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After the Fantastic Four films but before Captain America, Chris Evans starred in another superhero film called Push that most people (including Perry) never even knew about. Matthew Bliss of the Dead Drop Podcast is here to talk about this underrated superhero film and why he feels it's worth another look (or even a first look if you've never seen it).
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Transcript
Kira's Past and Present with Nick
00:00:29
Speaker
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Keira?
00:00:39
Speaker
What? You're the girl everyone's looking for? I should kill you, Nick. Hey! You know this psycho? What happened to you? So now you want to know? What is that supposed to mean? I thought you left. You stopped returning my call. Division caught me and locked me up. What? And you never came. I looked for you. I did. You didn't find me. Dylan, whatever. You had a thing. Get over it. I really suggest we discuss this somewhere else. Let's go, Nick.
00:01:22
Speaker
Kira, division's looking for you. They're looking for the case. And so are you. What's in that case, Kira? I don't know. All I know is that I woke up on a boat next to a note I had written saying to look for you and you'd help me find the case. I don't remember anything about the last couple of days. No matter how hard I try,
00:01:46
Speaker
You must have had yourself wiped. Erased memories make it harder for division to track you. Not the ones of you. Can I talk to you for a sec? Can you wait? Kind of in the middle of something. No. You, me and my mom. I've never seen my mom's death before.
00:02:16
Speaker
It's her, Nick. She's changing the future and she's making it worse. We've got to dump her. Dump her? Cassie, we... Cassie, we just found her. And she doesn't have the case, which is what we're looking for if you remember. Yeah, I know. We find her, we find the case. The three of us. Yeah, and the division finds her. Oh, yeah, the three of us. We'll get a shadow so they can't trace her. Satisfied? No.
00:02:48
Speaker
You gotta trust me. Hey, I'm looking for all the trust issues here. You better do something quick, because I'm getting sick of drawing dead bodies.
Introduction to Superhero Cinephiles
00:03:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, and welcoming a new guest today and a fellow podcaster, and that is Matthew Bliss. Matt, how you doing today?
00:03:13
Speaker
Not bad. How are you? Doing pretty good. So before we get started with the movie, why don't you tell people a little bit about yourself? Well, as you said, I'm a podcaster. I actually got in touch with you looking for a reason to promote my current podcast, The Dead Drop, for video game news. It's really short episodes, about 10 minutes, where I talk about
00:03:36
Speaker
the big and small news in the games industry. So if you're a fan of video games, do a listener, then feel free to jog along to my stuff and give it a listen. The whole mentality behind it is
00:03:51
Speaker
that a lot of the articles, the news articles that we get in video games, they tend to be quite large. And, you know, there might be one or two sentences in there that gives you the information that it's purporting to give you. And then the rest is just, you know,
00:04:10
Speaker
I'm trying to be that guy who looks at that stuff and looks for those two sentences and tells you the sentences and saves you a bit of time. But every episode has all the articles linked. And so if you want to dive a little bit deeper, then absolutely.
00:04:26
Speaker
But I did get a beer in my guana last week, actually, because I'm not sure how much you talk about video games here. It's superheroes. So it's got to be somewhere close. I mean, I play video games. I'm not a hardcore gamer, much more casual just because I don't have the time most of these days. But yeah, I keep up. I don't keep up with them as much. So but I do keep, you know, a toe dipped in the water every now and then.
00:04:52
Speaker
Okay, awesome.
Gaming Industry Insights with Matthew Bliss
00:04:54
Speaker
Well, you might know then that usually we'd expect the big showcase E3 to come around shortly, but they've cancelled it for this year. Oh, I did not hear that.
00:05:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so they've been actually really bad about it the last couple of years and, you know, give or take a pandemic. Of course, it's going to be hard to organize that stuff. But they they said it was going to be a virtual one at the beginning of this year. And then a couple of months ago, they said, no, sorry, it's not going to happen this year. Well,
00:05:23
Speaker
we'll spool up our content and get ready for 2023. Wow. You know, fingers crossed. But it does mean that there's a news gap. Like people, the game developers even wait for that space to announce stuff. Right. Like it's where a lot of the good stuff comes. It's like some people call it Christmas for video games, you know. Right, right. So we've got a bit of a gap and that means the news outlets run out of stuff to talk about.
00:05:51
Speaker
So last week I did a clickbait episode because there were three articles in particular that they just, they were clickbaity so hard, it was ridiculous. So I unpacked one that was a headline that was completely false, but you had to click through to see them clarify the actual information, which for anyone curious was the
00:06:16
Speaker
the Zynga take two acquisition. They said it was the biggest merger in history. It was 12.7 billion or something like that. But of course, people who've been keeping up know that Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for the actual biggest in the industry. It just hasn't happened yet. Right. Playing with that headline a bit. And then I unpacked headlines that say things like should could will be potentially like, yeah, it's all speculative.
00:06:44
Speaker
So yeah, that was a little bit different than the usual, but more than normally, it's about five or six video game news stories and just unpacking them a little bit and sometimes giving my opinions. Yeah. Yeah. I used to write for one of those sites, not video games, but pop culture in general, and just always having editors tinkering with my headlines to make them more clickbaity. I'm just like, that's not at all what I was saying in it.
00:07:10
Speaker
Yeah. And you see it on Twitter too. People know, people know, like I saw a, I think I saw one yesterday where someone was talking about something really interesting that I did in my episode I released yesterday that the French government
00:07:25
Speaker
is banning its employees, so government workers, from using gaming terms that are anglicized in their language, like streaming and esports. Yeah. But I had a picture of a Fortnite bloke as the thumbnail for it. Like it made no sense, except that it's loosely related to streaming or games.
00:07:46
Speaker
It's yeah. And that actually that's actually not directed at gaming. That's a that's a French law that's existed for a while, I believe, where they if they have a French equivalent, the law states they have to use the French equivalent in official publications instead of the English one.
00:08:01
Speaker
Oh, OK. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yes. It did say that there was a publication that updates government workers on that information. That might be where the reporting came from. Probably. But, you know, they can connect to video gaming and then they can say the French government's coming after gamers and all that kind of shit.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely feels like that if you just read the headlines. That's what I implore my listeners to do to have a little bit deeper, or at the very least, look at the byline, which is where they correct whatever they did wrong in the headline, just in case they get in trouble. The one thing I see is whenever someone posts something from We Got This Covered, I'm like, nope, don't trust that. Don't look at that.
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, and Kotaku is a really bad one at the moment. Oh, Kotaku's gotten bad, really. I remember they used to be much better, I think. Yeah, I think they're just, they're leaning into the lighthearted nature of reporting, which is fine.
00:08:55
Speaker
Except when it's easy for someone to look at what they're reading, but not realize it's an opinion piece. It's just some guy prattling on about how he doesn't like the PlayStation Plus new service offering.
00:09:11
Speaker
You know, his steam deck broke as soon as it was delivered to him. So he hates it.
Exploring Superhero Films and 'The Boys'
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah. Stupid stuff like that. Oh, God. All right. But as you mentioned, this is the superhero show. So what is your history with superheroes or with comics or anything like that?
00:09:30
Speaker
Um, I don't, I'm not actually much of a comic guy. I haven't dived into those, but the superhero films have always intrigued me. Uh, I feel like I'm in that blessed generation that grew up with the Marvel stuff as it grew and kind of evolved seeing Iron Man in the cinemas.
00:09:50
Speaker
being one of the first was great. But I like the interesting ones. Like I'm a bit of an, I like the esoteric, I like the weird and the unusual, the stuff that makes me think about things a little bit differently. So I'll get across all your standard stuff.
00:10:07
Speaker
And then I'll try to target some of the weirder things. And actually, I might ask you a little bit later on, there's a film that I saw a trailer for years ago that I've never been able to find because I forgot the name of it. Okay. But the
00:10:24
Speaker
The weird ones that kind of have a different take, kind of like The Boys. The Boys is a TV show, kind of flips it on its head a little bit. It's getting very big for its britches though, and it's starting to have to go in weird directions. There was one that came out last year or in 2019, I can't quite recall. Wow, it would really help if I remember the names of these.
00:10:48
Speaker
I'm that guy, I'm kind of that guy who looks at a film and goes, oh, I know that actor. He was in this, this, this, and this. But for some reason, I'm just blanking on a couple of these. My wife does that a lot. Like she'll see an actor in something or she'll try to tell me about an actor. She's like, you know, that actor, he was in that movie. And I'm like, you have to be a little bit more specific. That guy in that movie isn't really helping me. It's like a seven degrees of Kevin Bacon. Right. Yeah.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and I, I guess I am very narratively focused too. When I perceive this stuff, I tend not to look too far behind behind the curtain with how, you know, superhero movies in particular, uh, get their stuff. Cause there's always drama around them, right? Scarlet. Uh, sorry. What was her name?
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah. Scarlett Johansson. Scarlett Johansson. Yeah. With the Disney thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was a very weird thing to see happen, although it seemed to be resolved and everyone was happy. Yeah. Yeah. So I wasn't, I was never really following that all too closely. I never really cared too much about, you know, how many millions or billions the actors are getting, all that kind of stuff.
00:12:01
Speaker
Just to be happy Robert Downey Jr. doesn't have to answer a quote or a question about how much he's making per Marvel film anymore. Yeah, probably a good one to avoid. But yeah, I've always loved the superhero franchise. I just think
00:12:18
Speaker
You know, it empowers people when they watch them in a different way than standard films do. And I'm glad it's come a lot further than the Fantastic Four's that will come up soon. You know, at the Eric Banner Hulks. Right, right. The older Spider-Man's. It's kind of, it's getting its own treatment.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, one of the big things I've noticed is as they, and I think Marvel is really the one that kind of leaned heavily into this early on is,
Marvel's Genre-Blending Success
00:12:49
Speaker
they decided to stop making just superhero movies and to start making, and they really kind of realized that superheroes, not so much a genre, but it's more like a type that you put on another genre, right? It's like a cape, basically, you put on another genre type of film. So you have the Captain America movies are political thrillers. The Iron Man movies are more sci-fi techno thrillers, right? The Thor ones are
00:13:15
Speaker
you know, like this blend of, or like science fantasy. Yeah, this blend of sci-fi and fantasy. The Ant-Man films are heist films and all that kind of stuff. And I think that's really, that approach has really served them well, I think, and really helped to kind of set each of their movies just slightly apart. Because if you don't like, you know, if you don't like the Avengers stuff, you've got the Guardians of the Galaxy stuff, which is much more, you know, like comedy space opera type of thing.
00:13:44
Speaker
And yeah, I've never actually heard it described like that, but you're absolutely right that they've each got their own style, which means that when they come together to do a mashup like Civil War, it becomes incredibly interesting.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So now you picked a movie for today that I had actually never heard of before you told me
Chris Evans' Career Highlights
00:14:07
Speaker
that. So which I was very proud of. Yeah. Yeah. And and I was surprised because this was well, I think one of the reasons is this came out in 2009 and this was my first year.
00:14:18
Speaker
This is like my first year in Japan. I was still heavily plugged into social media at the time, but I don't think a lot of people were really talking about this movie back then.
00:14:33
Speaker
Sorry. Oh, sorry, I was just gonna say, and it's an original superhero movie. It's not based on any existing IP, but there was a comic book miniseries that acted as a prequel to that, that was written by Mark Bernardin, who's also the co-host of the Fat Man Beyond podcast with Kevin Smith and Adam Freeman. He was the other co-writer and Bruno Redondo did the art. Wow.
00:15:01
Speaker
but I've never read that, I have no idea how good it is. Bernard's a pretty good writer, so I assume it might actually be pretty decent. But yeah, I had never heard of this movie before. So how did you come to discover this movie? I was trying to think about it last night because I realized this is one of those films that I go back to often. You just wanna sit back and watch something you've enjoyed in the past.
00:15:31
Speaker
Chuck it on, enjoy it for a, to have a good time and then come back to it in a couple of years. But going back to the origins, I think I originally saw it on a plane when I was in 2009 would have been around the time it came out and that would have been the time I flew to Europe. Okay.
00:15:49
Speaker
And coming back on the plane, I watched it. And at that time, you know, I was young, full of piss and vinegar. Fuck that. I'm not going to sleep on the plane. I'm just going to watch all the movies and drink a lot, you know. So I yeah, I caught that. And I saw Chris Evans was in it.
00:16:07
Speaker
I think the only thing I would have seen him in before that was a Fantastic Four when he was Johnny Storm. And I was intrigued by it. I had Dakota Fanning, who was a big thing at the time in it as well. So I was like, yep, give it a look. I watched it on the plane. I'm not sure if I got to finish it, which was unfortunate because at that time
00:16:30
Speaker
you know, being able to get access to stuff in Australia. I should have said that too. If you couldn't tell I'm from Australia. Getting stuff in Australia at that point was sometimes difficult. And it being a very little known film, you know, there may not have been a DVD that came to Australia for a little while.
00:16:51
Speaker
So yeah, I think I was on an airplane when I watched it initially. And yeah, it just caught me by surprise. It was turned out to be an excellent film. And before we dive into it, I think Chris Evans, I've been a secret Chris Evans fan for a very long time. And I only discovered that when he did Captain America for the first time.
00:17:13
Speaker
because he's done, he's had a great back catalog of films, not necessarily just superhero films, but he does a really good indie. He really does. One of the surprising things about Chris Evans is when I went back and
00:17:29
Speaker
So there was a, not another teen movie was on one of the streaming services and I went back and I rewatched it and there's Chris Evans as the lead character. I'm like, what? Wait, that Chris Evans, I completely, that had completely slipped by my notice. I didn't realize that that was him. And watching that again and just realizing, oh my God, he's actually, he's a really amazing actor. Like he, cause he was, he was funny as hell in that movie. That movie was an underrated, an underrated gem and
00:17:56
Speaker
Just seeing him do that, you know, and then when he did Johnny Storm and the Fantastic Four, right? He was, him and Michael Chiklis were the best things about those movies, right? They had the Johnny Ben dynamic down to a science. They were perfect. And then, you know, going back and seeing him in other things, like there, he was in Snowpiercer. He was really good in that. Or there was this other movie he did called Gifted.
00:18:21
Speaker
with I can't remember. Yes, great movie. I can't remember the the actress who played his his
00:18:27
Speaker
niece slash adopted daughter in that, but she was really good too. And that was something I had watched fairly recently. It was actually something that I taught in my class because one of the students had requested it and it was really good. I was surprised at how much I really enjoyed it and just seeing him in all these different roles and how good of an actor, how talented he is. And I think that that's something that I think took a lot of people by surprise.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it really did. A couple of others that are big winners for me is the losers. Oh, yeah. Came out at the same time as the A-Team, I think it might've been within like a couple months. It was like the exact, yeah, it was like the exact same summer. It was like, that was like a weird summer. It was like the summer of like the military style team because you had the A-Team, you had the losers. And I think the Expendables also came out that same summer too.
00:19:18
Speaker
I didn't know that. Although it's funny because The Losers was actually based on a DC comic book as well. So that's another, and he's got this history of doing these comic book movies before he really kind of hit it big with Captain America. Yeah, yeah, he definitely did. But The Losers was great. That was an Idris Elba as well. Yeah, yeah. He popped up in there too. And Zoe Saldana was in that too.
00:19:46
Speaker
It's crazy. All those old movies that you forget about where all the big names are that you still recognize today. Another one that I do want to shout out is Puncture. Oh, I haven't heard of that one. It's good. It's not a superhero one again. He plays a lawyer that is a drug addict.
00:20:06
Speaker
but he's trying to build a case for people who aren't represented in the medical industry to address needle sticks, which cause sexually transmitted diseases to infect nurses at an exorbitant rate. And only because the HMOs for hospitals,
00:20:31
Speaker
have particular people they sell to and they don't improve the products to remove the danger for the nurses. And the way that it explores that and his nature as a lawyer and a drug addict is just really interesting. That just illustrates the diversity that he's got. I'll have to check that out. Yeah, that's also based on a true story, apparently.
00:20:56
Speaker
Yeah, Mike Weiss and Paul Danzinger, they were, this was apparently a real situation. And the real Danzinger actually co-wrote the film. There you go. Yeah. And it feels true to life when you watch it too, particularly when you get to the end, but I won't spoil anything.
00:21:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, please don't because I'm not to look that up. But talking about push and continuing on, you know, kind of connected what we were talking before. The cast is amazing in this movie. It's got a really great cast. I mean, it's, you know, we got Chris Evans, obviously, and Dakota Fanning, who you already mentioned.
00:21:35
Speaker
But also Jiman Hanso playing the villain in this, who's just, you know, he's just perfect. Yeah, exactly. He's perfect. He's just like this cool, calculating presence throughout the whole movie. Ming Na Wen was a surprise in there. I didn't I wasn't expecting to see her pop up. You know, later on, get more successful in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Cliff Curtis, who's been in a bunch of different stuff. Corey Stoll, this is before he really kind of hit it big with because I think
00:22:05
Speaker
House of Cards is really kind of like his big star turning moment and he was in this plane, one of the agents at the early on.
00:22:15
Speaker
Um, Neil Jackson, who was in, uh, he was actually the villain on the Blade TV series. Uh, Hal Yamanauchi, who, uh, he played Pop Father in this. He was in The Wolverine, uh, as, um, the, the old Yoshida. And another one who probably no one else will re- re- re- remember me, but, uh, Shaolu Lee, who plays, um, Pop Girl.
00:22:36
Speaker
I was watching this movie and I'm like, I know this actress. I've seen her in something before. And I looked her up and it's like all Chinese movies. And I'm like, I'm not that familiar. I've seen some Chinese films, but I couldn't tell from IMDB based on the titles because they go with the title in the country you're accessing it from. So I'm seeing the Japanese version of the Chinese titles as opposed to the English titles. And then I looked her up on Wikipedia and right there in Wikipedia, she was it says that she got her
00:23:05
Speaker
her big break in this movie called, it's this movie that Joan Chen directed called Shushu, the Suntown Girl. And it was a movie that China had actually banned because it was, it really kind of depicted the cultural revolution in a bad light. And I hadn't seen that movie in God, like
00:23:25
Speaker
probably 20 years, at least, maybe more. And so seeing her in this was really kind of surprising, realizing that I still remembered her all these years that she kind of stood out. Yeah. Well, you're clearly still tapped into your seven years, seven degrees of Kevin Bacon. Apparently, yeah. Yeah.
00:23:45
Speaker
But yeah, the cast is ridiculous. And a lot of those actors did go on to do even more stuff. But you just enjoy it. Even Chris Evans being Chris Evans, if you look back on it now and said he's Captain America,
00:24:01
Speaker
You don't even he doesn't really represent that same role anymore. It's still his style. But you just kind of sit back and enjoy him represent the character that he's representing. Well, I think that's that's one of the great things about Evans, because when he was cast as Captain America, I remember thinking, I'm like, well, the guy who played human torch, really him? I'm like, he was good as human torch, but I don't know if that translates to Captain America.
00:24:24
Speaker
And then when he played the part and I saw how good he is, I'm like, oh, wow. And just seeing him all this other stuff made you realize just how much talent he has that nobody really recognized until later on. Yeah. And I think part of that is something that he's been quite open about as well. I'm not sure if it's depression or anxiety that he feels, but he said that
00:24:50
Speaker
there was a lot of times that he was reconsidering doing Captain America roles again because of the immense amount of pressure that comes through in that stuff. And that might be why we get so many great indies from him because he's like, all right, I've given you one for you. I need one for me now.
00:25:08
Speaker
Well, yeah, that's that's basic. I think that's why he did the Captain America and the Avengers movies for so long. I mean, he's clearly a comic book fan. I know you could he he talked about that from when he did the Fantastic Four movies and you can see it in his performances like he really brings stuff out from the from the comics. But but also he's someone who.
00:25:30
Speaker
kind of like Dakota Fanning in a lot of ways too, right? Is more interested in the craft of acting as opposed to the star aspect of it. And I think, and one of the things that he's, you know, because he's done all these, you know, superhero movies now, now he's got the clout to go into any studio meeting and say, I want to do this indie movie. And because I was Captain America, you're going to let me do it. And they're like, okay, yeah, go ahead.
00:25:56
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's probably right. But he did do a great job in push. And as the titular actor that just kind of bumbles along, not quite sure what's going on, but knowing enough to be able to kind of direct the story, it's yeah, he does a great job. Besides the, like, so overall,
00:26:18
Speaker
I think I'm between your opinion on the movie and the consensus on the
Critiquing 'Push': Between Love and Dislike
00:26:22
Speaker
movie. Because this movie got walloped in the response. It had rotten tomatoes, had a 23% approval rating for it. And, you know, Metacritic gave it a 36 out of 100.
00:26:40
Speaker
Roger Ebert gave it one and a half stars. And looking back on it now, last night after I watched it, I was looking on letter boxes, reading through some of the reviews. All of them basically, the best reviews were like maybe three stars. But most of them were like one or two stars. So had a really negative reaction to it. You really liked this movie. You had told me in our emails. And then so when I watched it last night,
00:27:08
Speaker
I sat down, I watched it, and I'm between those two extremes, right? I'm not quite where you are, where I think it's really great, but I don't think it's as bad as everybody said it was. There's a lot of really good things in it, like the cast is really amazing in this. Another thing I like is just the world building in it, the background here with the
00:27:26
Speaker
with the whole history behind the division and the people born with these superhuman abilities and the second generations and all that, and the different categories too, right? That felt very much like, I don't know if you're familiar at all with the wildcard series of books that George RR Martin edited. So yeah, and I think it started in the 80s, 70s or 80s, when George RR Martin,
00:27:54
Speaker
he created basically this world for a series of superhero themed novels called the wild card series. And where there was this kind of like alien event that had given different people in the world different powers. But it wasn't like with Marvel or DC where
00:28:17
Speaker
the powers are just completely random. They were set categories of types of mutations that they had. And this seems very similar, right? The whole idea that you have these different categories of supers where you've got the pushers who are
00:28:36
Speaker
They are the ones who are able to influence people's thoughts. You've got the movers who are telekinetics, watchers who can, you know, kind of see the future but kind of not because even talking about the future changes it, which I thought was a nice little, nice little thing to add in it.
00:28:54
Speaker
You've got the bleeders who have this, who can emit these like high sonic frequencies and like cause you to basically bleed out of your ears. And then you've got the sniffers who can track people down or shadows who can, who can cause people to hide from sniffers.
00:29:13
Speaker
I don't think they ever named it, but there's one bloke in Australian bloke or New Zealand. I'm not too sure who can change objects to look like. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think they named that though. I'm not too sure. I can't quite recall. But yeah, I love the way they class those and usually with a superhero movie.
00:29:34
Speaker
Oh, there was one other class, not that one, but also the wipers who can kind of erase memories. That's right. That was the precipitating, yeah, that they loop back to. But usually with a superhero film,
00:29:49
Speaker
kind of like the Wolverine style, you'd expect them to go, okay, now we're in this world, we've built these elements. Now we're gonna blend them together. All of a sudden you've got a sniffer who can see the future instead of just looking backwards on whatever objects that they smell or touch. But yeah, with this one, it very much grounded itself in how it built the world initially and then let the characters kind of
00:30:19
Speaker
builds the drama around those powers. And I think that's where its strength is too, that it's set the rules. It wasn't gonna break those rules. You find out, actually I should ask, how are we for spoilers on this? We're fine. I mean, this, yeah, don't know. It's pretty much this movie. It's, yeah, it's like what, almost.
00:30:38
Speaker
uh over 10 years old now by this point so yeah yeah um that you find out things with about the scope of people's powers like the old woman in the building at the end who was shadowing an entire building and protecting it from watches um but yeah they didn't really go too far with the powers i think i'd say they wanted there to be a second film they they definitely set up for another one
00:31:04
Speaker
Well, I think that's my biggest complaint probably with this film is that I don't feel like the story really kind of lives up to that potential of the concept and of the world. I feel like the story overall is a little bit weak in comparison to all this other stuff. You know, we've got this really great cast. We've got this really great setup here and
00:31:24
Speaker
the story kind of peters out for me a little bit. I was into it a lot in the beginning. Like the first half of it, I'm pretty invested in it. And then as it gets on, it kind of slows down and it kind of loses my interest a little bit, I felt. I think they got too ambitious a little bit because there's a point in the film where they establish the problem. Like you get the team together
00:31:49
Speaker
they're all together and talking about this issue they have to deal with. And then it becomes about fact finding again, just because the watches kind of confuse that a little bit. They're like, I don't know what to do, but if I decide what to do, they know what I'm doing. So where do I go? And then it comes to a head.
00:32:08
Speaker
where they play with the memory mechanic a bit. And Chris Evans is relied upon entirely to set up the rest of the film when he writes the notes that he will then forget in order to precipitate these actions that can't be tracked. And at that point it became like a framing device for another type of film within this film again. And
00:32:34
Speaker
Uh, it happens with video games too, actually the idea that, that you're changing.
00:32:41
Speaker
You're being innovative by changing the style of film or game halfway through, but your audience is drawn into how you built it at the first time. And they don't wanna do the hard work of having to rebuild their expectations around how it's gonna look and how it's gonna feel and how it will roll on going forward. So for the first half, you're learning a lot and then you're left guessing for the second half without
00:33:10
Speaker
having any information to deal with, you kind of just have to sit back and not do any hard work and just watch what happens. And that might be something that you experienced when you watched it as well. We want to do that work, right? As people watching superhero films, we want to go, oh yeah, that's like that. So, you know, they could go,
00:33:30
Speaker
that the watches are like people who can see the future. So what if they can change the future to affect people's actions simply by looking at the future as opposed to affecting the physical space to change what watches actions are like or what constitutes a decision, you know, the adamantium versus vibranium argument. We love doing those things in superhero films, but it's hard to do it in the second half of this film.
00:33:57
Speaker
Also, I think this movie is, I think it relies a lot on trying to pull out twists that don't really need to be there. Like the whole idea that where Camilla gets pushed and then
00:34:13
Speaker
She, and then she, then she has the whole twist like, oh, there was never any Coney Island. You know, we, you've never, you've never been to Coney Island. I put that all in your mind. And then later at the end to have another reversal where she gets pulls the, pulls the picture out and you know, it says, you know, you know, you know, kill him basically, you know, and then, and he, and he has the little speech to her before where he says, you know, when she asks, when should I open? And he says, when you start to doubt the truth and
00:34:39
Speaker
Or at the very end where he goes with Cassie and reveals that this was her mother's plan all along. And he says, how long has your mother been planning this? She says, probably since before I was born. And also the whole central idea driving, the whole reason why they get together in the first place is so that they can get this drug and they can go and free her mother from the division.
00:35:04
Speaker
But we get to the end of the film and they still haven't freed her mother. They've got the drug part, but and it kind of feels like it's a setup for something else that never comes. Yeah, but I think that's where they failed a little bit, too, that it takes a couple of rewatches to get the full picture like they've they've tried to get that time loop.
00:35:27
Speaker
thing working well but I don't think there's enough space for you to remember the important stuff like did you pick up at the beginning when they're in the the medical facility that Kira escapes from that the woman being led away that drops a little little shiny ball that stops the door from closing
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah, I did pick that up when Cassie's talking about her mom and you see the mom walking down the hall and then she drops the marble. Because I remember thinking at the beginning of the movie, what's the point of this marble? What's that all about? So then that was something I did pick up on. But there was other stuff in the movie that after I watched it that I had to go and, you know, reread the plot summary and stuff to make sure that I was piecing everything together, right? Yeah. So I think you're right. I think it does take more than one viewing to really kind of
00:36:18
Speaker
get the story. I think that's probably a big reason why a lot of people were cold on this film. Yeah, it probably, yeah. Because you don't sit there fact-finding. Like within the first minute, there's a mention of the mother as well, but you don't know it until you've watched the entire film. When Nick as a young kid is being led into the room by his dad, he said, someone told me that there's going to be, you know, that you're going to be a great pusher or, sorry, mover or whatever.
00:36:48
Speaker
that would have been Cassie's mother as well. Yeah, she features all the way throughout. And that's why I think they were trying to set up for a sequel. Because you have this Oracle that knew the events of the entire film, like all of that has been backwards. And I noticed when I watched it again the other night that they built the cinematography around that as well. Because there are transitional moments when
00:37:13
Speaker
it gets all grainy. Like it looks like someone's viewing, uh, you know, Nick and Cassie doing their thing and in the fish market, for example. And it's trying to just transitional music and you kind of write it off as a, uh, film narrative technique to move people between places. But that's kind of the view that that's similar to the grainy view the sniffers get when they're trying to look at the content. I think they were trying to build that
00:37:43
Speaker
that Cassie's mother had seen this already. That was her watching them do the thing that she knew was gonna happen. This might've been a bit too deep for its own good. And that's where the overambitiousness maybe comes from.
00:37:58
Speaker
Well, also with that overambitiousness is it's just got such a huge cast. I don't think we need this many people for this story. I mean, because we've got the you've got the main cast. And, you know, first, it's just it's Nick and it's Cassie. But then we bring in bring in Kira and then we bring in Hook. And then we bring in, you know, Emily Wu. And then we bring in the
00:38:22
Speaker
The shadow pinky and you know we have this huge team that ends up getting assembled here and then you've got on the division side you've got you got carver and then you've got you know MAC and Holden and then.
00:38:37
Speaker
and Victor and all these other agents that are all pretty big presences in the movie, even if they don't have much screen time comparatively, but then you've also got the triads too that are involved in this too. And it's just, yeah, there's, there's, it's, so it's hard to keep track of, of these different characters at times, I think, even though they're, they're played well, like I'm not, then, like I had mentioned before, the cast does a really good job, but
00:39:02
Speaker
when you have that many people and in this kind of story where there's so many moving parts, it's very easy to kind of just glaze over at some point. And I think that that's kind of what happened to me. And I think that's what happened to a lot of people when they were watching this film. And maybe that's where I kind of liked it a bit more than the casual person would because I don't, when I see a character that doesn't have much
00:39:28
Speaker
much built around it. Like the bloke who was doing the shape-shifting of objects. There is so little that we know about him and probably very specifically because he's kind of built to be a grifter. But, you know, he's obviously from a different country. He's X division. So he must've worked for them to some degree, but how and why? And why is he doing what he does now? And why does he hang out in clubs all the time? He could be, you know, doing it in, uh,
00:39:58
Speaker
you know, gambling locations where money is more of a thing and he can manipulate people in different ways. Like I tend to read into people's character and infer more things from it. And that's the kind of enjoyment from imagination that I usually get when I watch these kinds of films. So when I saw them all get together,
00:40:19
Speaker
I was like, okay, they've all got their own stories, but that's not the important bit at the moment. The important bit is that they all have a contribution to make because they all have different powers. And that may have been part of that downfall too. That, all right, you set up this expansive universe and you've introduced all of these abilities.
00:40:43
Speaker
but now you have to pay them off a bit. And the only way to kind of do that is to bring all the different powers together and see how they work in unison to achieve a goal. You know, cause you do have the shadow that's protecting some people and the memory wiper that helps with the overall heist motif. You know, somebody, oh, that's actually, that's really interesting. What Mignal's character,
00:41:10
Speaker
does trying to sniff out the location of the lockbox, obviously being shadowed means that she can't find it. But, you know, she peels off the little bit of tape to show the number of the lockbox. And so she didn't end up actually using her power at all. She was just a person rubbing a key.
00:41:30
Speaker
Yeah, maybe that was a bit over-ambitious as well, but I think it became a necessity for the film, so it couldn't really be ignored that they bring all those complex characters together.
00:41:42
Speaker
And maybe they were tied to that prequel comic you mentioned too. I'm not so sure. With prequel comics they tend to go with the script that's written and then they do the prequel comic based off of that. And usually there's not a whole lot of fidelity paid to those like most times when there's prequel comics.
00:42:03
Speaker
they don't pay a whole lot of attention to them if they want to do something in like sequels or something that contradicts the prequel comic, nobody cares, right? They'll do that anyway. So that kind of stuff happens a lot. So I don't think that's so much a concern for them. But one of the things that I think too is this feels like it should have been a TV series instead of a movie,
Could 'Push' Work Better as a TV Series?
00:42:25
Speaker
right? Because it's got all these different elements, it's got all these different characters. And I feel like this basic story of
00:42:33
Speaker
Nick and Cassie trying to find this drug so that they can free Cassie's mother. That could have been like a season of like a streaming service TV series, like a 10 to 13 episode season or something like that. And I think it would have drawing it out a little bit more and allowing you to play more with these different characters and their connections to the main characters, I think would have worked a lot better as opposed to try and jam it all into this movie.
00:43:00
Speaker
Yeah, I'd agree with that. Absolutely. Because heroes was something I thought about just then as something that tries to do that. But I actually can't remember when that came out. It might have been 2006. It was earlier than that, I think. I think it was probably 2004 or 2005.
00:43:23
Speaker
Probably something like around there. 2006. Oh, it was 2006. Okay. Um, cause I graduated at the end of 2006. So I, I thought it came out earlier than that. Cause I remember watching it when I was in university. Yeah, I did that math too. Cause I graduated high school in 2006. But yeah, it's, it's exactly what you're explaining. It's a TV show that has a diverse range of powers with, uh, like a nefarious, uh,
00:43:51
Speaker
kind of a super villain type. Yeah. Omniscient organization doing things and a villain, you know, a bunch of different elements working together, but they have the space to to etch that out a little bit. Right. And they've got all the different characters with the different types of powers that all have different backgrounds and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah. And different stories, too. Yeah. Yeah. We get to know about Hiro Nakamura and his journey to everybody else. The cheerleader in high school dealing with teenage stuff.
00:44:20
Speaker
Peter Petrelli dealing with, wait, Peter Petrelli. Yeah, that was the main character. Yeah, that was Milo Ventiglia. Yeah, him dealing with nursing and the idea of palliative care, that just had such a huge thing. I think if Push got that, I think you're right. It would have done a lot better. Yeah, it definitely would have.
00:44:46
Speaker
Now speaking of the cast, like I said, most of the cast, the cast is pretty good. The one exception though is I don't really feel Camilla Bell in this movie. Like she doesn't really, who played Kira. And I, you know what, the whole, her, the kind of lack of chemistry I feel with her and Chris Evans, I think it would have worked a lot better if
00:45:10
Speaker
Carver's pushing had actually been the truth. Like she was actually, she actually did trick him into thinking that he knows her. I think then the lack of chemistry actually would have made sense for the movie, but then when you find out they were together all along, then the entire time just like, I'm not really seeing how these two characters fit together.
00:45:31
Speaker
Yeah, it is a bit, that relationship is definitely weird when you see it because they don't shy away from the intimacy that they have. Like right away. Yeah. Um, but yeah, you don't, you don't feel like they were together for ages and they don't really set it up as a, these guys have been on and off for 10 years, you know, high school, sweet arts kind of thing, but still, yeah, there, there could be a lot more work done to try and
00:45:59
Speaker
establish a bit more of that relationship. But I think. Well, sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say that the the the whole idea of the film is that these these people with these abilities are all in hiding. Right. They're they're always essentially disconnected from the world at large, trying never to stay in one place for more than they need to or until a sniffer finds them from the division and then they they hightail it like Nick was about to at the start. Right.
00:46:30
Speaker
And I think that kind of style of living may have played off that relationship a little bit to prevent us from buying them as a couple. Yeah. Also too, and I think, what was I gonna say? I had it in my mind. It is kind of weird though when you're watching this movie and Chris Evans has better chemistry with Dakota Fanning than he does with Camilla Bell.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that is a bit weird. The partner in crime beating out the love of your life, I guess, which they're trying to set up. But again, that plays off well to how they've set everybody up in the film to be, where Cassie and Nick,
00:47:19
Speaker
trust each other implicitly, even though they've just met. Like that kind of stark contrast to everybody else being distrustful of each other and everyone is what stands out with that relationship, I think.
00:47:33
Speaker
Yeah, another thing I think would have worked better if they had done the she's just pushing Nick the the entire time is is just the the gobsmacking coincidental nature of it where the girl they need to find to get this drug that cat which is the reason why Cassie recruits Nick in the first place just so happens to be Nick's ex girlfriend.
00:47:56
Speaker
Yes. So I think if it was always she's pushing him, I think that coincidence would have worked a lot better for me. Yeah, I can see where you're going there, but I think it's the whole nature of
00:48:13
Speaker
future prediction, right? Again, we're going back to Cassie's mother being the person who controlled and set up the entire film by just a few actions. The fact that she was a watcher that could see how far things went, even though other watchers could only see changing areas of the timeline.
00:48:37
Speaker
meant that that became the backbone of everything that happens. And at that point, if you trust that, then we don't need a reason for Kira to be pushed or not when she is pursuing the actions that she does. Even though it does feel like that, and maybe we needed it to feel that empty,
00:48:59
Speaker
in order to believe the twist at the end when she wasn't actually pushed, but got pushed. Like if she was a bubbly character that was really striving to go after Nick again to try and find him or to, you know, like she does feel like a character that's carrying a bucket of plot with her and not really doing much with it.
00:49:26
Speaker
But if she didn't do that, if she was empowering the plot a little bit more and had more character to her, maybe we wouldn't have believed enough that Carver had not pushed her when he pushes her later on.
00:49:40
Speaker
And that might've been something they saw. And I think that's probably part of it too. They make a lot of compromises. I think also there's some things. That's another reason why I think a TV show would have served this story so much better because you could have had more time to play with that and kind of see that in a little bit better. But as it stands, there's too much plot for this movie, I think, is its biggest problem. It's very dense and it leaves little room for other stuff to happen.
00:50:08
Speaker
Another issue I had, and this, you know, this is probably comparatively minor in the overall scheme of thing, but I feel like they're not quite as consistent as they could have been with Nick's level of control over his, his moving abilities. Because, you know, they have him at the beginning where he's like, he's kind of struggling to move the dice over and Cassie says, you know, you're,
00:50:30
Speaker
you're a mover, but you don't really practice, so you're kind of shitty at it. And we see these moments where he's got trouble controlling, but then when he fights Victor, he's able to control the guns and fire them from a distance, which I would think would take a far greater level of control than moving a dice over two times.
00:50:52
Speaker
Yeah. And that's, that's part of the, um, the prodigy aspect they're going for, I think, like they don't explore the second generation aspect much, even though they do mention it a lot as something new and different. Right. And I think that's what they're going for with that, that Nick kind of.
00:51:09
Speaker
accidentally stumbles on this this new stuff that he can do and we get to that stage with Victor and Carver in the restaurant and he can do the hover gun thing which we have probably been waiting to see pay off for that that portion of the film but we see Victor doing this awesome stuff like bashing him against the roof and yeah having awesome bullet shield stuff and uh and then
00:51:35
Speaker
Uh, we're probably like, Oh, okay, cool. Nick's going to do that eventually. But then that doesn't pay off until the next big fight scene with him, which is right at the end. Yeah. Yeah. And he starts. And then we get another special ability where they can, they can charge up their fists and their head and stuff.
00:51:51
Speaker
do a little beat down, which I think I've always watched the mover aspect of this because we see so much of Nick. And I think Victor's character is one of the strongest in the entire film because what does he do as soon as he sees Nick accidentally punch him in the stomach with the move, he rips off the jacket, like powers up his fists and he just gets at it. Like, I think he does that, that roll really well.
00:52:18
Speaker
Yeah, even though the level of control is inconsistent, I thought the way they depicted the different abilities was, they found really creative ways to use these different powers. Although I couldn't understand why the bleeders always take off their sunglasses before they use their powers. I thought that was a little strange. I figured it was more of an aesthetic thing. Like one of them, you see their eyes, but there's another bloke whose eyes never really open. Yeah.
00:52:48
Speaker
He's concentrating so hard that he has to squint to get the scream out. But the other bloke who's like he's such an aesthetic to that superhero thing, his face just blows up. So you can see right into his eyes and his eyes like undilate. I thought I noticed that. Yeah. So that might be how they hide themselves. Maybe there's a light sensitivity issue when they do that or when they're not doing that, that means
00:53:16
Speaker
This is the stuff that I think about when you've enjoyed a film and you've got 12 years to think about it. But just the different ways they were using the different powers I thought was pretty creative.
Creative Depiction of Superpowers in 'Push'
00:53:31
Speaker
When you think of telekinesis, you just think of like we see at the beginning, just like moving things around very simply. But the idea of like,
00:53:40
Speaker
kind of, you're basically in a way forming shields and stuff because you're like kind of like stopping it in midair or whatever it is, or like charging up the fist where you're adding, I thought all those were like really interesting ways of depicting telekinesis. So that thing I thought they did really good on. The way they use the pushing, like especially when Kira manipulates,
00:54:08
Speaker
five or six blokes at the same time. Well, not, I mean that too, but also, but earlier on, the one that hit me the most was when she influenced it, when she pushes a Mac played by Corey Stoll. And when they're in the bathroom and she makes him and she talks to him, she's like, you're, you're a good, you're a good man. You're a good agent. And then she says, it's like, but you know, there was someone, you know, but he killed your brother and all that. And then
00:54:30
Speaker
And then he goes and he goes and he shoots his partner. And then later, you know, we find out that he never had a brother whatsoever, right? All of that was completely planted in his mind by Kira. And my thought when I was first watching that scene is like, he did have a brother who died, but it maybe wasn't this, it wasn't his partner who killed him. And she just kind of like took advantage of it. But no, that whole history she put in his head in just moments. I thought that was,
00:54:56
Speaker
a really cool way to show how powerful she is. And even when we get the little hint that there's also, she had done more with that too. When Carver says like, you know, I don't need you shooting me because you think I killed a sister you never had. He's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I have a sister. I don't have a sister.
00:55:13
Speaker
Yeah. But you did catch that Keira had met his gaze sort of cracking the door to, I think that eye connection is the thing, but that is an interesting point though. It's the only ability that you explore in that film
00:55:30
Speaker
that psychological manipulation that can be set up without the superpower. Because that's how Carver gets Kira towards the end as well. He's so convincing. He doesn't push anything. He just puts an FBI or a divisional ID in front of her, is convincing enough to make her doubt herself. And then she willingly gets pushed to get the rest of the information.
00:55:56
Speaker
Yeah, that was incredibly interesting. And Jamon Honsu doing that, just, oh, he's so good at it. I mean, I watching this, I was thinking that I wish we would have seen Jamon Honsu have bigger roles like this, especially like, you know, he does such a good job playing a villain, right? I was getting flashes of his character in
00:56:20
Speaker
Oh, what was that? Constantine, when he played Papa Midnight. Yes. And like, that was another character, when I'm thinking about that movie, like, that was a character I would have liked to see a whole series about, was that the way he played that character. And same thing in this, right? He does such a good job as the villain. It just makes you wish that he had had a chance to take on more roles like that.
00:56:42
Speaker
I guess it's unfortunate in that light that the role he got in Marvel for Guardians of the Galaxy was comic relief almost. Right, yeah. And then he came back and they were bringing him back and they brought him back for Captain Marvel and thought it would give him more of a chance to really kind of showcase what he could do. But even so, that's still kind of a minor character overall in that film. Yeah, yeah. But he's got so much range. Yeah.
00:57:09
Speaker
For some reason, don't ask me why, but oh, God, what's the name of that film? Never Back Down. I've heard of it. I don't think I've ever seen it, though. It's an MMA film about a teenager who has anger issues because his dad left his family. So they have to keep moving town because, you know, he's an NFL player that just beats on people out of his control.
00:57:36
Speaker
But he takes up MMA with Jimon Honzu's character in his gym, which is like a very ethical kind of low key. He used to be a brilliant MMA fighter with his brother and you know, but the character he fills in there is really powerful and strong. You really feel for it emotionally. And he kind of carries that whole film to my mind, even though there are a few actors in there that popped out in other places that,
00:58:05
Speaker
you know, went on to bigger things. Right. But yeah, giving giving him a bigger role is always a good idea. Well, at one point, he was actually supposed to be Black Panther when when Fox still had the
00:58:20
Speaker
the Fantastic Four rights and they were going to make a third Fantastic Four movie in that series. Tim Story had said that in the third movie, they were going to bring in the Black Panther and that he was going to bring he was going to he wanted to cast Jimon Hanso and Hanso would also did the voice in the short lived BET Black Panther animated series, too. OK, you know, I could see that. I could see that. Yeah, he was he was the fan pick for a while back then. Hmm. Yeah. Well, that guy.
00:58:51
Speaker
But anyway, yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah. I think that's those are kind of the biggest things that I want to say. Oh, then one more thing I want to say is I like that they said it in Hong Kong.
The Unique Hong Kong Setting of 'Push'
00:59:03
Speaker
I thought that was a really I thought that was a really cool setting to pick instead of setting it in like a because typically movies like this would be set in often some sort of nondescript American city.
00:59:16
Speaker
So setting it in Hong Kong, I think really adds a different flavor to this movie. And they use that, and again, this is the problem with if they had had a TV show or something, it could have explored it more, but they use the setting to pretty good effect. Like the whole idea of Nick being this, you know, this expat who's living in Hong Kong because, you know,
00:59:38
Speaker
He's worried about the division, which is which is an American thing come tracking him down and all that kind of stuff. I thought that idea and the fact that there are so many of these supers in Hong Kong kind of suggest that it's almost like a refuge for them to get away from the division. So I thought that was the idea behind that. I like although it it kind of falls apart when you realize, well, the division easily can come to Hong Kong anyway.
01:00:02
Speaker
Yeah, they address it a couple of times in the film, though. When the two sniffs come for Nick at the beginning, they say, oh, so we tracked you around Malaysia and all that stuff. And you picked an apartment complex as well, which is people stacked on people, so it hides you a little bit better.
01:00:23
Speaker
You know, there are reasons for that. I think the population density might make things harder for the watchers and the sniffers to track things down. Like if you've got 10,000 people touching something a day, maybe it becomes much more difficult. Oh, yeah, I'd imagine so. Yeah.
01:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, but yeah, Hong Kong's a good spot. And there's probably extradition stuff they worry about too. But as you say, the division sets it up to be powerful enough that none of that matters. Exactly, which is kind of the failing of it, because you got this awesome reason for them all to be there, but then division easily comes in anyway. So it's another one of those issues where the story I think needs things to happen a certain way, and it clashes with the kind of world that they're trying to set up.
01:01:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think so. But like we've said a couple of times already, it could just be the comparative aspects that the film absolutely requires to build the components in a way that make it believable to the audience. Like Hong Kong, okay. But the division is super powerful. So, you know, with that going forward, that's the payoff the film needs to make the rest of it make sense.
01:01:30
Speaker
One thing I also like too is just the overall look of the film, the overall aesthetic. It's got this almost kind of like grungy feel to it. And I think that really helps work for this kind of movie they're telling, the kind of story they're telling, the kind of world that it's existing in. It's not, like,
01:01:54
Speaker
You know what I mean? I'm having trouble putting it into words. I think it gets epitomized a little bit towards the end in that last fight scene. Like it is very down and dirty for the most part. Probably the cleanest characters you see, Carver and Victor, you know.
01:02:14
Speaker
anyone from the division in a suit. Right. And they stand out in that environment too, you know, plays to the favor of the division. But at the end, the bags of cement, or whatever it is that Victor's, you know, picking up and throwing around, they're multicolored. Yeah, like it's, you know, it adds a bit of bit of color to the film, where it hasn't been colorful for a long time. Right.
01:02:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think, and I'm not sure whether that's like a juxtaposition to the rest of the film, because you kind of get a little bit of color in places, but yeah, it is very down, dirty, very browns and blues and grays. It doesn't vary too much on that film. Yeah, and I thought that look really, really did, it really suited the world here in this movie. Although I think at some times, I think the director got a little too,
01:03:08
Speaker
overly enthusiastic with cuts. There's some scenes where the cuts come really fast and furious, and I almost got a little bit disoriented trying to watch it. Yeah, it can happen with the powers sometimes. There's a bit that stands out every time I watch this film as well, which I don't think it really needed. But anyway, maybe you pick this up too. In that last fight scene between Nick and Victor in the bamboo,
01:03:37
Speaker
there's a point in it where Victor is, you know, moves a piece of bamboo into his hand. But it's so CG. You can absolutely see that it hasn't been an actual piece of bamboo. Like, yeah, they could have put a string on the end of his wrist in the set and had someone just at the back just pull on it. So he catches the bamboo, but no, they elected to
01:04:01
Speaker
you know, spiral it into his hands and make it look like it just popped out a fortnight or whatever. And, you know, that, that always is glaring to me as part of that. Yeah. Yeah. Arts, arts CG is definitely doesn't hold up very well.
01:04:18
Speaker
No, no, which is funny. I haven't thought about that for a while, but I watched the recent Rescue Rangers film, Disney, and they play off that a little bit. Oh, really? Yeah, there's a whole section of LA, the town that they run around in, that has all the characters
01:04:38
Speaker
CG animated from the naughts. And they all look like a little bit off and weird. And they're not quite staring straight. They call it the polar express of things, which, yeah. Well, there was one thing I saw, because I saw the trailer for that, where the guy's, the character's eyes are looking straight. And they're like, why aren't you looking? He's like, I am. I'm looking right at you. Yeah. And that one, that character was voiced by Seth Rogin as well. Oh, OK. You know, you picture Seth.
01:05:08
Speaker
saying that as well, doing his really goofy laugh. And yeah, it just, I know we're not talking about it, but you should give that film a watch. I didn't want it. Yeah. Cause I only, I surprised, I didn't even, I had heard about it and then I saw it on Disney plus the other day and then I like, Oh, I heard it. And then I watched the trailer. I'm like, okay, I definitely have to put this on my, on my, on my list. So yeah, I want to check that out. My wife was actually watching it yesterday actually. So I have to get her to go back to the beginning and start over.
01:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, no, definitely do it. And for the gamers listening, there's an Ugly Sonic reference in there from the pre CD change. That was probably the advertising campaign mostly. That was one thing I picked up on because she and I came home from work yesterday. She was watching it and they had Ugly Sonic on there.
01:05:55
Speaker
Yeah. I don't go fast. That's Sonic's thing. I go slow, baby. Yeah. Doesn't, that's weird. But anyway, push. Yeah. So, I mean, do you have anything else that you wanted
Final Thoughts on 'Push' and Chris Evans
01:06:08
Speaker
to talk about it? Cause I think I've kind of touched on the big things that were, that I wanted to mention.
01:06:14
Speaker
Yeah, you know, you really have gone into a lot more depth than I ever have. As I said, I don't really explore much of the stuff around the edges. And that's probably why I enjoy this film so much. Like I'm always happy to sit back and
01:06:28
Speaker
just soak in something that has rich law like this does. Even if it doesn't do the film well. I think if I wasn't watching it with this more analytical eye because I know we're gonna be talking about it, I think I probably would have enjoyed it more. It's definitely the kind of movie where if you kind of just turn off your brain and just sit and watch it, it's pretty good. It's entertaining enough to keep you distracted for the whole runtime.
01:06:55
Speaker
Yep. And if nothing else, it builds a catalog of Chris Evans work pre-Captain America, which I know isn't unfair. Like I'm not out here saying the world discovered Chris because he became, you know, this beefy bloke who runs across old New York half dressed like he's, he's got some body to him and he's always been much more than just Captain America.
01:07:23
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's funny going back and seeing like all these superhero or comic book type movies that he did before Captain America. Right. He did the Fantastic Four movies. He did The Losers, like we mentioned. He did this. He also did Scott Pilgrim, which was also based on a comic book. I meant to mention that before. Yeah.
01:07:41
Speaker
And it's funny seeing him in all these different roles, because I was watching, rewatching Don't Look Up the other day, and he's got a cameo in that as this kind of like, which is, it seems like it's the same character from Scott Pilgrim. What was that film again? Don't Look Up. Don't Look Up. I don't think I've seen that one. Oh, with DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence about the meteor, about to strike, it's on Netflix, it's really good.
01:08:10
Speaker
Oh, that's a more recent one, is it? Yeah, yeah. It just came out like around New Year, I think. He's also got that one coming up where he's a hit man across Ryan Gosling, I think. Oh, I did not know that. I got to look that up. Yeah. See, look at this. He's not even Captain America anymore. And he's always like, he's subverting our expectations for him as an actor, too. Yeah. But yeah, he's...
01:08:35
Speaker
I like seeing him in these different roles, because it really does show you, like he, you know, in Scott Pilgrim, where he plays this meathead actor, or then he are in gifted when he plays this, you know, this really intelligent, this really caring guy, and this where he plays this kind of, you know, good hearted con artist, I guess is the best way to kind of describe him. Yeah.
01:08:58
Speaker
troubled, traumatic childhood. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's an entertaining enough movie. It's definitely worth it for the world building and most of the cast, except for Camilla Bell. Those are the two big reasons I'd say are why it'd be worth a watch.
01:09:18
Speaker
And I would highly recommend it to anyone listening as well. Definitely for the Chris Evans factor, but just to expand your mind a bit, expand your mind a bit. We haven't had an X-Men for a while, so if you need that fix, it's probably- Yeah, it's got a very X-Men type feel to it. And especially like I mentioned, if you're
01:09:40
Speaker
someone who was a fan of the wildcards books, this has got a very similar type of idea behind it with the idea of like the different categories of superhumans. I thought that was that immediately made me think of wildcards when I started watching it. Yeah, definitely.
01:09:56
Speaker
So yeah, it's not a bad film. It's definitely not as bad as everybody said it was when it came out. It's much better than I think its reputation is, if it has much for reputation because, you know, like you're telling me, I hadn't heard of it. And you didn't seem at all surprised when I told you that. No, no. Yeah, there's very few people that have seen it. But I operate in such a weird space.
01:10:19
Speaker
that I always presume not everybody has seen the films that I've seen. I'm gonna look up the film just very quickly that I mentioned because it's a really
01:10:33
Speaker
unusual one. It's in fact, I'm not going to even bother to subscribe to you. It's a, it's a film that's set in a, like a post apocalypse America where they're running out of water. Everybody's struggling to get to, you know, get to live pretty much. Uh, and water is pretty much the currency for everything. If you can get money to buy it. Um, and
01:10:59
Speaker
uh with that backdrop there's you know your overworld that there's a division in there trying to track people down and this woman who denied her powers for a long time but had the ability to connect with the world in a way that made her see colors okay the name with colors in it somewhere that's what i'm trying to think of um and you know there's there's a lot of different
01:11:28
Speaker
that don't explore the powers so much, but explore the characters. And in that way, it's not like push where it's selling a massive powers-based universe with a lot of law. You kind of just accept the powers for what they are. You get a bunch of cool moments when the powers pay off a little bit, but it builds the entire
01:11:51
Speaker
an entire story around it without much else. And you think ambitious as well, right? It's a dystopia. There's a, you know, a government body trying to track somebody down to test them, you know, superpowers, but they don't do the push thing that we've described for the last hour or so where they over commit and over compromise on things. It's a very sparse, very Spartan and
01:12:19
Speaker
they don't add much. They only add what they need and you know that creates a film that's easy to watch. The pace is a bit slow. Yeah, I don't know that movie. When you started talking about water shortage and all that, I've never heard of this film. Do you remember anything about who's in it?
01:12:43
Speaker
Uh, see now we're playing the bacon game. Uh, it didn't really have any big actors in it. Um, it was very much a, a, um, like a very, very much an indie. It got a lot of recognition. Okay.
01:13:03
Speaker
power of colors film. This has become the podcast of people Google stuff. That's okay. We'll close up now if we remember at some point later, I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, but Matt, thanks so much for coming on. Do you want to tell people one more time where they can find you?
01:13:24
Speaker
Dead Drop podcast, 10-minute video game news. We've got a website. That's the deaddroppod.com. You can also get in touch with me at deaddroppod, hang on, deaddroppod at gml.com. Yeah, I did some weird backflips to try and get domains and stuff and have it all make sense.
01:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, but we're on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, pretty much everywhere you get it. There is a YouTube channel that I'm uploading episodes with a video version to, not with my face, but, you know, with some fun stuff to look at while you listen to the episode. And yeah.
01:14:05
Speaker
every couple twice a week. We do Mondays and Thursdays, Australian time. Um, sorry for the us folks. That probably means Sunday and Wednesday time zones. There are always a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about it. The dead drop podcast. I'd love to love to be in your ears.
01:14:25
Speaker
I'm trying to find a way that's not dirty. Yeah. Cause we can't say going to see you there, but we're also, I'm not going to be listening to you there. Cause you're listening to me. So looking forward to being in your ear holes. I don't know. Well, thanks so much for coming on and you're more than welcome to come back on anytime you want. Sounds great. It's been a great chat.
01:14:50
Speaker
Thank you, yeah, definitely. All right, that does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Superherocinephiles.com is the website, and we are SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. And also, if you join our Patreon, you get these episodes a week in advance, and we got some other stuff that's gonna be dropping, might already be on there for you guys if you're on the Patreon, at any level of subscription. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
01:15:16
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points.
01:15:37
Speaker
If you're interested in reading some comics but don't know where you should start, plus you'll get access to all episodes of the main show a week before everyone else. On all of this for as little as just a dollar a month, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash supercinemapod and you can sign up at any subscription amount to get started. Thanks so much for your support and please don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get podcasts.
01:16:20
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.