had a lot of scenes when Harry Osborn is the Green Goblin that they just did not include in the movie at all. Or at least...

Speaker: making Harry Osborn more goblin-like and make it a bit more conspiratorial. um But yeah, scenes absolutely got locked off that right, left and center.

Speaker: And they filled it with a lot of scenes and Easter eggs and nods like, oh, this is coming. Oh, this will come be in the next movie. Oh, the Sinister Six. so We're working on that. Well, then just let the movie be the movie.

Speaker: Something self-contained would have been absolutely wonderful, but instead they had all these little hints of things to come and it just was messy and sloppy.

Speaker: um The Tom Holland movies. Basically, again, a lot of people are like, you know, oh you know this is so amazing.

Speaker: They're good. They're not amazing. They're not fantastic. And, i mean, the first Tom Holland movie... It's basically, it should be called Spider-Man featuring Iron Man.

Speaker: And the sequel, again, he kind of gets overshadowed by putting Mysterio in there. And then the third one, it only, it was a fun movie, but Tobey Maguire really made it. He really brought in the audience numbers.

Speaker: They don't actually have confidence with Tom Holland's spider-man in of himself that's why they've been filling all these cameos now i say i was in no way excited about the fourth one when i heard that mark ruffalo was in it there is something about that man that i find deeply disturbing and distressing um and unless reports are wrong And they might be.

Speaker: Big news media and all. and he slash the Hulk were supposed to be in Spider-Man 4. But now it looks like his scenes are going to get cut out. And the movie's goingnna get reshot because of comments he made at the awards ceremony there last week.

Speaker: He made some comment about your president, of course, um and they wore a pin basically saying that the woman that Ice killed was in the right and Ice were in the wrong or some nonsense.

Speaker: um But ah I actually think that he's probably been cut out of it. But there's no self-confidence in those movies. It's all just about cameos, cameos, and more cameos.

Speaker: The Sam Raimi movies were different. There was a moral in every story. There were moral tales. The first one, Peter spent the whole movie pining for Mary Jane.

Speaker: and you have that beautiful scene the very end when she literally throws herself on. him she's like, Peter, I'm ready to be with you. Kiss me. And he says, no.

Speaker: And he walks away because he chooses the superhero life of sacrifice over personal pleasure. Second movie, you're right, is all about what it takes to be ah hero.

Speaker: And the third movie, it's all about forgiveness. Peter takes on very dark qualities to his personality. His best friend becomes one of the three villains of the piece. One of the other villains murdered his uncle.

Speaker: um the other villain was personally humiliated and his life destroyed professionally by Peter. And he reaches a point at the end where anyone that he forgives and who receives his forgiveness lives in the case of Sandman or in the case of Harry becomes a hero.

Speaker: That is when it comes to hero. The one who refuses to forgive Venom is the one who who perishes really, really nastily. But and that was such a beautiful story about forgiveness. So there was a moral in all those tales. They felt, yes, they were made from money.

Speaker: and entertainment, but there was like a social good element to them in terms of qualities you can draw. You don't really get that in superhero movies anymore.

Speaker: Because the people making them are the most evil people in the Western world. Yeah, they they have no care for morals. and And maybe that's even why movies have been so poor. Of course it is. They don't have a heart or a moral behind. That's right.

Speaker: Or a arc or a goal or any of those kind of things. It's all about entertainment. It's all about let's throw a bunch of memes and a bunch of characters and a bunch of stuff on the screen and go, ha, that's funny. And no one will ever remember that movie.

Speaker: and no one will rather remember that movie True. True. Yeah. Because in the modern movies, the the audience is the villain.

Speaker: And the whole movie is made despite the audience. um This next clip is awesome for Spider-Man 2. And this is one of Spider-Man's battles with Dr. Octopus involving a train.

Speaker: And it is absolutely iconic. a It looks very, very unlikely that he's going to save the day.

Speaker: But in the end, he makes... In in in in the end, he does save all the civilians, all the passengers of the train, even if it costs him his life, which it very nearly does.

Speaker: I loved the ah the grunt noises when they were fighting. It was great. yeah Can I just say that I never thought this before, but my number one takeaway from that is if my brother and i had been the two kids to find the mask, no way in a hell I'd letting him go back to Spiderman. I'd be like, I'm older than you. I'm doing this. It's my moment.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. That's not happening. Yeah. Yeah, that happened today. There would be like 85,000 phones taking pictures of his face. and It's already posted.

Speaker: It's like, we won't tell nobody because we already have.

Speaker: Yeah, that's that's kind of the play in, what was that? The Tom Holland Spider-Mans where they just are um instantly taking pictures of him. are yeah Yeah, live streaming him.

Speaker: Yep. Yeah. But what I love about that movie is just how iconic that scene is in particular. One, because it does not look like he can stop that train. It just doesn't.

Speaker: um And then even the... Just how beautifully the people then look after him. Just like raising him up when he's unconscious. So it's not even like he's being cheered and celebrated like he is in the third one. When it just goes to his head.

Speaker: um then they lay him down. and they just look at him as such awe, wonder, humility, and appreciation. Just, I guess, amazed that he would...

Speaker: risk his life to save them and that he's just some ordinary young man. Yeah. um And even when Octopus returns, the fact that they all stand in the way and they're like, yeah, listen, you're not getting, you're not getting past us where where we're going to look after him. And just something so small, but really beautiful that actually as incredible as his display of frozen was,

Speaker: Theirs almost eclipses his because they're standing in the face of a supervillain and they have like nothing to show for. They've got no weapons or supernatural abilities or superpowered abilities or scientific science fictional abilities stand against them.

Speaker: But they have a compassion but their hero. They have bravery. They've got courage in the little way that they can. and then even how at the end he's just like, no,

Speaker: Let him take me. Don't let him, her to, save the innocence. Phenomenal. Just iconic.

Speaker: Indeed. Yeah, it was it was it was good. I liked it. I i think it's it would be great if... And i'm you know I think some of the the fight work maybe be needed more of what we have nowadays for camera shooting. It could have been a tiny bit better, but it would it's kind of sad that you can't have a moral tale with better graphics and fight scene and then...

Speaker: That would make a great movie. i Not that it's not a great movie where it is now. It's just, you know, just even thinking how how far we've come with what we can film. We've gone down in the quality of what we're putting on the screen.

Speaker: True. Well, i would think I think that so much of what's turned out today in superhero movies is just CGI slop. um Like at in those movies, I'm not saying to me, Maguire filmed all this done, so there are certain ones he did do.

Speaker: yeah mom But let's say some of the fight scenes, some of the yeah there' the hand-to-hand battering up of each other, um it feels very visceral. It feels very organic. It feels very yeah feels very scary. It feels like, oh my goodness, it's one thing swinging you know from building to building.

Speaker: Well, let's say, you know, when he's just like pummeling the Green Goblin Dr. Octopus or whoever. Yeah. You're like, okay, this is intense. This is real. um You lose that with so much um today. so today's superhero battles, it's all just CGI.

Speaker: You know the superheroes aren't real. You know the actors aren't doing anything. If they're doing anything, there's a green screen behind them. um You have...

Speaker: and and i almost feel like entire movies are being shot with CGI and sloppy, mucky CGI. They're almost afraid that if you saw the attention to detail, you'd realize just how undetailed it actually is.

Speaker: So was so much going on in the screen as, you boom, boom, boom, event, event, event, event. Because if you stopped and actually thought about it, you'd realize the whole thing is just muck. The whole thing just makes no sense. And it's lifelike, hollow, because it's just a screen.

Speaker: And i mean, you think back like decades ago, what if you wanted to make it Hollywood? You had to be good acting, good at dancing and good at singing.

Speaker: Today, that's not the case. Today you just have to have the regime's political opinions. That's the value of it. Yeah. You know?

Speaker: Yeah. So yeah, the people making the movies are lifeless. The people starring them are lifeless. Everything on the screen is lifeless. The scripts have probably been generated by AI for a very long time. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: And it shows there's like no heart in them whatsoever.

Speaker: Yeah, that you you can see. Yeah. And that's why I think even though we have the technology, if we had the storytelling elements that we had even 15, 20 years ago,

Speaker: a How amazing would some of the movies be? But instead we just get a bunch of C's and D's and F's quality movies. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Okay, the next one is from my favorite TV show growing up. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Certain things happened in that TV show that I absolutely categorize as Christian cannot condone.

Speaker: But insofar as moral tales, there were some absolutely epic ones. And be honest, Buffy is actually a series of not worth watching, at least worth studying.

Speaker: Because so much of what became normative in TV shows sp sprang from Buffy from Horsley. The idea of having 22 episodes, of having a big bad, and the epic showdown happened the final episode.

Speaker: That was not normal before a Buffy Empire Slayer. Now what I love about Buffy, I'm gonna use it as a comparison with, well, there is no comparison, there'll be contrasts with Captain Marvel.

Speaker: Is Captain Marvel was the best pilot because female. She was the best friend to someone she hadn't spoken to for years because womanhood.

Speaker: She was best aunt, because obviously was she couldn't be a mother, because, you know, lefties love abortion. um Because feminism. And she was the most super of all superheroes, because M. She.

Speaker: You.

Speaker: Buffy's the opposite. When Book for the Empire Slayer begins, because of fate, because of destiny, she's given super strength and super endurance, super flexibility, agility, and all these.

Speaker: An increased healing factor.

Speaker: But when the show begins, you see her, i say when the show begins, even by season five, you see her training constantly. She's always improving her fighting techniques and her fighting style changes over the course of years.

Speaker: She's working on balance and physical physical balance and the likes. a Yes, she had gifts, but she had to work on the skills.

Speaker: Captain Marvel just had both because feminism.

Speaker: With Captain Marvel, The male characters were intentionally vilified or made stupid to build her up.

Speaker: With Buffy, there was a great love and respect for the men and women around her who were in her inner circle, regardless the other of their abilities or their lack of abilities. She has one friend who never at any point has superpowers.

Speaker: um He's literally the guy who fixes the windows after smashed during her fights. And his contribution is seen to be just as valid as on anyone else's. And with Captain Marvel, like I said earlier, she hunted Skrulls, killed, we have no idea how many of them.

Speaker: Realizes, whoopsie, they were innocent all along. And my team are the villains. And guess off, Scott Free. No consequences. No shame. Doesn't bat an eyelid, doesn't shed a tear.

Speaker: What I like with Buffy is if and when she made a mistake, there were always consequences. If, for instance, she decided to underage a drink, she would probably get chained up and like, you know, a monster would come along and try to gobble her up. You know, the demon in the bottle, as they say Or if she um used her super strength on someone who was not knowingly at the time superhero or a supervillain or superpowered.

Speaker: It would actually look like, you know, she had murdered an innocent and law enforcement would get involved. And the 90s, you knew someone was having a bad day because they'd wear dungarees. She'd wear dungarees to school. And people were like, you know, she's a murderer. She's a killer.

Speaker: was all There were always consequences. Really, really stern ones. It was a moral tale. Yes, you've got super strength, but behave yourself. You're not invulnerable.

Speaker: And in season two, the show, like season one was, it was great. Season two, ten times better in every possible way. Where basically she, on her birthday, has slept with her or her boyfriend who was a vampire.

Speaker: And in the show, he was a vampire with a soul. The only one at that time. Where basically vampires don't have souls, as in they don't have a conscience.

Speaker: Doss Whedon, the director's idea of a soul, is different from the Bible, but they just mean a conscience. But then he got cursed with one, and by gypsies, so that he would remember all the wicked things that he had done.

Speaker: And he decided to redeem himself for becoming a hero and fighting alongside Buffy, vampire slayer. But after they slept together, he lost his soul and as part of the curse and became a mass murderer again.

Speaker: Just got off on eating people. So, alternate season two she's had this tension... Will I kill him? Will I not? Can I kill him? Shouldn't i Isn't it for the best?

Speaker: And this is the season two finale. and And basically, after 10, 11 episodes of warring with each other, she's just said, okay, screw it.

Speaker: He has to die. He's trying to open a portal to hell. The world needs him dead. But her friends, on the other hand, are working very, very hard to restore his soul in the k nick of time, if at all possible, so that they can have a happy way of her after.

Speaker: This is an an episode of a storyline, the likes of which Captain Marvel, the MCU, Doctor Who, Rings of Power, and Star Wars could never be brave enough to put on.

Speaker: on? Where are we? Oh my God. I feel like I haven't seen you in months. my God, everything's so muddled. i

Speaker: Oh, Bobby. What's happening?

Speaker: I love you. Close your eyes.

Speaker: The MCU wouldn't dream of it. Captain Marvel, on behalf of an evil empire, hunts, scrolls, and kills them for fun.

Speaker: Whoopsie, they're innocent. No one cares. Least about her. Buffy does one thing that triggers her boyfriend becoming psycho mass murderer.

Speaker: And as soon as gets his soul back, she has to pay the ultimate price. Of sticking a sword in his belly. Sending him to hell. When he clearly doesn't even know what's going on. He just has amnesia.

Speaker: And the rest the episode follows that. He gets kicked out of home. And kicked out of school. And just loses literally everything. But there were consequences.

Speaker: And if the story doesn't have consequences. What is the point in writing it? Because... I don't encourage people to use ChatGPT necessarily.

Speaker: But if you were to decide to write a novel with ChatGPT,

Speaker: weigh up the serious danger it actually puts your characters into. Weigh up the actual consequences for actions.

Speaker: It's not really there. It's not actually built into the algorithm. out goes the into It's a brain. It's algorithm to really, truly, genuinely put the characters in harm's way.

Speaker: And because like, oh my goodness, you know, that dash that goes against our programming. That goes against our community standards and that nonsense. And that's very much how superhero movies feel today, how science fictional movies feel today. It's never really about actually giving consequences to those who deserve them.

Speaker: They might artificially make heroes villains for the sake of, ha ha, we subverted your expectation. But actually, evil people really and truly get in their compliments.

Speaker: Especially when they're evil women. Oh no, they must have had a reason. She was just oppressed by the man. Don't you know? But Buffy was a show all about choices.

Speaker: All about consequences. And I remember when Captain Marvel came out to cinema. I just said, that's that's bad. That was really, really despicably awful.

Speaker: And they Thor Love and Thunder was a movie that made me write off the MCU entirely, but that was the first movie I saw from the MCU and said that was really genuinely bad. And I remember colleagues at work, obviously leftist women, saying, you just have a problem with strong women. And I said, chick, I grew up watching Buffy Vampire Slayer and Charmed. Again, this a Christian channel. I'm not encouraging you to, I'm just being honest.

Speaker: And I said, i know about powerful women and strong women and consequences when they misuse that power. Captain Marvel had none.

Speaker: I saw women who had to learn the skills of their power. Captain Marvel didn't. She was just always wonderful because feminism and it made the story pure and utter crap.

Speaker: Any thoughts? Well, I know what some ah some people would say. Well, they were trying to tell Buffy's story over series, so they had episodes. It wasn't like they were trying to tell the story in under two hours, so that's just different. But that That argument doesn't really stand up when you have the time that you're given.

Speaker: that's You can't change that. But you can make consequences for your decisions, especially if you do something wrong and you're killing innocent people. There should be a consequence to what you did.

Speaker: And so, yeah, there's... in If you are a selfless, courageous person and you did make a mistake that bad, you know, killing people who were innocent the whole time, then the right thing to do is to turn yourself in and face punishment for what you did.

Speaker: And that's not what is done there.

Speaker: True. And the reality is if you cannot tell a story in two hours...

Speaker: And you're screenwriter? You're in the wrong industry. It's that simple. I mean, okay, it's one thing with Lord the Rings, for instance, okay, they were trying to tell you a massive book across three volumes. It needed the space to breathe, and they did a phenomenal job.

Speaker: Superhero movie, to be honest, does it even have to be two hours? Tell it well enough, 90 minutes, maybe an hour 45 could actually be possible.

Speaker: yeah If you choose give yourself two hours, you should be able to wrap up the story in two hours. And all you need is is a montage at the end of the movie when the chaos has died down and then the villain's dead and just reflect on her part in killing all the innocent people and raise decision, you know what, I'm going to look after the Skrulls, going to do this for them.

Speaker: That's all you need. Five minutes of self-reflection. She doesn't even have to say she was wrong. Just play a sad song over it. Yeah. But no, that would be saying that women are capable of making mistakes.

Speaker: And that is not something that post Harvey Weinstein Hollywood wants to admit. I'm going to finish off with one more clip. And it's also from Buffy the Empire Slayer.

Speaker: And this is from their 100th episode. So basically...

Speaker: In season five, the entire history of Buffy is rewritten, where she had a sister all along. And you kind of watch the show thinking, hey has she ever been mentioned? Was she even in the background?

Speaker: But then you realize that she's actually character. or her blood is the key, to unlock and open different dimensions and hell dimensions. And she was sent to Buffy, her story is rewritten, so that she would protect the key from the villains.

Speaker: um But once the blood is cut, the blood will be poured out until the blood starts flowing. all the hell dimensions and Earth are going to collide in on top of each other. And Earth basically, again, gets sucked into an apocalyptic portal, similar to the one we just looked at.

Speaker: And Buffy has repeatedly been told throughout the season that death is her gift. And she's always thought that that meant that being a slayer and being a killer was somehow a gift or everything around her dying was somehow for her own benefit.

Speaker: But again, here you're going to see a scene from the 100th episode, how it ended, the likes of which you would not see TVs or movies today produced by Hollywood.

Speaker: Puppy, you have to let me go. Blood starts it and until the blood stops going, it'll never stop. I know where you have to let me.

Speaker: It has to have the blood.

Speaker: Because it's always got to be, Puppy. It's Summer's blood. It's just like mine. She's me. The monks made her out of me. Death is your gift.

Speaker: Death is your gift.

Speaker: Oh

Speaker: Don't listen to me. Listen. You would not get the likes of it in 2026.

Speaker: Nope. No, you would not. That is true. That is true. I do hope that people don't clip what you said about how you should be able to tell a story within two hours. I hope they don't clip us and send us a response to this video because... You guys shut up and I want to tell the story. I believe I specified screenwriters if you're professional screenwriter.

Speaker: Yeah, they could cut that out these days. And they would. Oh, man. No, it it is true. It's that's not really the sacrificial and people.

Speaker: The hero dying is not it's not something that happens very often, that they make the ultimate sacrifice for everyone else. That that is not a that's not a part of the story they want to tell. And probably because it has to do with with Jesus, because that's what he did.

Speaker: And they don't want people remind that. No, I think that's right. They have an idea in their heads of what a man is. A man is someone who doesn't emote, so therefore their female heroes don't emote.

Speaker: um They think that men walk a certain way, so their female protagonists now walk funnily. um They intentionally dress their heroines up nowadays in a way you couldn't even tell it was a woman.

Speaker: I mean, you can't see the curve. There's no pelvis. There are no breasts. um I mean, look at the absolute state of that What If Marvel series where Peggy Carter becomes Captain America.

Speaker: I mean, okay, her chest kind of looks like your traditional shield shape insofar as it's very peculiarly shaped. But you can tell it's a woman by looking at the screen.

Speaker: And then they give them really ugly haircuts. And let's be honest, they nowadays tend to hire really ugly women. Or they hire beautiful women and uglify them. Because there's also a war on beauty and aestheticism, which is also a video I believe at some point we should make in the future.

Speaker: Because it affects... cinema, it affects TV, it affects politics, it affects culture, it affects art, it de affects architecture. We see it all around the Western world, uglification of the West.

Speaker: um Literally promoting all things ugly. And that's because they want their female characters to be men. And they think masculinity is ugly, so therefore they oglify women to look like it.

Speaker: But they would never show real, genuine vulnerability or a sense of one woman dying for the world. They just wouldn't.

Speaker: no it's Especially with maternal love as presented there, now between a sister, and older sister, older sister, but very motherly because they also despise mothers.

Speaker: um Let's be honest.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, they do. Yeah, that is not something that would happen is that they would probably, if they had written that, they would to have, because they want the show to continue, they would send her sister off the cliff and let the sister take the Yeah.

Speaker: You should go. You know what? you're You should go. Have fun. I'll push. I'll push you off. they We love the death and the vulnerable and innocent. Yeah.

Speaker: Every four years we vote on it. Please make the sacrifice for me. but Exactly. Yeah. So that, like you know, older women can live whatever kind of life they want to. Yeah.

Speaker: yeah So, yeah, I i think they're you're right about there being more videos of beauty and truth and all of those things that are things that even 20 years ago, everybody agreed on those things. And now there's a huge disagreement. And so, yeah, there there might be a a ton of videos that we can make on that kind of stuff. yeah Yeah.

Speaker: Well, just to finish off, I know it's been a long video so far. I just want to read a couple passages, one is bit longer than the other, from my books, just to indicate what a hero is.

Speaker: The first one is from the Ghost of the Unsaid, the Panopticon.

Speaker: And in this... Buy it on Amazon. Buy it on Amazon, please. And it's equal... Reckoning. i promise you it's not woke, which by today's standards is saying something.

Speaker: Yes, it is. Don't support industries that hate you. When I see the Christians spending like, you know, 30, 40, 50 quid a month on industries that despise them, I'm like, why?

Speaker: why what what, what, what are you doing? And then they complain about it. I'm like, no way. I wonder why they feel so empowered to keep producing all this evil content. because Christians are making them rich.

Speaker: So in this one, a character called Aurora is talking to Benjamin. She calls him Sky for Skylar. And basically he has every reason why not to be the hero.

Speaker: All the things that you know you see in movies today, you know depression and anxiety and defense, and this person said this, and daddy issues, and blah, blah, blah, blah. blah And she's basically going to give him a lecture and say, listen, I know you've had a rough, but but but that's not an excuse for you to let evil be perpetuated in your time.

Speaker: You should look what you've been through. and redeem these moments, like passing through the fire and outcome silver. You've been passed through the fire.

Speaker: Redeemed silver should be the byproduct. And you should be extra keen on saving the day and world saving. So the hearing is here's some passages.

Speaker: Sky, you suffer the inevitable cost of clarity. Had you been instructed in the ways of your destiny by a dream, a night vision rife at symbolism and multilayered levels of meaning, your primary task would not have been to save the world, but to interpret the dream.

Speaker: That would have been your cost, your penalty, your payment. Instead, you are told that you were the chosen one, who your enemies were. and that you are to destroy them. and in doing so, this global prison they have built, that's what a panopticon is, a prison of observation.

Speaker: Hence, to maintain the balance between good and evil, currently skewed, though it is, you suffer the cost of abundantly clear revelation.

Speaker: Gotta cut that out. Revelation. I can read my own writing.

Speaker: You are salt in a wound, that needs healing. You are light in a crisscrossed snare infested with darkness. You are hope to those who have inwardly died without it.

Speaker: There's a target on your back because you are the sharper arrow.

Speaker: Benjamin pauses and bows his head with embarrassment, not believing any of it. He's thrown into a fit of blinking, as though attempting to erase the compliment.

Speaker: the truth, from his most wonderful, imaginative, and alluring mind. With tears in his eyes, he blubbers. i don't want to be salt, light, hope, and metal-tipped missiles made of sticks.

Speaker: I always thought I wanted to be the hero. But this is this is hard. Can I just go back to the shadows and be quiet?

Speaker: Sky, you were chosen because of your pain. Your whole life, you were a victim. That is what you told me. You nearly died in the womb.

Speaker: There baby-killing doctor in the hospital you were born. Okay, that's biographical for me. You nearly got his claws on you, but for the timely arrival of a nurse.

Speaker: You learned to draw a hiding on your bed from DW, the white room physician. You were despised at school, at home, in your community, and other worlds.

Speaker: All because they could see what you could not. Your destiny. Who better to be a slayer than he who had been slain day after day for years.

Speaker: You were chosen for your rage. For every time they tripped you up, stole your school books, urinated on you, defamed you, struck you and drew blood.

Speaker: And although you had the skill and the speed and the martial arts to terminate them, you chose not to. Because to do so would have been wrong.

Speaker: You were chosen for your hatred of all living things. Ever watching mockers, liars and bullies men who represented all you feared you'd become, the woman who gave you life but took it from you again with her choice of bad fellows, leaders and their blind followers, your church for doing nothing to help you, and yourself for never fighting back or being able to lie in the bath long enough for the pain to end in its entirety.

Speaker: You, who had been the most humbled and submissive, the most silent in your grief and distress, the strongest in weakness and the angriest at human frailty and spiritual scourge would avenge those who had endured suffering and could not help themselves, whether they deserved rescuing or are not.

Speaker: And even though the villains you would face would be nastier and larger, and more numerous, and there being neither thanks nor reward, the prey would become the apex predator, the crocodile, the lion, the killer whale, the wolf, the dinosaur, the man, and the ghost you had always been would become a deadly poltergeist, and those unsaid words would become action.

Speaker: That is why you are chosen, Sky. That is why you fight. For no cause, no nation, and under no banner.

Speaker: But because fighting is the only thing keeping you and the other weaklings from being dead. In most Hollywood 21st century storytelling, people mistreating you is an excuse to hurt them back.

Speaker: People mistreating you is an excuse for you to become the villain. People mistreating you is an excuse for you to make them hurt and get petty revenge and not get called out in it so long as you have the correct pronouns or bed buddies or sexual preferences or skin color. Hello.

Speaker: Or you come from the right country or the right side of a certain border. but In the current terms of the USA and Mexico. ago Yeah.

Speaker: But look at things through God reality. I'm not saying God lets bad things happen to you because it makes you stronger. Bad things happen to you because we have an evil enemy.

Speaker: But when you're put through the fire, the Lord can burn off all the impurities of pride, of selfishness, of bitterness, of sourness, of unrighteous anger,

Speaker: and can bring out the absolute best in you. Think of a pot of boiling water. If you put an egg in it, the egg of the start is very soft.

Speaker: but apply the boiling water and it will become hard as a stone.

Speaker: I will never let anyone love me. I will never bend over backwards for anyone ever again. i will never be used and abused like I was by that person. If you don't like me at my worst, you will never get me at my best.

Speaker: Then you put a carrot into it. The carrot has a strong personality. Initially.

Speaker: but apply the boiling water the storms of life, and suddenly it loses its strength. It becomes breakable, easily crushed, very easily munched.

Speaker: And then consider coffee grains. I believe most of us are coffee grains. You don't look like a whole lot of anything sitting in a jar, do you? But apply that to the hot water and suddenly you will have an aroma that fills the atmosphere and you can smell it from one end of the house to the next.

Speaker: That is what it looks like when you are passed through the fire holding onto Jesus.

Speaker: He brings out the best in you. He brings out his fruit and it changes the atmosphere. Whatever stink of sin is in the place, the aroma of heaven emits from you.

Speaker: But it's a choice. You can let the storms of life turn you into a stone, break you, or bring it the best in you. And the best in you is Christ.

Speaker: Takes Benjamin a while to learn that lesson, but he gets there. And then in Reckoning,

Speaker: Things are looking really, really bad. His enemies have absolutely outnumbered him. Things are looking desperate. And he asks, so why you try it all?

Speaker: Why not do what virtually everyone else does all this time? going to reread that. That made no sense dramatically. The sentence makes sense. I just said it incorrectly.

Speaker: Why not do what virtually everyone else has done all this time? all the same people at least, and just accept that it's over. And stay here in the great nothingness at the end of all things.

Speaker: Easy.

Speaker: Because if I don't find a way to rescue even the lump of rock that I'm on, no one else will. And evil is a starving beast with an unquenchable appetite.

Speaker: starting sound biblical, isn't it? It will never stop chomping until it's slain all living things or until it's been eradicated.

Speaker: We don't do what we do for Jesus because it's easy. Because it isn't. We don't do it for glory. Some Christians get glory out of it on the earth. I don't know how.

Speaker: Personally, I never have. I don't think Logan does. And to be honest, at this point my life, I don't even think I'd settle for that. We don't do it because we get thanked.

Speaker: We often thank less. Yeah. We don't do it because it brings out the best of everyone around us. In fact, the more you serve Jesus and the best that you try to eke out of people, I find the worst you see in them.

Speaker: And the more you do for Jesus, very often, not saying go around pessimistically, but very often, the bigger target you get in your back from the people who should know you best and support you the most.

Speaker: But we do it because it's right. Exactly. And it's not easy. It is hard. It involves commitment. And a lack of sleep.

Speaker: And a heck a lot of prayer. And it is every day.

Speaker: But our body was made for this. Adam and Eve were not sent to the earth so they could just roll running grass, chewing leaves all day long. The human body was made to know the Lord, worship the Lord, serve the Lord, enjoy the Lord and fight evil. That's why we're here. Your body is a fighting machine.

Speaker: um Your spirit and your soul are fighting machines. Yeah. And it's not easy.

Speaker: Fighting the good fight of faith. But that's the job. And we have a hero whose name is Jesus. And he sits in the director's chair.

Speaker: And he leads us just like Captain America of the Avengers. And when he says go, you go. When he says jump, don't even ask him how high. Just jump.

Speaker: He'll land you where he wants to land you. that but He's very good at that. Indeed. And...

Speaker: I'll leave it there. was going to start thinking of something else to say, but I think that's... That was good. right it's big I think we would be um remiss to even put these words together um ah by saying that our ultimate hero is Jesus Christ. Yeah.

Speaker: That is the ultimate standard. That is the, who we, who we want to be, who did not consider it equality be like God. And like, he, he, he he didn't worry about why need to be like God. Like, cause I have to be God. He, he gave that up for us. Um, i just want to leave us as we're thinking of this, as we close up with, we'll close up with a verse and then, um,

Speaker: We'll do our quick shout-outs and send you on to whatever it is you're you're doing today or whenever you're listening. But um I want you to take you to John 19, and we could go to probably any verse here. it's It's all focused on Jesus dying on the cross. And I want to take you right to the end. and He has...

Speaker: I guess i'll I'll try to summarize as quickly as possible, but lived a perfect life, um came to this earth to teach people how to live. He ran into people who hated him, basically because of who he was. And they claimed that he was... um Lying about who he was, that he was a devil, that he was sons of Beelzebub, had a demon in him. he was a bad guy because of what he was saying.

Speaker: But every single thing he said was true. Every single thing he said was could be factually backed up. And they get so angry with him that they decide they're going to kill him, even though he had done nothing wrong.

Speaker: Even though he had not done anything worthy of death, they were going to kill him anyway. And ah they don't just kill him, because if they had just killed him, okay, not so bad. But beat him to the point of death that the fact that he couldn't even carry his cross...

Speaker: was how beaten he was. They stuck a crown of thorns in his head. They spit on him. They mocked him, made fun of him, jeered him, said, come on down for the cross. The angels will save you if you're really God. um And all of this to kill the perfect son of God.

Speaker: and And he gets to the end, and he, I mean, even as you go through, he doesn't say much. He's not, like, complaining about it. He's not whining about it. he's not ah He's not talking much at all. He gets right to the end, and in in John 19, verse 30, he says, So when Jesus had received his sour wine, he said, It is finished.

Speaker: And he bowed his head, and he gave up his spirit. So even at the last moment when he has been beaten, he has all this misery and hatred thrown and lobbed at him.

Speaker: He gives up his spirit. He gives it up willingly. He let go of the fact that he could have been here on earth and he could have ruled and he could have been the king of humanity. And he gave it up because there was something better.

Speaker: And the something better is that all of us could come and make it into heaven. Because if he didn't die, if he just came to be a ruler and have a great time and all of the joys, then first of all, he wouldn't be a good God.

Speaker: He wouldn't be loving. And second of all, it would be empty. Heaven would be completely empty. Nobody would make it. And he did not want that. He knew the glory and the joy of what it would be to be with us. And it's not because of anything inherently in us. It's because he wanted us.

Speaker: Simple. then That's it. And so um this was the ultimate sacrifice to die for not just our sins that we've done before, but our sins that we will do, our sins that we are currently done today, our attitudes or thoughts that we've had today. He died for all of our sins, and not just that he wiped them blank So that we could continue on sinning because we're sinners, but he cleansed all those sins so that we could be made right before God, right before him, him righteous. And he took our sin. He imputed his righteousness to us, making us right, making us be able to be seen by God as someone worthy of making it to heaven.

Speaker: And so if Jesus can do all that for us, how much should we be able to do for others? How much of a being rock steady, being consistent, being able to sacrifice when we need to, um all of that all that selflessness, all of that is Christ could do it.

Speaker: He showed us how to do it. He showed us how to live. And we're supposed to be like him. We're supposed to imitate him. As Paul says, imitate me as I imitate Christ.

Speaker: Follow Paul the way Paul was following Christ. He was zealous for good works, zealous for falling after God. That's who we're supposed to be. And we live in a day and age where we're not. Where we get off on our own little paths and we try to make it all about us.

Speaker: It's not. And being a hero and being someone to look to, it's not easy. Like we've talked about multiple times, living life is not easy just in general.

Speaker: But as Jesus says, his yoke, it's a yoke, it's a burden, is easy, and it's light. um It's still a burden. It's still at times tough. It's still at times difficult, but it is good.

Speaker: So, Brendan, would you maybe close out with a few words or give us a few more words, close us with some prayer, and then we'll do our quick shout outs. that that was That was awesome. Amen.

Speaker: Jesus, I thank you. You are our hero

Speaker: You are our superhero.

Speaker: You dismantle the operations of darkness. You lead. You're able to fly. You have a fire in your eyes and fire in your mouth.

Speaker: The Bible tells us you've got the axe of God. You've got an iron scepter.

Speaker: Storehouses in heaven full of lightning bolts for days of war and full of hailstones for days of spiritual warfare.

Speaker: You send for the arrow of salvation.

Speaker: net to trap our enemies.

Speaker: You protect us from more every single day than you could possibly imagine. as only when we get to heaven that you will actually see how you preserve extended our lives every single day.

Speaker: From

Speaker: the artillery and the weapons and the advancement of the Dark One.

Speaker: Lord, I thank you for your goodness, your absolute goodness. your heroism, your courage, your strength.

Speaker: Jesus, you are the one who makes us brave.

Speaker: It's your fire in our belly that keeps us going.

Speaker: So Lord, as as we wrap up today, i pray, Lord, that this week everyone will meditate on the word hero. They'll think about it, what it means to them, what you mean to them, and how they can step up and be the heroes in their world.

Speaker: Like Logan said, we follow Paul as he follows Christ.

Speaker: And in following Christ, we must take on courage, selflessness,

Speaker: zealousness for your name, being okay with being anti-establishment, being okay with being hated, being okay with taking a few licks and a few bruises. Because that's what a good fight of faith looks like.

Speaker: It is a world of risk. It is a world of adventure. Involves facing the dangers that other people won't. can't.

Speaker: But won't.

Speaker: that other people can cross over from death to life.

Speaker: From bondage to freedom.

Speaker: From ignorance to clarity. Crystal clear clarity. As to your goodness.

Speaker: and being bridges that connect people to you. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

Speaker: Amen. amen So as we head out, as we normally do, we'll do our quick shout-outs. I think for me this week is to shout-out our other podcast. We have another podcast from it's FDTC Extras. um Brandon has been uploading a lot of things on there. There's a lot of teaching. There's a lot of encouraging things. He's been going through 1 and 2 Samuel and has a lot of...

Speaker: depth there um i just did one that go went out there a couple weeks ago about fruits of the spirit so we'd love if you check those out um those were you know our hearts desires is to do that stuff so um definitely check those out uh it's a little known channel we don't always plug it a ton but check it out uh because there's good stuff on there and there's good biblical wisdom so that's it's my shout out how about you what's your shout out for this week Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker: um i don't think everyone necessarily realizes that Logan preaches at his local church, and as do I. I've got two ministries, Joshua Generation here in Ireland and Open House Ministries, which is theyre kind of global, but we mainly focus on Europe when comes to revivals. But I believe the Lord will send us to you to the West eventually and Australia too.

Speaker: Um, yeah, I suppose my shout out will be to Open House Ministries. um Mission Field, we're having a revival in Ireland in five weeks, which is incredibly hard to believe. We are filming this on Saturday, the 24th of January.

Speaker: um And yeah, it's going to be on the 28th of February. We had a big turnout last time, 150 or so.

Speaker: and and we're anticipating Even more this time around an overflow. And then come September, we're hoping to build it up to 400, 450 guests. And we just want to see as many people as possible come into the salvation knowledge of the Lord Jesus and step into the full freedom, spiritual, soulish, and physical, that he died give them.

Speaker: And then release them into their lane so that they can equip the saints and help the people that they know that we will never meet out there cross over from death to life.

Speaker: Amen. Very good. busy month So yeah, check out Open House Ministries. Check out our other channel, and that is FDTC Extras. You can find it on Spotify. You can find it anywhere podcasts are found. So check that out.

Speaker: We'd love if you would support us in that. And yeah, we have more things coming out, more things that we're working on. Even some of this discussion, we came up with things as we went along. So thank you for spending a considerable amount of time listening to two guys talk about a concept and idea. And if you like this content, like this kind of stuff, let us know, send us a message at from double to Cleveland, gmail.com. And that's all I have. So we'll see you all next time.

Speaker: Bye friends. Cheerio.