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Witchblade
149 Plays5 years ago
Perry and Derrick discuss just some of the news coming out of the DC Fandome, and that takes up a good chunk of the episode. But eventually, they get around to discussing Witchblade, the made-for-TV movie that led to the successful (yet short-lived) TNT TV series. There's praise for Yancy Butler and how she went beyond the T&A aspects that made the comics so popular, but also find some critiques.
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Transcript
Audible Promotion and Benefits
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, Derek, guess what? Hit me with it. We just got a promotion with Audible. Audible, fantastic. I love Audible. Do you know what the cool thing about this deal is? What's that? If our listeners go to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod, they get a free trial with Audible. And do you know what they get with that?
00:00:22
Speaker
What do they get with that? Tell me. They get one free audiobook of their choice and they get two free Audible Originals, which is special content that Audible makes available free for all its subscribers. Are you kidding me? That deal is so good I may go myself and sign them. Do you think they let you keep the books after you're done?
00:00:42
Speaker
No, you're not gonna tell me they let you keep the books after you're done. Yes, in fact, you can go sign up for a trial and you can cancel before the trial ends and you get to keep the books you've already downloaded.
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, I don't see how you can beat that with a stick. Exactly, yeah. And you can, lots of great books, especially for fans of the show. You can listen to Super Gods by Grant Morrison, which is all about like how the superhero comics have changed and evolved over time. Or you can check out Marvel Comics, The Untold Story. Which is a terrific book. I have that both in hardcover and I listened to that on Audible myself in my car while traveling back and forth.
00:01:21
Speaker
And there's also another similar book that's called Slugfest, which is about like the wars between Marvel and DC Comics. Oh, okay. So that's another one you got to check out too. So yeah, head on over to audibletrial.com slash supercinemapod and start your free trial right now. You got one free audio book and two free audible originals and you can keep them even if you cancel before it's over.
Mystery of the Witchblade
00:02:03
Speaker
The Witchblade has a way of slipping from its wielder's grasp just when it is needed most. You're wearing it now. How do you know so much about the, um... To name is to know. To know is to control. Sarah. How do you know so much about the Witchblade? I read a lot. And this Witchblade is not yours? There is only one.
00:02:33
Speaker
But as you can see, only women can wear the Witchblade. Why? Women are more elemental, they're closer to nature than men. The Witchblade finds them superior. Do you believe in destiny, Sarah? I believe that, uh... things are a lot more connected than they appear. They are. What is this thing? What is the Witchblade? A mystery.
00:03:02
Speaker
wrapped in a riddle and cloaked in a conundrum. It doesn't help very much. Language is labyrinth. All of mirrors that we can easily get lost in. I do want to help you, Sarah. I can help you solve the mystery. The Witchblade has powers, many powers, but only the person who wields it can truly know them all. Haven't you felt different since it's found you? That's an understatement.
00:03:31
Speaker
Yes. In fact, I feel like I'm losing my mind. And that you can't tell anyone about your predicament? Anyone but me. Why do you think that is? Look, Mr. Irons, bottom line is I don't want this thing. You can have it back. You loved your father very much, didn't you? Yes, I did.
00:03:51
Speaker
You can use the Witchblade to pierce the veil of the senses, to see in an entirely new way, to extract more information from the universe than the normal human sensorium allows. You already have. What are you implying? Nothing. I am simply stating a fact. No offense, Mr. Irons, but I don't want this thing. My life is complicated enough. Sarah, you were destined to wear the Witchblade as for all these women. Embrace your destiny, Sarah. What do you mean?
00:04:20
Speaker
The Witchblade. The gauntlet has chosen you. You must accept it. Use it or lose it. And if you don't deserve it, if you don't earn it, it will abandon you. I don't believe in any of this, this magic. Magic. Alchemy. Science. All different names for the same thing. All ways to explore the natural, or rather the supernatural realm. Means of grasping the unknown.
00:04:48
Speaker
I don't agree. Don't you want to avenge the death of Daniel Woo and Maria? Don't you want to find your father's killer? Don't you want justice? Yeah, but I can do all of the above myself.
Hurricane Evacuations Debate
00:05:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I am half of your host Perry Constantine.
00:05:07
Speaker
And as always, I am the other half, Derek Ferguson, coming to you from beautiful downtown Brooklyn. I'm coming to you. I'm doing good, although it's not beautiful out here. We got a bunch of rain over the past few days lately. Oh, sorry to hear that. Yeah, not much you can do, but it's not too bad, because I'm mostly inside anyway. We're supposed to be getting a bunch of rain Friday, because there is not one, but two hurricanes that are supposed to be hitting.
00:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're getting it. They've been evacuating for like the last three or four days. They would tell the people, listen, you leave. And they're telling the people that are staying, they're telling them, okay, listen.
00:05:55
Speaker
You can stay, but nobody's coming to get you. Yeah. Oh, wow. Some people have a problem with that, but you know what? I don't. I don't have a problem with that. You know something? If you want to willingly stay and you say, yeah, well, I'm going to ride it out, OK, I see no reason why people should come and risk their life coming to get you once you change your mind. Yeah, I can see that point of view. I'm not sure I completely agree with that, but I can definitely understand that point of view.
00:06:23
Speaker
Well, yeah, exactly. It's not a popular point, but that's just me. Because, you know, when you've been told numerous times, and these are people that have lived through this stuff. Right. It's not like they don't know. Well, I think part of the problem with having lived through it before is you get cocky and you get arrogant about like, well, I've seen it before. Well, and know what else? I think it's a regional thing, because I remember back during the 80s, people used to say, oh, New York. Oh, how could you live in New York with all that crime?
00:06:52
Speaker
It doesn't look wrong. Yeah, because yeah, it was just something, you know, when you live in New York, there's a lot of things you just take your stride. Oh, yeah, people said the same thing to me, you know, growing up in the Chicago area, and you know, I went to, I grew up in the suburbs, but I did go, my university was in Chicago. They're like, Oh, well, didn't you have a lot of, did you deal with a lot of crime? Like, I never, you know, 25 years I was there, never experienced anything. Yeah.
00:07:17
Speaker
I mean, I know people who had, like my grandpa got mugged one time, my best friend got mugged one time, but like me personally, I never experienced anything. And because we were on the North side, like most of the crime, there's not a whole lot of crime up on the North side, at least not out in public, because the tourist area, so the police make sure to monitor that shit there.
00:07:39
Speaker
it was on the south side where everything was happening right the south side uh in the older days it was more on the south side the south side has got has improved in um in recent years but and now it seems like it's more on the west side i think but the south side still does have some problem areas too yeah but yeah yeah i guess it's like i mean
00:08:02
Speaker
if you're living there it never seems as bad as it does the people who don't live there because then they hear all of these stories and everything like that because people always say to people who live out in uh what you would call the California oh yeah but you got all those earthquakes there you know and people California said you know yeah but you know so what
00:08:20
Speaker
Well, here I've got an active volcano in my backyard. Well, there you go. Yeah. And people are like, how can you live near an active volcano? I'm like, well, it's inconvenient sometimes because it spews ash all over us. But you know what? The way I look at it is, I'd rather it be spewing ash every day than spewing lava every 10 years. Yeah, exactly. It's not like it's going off all the time. Right. Yeah. So.
DC FanDome Announcements
00:08:44
Speaker
Um, anyway, uh, what else is, uh, oh, well we had some big stuff coming up, uh, over the past, um, the past week, the, the DC fan dome stuff.
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, a lot of big announcements, a lot of surprises stuff came out of it. Did you get to watch any of it at all? Oh, I watched some of it live and most of the other stuff I saw afterwards on YouTube. So I got to see the Suicide Squad video game announcement live with Will Arnett talking with the guy from Rocksteady. They made the
00:09:17
Speaker
the Arkham Asylum and Arkham City and Arkham Knight games. So now they're making the suicide game, which we talked about a little bit last week, Kill the Justice League, where it looks like Brainiac has taken control of the Justice League and the suicide squad has to kill him. So it's like this action, it can be co-op, but you can also play solo too. And you get to choose between, there are four members of the squad you can choose from. So it's Harley Quinn, Deadshot, King Shark and Captain Boomerang.
00:09:47
Speaker
And you can switch between the characters. So it's very similar to the Ultimate Alliance games that were out 10 years ago or whatever. Right.
00:09:57
Speaker
So that looks pretty cool. And then of course we had, I got to see Aisha Tyler speaking live with Matt Reeves, you know, who's directing the Batman and you know he dropped the trailer for that as well, a little teaser trailer for that. So did you get to see the trailer? I saw the trailer. I'm like you. I watched a lot of these on YouTube later on, although I wish I'd known Aisha Tyler was
00:10:22
Speaker
talking to Matt. Well, that's probably a YouTube you. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. So I finally, so I want, you know what I, I am getting, I don't know about anybody else, but I'm getting a very like Neil Adams, Denny O'Neil era vibe. Yeah. Batman. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I'm getting. Like they had a very brief scene where Batman's like standing on all the options around him and he's talking to Commissioner Gordon. And I said, wait a minute, we've never seen that in a Batman movie before.
00:10:49
Speaker
Well, you know what I liked about that scene is we did see a variation of that because in The Dark Knight, we do have those scenes where Batman turns up at the bank and then later at one of the Joker's crime scenes. But Gordon tells all the other cops to leave them alone. Right, exactly. This time, all the cops are still in the room with him. Yeah, yeah. And you know, apparently this is
00:11:12
Speaker
this is a batman that works much more closely with the police than we used to be. But like I said, from the look of it and, you know, the vibe I'm just getting, like I said, it reminds me a lot of, you know, when Demi O'Neal and Neal Adams did their classic reworking of the character. So yeah, I'm digging this
00:11:35
Speaker
you know, the more I see of this, the more I'm definitely digging it. Yeah, yeah, I'm liking it too. And that scene when, you know, we see him talking with Gordon, the police, I was getting flashbacks to the Batman the Animated Series, because those scenes happened all the time in that show.
00:11:51
Speaker
Yeah and it was really nice to see that happen to see that brought to life and I get the sense and especially from the from what he was saying in the interview with Aisha Tyler who in fact I was watching the interview and for some reason I could not place Aisha Tyler's face I'm like who is that I know I know who that is her voice sounds familiar her face looks familiar I could not place it and then afterwards someone said oh that was Aisha Tyler I'm like how the hell did I not realize that?
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. You know, it's been so long since I've seen her face. That's why. So I just like it just doesn't clicking in my head. Yeah. Cause she actually hasn't been very high profile lately. You know, I know she has a podcast that she does, you know, Oh, she does. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I can't think of the name now cause I haven't listened to it for awhile, but yeah, but here's a podcast that she does, but she's like a geek goddess from way back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:45
Speaker
You know, so she's cool. Yeah. Okay. I definitely have to look that up. The other thing that had me scream like a fangirl is the trailer for The Suicide Squad. Yes. Yes. Oh, God. The behind the scenes stuff with that and the character intros. That looks so awesome. Listen, they had me a polka dot man.
00:13:10
Speaker
Seriously. You know what? And then, of course, you had the people say, oh, well, there's too many characters. There's too many characters. It's too many. You know something? For something like this, you cannot have too many characters. Well, you know what? The whole point of having all these characters here is so that you can kill them off. That's why most of them are in there. Yeah, exactly. I mean, half of them, there's a good chance that half to 90% of them are going to be dead by then. The only character that you can know for a fact is not going to get killed is Harley Quinn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:38
Speaker
And I was wondering, who's Idris Elba going to play? And we finally found out. I don't know if it was announced before, but he's playing Bloodsport, which was kind of surprising. Whose character has an interesting backstory. And I'm wondering if they're going to make reference to this, because he went out in the comic book, I remember, drawn by John Burke. He went after Superman. He had kryptonite bullets. He almost killed Superman. Yeah, yeah. So I'm wondering if in the movie, they're going to be making mention of that.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, so that that'll be interesting to see the the it looks you know we don't have we don't they didn't give us a complete cut trailer because we just got like behind the scenes stuff and. I like the character intro video but it's looking good. And I really really for the life of me, I cannot understand the whining.
00:14:28
Speaker
from a lot of people. I mean, the guy who wrote and directed this is the guy who gave us freaking Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah. Do you have any doubt that this is going to be on that level? I mean, look, from the footage we've seen so far, from the logo, the style of the logo, like this looks like a, you know, like a 70s war movie. It looks awesome.
00:14:51
Speaker
I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, but then again, and also people, can we please stop with the wine and crying about Rob? What's the name? Robert Pattinson? Oh yeah. But he was the guy from Twilight. Twilight was freaking 15 years ago, okay? Gives a shit.
00:15:07
Speaker
You know, the guys made like 20 movies since then. Yeah, but you guys didn't watch any of them anyway. Exactly. Exactly. Nobody watched any of them. I remember, I remember years ago when I was, I was working on this indie comic with some guys and I'd mentioned something about, I think we're, I'd mentioned something about George Clooney and they're like, oh, George Clooney is terrible. He's terrible. He was the worst Batman. I'm like, you know, he's made other movies besides Batman and Robin. He's actually a good actor. And like, no, no, no, we're not gonna, I'll never watch another movie with George Clooney again.
00:15:36
Speaker
And this is like, you know, like 1520 years after Batman and Robin and they still refuse to watch a movie with George Clooney. Yeah. You know, and I said, you know, when are you gonna grow up? Yeah, yeah. Please, you know, Robin Pattinson said, you know,
00:15:53
Speaker
I didn't know him from too many movies, but the few movies that I had seen him in, you know, I'd never seen the Twilight movies, simply because I wasn't interested, but I had seen him in some other things. And I said, okay, this guy. So when he was announced as being Batman, I say, yeah, you know something? I can see him as a young Bruce Wayne, you know, Batman just learning to roll. I can see that.
00:16:13
Speaker
And like you say, from the little bit that we've seen so far, yeah, they've got me, they definitely got me intrigued. Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I definitely want to see more now. Although I do have one quibble about it and I wish he had gotten a haircut. Like I don't like Bruce Wayne with that kind of like floppy hairstyle. That's, that's my one quibble. Yeah. Yeah. Bruce Wayne is a little bit more, you know, coiffed.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And you got Paul Dano as the Riddler. Sounds really awesome because you hear his voice in the background and everything and then you see a glimpse of him in costume and he's got like this like plastic face mask or something. It looks really creepy too. Yeah, yeah. And we also got, did you see Colin Farrell as the penguin? Yes. Wow, I did not recognize him.
00:17:00
Speaker
I did not recognize him at all. I like I said I am looking the more I see of this the more I want to see. Yeah and uh so we grab it's this catwoman we got to see a bit of her in action too. That's the best compliment I can give this movie the more I see yeah I say okay they got the right body. Yeah yeah and um so then what else did we see uh so we saw the um the Zack Snyder's Justice League trailer which um
Justice League Speculations
00:17:30
Speaker
What is this guy's obsession with that Leonard Cohen hallelujah song? You know what? It definitely was the wrong song. Well, it was the wrong song when he used it in Watchmen too.
00:17:49
Speaker
Okay, there are some directors that, okay, know what he got right when in the beginning of a watchman over the credits he had. Oh, the Bob Dylan song. Right, the Bob Dylan song. Yeah, yeah. He got that right. But he couldn't leave well enough alone. No. He had to keep, you know, because the song he used, I mean, you know, for Justice League, you know, yeah, that was, you know, that was completely, he was trying for the same vibe as he did with Watchmen. But you know what?
00:18:19
Speaker
sometimes it's best to be a one-trick pony. Yeah. And no one to lead well enough for. I don't know. And you know what? I'm speaking to somebody who liked Justice League. I had no problem with Justice League. It was far from being a perfect movie. It's far from being a perfect Justice League movie. It's far from being a perfect superhero movie. But I liked it for what it was. Everybody seems to think that we're going to get this right. OK.
00:18:47
Speaker
Everybody apparently thinks that we're going to get a brand new movie.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah. That's the feeling I'm getting from talking to people and from stuff that I read. Apparently, people have this impression that this is a brand new movie with all kinds of stuff they've never seen before. There is going to be a lot of stuff we haven't seen because it's going to be four hours long. But most of that stuff is not going to be like these big action set pieces. You're not going to see the Justice League fight Darkseid. You're not going to see that. Because that was never the plan for this movie. You're going to see Darkseid in The Flashback is what it's going to be.
00:19:19
Speaker
Right, you know, this is stuff that you know he already shot. Now my understanding is that yeah that Warner Brothers is going to give him a little bit of money.
00:19:29
Speaker
to do a little bit, you know, to do some other tweaking here and there. But it's not like he's calling everybody back and putting them in costumes and filming brand new scenes. I think there's a little bit of that, I think. I think they've announced there's some, like some of the actors are coming back for some small reshoots, but I don't think it's going to be like these major set pieces that everyone thinks it's going to be. No.
00:19:52
Speaker
It's mostly gonna be, and you know what I think judging from the trailer and judging from what we heard about the movie before this all happened, is I'm guessing a lot of the stuff we're gonna see is a lot of stuff involving Cyborg.
00:20:04
Speaker
Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Because I did see some stuff in there that I know I didn't see in the movie as it did. And the final battle will probably be, will probably be different. Like, because I don't think he had it set in that same Russian town or whatever it was. So I think the final battle will be, but it's largely gonna be a lot of the same stuff. Like the basic story, we're gonna see, and we're gonna see Superman coming back to Wayne Manor, right? We're gonna see him in the black suit and everything.
00:20:30
Speaker
And apparently the scene when he comes back and he interacts with Lois is a little bit different because we see his mom in that scene as well. Right, yeah. So it'll be like alternate versions of scenes that we've seen before. Like we see a scene where Martha comes to visit, comes to Lois's apartment, whereas in the Josh Whedon version, they were talking at the Daily Planet.
00:20:51
Speaker
Right. So it'll be like alternate versions of stuff we've already seen. A lot of that stuff was done. I don't know. It was like they're just they had to do catch up shoots or whatever. I was gonna say they did so that they had to give they because they had to reshoot stuff because to give Whedon the director's credit because there are all these DJ rules but Snyder was still credited as director on on the original Justice League. So I'm not sure exactly why they had to redo all that stuff.
00:21:14
Speaker
Well, we will see. I mean, you know what, I'm going to watch it. I'm going to look. I mean, I might as well because I because I have HBO Max. Right. Yeah. And also for those of you who don't know all DC Universe is put
00:21:29
Speaker
Hey, you know, all of this stuff is moving to HBO Max, which has
DC Universe Moves to HBO Max
00:21:35
Speaker
its own section. It's got its own hub. Because if you go to HBO Max, they've got what they call hubs. Turner Classic Movie has a hub. So you can go on there and watch movies from Turner Classic Movies. Cartoon Network has its own hub. So you can go there and watch all the animated stuff from on there. And DC has its own hub on there, which has a whole shitload of DC stuff.
00:21:57
Speaker
you know so yeah they got like all of the Batman movies they got all of the Superman movies they got all of the animated stuff you know not all of it but oh you know a whole bunch of animated stuff it's supposedly anything that's not on there now they're going to be added to later on right they're going to have like all the DC Universe stuff on there too like Doom Patrol was already on there
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah, Duke Patrol is already on there. Harley Quinn is already on there. Do they have the CW stuff on there? They got the CW stuff on their show. OK, cool. Because I know that's going to be leaving Netflix. Because they announced that. I think some of the shows still have agreements with Netflix. So the Flash, Supergirl, Arrow, Legends, all of those, Black Lightning as well, all those are still on Netflix. But Batwoman never came to Netflix. Batwoman is on.
00:22:48
Speaker
HBO Max. Yeah. So I guess like these deals are probably for like another season or two with all those. That's been confirmed that once the, once they contact with Netflix is up, all of that stuff is going to HBO Max. What about that? There was this, I've heard about this series for years. I've never actually seen it, but the, I think it was the 1980s, was it Ruby Spears, Superman cartoon? It lasted for like only one season or so. Yeah. Do you know about it?
00:23:16
Speaker
You know what I'm talking about? I know about it. I remember seeing it. I don't remember any actual individual episodes, but yeah, I do remember seeing it. Do you know if that's on HBO Max?
00:23:29
Speaker
Uh, I don't know, but I can look while we're doing this. And I can look and I can tell you, I can look. Hold on. I've always been curious about this series. It's supposed to be a really good Superman show, but it was like very short-lived. It like, I don't know, whatever happened. I just couldn't find an audience or like it was some network trouble or whatever happened. It only lasted for like one season. And Marv Wolfman was like one of the writers on it apparently. Yeah, right. Exactly. That's what it was. Marv Wolfman was heavily involved in, you know, like the mastermind behind it.
00:23:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So, okay. Give me one minute here. All right. HBO Max. Okay. I got to talk to my VPN service about this because now they got all this DZ stuff over there. I got to see about, you know, getting signed up for that thing. Yeah. Well, you know what? We had HBO Max because my wife Patricia, I don't know how she does this.
00:24:27
Speaker
But I think because she was in customer service when she worked for Verizon, she knows how to speak like this secret language. So when she calls up the customer service like for direct TV or whatnot, she always manages to talk them into giving us something. So she got us like HBO for like $6 for six months. And I said, how did you do that? And she said, well, if I tell you, I have to kill you.
00:24:56
Speaker
OK, here we go. HBO, DC. Yeah, so of course now since I got all this DC stuff, I said, well, you know what? I'll pay for it. You don't have to go, because I'm not giving it up now. OK, I am looking. Batman Begins, Joker, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Shazam, Batwoman, Watchman, Batman Got the Night, Supergirl, Batman Year One, Green Lantern, Freedom Fighters, DeRay. Ooh.
00:25:27
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I remember them doing a lot of those. Oh, wow, I think I can, it looks like I don't have to email my VPN. I think they got us already set up with HBO Max. Birds of Prey, Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn, the animated series from- Oh, I've heard that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, I've gotta watch that. Yeah, I've seen a few clips of that and it was really good. Suicide Squad, Hell to Pay, Batman and Harley Quinn, Batman Beyond Return of the Joker,
00:25:54
Speaker
Batman and Versa Two-Face. Justice League. Justice League versus Teen Titans. JLA Adventure Trapped in Time. This is everything that's on HBO. Sounds like they don't have the Superman series on there yet.
HBO Max Pricing Strategy
00:26:10
Speaker
They got a ton of Justice League stuff. Justice League Gods and Monsters. Oh, wow. The Flashpoint Paradox. Throne of Atlantis. War. They got Lego stuff on there.
00:26:28
Speaker
Hold on one second. Okay. DC Hero is super animated. They've got Beware the Batman. They've got Teen Titans the Judas Contract. Green Lantern First Flight. The Lego movies. Batman versus Robin. But no, they don't have that on there yet. No. Okay. Oh, wow.
00:26:52
Speaker
Now, I was just curious about when Zack Snyder's Justice League will come out. So I looked online. Apparently, there's no official release date, but someone found this press website, and it has the date as September 5, 2021. OK. So it looks like they're definitely doing some extra work on it then.
00:27:19
Speaker
I thought it was going to be a lot sooner. I thought it was going to be early 2021 at the latest. That's what I thought. I thought it was going to be, you know, so yeah, so that just went credence to the notion that yeah, that there's going to be a little bit more work done that we thought because you know what it is, they want to make this
00:27:40
Speaker
as special and as exclusive as possible to get people to sign up. Let's be honest about it. They're trying to get it. But I'm telling you, just the stuff that I named off, if you're a DC fan and you want to get a whole ton of DC stuff,
00:27:59
Speaker
in one spot, it may, you know, you may want to drop a couple of dollars on this. What I would do is that I would suggest that you check with your cable or satellite provider, because if you already have HBO, then you already have access to HBO Max. Right.
00:28:16
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So I got, I don't, so that's, but it's like 15 bucks a month. So I think what I might do is I might drop in and out of the service. Like I'll, I'll sign, I'll re-up when, when there's something I want to watch on it or when there's something new up there, but otherwise that'll drop out again afterwards, this type of thing. Yeah. Well, that's what we do when, because Patricia watches Homeland and the both of us watch Billions on
00:28:40
Speaker
Showtime. So what we do is that whenever a new season comes on, you just sign up and just watch the season and then we drop out. Yeah, yeah. So another thing about Snyder's Justice League, which kind of shows that he hasn't really learned anything from this experience, is someone posted on Twitter that, you know what? I don't really see a whole lot different in the Zack Snyder's Justice League trailer.
00:29:06
Speaker
And Snyder replied to the tweet and said, well, you like the Josh Whedon's Justice League. So because you said it reminded you of a Saturday morning cartoon. So obviously you're not the audience for this movie because this movie is for adults. And I was like, what? Why is this guy so obsessed with taking Superman and making him for adults only? I have no idea. I mean, Superman should be for all ages.
00:29:33
Speaker
I remember, and I probably told the story before, and if I have folks, please indulge me. There's some habit. I remember going to see Man of Steel. And when I went to see Man of Steel, you know, I'm in the lobby, and Patricia Schumann to the ladies' room, and there's all these kids that they're excited and everything like that, because this is gonna be their first time seeing Superman on the big screen. Okay, so we go in the movie and we'll watch the movie. After about 45 minutes,
00:30:02
Speaker
I'm hearing snores because some of the kids, they went to sleep. I hear other kids saying to their parents, you know, when is this going to be over? Can I go home? You know, and me, I felt kind of disappointed because a kid's first experience going to see Superman.
00:30:19
Speaker
in a theater on the big screen, it should not be boring. No, it should be magical. Yeah, it should be. And yes, I know some of y'all are going to say, I'm living in the past, but it should be like Superman the movie. I'm sorry. That's just how I feel.
00:30:35
Speaker
That movie was magical. And that's how I felt when I saw it, even as an adult this time. Yeah, yeah. Superman should be to kids what Star Wars is to kids. It should be something when they come out of it, they got these big smiles on their face. They're reenacting the scenes as they're running out of the theater. They're begging to go see it again. That's what Superman should do for kids. So if you've got this movie where kids are falling asleep or they're coming out looking depressed, then you've completely screwed up.
00:31:03
Speaker
Yeah, you've completed the score. And of course, this is why kids don't want to be bothered with Superman later on. You know, you give them a Superman combo, they say, what is this shit? Throw it over their shoulder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't want to read it because they saw it in, you know, and they say, yuck, you know. Exactly, yeah. They don't want to be bothered with it. That's why I so much appreciated the Superman they presented on the Supergirl TV show. Yeah, who's getting his own TV show as well? Yeah, because, OK, that's Superman. Yeah, yeah.
00:31:34
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no. And then I was saying, yeah. And then you get these people talking about, well, why can't Superman be for adults? Why can't we have an adult Superman?
00:31:44
Speaker
You know what? Why do you need an adult Superman? That's the thing. Yeah, why do you need an adult? What is this thing that you need Superman to be a remorseless killer? I mean, all these people who say like, well, I never liked Superman, but I like Zack Snyder. I'm like, well, then you don't like Superman. I mean, like, if you don't like Superman, that's fine. You know, there's like, you know, what, millions of other characters out there for you to like.
00:32:06
Speaker
You don't have to like, not every character has to be made specifically for you. And the real tragedy is that if he was given a decent script to deal with, Henry Cavill could be a classic Superman. Oh yeah, I mean we saw flashes of that in the Justice League shots that uh that Whedon directed. Yeah.
00:32:27
Speaker
Like he's got that, the line when, I think I referenced this before, but like when he comes back to life and he meets Lois and she's like, you smell good. And he's like, well, did I not before? And he's like, you know, he's charming, he's witty, he's intelligent, he's, you know, and like that, that scenery confronts Steppenwolf and you know, he goes after Steppenwolf and he says like, you know, I prefer justice and you got the Superman theme. I mean, I love that. Those are the best parts of Justice League, you know, despite the CGI mustache. And I think that when people,
00:32:56
Speaker
when I have this conversation with people and they say, well, you can't do Superman because he's just a Boy Scout. And I said, wait a minute. You saw all the Captain America movie, right? I had literally just had the same discussion with someone the other day. They're like, oh, you can't do Superman. A Boy Scout doesn't work in a post 9-11 world. I'm like, work for Captain America? Yeah. And I said, well, you like Captain America. Oh, I love Captain America. OK, then. So then what are we talking about?
00:33:22
Speaker
Yeah, if anything, I think Superman would work better in this day and age than he would, because I mean, people forget like the Superman did not premiere in the 1950s when everything was hunky dory, right? He didn't appear. He appeared in the 1930s in the height of the Great Depression. Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
I mean, so like this this whole notion people have that Superman only works in a time when everybody's happy doesn't work. I mean, even Superman the movie, you know, we talked about this way back in our first episode, but that was in the that was in the late 70s when New York had a high crime rate and there's a lot of distrust in institutions and all that kind of stuff going on and
00:34:01
Speaker
And Christopher Reeve played it completely straight and it worked, right? There's the scene we've talked about before where he says to Lois without a hint of irony or deprecation or anything, where he says, I'm here to fight for truth justice in the American way. And she laughs. And she's like, you're going to fight every elected official in the city. And he's like, oh, you don't really believe that. And she's looking at it. She's like, you're serious right now. He's like, yeah. Yeah.
00:34:28
Speaker
Yeah, but that's the only way that's the only way that you can play and Christopher Reeve so that so well that here it is 40 years later. We're still talking about that movie. Yeah. Yeah, because he believed it and he sold it. You know, so don't tell me that, you know, well,
00:34:47
Speaker
Superman's corny and we don't need to. Superman was created in one of the worst periods of American history. Why? Because we needed something to look up to. Superman works best as a contrast, right? So if you've got a dark world, then that's all the more reason why you need a brighter Superman head because he's supposed to be that that ray of hope and optimism.
00:35:10
Speaker
That's why I always tell people whenever I hear that old thing, well, I don't like Superman because I can't relate to him. You're not supposed to relate to Superman, stupid. You're supposed to relate to Clark Kent. You aspire to be Superman.
00:35:26
Speaker
I saw someone, I saw this great response on Twitter. Someone says like, well, Superman has to learn that, you know, has to, has to learn about his moral code against killing. And then someone responded with this great tweet. He's like, that's so true. I cannot wait until my kid is old enough to kill their first humans. They know what it's, why it's wrong. Thank you.
00:35:49
Speaker
Oh, such a
Flash Movie Excitement
00:35:51
Speaker
shame. Anyway, so other fan dome news is we also found out a little bit more about the Flash movie with looks like Ben Affleck is going to be suiting up again as Batman in it. And Michael Keaton as well. And Michael Keaton. So but it's like I don't I'm really I'm kind of nervous about this because this was kind of something we saw with Batman and V Superman where they had all these characters announced. So I'm I'm I'm hoping they're not going to bite off more than they can chew.
00:36:19
Speaker
Am I okay I'm getting the impression that because this flash movie is going to be the flashpoint paradox they're going to do flashpoint which which to me they're trying to.
00:36:34
Speaker
reconcile all of the errors in the continuity as far as the movies go. But didn't they do that with the Crisis on Infinite Earths on the TV series? Yeah, basically. Or did I, yeah, I mean, or did I get it wrong? Because they did show that on some earth somewhere, the movie universes
00:36:56
Speaker
existed along with the TV version so didn't they kind of sort that out when we saw that you know everybody had their own earth I don't know I just yeah but you know the problem is that not everybody who watches the movies is going to watch the TV is going to watch the TV shows and vice versa you know what these say every
00:37:17
Speaker
DC gets into this thing where they keep saying, OK, well, we're going to fix the continuity. We're going to fix the multiverse. And all they end up doing is confusing themselves even more. At least they're consistent, because they've been doing this for decades. Yeah, they've been doing this for decades now. They keep saying, oh, we're going to fix the continuity. We're going to fix this. We're going to do that. We're going to have hyper. Nobody even remembers hyper timing.
00:37:44
Speaker
Not that anybody understood what hyper time was in the first place. Hey man, I love hyper time. I'm a hyper time fan. Yeah, I will defend hyper time to my dying breath. Okay, so that was okay. So hyper time is hyper time is basically a theory of the multiverse where like everything exists. Everything so you can it's basically like the the universe the timeline is kind of like its own sentient entity.
00:38:08
Speaker
And so it is like this thing where you can have like the Batman 66 world exists, the Snyderverse exists, the Superman the movies world exists, the Burton movies, the Schumacher movies, they all exist within the same multiversal realm. And that's basically hyper time, like that's basically- But didn't they always do that? Yeah, but then they tried to get, see the thing about hyper time is they got rid of the multiverse when they did hyper time.
00:38:40
Speaker
because they had gotten rid of the multiverse in crisis. So hyper-time was kind of a way of bringing back the multiverse. But isn't hyper-time the multiverse? Yeah, but they had gotten rid of it after crisis. They had to bring it back. So why didn't they just call it the multiverse all over again instead of hyper-time? I don't know. Marketing? I don't know why.
00:38:59
Speaker
You see what I mean? I've been telling them the exact same thing. They just slapped on a new coat of paint and filed off the serial numbers and said, OK, this was brand new. No, was it? It's the same thing as the multiverse. Well, I didn't say it was brand new. I just said, I like the concept. Oh, well, listen. Listen, I am a big fan of the concept of the multiverse. I just think that it just got out of hand. And they spend too much time trying to fix it instead of just
00:39:29
Speaker
letting it be. Yes. Instead of just saying, you know what? We're just, you know what? We're going to let the fans figure it out. We're just going to put out the comic books in that city and stop trying to figure out how to fix it. Because I don't know. As you said, they've been trying for decades, and they still haven't done it yet. It's like trying to build a better mousetrap. Yeah. So the thing about hyper time, too, so that here's where hyper time is different from the multiverse, right? In the multiverse, each reality is its own thing.
00:39:59
Speaker
Okay. Right? So like you've got the JSA reality, the golden age heroes, you got the silver age heroes and all that, you got the earth three with the crime syndicate and all that. They're all separate timelines, right? Okay. The thing about hyper time is it's more like a river network, right? You know how rivers crisscross and they come in and out. So like this allows for contradictions in continuity.
00:40:28
Speaker
So like whenever you've had a contradiction in continuity, something that doesn't make sense with what's happened before, the explanation for that is that one of the other timelines kind of branched through into that timeline for a brief period. So it's more of an interconnected multiverse where events can cross over and that allows for these continuity problems. Moving right along.
00:40:59
Speaker
You know what, I just talk to them too, I'm old. Fair enough. But yeah, so we're getting Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck, both as Batman in the Flash movie. And also apparently Jim Lee said that taking it back to crisis, that is where he decides to call himself the Flash, is his meeting with Grant Gustinsbury.
00:41:24
Speaker
Oh okay. So like in because he because remember in the crisis um you know when um barrier first himself is the flash um uh Ezra Miller's like the flash wow because he is he's never heard it before. Oh right yeah. So apparently yeah he gets his name from uh from Grant Gustin's flash. Wait a minute so in Justice League he's never called the flash? No no.
00:41:48
Speaker
really they don't actually they don't actually call if you think about it they don't really call any of their character like you know obviously batman um but i don't think they ever called diana wonder woman in that no no yeah i know that and uh i don't believe they called um they ever call uh refer to um uh the guy they don't call cyborg as cyborg i can't remember the character's real name right now victor
00:42:13
Speaker
Victor, thank you, it was right on the tip of my tongue. Yeah, as a matter of fact, you're right, because even when Batman is in his costume, they still call him Bruce. Right, right. Yeah, they don't call him Batman, they call him Bruce, yeah. And Arthur Curry is referred to as the Aquaman at one point, when Bruce is looking for him, I think. But that's about it. Other than that, the only characters who get called by their superhero names are Superman and Batman. Oh, yeah, know something?
00:42:41
Speaker
I never noticed that before, but I do believe you're right. He was never called the Flash in that movie, yeah. Yeah, I didn't realize that until they had that scene in Crisis. I'm like, oh, wait, that's right. He never did call himself the Flash.
00:42:56
Speaker
So it makes sense. And so that's a cool little tie-in they're gonna have to Crisis. And Greg Berlanti said he's trying to work out a way to have more of the movie characters appear in the TV shows as well, like to have some sort of cameo or something like that. So you know how we got Ezra Miller to have a cameo in Crisis, they're hoping maybe they can do something with some of the other characters as well. And oh, also the,
Wonder Woman 1984 Trailer
00:43:23
Speaker
The big thing in the room, we got the Wonder Woman 1984 trailer. Oh, yeah. That was astonishing. That looks awesome. I love that. And we finally see Kristen Wiig as Cheetah. Yeah, you know, really, really surprising. She looks like she's going to be a very effective supervillain. She looks, yeah, she's, and I remember, well, like, you know, Kristen Wiig's a great actress. So like, when she was announced, and everyone was starting to get pissed off about it, I'm just like, you know what?
00:43:52
Speaker
I give up because at this point it's been what like 30 years since um Tim Burton's Batman you guys still haven't learned the lesson to just wait and see how the guy how the character actor doesn't know yeah no no no I mean you know they still have not learned yeah we still have not learned we still have not learned the Keaton lesson yeah you know to not underestimate especially okay here's the funny thing if you look back at the history of film
00:44:22
Speaker
Completely, not just superhero movies. Look at how many comedic actors have won Academy Awards for dramatic roles. Right, right. You know, Jackie Gleason, Jackie Gleason, his most memorable roles in film were dramatic roles.
00:44:39
Speaker
Red Skelton, he was a comedian, won Academy Awards for dramatic roles. Yeah, yeah. You know, what's his name? Robin Williams. Look at Robin Williams. Had about like three or four iconic dramatic performances. Oh yeah, he was a brilliant dramatic actor. Yeah, this is what I'm saying. A lot of comedians, matter of fact, you have a lot of
00:45:02
Speaker
Okay I'm gonna go so far as to say you have a lot of comedians that turn out to be better dramatic actors than the dramatic actors. Well because comedy is all about timing so if you're a good comedian like you have to be able to slip into different roles you have to have your timing down down like that so it's no surprise that you're able to to slip into these dramatic performances.
00:45:24
Speaker
And comedy, which is probably a brilliant dramatic act. Well, something a lot of people don't realize too is that comedy, like a lot of comedians struggle with things like insecurity and depression. So they, and comedy is a way to mask those feelings.
00:45:40
Speaker
Right. And so like, you know, Robin Williams, famous example, struggled with depression for pretty much his entire life. And so like, you know, comedy is a way to kind of mask that pain. And so when you slip into these dramatic roles, you've got this personal stuff you can draw on. What's his name? Dick Van Dyke. Dick Van Dyke. There was a movie he made called The Morning After. It was a TV movie made years ago. Best portrayed, him and Jack Nick, Jack Lemon in Days of Wine and Roses.
00:46:10
Speaker
best portrayal of alcoholics on film because they actually were alcoholics. Right. Yeah. You know, but I mean, if you see that movie with Dick Van Dyke, I mean, as far as I know, I heard years ago that they still show that movie in AA meetings because it's such a devastating portrayal of alcoholism. And, you know, it just blew people away that Dick Van Dyke was playing it. Well, I mean, you know, similar along a similar line, Michael Keaton and Clean and sober after he had been known for doing comedy his whole career.
00:46:40
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, Chris Evans, you know, started off doing comedy. He was in not another teen movie. And so like all these actors, they've got these, they've got these comic backgrounds, but they can slip into dramatic roles too. So, so yeah, I'm not surprised at all that Chris and Whit looks like she's going to do a good job. Yeah, yeah. This looks like, you know what, I, you know what, I'm already regretting
00:47:06
Speaker
my vow not to step into a movie theater really because yeah because i said no i'm not gonna go step foot in the movie theater until there but but some of these movies that they have coming out you know i mean i mean that wonder woman it looks like it's gonna be amazing yeah yeah i love the scene at the end with um chris pined trying on different clothes with the fans
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, from the 80s. He said, wait a minute, does everybody with parachutes now? Parachute now? Do people parachute now? All the time now? Oh, man. He's another guy who got great comic time. Yeah, he's awesome. Yeah, I want to see him a lot more stuff. So yeah, that looks really good. And then the one last thing I wanted to mention is the Gotham Knights video game.
Gotham Knights Introduction
00:47:52
Speaker
Did you see the trailer for this? It's by the same people who did the Arkham Origins game, which is the different from Rocksteady. But it's set in a world where Batman's dead, right? And so it's Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, and the Red Hood. They're picking up the slack.
00:48:10
Speaker
After he's done so and you get to play between all the different characters. They showed some gameplay footage as well with back row and you get to like ride her motorcycle and everything like that. So it looks like it looks like a really cool game. You also have the option to have other people join in so it can be like cooperative as well. So that looks that looks really cool.
00:48:33
Speaker
These motherfuckers are going to force me to buy a PS5 and just know it. Can you get that for the Xbox? I assume it will be. The Batman games, the Rocksteady ones, and Suicide Squad, they've been cross-platform. So I assume it'll be the same case with these. Because I'm just getting around to, because they had it on Xbox One, they were selling
00:48:56
Speaker
as a bundle all three of the Batman, you know, the Arkham games. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are the three Rocksteady ones. Arkham Origins, the only one missing from that is Arkham Origins because that wasn't made by Rocksteady, but it's set in the same continuity. But yeah, but our origins, you know, most people agree, is the weakest of the four anyway. So, I mean, it's worth a play. It's fun enough, I thought. But yeah, those games are awesome. Yeah, so I'm just getting around to playing them. You know, they had them on sale, and I said, oh, shit, you know,
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah, you're in for a good time. You're in for a good time. Yeah. OK, thank you. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. Ever since I got this damn Xbox One, I've been playing more games than is good for me. Yeah, I'm playing, oh, speaking of games, they had the Avengers game. They had the beta open this past weekend. So it was free for like three days. You could download it. You could try it out. You get to play some of the story mode. You get to play different missions. You get to sample the different gameplay modes and stuff.
00:49:55
Speaker
um and it's fun right it's not but i don't think i'm gonna be spending 80 bucks for it on release day i think i'm gonna wait a little bit until the price comes down yeah i hear that i mean it's it's fun but you know i got enough games right now to keep me occupied i've you know i'm playing the outer worlds now i still haven't finished red dead redemption 2 or assassin's creed origins and then i got assassin's creed odyssey on there too so so i got a bunch of stuff i still gotta play anyway please don't even start i got i got
00:50:24
Speaker
games here, you know, I'm in your boat. I haven't, I've had Mass Effect. I've got Mass Effect one, two, and three, right? I have not yet got the Mass Effect two, three. Why? Because I'm still on one. You know why? Because I keep getting distracted with all of the side missions.
00:50:41
Speaker
Yeah, I saw this, there's this meme someone posted up about Skyrim the other day, and I'm like, I didn't even know you could do half this shit in Skyrim. I gotta go back into that game again, because I kind of like got distracted so much that I ended up moving on to other stuff.
00:50:56
Speaker
And then what did I get hooked on for about a month? Bioshock Infinite. Oh, that's awesome. Because I played the first Bioshock until this fell apart. Because I love Bioshock so much. I haven't played Bioshock too yet.
00:51:12
Speaker
but I saw Bioshock Infinite in Walmart for like 10 bucks. And I said, okay, I got to get it. Yeah, I stayed up to three, four o'clock in the morning playing this frigging thing. You know, because it was so detailed and I kept getting set, you know, really.
00:51:28
Speaker
This is why I can't get any writing done, folks. I'm too busy podcasting with my friends and playing Bioshock Infinity. The other day I did a bit of writing. I'm like, okay, so I wrote a thousand words today, so now I can go play video games and slack off because I feel guilty about it. Because I got classes coming up next week, so I'm trying to get in as much video game time as I can, as much vacation time as I still can.
00:51:53
Speaker
And I was telling Patricia today, I said, listen, I said, starting in September, you got to leave me alone. She said, well, what's the matter? What did I do? I said, it's not true. I said, I got two novels, I promise. And I really got into the buckledad that I got to write to my dad. I said, I've been slacking a little horribly. She said, you know, she said no. I said, yes, I have. And my wife is now getting into video games, too. Coach Ngo picked up a GameCube the other day.
00:52:22
Speaker
Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, so she's been playing like, she was up until 2am last night, playing Luigi Mansion. And so she got like Mario, because she had these games when she was a kid, right? And, but her mom, her mom got rid of them, because she's like, you know, video games are bad influence and all that kind of stuff. And you know, she sees me playing video games, and we were at the store the other day, and she's been wanting a Nintendo Switch, right? But Nintendo Switch is still like three, 400 bucks.
00:52:49
Speaker
So she's like, I don't wanna pay that much money for it yet. So she's like, I'll wait till it comes, but then she's like, well, I can get a GameCube. Those are like, so she got a GameCube off of an auction site for like 30 bucks. Oh, cool. So yeah, so we got, she's got a little TV there. So she's, she got it hooked up to her little TV. And so she's been playing GameCube like every day when she comes home from work. Oh, that's adorable. Yeah, yeah. So we played a, we played some Mario Kart yesterday. She kicked my ass of course, but.
00:53:17
Speaker
And I told her, I'm like, are you sure you want to play with me? Because you're probably going to hate this game after I kick your ass. And she's like, no, you're not going to kick my ass. And so after she beat me each time, she gets in first place, I get in like eighth place. And I'm like, you're cheating. And she's like, no, I'm not. Uh-huh, yeah. See, there you go. Yeah. Nah, I was just kidding around. Showing this.
00:53:41
Speaker
All right, now, believe it or not, we actually do have a movie to talk about today that's not tied to any of this shit we've been talking about for like the past hour. You know what, I completely forgot we had we started getting this. You know what, we should just do an episode called digression.
00:54:03
Speaker
and get all of the digresses out of the way. Yeah. Well, I mean, there was a lot of news going on. I mean, because they had all the fandom stuff. So we had to talk about that kind of stuff. Absolutely.
Witchblade Movie Origins
00:54:14
Speaker
But the movie we're talking about today is Witchblade from 2000. It was made for TNT. It served as a backdoor pilot for the Witchblade TV show that ran for two seasons from 2001.
00:54:29
Speaker
And now, did you have any familiarity with Witchblade before you watched this? I had no familiarity with Witchblade at all because this was during the period when in comic books you had a lot of artists that struck out on their own and they created their own characters and, you know, they were producing books that were
00:55:00
Speaker
to be charitable, not really all that well written. The whole thing was, the artwork was the selling point of the book. Now, as much as I love art, and of course, comic books is primarily a visual medium. You look at the pretty pictures, but being a writer myself, I need a little bit more than that to go on. So a lot of those books that were
00:55:29
Speaker
you know, driven primarily by the artwork, I really didn't pick up many of them. And you know, I think the only one I really picked up was Eric Lawson, like Savage Dragon. But that's because Eric Lawson knows how to write. He's a good writer. He's a good writer. Stuff like, you know,
00:55:50
Speaker
Oh, those horrendous ex people knock walls. Oh, the like Wildcats and and Youngblood. Yeah, all that stuff. I wasn't interested in that stuff. Yeah. And, and, you know, Witchblade, you know, the artwork was pretty. Yeah. But, you know, I remember leafing through a couple of issues while I was in the comic book store when I went to at the time.
00:56:11
Speaker
I said, nah, this is okay. So yeah, so Witchblade had kind of an interesting start in comics. So like you said, it was very much like those early image books where it was primarily artwork driven with Michael Turner's art. And it was, the character was co-created by Turner and Mark Silvestri, who was one of the image founders. And it was very much that, you know, the bad girl thing that was going on in the 90s. It was all the craves where you had these women with like, you know, broken spines.
00:56:41
Speaker
than the artwork and impossibly long legs. There's one scene in, because they had the collection on sale, like the first year of Witchblade or something. So I bought it and I read it and I had read these books in a long time. And as I'm reading it, I'm paying more attention to the art now, especially now that I'm starting to get into art myself.
00:57:00
Speaker
And there's this one scene where Sarah Pizzini, the main character, she walks into this like ballroom and she's wearing this white dress. And you look at it and the length of her legs and the dress is like twice as long as her torso. Yeah. And I was staring at this panel, I'm like, wait a minute, that's not. You had a lot of artists during that period that unlike
00:57:29
Speaker
uh, other artists say like, okay, let me pick one of my favorite artists, Javi Usama, who actually went to school and learned how to draw. And he did a lot of other drawing professionally, you know, so he knew how a human body actually works and how, you know, where the muscles go and everything, you know, but during that era that we're talking about, you had comic book artists that learned how to draw.
00:57:57
Speaker
from reading comic books. They didn't go to school and learn how to draw. So what they were doing, they were copying whatever it was that they didn't know how to do, they just filled in with their imagination.
00:58:13
Speaker
And some of them turned out, some of them to their credit, some of that style works. Like it works for Jim Lee. It works for Mark Silvestri. It works for, you know, Sam Keith, right? And they like, you have these artists who have this kind of like exaggerated style and it works for them. It does not work for Rob Liefeld. No. In most cases it works for Michael Turner, but there are those moments when you're like, that doesn't work.
00:58:40
Speaker
Um, right. And, um, but also, and it was also the whole thing in this era where all the women characters, they had to be supermodels and they had to wear as little clothing as possible. So, well, that was, well, that was the whole thing with, I mean, you know, the Witchblade character.
00:59:01
Speaker
uh at least in the comics because you know the witchblade provided her with armor that did absolutely nothing to cover her it covered her naughty bits and and tore her close to shreds and that was it that's all it did yeah now it makes very good cosplay i will say that i've seen some i've seen some women cosplay as witchblade and
00:59:25
Speaker
Yeah, it makes for good cosplay. But it's one of those things that when you see it in real life, it looks absolutely ridiculous. Right. Yeah. Like the armor in like fantasy video games, the female armor in fantasy video games. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like, what's the name for the corner combo? It's like Red Sonya with her chain mail.
00:59:46
Speaker
you know, the bikini. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, come on, it's utterly ridiculous. You know, we go with it because, okay, well, it's fantasy, you know, we go with it. I mean, with the thing about Red Sonia, I can understand, because you do have Conan as a counterpart to that, and they're both like in the same type of world. So it does make sense, you know, she's kind of fitting in with that world and Conan's the same way.
01:00:07
Speaker
Yeah, he's running around with just a fertile loincloth. He's not in any harmony. But in a lot of these video games, though, you look at the ultimate armor they have. The male armor is full body, covers everything. And the female armor, it covers less than lingerie. Yeah, exactly. So that's the thing. It's the contradiction that makes me laugh. Which is one of the things that this movie kind of fixes. Yeah.
01:00:36
Speaker
uh Sarah Pizzini she has the gauntlet that covers her hand you know but she but I mean you know that's it it just covers her you know her forearm you know so we don't have that ridiculous thing where you know of course they didn't have the budget to do that right yeah yeah you know but in that but in this case that's where the lack of a budget actually made for a more realistic
01:00:59
Speaker
you know. Well, and when they do show her fully armored up, it's actual armor. It's an actual suit of armor that covers her up. Right. Which makes more sense. Yeah. Yeah. So we can buy it. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Well, now the interesting thing about the comic is after Michael Turner left, one of the editors on the book, Christina Z, she took over the writing duties.
01:01:20
Speaker
And you had a Randy Green as the pencil, I believe, and you know Randy Green style. It's not as image asked as the other one. So, although you still had kind of that kind of it wasn't as like overly sexualized. You still had like the exposed skin and everything but you had a female, you had a female writer taking over the writing duties of it and
01:01:40
Speaker
And it actually became really good. Like it actually developed a really strong female fan base because of her writing. Yeah. And like I'm pretty sure Gail Simone has broken her record now, but at the time, Christina Z was like the highest selling female comic book writer of all time.
01:01:58
Speaker
oh cool um so yeah and it was it was that's when i got into it when she was doing the work and it was uh it was she was a really good writer she she had done some really good stuff with that book and later you had paul jenkins come on who was also a really good writer so there were there was it did have this trajectory where it started off which a lot of image books kind of went through like i know wildcats went through that as well where you had
01:02:19
Speaker
You start off with Jim Lee kind of doing his thing. And then later on, Alan Moore comes on to the book. And then later on, you get Joe Casey. And they take it and elevate it above, like being just an X-Men ripoff. Oh, OK. So there was some good stuff in the comic that came after the initial, the Michael Turner stuff, which it's most famous for. But now this movie, so what was your experience with this movie going into it?
Yancy Butler’s Portrayal of Sarah
01:02:45
Speaker
You know what?
01:02:48
Speaker
As with a lot of the movies that we talked about here, it's been so long since I've seen this that it was like watching a brand new movie. Because I do recall seeing the movie, I do recall watching the TV series. Because I really like Yancey Butler. Yancey Butler. She is by no stretch of the imagination a great actress. But there's something about her
01:03:13
Speaker
you know, she's got that indefinable quality that you're like looking at her and she's convincing in what she's doing. Yeah. You know, there isn't, even though she's not the best actor in this movie, that's the guy that plays her partner who gets killed. Yeah, the Asian guy, he's a better actor, but for what she has doing this movie,
01:03:38
Speaker
she's convincing. And really, that's all I require you to be, you know, you don't have to give me a performance on the level of a Katharine Hepburn. You have to make me convinced of what you're doing in the reality of this movie. And that's what she does here. You know, like I said, I like her a lot. In doing my research for this, I read, of course, a review written by Keith
01:04:08
Speaker
Well, I hope I get his last name right. D. Candido? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I ran across a review that he wrote in his movie and he said something and cracked me up that I have to share that. Okay. He said that, he said that Yancy Butler is the only actor he's ever seen who looks like she was drawn by John Burke.
01:04:30
Speaker
And the more I watched this movie, I said, you know something? Damn, if Keith wasn't right, she doesn't look like a John Byrne character. You know what I really like about Yancey Butler in this? Is that I buy her as an NYPD detective.
01:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, like Sarah Pizzini, especially in the Michael Turner stuff, I could not buy her as a NYPD detective. She's like this supermodel. She's easily tricked by Kenneth Irons and all that. But Yancey Butler, like she's an attractive woman, right? You would never call her ugly, right? She's a very attractive woman. But she's got this down to earth quality about her. Yeah, you know what? She looks like somebody that I wouldn't be surprised to see walking down the street.
01:05:14
Speaker
Right. Also, she's got that kind of husky voice, which I think really works for the idea of her being a cop. Yeah. Yeah. And she's got this messy tomboyish type of role. Yes. Yeah. That was one thing. You see her in the beginning when she's getting dressed, and you see her pulling her jeans up over her underwear. It's not like, you know, frilly panties or something like that. It's like long johns. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, they're serviceable. Yeah. Yeah.
01:05:42
Speaker
Yeah, so, and I mean, you know, obviously she didn't take a shower. It was a show that, you know, she just gets out of bed and puts on her clothes and the same clothes, mind you, and I believe she goes through the whole movie wearing the same clothes.
01:05:58
Speaker
you know, we don't, there is no contrived scene where she has to wear like a ballroom dress. The closest we ever get is the, is when she goes to the nightclub at the end, right? She's wearing like the leather pants and like the midriff shirt, but that's it. And that's not, that's still, you know, that's still functional. Right. But usually like, you know,
01:06:21
Speaker
You will see that Dale has some kind of contrived scene where she has to show cleave, like she has to go undercover and she has to pretend to be like a prostitute or something. The very first page of the very first issue had that scene where she has to wear this tight revealing red dress. Yeah, see what I mean? You don't get none of that in this movie. She doesn't do that. In fact, I may be misremembering, but I believe like the, you actually see a closeup of her cleavage in the comics before you actually see her face.
01:06:51
Speaker
See what I mean? You don't get that here. No. I mean, you know, like I said, she wears very serviceable, functional, messy clothes. You know, she's got that messy tomboyish type of quality. I find myself very appealing for this character and for her style of acting. It works very well for the character. It does. It works very well.
01:07:15
Speaker
Especially the fact that everybody calls her Pez instead of calling her Sarah. That also helps work as well. Because they treat her as one of the guys, basically.
Costume Choices for Sarah Pizzini
01:07:26
Speaker
But yet, her femininity, am I pronouncing it right? Her femininity isn't lost at all. No, no.
01:07:39
Speaker
But that's what I love about this movie. It's not a great movie. It's got a lot of problems because it's made for TV. It's got a low budget and all that kind of stuff. The script's not the best, but there's a lot of good stuff in the way they, I really like the way they present Sarah in this. It works a lot better than it did in the comic books because even when they do show her, they never resort to pure sex appeal with her.
01:08:05
Speaker
Even when they show like the the Witchblade comic is famous for showing her you know scenes when she's sleeping in bed and she dreams about the Witchblade and she's wearing like these skimpy negligence and that kind of stuff or she's wearing nothing but panties with the blanket conveniently drawn over her breasts or whatever like that.
01:08:26
Speaker
or they show her scenes in the showers and it's very close ups on certain aspects of her. In this, we see a scene of her in bed, but she's wearing boxer shorts and a tank top. Yeah, yeah. Or we see her in the shower, but she's completely covered up. It's never sexualized. And okay, this is another reason why I like...
01:08:50
Speaker
this woman so much, because you could tell from her body language, this is stuff she sleeps in every night. For all I know, that may be the stuff that Yancey Butler actually sleeps in, because she's very comfortable in wearing it. And also you get the scene when she's training at the gym. And you can see Yancey Butler's got some bill to her as well. Yeah, exactly. Which makes it very plausible when she's going toe to toe, beating up on guys and everything like that. Because you can see, OK, well, this chick's got some muscles. Right, yeah.
01:09:20
Speaker
You know, yeah, I mean, she's one thing about this movie I got to mention before talking about the budget, everything like that. You know when I knew that this movie was not actually filmed in New York? What's that? When we got our third or fourth shot of The Twin Towers. Any time a movie is not filmed in New York, they will do one or two things. They will either show The Twin Towers or The Empire State Building.
01:09:50
Speaker
or some other landmark. And they do both of those in this. Yeah, but if you notice, nobody ever mentions like, okay, there's certain New Yorkisms that people say to let you know that you are in New York, they don't do that in this movie. And I mean, once we got to that third shot that they had, I think it was a shot of sunset and the sun was between the 20th
01:10:17
Speaker
I said, this was not filming in New York. This was filming in Vancouver. This was some shit filming in Vancouver. I remember when I was watching it last night and I remember like, I think it was the subway scenes. I'm just thinking, I'm thinking like, I'm betting Derek's going to mention the fact that this is not shot in New York. No, I just want it shot in New York.
01:10:39
Speaker
Because I remember we were talking about the subway in Joker last week. And you're talking about how it felt like a New York subway. Yeah. And this one, I'm thinking, I had never ridden the subway in New York. But even watching it and just knowing you for so long, I'm just like, I'm betting Derek's going to talk about the subway here. No, no. You can look at it and say, nah. No, that's not the subway in New York. But you know something?
01:11:09
Speaker
Okay, here's the weird thing about this movie. Here's what's got me. If you took away the witch blade, right? If we didn't have that, what are you left with?
Female Lead in Cop Thriller
01:11:22
Speaker
Oh, it's a straight up cop drama. Right. You're left with your typical 1980s
01:11:28
Speaker
cop revenge thriller, you know, cops partner gets killed, cops revenge against. The only difference here is that the cop is played by a woman. Right. And not say like Chuck Norris or, you know, somebody that, which of this movie was made in the 80s, you know, that's who the cop would have been. It would be somebody like Chuck Norris or something like that.
01:11:47
Speaker
But that's what you basically have here. You have a cop thriller with a cop seeking revenge against the mob boss that killed her partner. And the Witchblade is thrown in almost as an afterthought. Yeah, yeah.
William Lee’s Expanded Role
01:12:03
Speaker
And speaking of partners, got to talk about William Lee, as you mentioned before. And you know, this guy's done a ton of shit like he was in the Wolverine movie. Oh, yeah, yeah. And they changed his character's name. In the comic, his character is actually named Michael Yee, and he has a very
01:12:20
Speaker
He's killed right away, just like in this, but he never appears after that. But William Lee, I'm guessing because, you know, everybody knows he's such a good actor, they decided to keep him around for the TV show as like, kind of like, as this ghost who keeps appearing to Sarah. Which also is a little subtle bit of racism I detect here because, okay,
01:12:44
Speaker
He's a better actor than the guy who eventually takes over as Pazini's partner. Yeah, Jake McCarthy. But they kill off the more interesting guy, who's Asian, in favor of the white guy, who is a pretty bland character, let's be honest, played by a pretty bland actor.
01:13:09
Speaker
yeah I mean you know this guy he had he had that trench coat working for me he had hair, you know he had he had he had a rap for with yancy Butler then.
01:13:21
Speaker
the other guy who becomes a partner that she doesn't have with it. I think part of the well I mean like this also happened in the comics too so I think part of the problem is they're sticking with the comics um but it is it is the same problem in the comics well Michael Yehe didn't really have much to do in the comics but but you're right that's the that is a failing of this because they didn't when you're writing the script
01:13:41
Speaker
You can't account for the fact that the script is written before the actors are chosen and you get to see how they interact with each other. So I think that's why they decided to keep William Lee coming back in the TV show because of this chemistry he had with Gansi Butler. Yeah, yeah. Because none of that happens in the comics.
01:14:00
Speaker
because they have a couple of scenes together where they're just sitting in the car there on stakeout, you know, and they're just having banter back and forth. And that's some of the most entertaining dialogue in the whole movie. Yeah, yeah. We're like, he's talking about Jake McCarty and Sarah's like, oh, you think he's hot, don't you? And he goes, no, I think Ricky Martin's hot.
01:14:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And Noah is actually entertaining. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they feel like they're old friends. Right. It's certainly more entertaining than any of the dialogue she has with Jake.
01:14:31
Speaker
Now, I do kind of like, like Jake, he's very, he's just like he is in the comics. So I did like David Chokachi for that. In fact, he was like the fan casting for Jake, the character's name is McCarthy in the comics. It's McCarthy in this. I don't know why they changed that, but he was actually like the fan choice for this character. And, you know, he does fit this character as he was portrayed in the comics very well. I did like that they, I did like his kind of,
01:14:58
Speaker
I don't know something about him. You're right, he's not as good as William Lee, but for some reason I just kind of like the character. Okay, well that's fair enough. I mean, and see now that you told me that the Asian guy was killed off in the comic as well, I retract my
01:15:18
Speaker
statement because I thought that they just did that you know because they wanted to give the juicy role you know they just wanted to get rid of the Asian guy and make the white guy but if that's how it happened in the comments I'll go with it yeah yeah
Ian Nottingham's Character
01:15:32
Speaker
So, but you're right, it does, it would have worked better if they were able to switch those two roles, but they would have had to had, you know, some foresight into what was going to happen to the chemistry. And then, so we got also Ian Nottingham, played by Eric Edebari. Oh, one thing you mentioned though about the trench coat, right? So, William Lee and Eric Edebari, they both were these trench coats and
01:15:56
Speaker
Am I forgetting something? Was there a style in 2000 where guys were trench coats that were like three sizes too big for them? Oh yeah, I have one too. Oh really? So that was the actual style at the time? Yeah. I had a trench coat that was flapping around my knees and around my ankles. Because I'm watching them wearing these trench coats and these guys are like swimming in these trench coats. Yeah.
01:16:27
Speaker
Okay, now let me ask you something, because like I said, I don't know anything about the comics. This guy, Ian Nottingham, is that all he did in the comic, was just lurk in the background and say, mysterious shirt? At first, yeah. So like this comic, this movie is, he eventually does become a bigger part, right? But in the first few issues, that is basically all he did.
01:16:45
Speaker
I like his name though. I like his name. Yeah, that's a cool name. Well, in the comp, one of the things I like about him is that you can buy him as like this mysterious assassin.
01:16:58
Speaker
because he's very unassuming, he just blends into the background. Ian Nottingham in the comics is built like a tank and he's got this long flowing black hair and he always carries a katana with him everywhere that's not concealed or anything like that, which looks cool in the artwork, but when you want someone who's trying to be an inconspicuous assassin, that's not the look you want to go with.
01:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, like this guy, you know, all through the movie. He just like, we really don't know his deal, even when we, even when it's revealed that he works for this mysterious billionaire type who knows all about the Witchblade, everything like that. We still don't know the deal with that. Because there was one part in the movie where I thought that he was going to kill Sarah if he takes out the assassin that was hired to kill her. And he takes the gun and he's looking through the sniper scope. I said, wait a minute.
01:17:50
Speaker
Well, and you see his fingers inching toward the trigger. And I'm saying, wait a minute, is he, I thought he was supposed to, you know, so yeah, so for most of the movie, we're really not sure what to deal with this catalyst. Yeah, yeah. But I thought he played that mysterious angle really good. And you do get to see his skills in action, the scene when he goes into, he meets with Gallo and he beats the shit out of all of his guys. Which is probably the best fight scene in the whole movie. Definitely, definitely without a doubt.
01:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, there's one that's in the theater where Sarah, when her partner gets killed and she has to fight Gallo's men while Gallo takes it on the hook. And that is like, that is, I'm gonna be charitable here and just say,
01:18:40
Speaker
is just one of the worst choreographed fight scenes I've ever seen. It's very much like they're trying too much to be like the Matrix and John Woo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they just- Yeah, they're trying way too hard. Yeah, and they don't have the technical skill to do it. They don't have the budget to really make it look good. And so the scenes on the special effects really kind of show through in this stuff. Yeah.
2000s Trench Coat Fashion
01:19:08
Speaker
But that fight with, yeah, that fight that you just said. And you can see that this guy obviously has some kind of martial arts training or something like that. Right. Because it's obviously him. I don't know. To me, it looked like it was actually him, the actor playing. Yeah, I think so. It's not a stunt man. It's actually him.
01:19:24
Speaker
Yeah. The only thing I didn't like is, again, the problem with the two big trench coat, even if it was the style of the time, is it makes him look smaller, right? He doesn't look as imposing with that. Whereas if it was a leaner cut or something like that, he might look a little bit, it might fit him a little bit better, I think. I gotcha.
01:19:43
Speaker
Well, to me, I always think that really when you have characters like that, since they can't wear a cape, they got to wear these oversized trench coats to give them the aspect that, you know, to give them like a vaguely superheroic feel. Right. Yeah, yeah. Because then the trench coat is flying all over the place, you know, which is exactly why they said that in The Matrix, they gave
01:20:09
Speaker
Keanu Reeves, they gave him those big flowing trench coats. So they gave him a cape. They said, yeah, well, we couldn't give him a cape, but we gave him this trench coat that was three sizes too big. So when he's moving, you get that feel that it's like a cape. Yeah. And then we had Anthony Sestaro as Kenneth Irons, who you mentioned, the billionaire, who's kind of like the Lex Luthor type of the Witchblade comics.
01:20:35
Speaker
He's not even Lex Luthor because, again, all he does is just stand around and say a lot of mysterious shit. Well, I mean, in the comics, that's what he's like, Lex Luthor, basically. Billionaire super villain, basically. Oh, OK. So, yeah, in the movie, because in the early comics as well, he served the same role. He was just kind of like he was giving Sarah information on the Witchblade and later it turns out he's a villain.
01:20:59
Speaker
Yeah, because we see that apparently he's raised up Ian Nottingham since he was a kid because there's one scene that we have where he's telling Ian, you know, and Ian is like the little kid. He's just like a cowboy, which I thought was awfully cute, too. I thought it was really cute. And he's standing there. He's got a little big old oversized sheriff's badge on it. He looks so serious, everything like that.
01:21:22
Speaker
And Irons has explained to him his theory about life and cosmology and what type of little kid is just saying, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, listen, what can I, listen, can I go eat my cornflakes and watch Captain Kangaroo?
01:21:37
Speaker
Yeah, then when he talks to Ian in the office, he takes out the old toy gun too. Yeah, yeah, he takes out the old toy gun, yeah. And actually, it was kind of a touching thing when Ian goes over and he looks like he's about to pick up the gun.
01:21:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Then he pushes it away like, well, I'm not that kid anymore. We're dealing with real shit now. Yeah. But the thing that killed me about that scene watching it is when the scene opens with Ian standing in that little window alcove, and he's just staring out the windows. And then Irons takes out the gun and starts talking to him. And Ian walks over. Like you said, he kind of turns away from the gun. And he just walks back over to the alcove and goes back to the stairs. Yeah.
01:22:24
Speaker
Is he recharging? What's going on here?
Critique of Main Storyline
01:22:34
Speaker
But, all right, and then the main story, of course, you know, about Sarah going after Tommy Gallo. I don't know, for me, like, I thought this was the least interesting part of the movie, the whole main story about going after Gallo. Because, you know, it's just so by the numbers. And, you know, Conrad Dunn isn't really that impressive as a villain. Like, he's just like a standard wise guy. There's nothing,
01:23:01
Speaker
original or nothing that stands out about his character at all. Yeah, he's got no big grandiose scheme, like to take over New York or, you know. Which one? Yeah. That would be fine. But, you know, just at least if you're not gonna have some sort of like grand scheme or anything like that, at least give me some personality with the character. Yeah, exactly. Not just like the, not just the 500th Goodfellas ripoff we've seen, you know, time and time again.
01:23:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's it. The only thing that we have about him is that, OK, well, he killed Sarah's partner, and he killed one of her friends. Yeah, Maria. And that's it. And that's all we got on the guy. And then he kills Danny, and that's it. Yeah, Dan, and then that's it. And basically, that's all we have on the guy. He has no personality. He has no grandiose scheme.
01:24:00
Speaker
there's a threat in this movie big enough to justify the mystical power that Sarah is given because the movie is all about her just getting, you know, the Witchblade. Really, that's all it is. Right. It's all set up for the TV show. Exactly. Exactly. This movie is all set up. Remember, even when the movie gets to the end, they even acknowledge that, that this is all just a big set up for, you know, the TV.
01:24:26
Speaker
So what do you do when your own movie even acknowledges, well, there's no, she even says that she said, well, there's no final scene here. So, you know, you're not supposed to say that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're not supposed to say that you're supposed to, you know, and then the mood just ends. You know, wait a minute.
01:24:46
Speaker
Oh, you know, it was interesting about the final painting because it ends on that painting of Sarah in Kenneth's showroom. Yeah. And and that's a that's that's a version of the of one of the comic book covers. But, you know, that's what I. Yeah. But, you know, it was you know, it was different from the painting versus the actual comic cover. Well, in the painting, she's wearing a shirt.
01:25:12
Speaker
Okay, because TNT, well, it wasn't exactly a family network back then. Back then when this show, okay, when Witchblade was on, TNT was primarily pretty much known as a show that was- Well, they also did have one painting where one of the Witchblade wearers, her breasts were bare. So that one, I think it's just more because they're trying to acknowledge the fact that this is Yancy Butler playing the character.
01:25:37
Speaker
But what they did, but TNT was like directed toward like a demographic toward men, you know. And that's what it was probably, you know, like action adventure series, you know. Right, right. A directed at men, which is why I think that that was one of the reasons why this series caught on. Because that's the demographic that it was aimed at, you know. And they had a bunch of action adventure series that was
01:26:07
Speaker
you know, they had a bunch of low budget action adventure series in this vein. But this one apparently, like I said, I did some research, apparently for some reason this show really caught on. It did. Yeah. Yeah. This show was like, it was like one of the highest rated TV shows at the time.
01:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I think as we were mentioning the last time, it was not canceled because of ratings, because the ratings were sky high. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, Yancey Butler was going through her problems with alcoholism, you know. Yeah, yeah. And that's why the show got canceled.
01:26:44
Speaker
And in fact, this has happened one other time before with Blade the series, remember on Spike TV? Yeah. Which everyone thinks it was canceled because it got low ratings. It didn't, it actually got really high ratings, but the show was just too expensive to keep going. And that was a terrible, and it was a terrible show. I kind of like that. You know what? Okay.
01:27:10
Speaker
OK, it was called Blade the Series. So I expect the show to be about Blade. I don't expect him to be a supporting character in his own show. Yeah, that's a fair criticism. And that's part of the problem is because Blade as a character is just not that interesting. Well, yeah, he's not. I mean, you know, and now all the Black people listening to this are saying, you dirty, lousy traitors.
01:27:36
Speaker
Not to say I don't enjoy the Blade movies. I do. I love this Wesley's Place Blade movie. Oh, yeah. Or at least the first two. But what people have to understand is that really, Blade in the comic books wasn't that much of a character. No, no. I mean, he was a supporting character and he wasn't with Dracula.
01:27:54
Speaker
he was a supporting character and when he came and when Wesley Slanks picked him up Wesley Slanks was the one that gave him all of the accoutrements that we now associate with the the blade in the complex was running around with wooden eyes for god's sake yeah yeah you know
01:28:10
Speaker
All that other stuff, Wesley Snipes, you know, gave him all of that and gave him a personality. That thing with the Daywalker, that wasn't in the comic books. No, no, no. You know, that came from the movies. Wesley Snipes gave him all that kind of stuff. And you know, the thing is, but even still, like the character, even in the movies, he doesn't have a whole lot of personality. Most of those movies, those movies are on the strength of the action. That's what they are. They're not, yeah. And also his interactions with, with like, with Whistler.
01:28:40
Speaker
Yeah. Like Whistler's really the, Chris Christopherson is really the star of that movie. He's doing all the heavy lifting with the acting. Yeah. I mean, Blade, Blade himself as a character really does it because he doesn't have a lot of, um,
01:29:00
Speaker
motivation outside of just killing vampires. I mean, that's it. I mean, that's all he does. He eats, sleeps, breathes killing vampires. There's no romance, no friends, no hanging out. I mean, no, there's none of that in there. And that's why every Blade comic has ended after just a few issues because you can't really find the way to make that character work as a headlining character.
01:29:28
Speaker
Yeah, because you can't give him any supporting characters because Blade is not a character designed to have supporting characters. You know, you can't have, okay, here's what it is. You can't humanize the character because if you humanize the character, then he's not Blade anymore. Right, right. What is he going to do? Is he going to go to the suburbs and he's going to get married and he's going to raise a family and have a...
01:29:54
Speaker
I kind of want to see that story now. Yeah, actually I do. Now I did hear a rumor that they said that what Wesley Snipes wanted to do was that he wanted to bring Blade back.
01:30:09
Speaker
he would eventually, he would basically be the Whistler character and there would be a new Blade, his daughter, who he was training to take over. That was, I'm not sure if Snipes was involved in this or not, or if it's stuff, rumors getting mixed up, but there was supposed to be a Blade comic book that was supposed to come out that was gonna have that premise. Okay. Now, I don't know if that just kind of mixed in with the, because at the same time, Snipes was in discussions with Marvel.
01:30:37
Speaker
right okay so i don't know if like maybe these two rumors got mixed together or something or maybe snipes was involved in some way in that i don't know but whatever the case there there was a comic that was planned about that okay okay that's what i heard i i heard that
01:30:55
Speaker
Wesley Snipes had went to Marvel himself and he had pitched that idea to them. Okay. You know, he said, well, listen, if you're going to bring back blade, I want to be involved. And this is the way that we can go. And, you know, so I mean, but you know what? It's all a moot point now because they got, what's the name? Marshall Ali. Yeah. Yeah. He's going to be playing blade. Yeah. So.
01:31:19
Speaker
And the other thing about this movie, you know what I liked? I liked Joe Siri, the police captain, because he was, in the comics, he was just your standard gruff police captain who's always shouting at everybody all the time. In this, Kenneth Welch plays him a lot more subdued, right? He's not as shouty and all that. And I like that aspect of it.
01:31:42
Speaker
Well, he's a surrogate parent. Right, yeah. I think that played off a lot better in this series than it did in the comics. Because there's a part where they're having an argument. Because he asked her for her badge and her gun. And we get some back and forth dialogue. And she said, yeah, well, you know me since I was a kid. Yeah, yeah. He mentions that, yeah, your father was my partner. So he's like a surrogate parent. And they do have a nice little
01:32:12
Speaker
thing going on. I enjoyed their back and forth and their relationship. I didn't understand the whole point of him revealing at that time that she was adopted. Yeah, and I don't think that was from the, I don't remember if that was in the comics or not either.
01:32:29
Speaker
you know, maybe that was something that was picked up later on down the road in the TV series. I haven't watched the whole TV series, but I was doing some reading up on it just before this episode. And it seems like, yeah, it was, it did become a plot point in the TV show. Oh, okay. That's what I figured. Cause a lot of times in these pilots,
01:32:46
Speaker
That's what they do. They'll drop these little things here that they can say, OK, well, you know what, further down the road, we'll come back to that when they need a story. They say, oh, well, remember, we said, oh, OK, well, we can write a script around that. Right. So that's why I figured that they just threw that out. Because I don't know. It just seemed funny that at that time, he would tell her that. Yeah, yeah. It was just an odd time for him to reveal that. Well, guess what?
01:33:12
Speaker
I'm suspending you. You're probably going to be brought up on charges. And oh, by the way, you were adopted. What the hell? Now you tell me. You could have taken me out for a nice dinner. I mean, that's what you do when you drop a bombshell like that. Let's go to the bar. I got something I want to tell you. You get them liquored up first.
01:33:42
Speaker
You know, it just struck me as funny. But yeah, but I, but I did like, I, you know what, I really don't have a problem with any of the acting in this movie because I realized that this was a made for TV thing. So therefore I have the unique ability apparently, which a lot of comedy movie fans don't seem to have. I can adjust my expectations depending on the budget.
01:34:09
Speaker
and level of what it is that I'm watching. So I'm looking at this movie and I'm not expecting to see Captain America Civil War. This is a TV movie. It's a powerful series. So that's how I took it.
01:34:24
Speaker
and you know and I'm not saying that I'm dead well damn now I want to see the series again but I did not feel my time was wasted watching it and it was good seeing Yancy Butler again you know yeah I mean when she was in her prime
01:34:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And this was a, this is a good, I thought it was a, it definitely made me want to watch the series, which I'm gonna, I am gonna do now. And it was a, it was a nice start. And it's, they did improve on some things from the original comic story, especially in the way they portray Sarah and also, you know,
01:35:00
Speaker
her relationships with Danny, with Jake, they feel more real than they did in the comics book. There's a lot of forced drama, especially in those early issues of the comics that just did not work. Yeah. And once again, I have to say that sometimes just because a movie
01:35:24
Speaker
has a small budget that can actually work because, except for a couple of scenes, like really, that scene in the museum where she leaps across and the glove leaps up in the air and just happens to stick on. But except for that, this movie has got like a down-to-earth quality that I found most appealing.
Witchblade’s TV Adaptation Potential
01:35:49
Speaker
Yeah. Like I said, if it wasn't for the Witchblade, this, you could take this as a straight copy of it. Well, when you look at, when you're thinking about, you know, shows, you know, comic books to make into TV shows, especially in this time, the Witchblade is the perfect thing to do it because you've got this supernatural element, but you can all dress it up with this, with the, with the police procedural. Right. Exactly. And you have a logical reason for her to be getting involved.
01:36:16
Speaker
and stuff like murders and crime. You don't have to go hunting for a reason. Well, she's a cop, and she investigates crime, which is why you saw that there was a lot of these shows during the 70s and 80s. The main character would have some superpower that he had to kid. But he was a cop, and he used his powers to solve the crime, but he couldn't let anybody know. But there was always one person on the force that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:36:45
Speaker
So that's kind of like Witch Blade. That's how I kind of took it, that, okay, well, here's this cop and she's got this one angle, this one ace up her sleeve that gives her an edge when she chasing the bad guys. Right, yeah, yeah. All right, so any final thoughts about this movie? Only that, and I want to say to you, my esteemed partner, thank you for
01:37:12
Speaker
hooking me up. Oh, you're welcome. Now I don't know how the rest of you folks are going to find this, but if you do decide that you want to watch this, you know, uh, yeah, I mean, it looks like it is on, it is on Amazon prime. Okay. Well, you know what? If you want to spring for the rental fee or whatever, you know, that's not a bad movie. You know, I mean, um, it's not, it's not like a seminal
01:37:42
Speaker
touchstone in the history of superhero movies, you know, not by any means stretch of the imagination. But it is entertaining, you know, I would give it
01:37:54
Speaker
on a scale of one to 10, I would give it a seven, seven and a half. Yeah. And it is, it looks like that both seasons and season one includes this TV movie. They're both available on Amazon. I don't know if it's part of Prime subscription or if you have to buy the episodes individually. So I'm only seeing the
01:38:15
Speaker
you can buy the seasons for like 15 bucks a piece. But they also got the DVD set of the whole series is, I guess it's maybe an out of print one or something because it's a used version and it's selling for like 19 bucks. So if you wanna get the complete series, which has both seasons on it, you can get that as well. Oh, okay. So it's available. So yeah, it's available for people can get it. And it's not bad. I'm definitely gonna go on and check out the rest of the series now.
01:38:46
Speaker
Oh, okay. All right. And yeah, my, my, my, I think my, my siblings are pretty much the same as yours. It's, it's not great, but it, it was made in 2000 and it's, they did, they did the best they could with what they were given. And it works as a pilot to a TV show. Like it's, you know, it's a basic cable TV show. It's not, you're not looking at like HBO quality here, but. No, no, no, no. Yeah. Don't, you know,
01:39:13
Speaker
Like I said, folks, you watch something like this, you have to adjust your expectations of what it is, you know, no, you are not.
01:39:23
Speaker
There's not a whole bunch of CGI in this. And the CGI there is, you're grateful there's not more of it. Yeah, exactly. You're not going to have your major fight scenes and stuff like that. Really, actually, even though this was made in 2000, like I said, I felt like I was watching something from the 1980s, actually. That's the vibe I was getting from it, a very strong 1980s type of vibe from this thing.
01:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah. But it's entertaining enough. It's, you go in there with your expectations appropriately adjusted. And, and yeah, I think you'll enjoy it, especially if, if you know anything about the comics, I think you'll, and if you know, if you're not only reading the comics from the tits and ass, I think you'll appreciate the changes they made to Sarah's character. This is the type of movie that I would say, okay, this is what you do, make a note of it.
01:40:13
Speaker
And sometime during, because winter is coming, you know, there's not a Game of Thrones reference. Winter really is coming. And you know what? Your home on a Saturday, you hear it's going to snow, or it's going to be really cold, and you're not going to go out anyway. And you said, oh, you know what? There was that movie that Derek and Perry, you know, they, let me check this out. And that's what you do. You know, you say before rainy day or a snow day. I mean, you know, you're not going out.
01:40:40
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And you can't find anything to win. You know what? You don't have to watch Avengers Endgame for the 15th time, you know? Hey, is that a judgment on me? No, no, no, because no, on me, because I've seen Avengers Endgame. No. Trust me, I rewatch superhero movies, but I just watched the Civil War just the other day. Oh, OK. Yeah, I watched it. I didn't say, you know what?
01:41:09
Speaker
I don't wanna see Civil War, dammit. Just put it on and I watched it, yeah. Yeah, there've been times when my wife has come in and she's like, are you watching Avengers Endgame again? And I'm like, so? Oh God, yeah, oh Patricia, plenty of time. She says to me, wait a minute, how many times have you seen that? It doesn't matter. And she comes in at the edge like, you're still, you've seen this movie like 20 times and you still cry at the end, yes? Oh yeah, oh.
01:41:39
Speaker
Hell yeah, you kidding? Absolutely. I lose it at the funeral. Oh, God, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. You know what? You know what? This is one of them things, like, my wife and I were in the car the other day, and After New Delight came on. And we were talking to them, and we're singing the song, mind you. We're like, eh, you know what delight?
01:42:01
Speaker
right rock is here flying and we're singing a song and the song was over and I said Patricia I want you to remember one thing she said well I said do not trust anybody who does not like this song
01:42:14
Speaker
And that's it. There are some songs and some movies. If people tell me that they don't like it, I don't trust them. I'm sorry. I do like that song, but you know what? Now, I cannot, I can't listen to that song without thinking of Arrested Development because there's this, I don't know if you ever saw the whole series, but there was this one episode where, um, uh, um,
01:42:38
Speaker
what's his name, the main character, Michael. He starts to get closer with his niece, and then his sister, she gets jealous, so she starts to get closer with his son. And each of them have a scene where they sing Afternoon Delighted Karaoke together, and like halfway into the song, both Michael and his sister, they realize, holy shit, we know what this song is about. Yeah, yeah, right?
01:43:00
Speaker
I know so many people that have known that song for years and they don't know what it means. And they said, really? And I said, yeah, that's what it means. Yeah. A lot of people, you know, you be surprised. But yeah, but there are certain like movies and TV shows and songs and stuff like that. If somebody tell me they don't like To Kill a Mockingbird,
01:43:22
Speaker
Do not touch that person with your husband wife, oh wow yeah yeah you know yeah it's just that i'm sorry folks it's just like anybody anybody tells me they don't get at least a lump in their throat. During the funeral scene. Oh yeah game.
01:43:38
Speaker
There's something wrong with you. Absolutely, definitely. There's something wrong with you, I'm sorry. It's just as simple. All right, so. Yeah, but I give Witchblade, yes. I would not say enthusiastic recommendation, but like I said, if Saturday is raining or it's cold, it's snowing, you don't feel like going out, you would not be wasting your time watching this. No, it's entertaining enough, yeah.
01:44:08
Speaker
Definitely. OK, so that was my pick for this week, which means next week is back to you.
Preview of The Cobbler Movie
01:44:15
Speaker
So what are we watching next? OK, now, this is a movie. And I know that we always say to you guys out there that it would behoove you to watch some of these movies before we discuss them so you know what we're talking about, if you haven't seen them already.
01:44:34
Speaker
I would definitely recommend that you watch this one before we discuss it, because this one is really out there in left field. And the movie that I'm picking that we're going to be discussing next week is The Cobbler, starring Adam Sandler and Dustin Hoffman. Now, some people may not think it's a superhero movie. I do. And next week I will break it down for you why I think it's a superhero. But I think that if you watch it,
01:45:05
Speaker
You understand why. I consider it to be a superhero movie. So yeah. So I haven't seen this movie before, but I'm just checking up right now. I know it's on iTunes, so it's on iTunes for like a dollar to rent, so that's no problem. Yeah. Although I think my wife's going to be happy you picked this because she likes Adam Sandler.
01:45:27
Speaker
And mind you, I am not a big Adam Sandler fan. I watched this movie because a friend of mine had seen it. And he said, listen, I know you don't like Adam Sandler. He said, but this is the Adam Sandler superhero movie. I said, get the fuck out of here. He said, no, no, no. He said, watch him. I said, OK. He said, no way.
01:45:46
Speaker
If you don't agree with me, he said, I will give you your rental money back. So I rented it, and I called him up, and I said, know what? You ain't got to give me the money back. You're absolutely right. It is a superhero movie. It's a superhero origin movie. Yeah, and I was kind of surprised, because I know how you feel about Adam Sandler. So I was kind of surprised when you said that you were going to choose this one for the next one. And know what? Actually, OK, Adam Sandler, there are a couple of his movies.
01:46:12
Speaker
Um, for some, for some bizarre reason, although everybody I know, they hate the movie. I like A Crazy Night. OK. I like that. I like the early movie he made where he plays the hockey player that becomes the golf. Oh, Happy Gilmore. Yeah, Happy Gilmore. I like Punch Drum Love. I like the one he made with Don Cheadle, Reign Over Me. OK.
01:46:39
Speaker
I like, yeah, I mean, I like that stuff. It's like, I don't know, it's his later movies that, you know, yeah, I don't. You know what, I like his movies at least one time, because the stupid comedy, I like the stupid comedy. So like, I can watch a lot of his movies the first time, and I'll like it, but if I watch it more than that, I'll probably hate it.
01:47:01
Speaker
Yeah, Adam Sandler, he's the type, you know, his comedies aren't the ones that, yeah, that you can watch over and over again. It's like, okay, I watch it, it was funny. And except for Happy Gilmore, I just can't watch Happy Gilmore again and I can get a good laugh out of it. Yeah. But, you know, most of his other movies, no. But I like it crazy. But for some reason, I, you know, anytime I say I like that, you know, people say, really? You like that one?
01:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, I remember watching that. I remember that was funny enough. I saw that in the theater. Yeah, for some reason, even Adam Sandler fans, they're not crazy about that movie. Well, I don't know. But anyway, that's what we're going to be discussing next week, folks. OK. The Cobbler. Yep, so getting a bit out of left field here. So yeah, we'll be watching The Cobbler next week. So you'll definitely want to check that out first. And like I said, it's only $1 on iTunes, so it's not going to break your bank. OK.
01:47:57
Speaker
All right, that does it for now. Head on over to our Facebook group, Superhero Cinephiles. Remember, our 50th episode is coming up and we're looking for, and we decided, you know, fans said they wanted us to do a live commentary of a movie. So we're taking suggestions for movies. When we get a bunch of suggestions, when we get closer to that date, we're gonna put up a poll so you guys can vote on which of the movies that have been suggested that you want us to cover.
01:48:25
Speaker
for our 50th episode. And whichever one gets the most votes, that's what we'll do. So far, people have been, we had a couple of people that made recommendations that said, well, whatever, it should be something that everybody, you know, or at least the majority of people have seen, or at least have access to, whatever. So I don't know, we're kind of leaning toward that I think, right?
01:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's kind of the hope, but we are going to leave it up to the fans to make the decision. Oh yeah, definitely. So that's why if you want to make sure that you help us with that, make sure you get over to the group and make sure you give us your suggestions. We have some good ones. Folks, do you really want to leave it up to us?
01:49:05
Speaker
Yeah. You know what Perry and I are capable of by now? I mean, don't forget, this guy has an encyclopedic worth of knowledge on BTV movies that you have never heard of before. Oh, yeah. If you don't get in there and give your suggestions, he's going to pick Condorman or some shit like that. Oh, man. You know what? You read my mind. Trust me, folks, this is something you do not want to leave up to me.
01:49:37
Speaker
All right, so that does it for now. Thanks so much for listening, as always, and we will see you next time. OK, good night and God bless. And remember, continue to stay safe out there. The corona is still out there. So wear your mask, wash your hands, and maintain social distancing. Absolutely. Thank you.
01:50:03
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Superhero Cinephiles Podcast. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode, or if you have a superhero movie or TV show you'd like us to cover in a future episode, you can email us at superheroescinephiles at gmail.com, or you can also visit us on the web at superheroescinephiles.com.
01:50:23
Speaker
If you like what you hear, leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Each review helps us reach more potential listeners. You can also support the show by renting or purchasing the movies discussed, or by picking up our books, all of which can be accessed through the website, as well as find links to our social media presences. The theme music for this show is a shortened version of Superhero Showdown, a royalty-free piece of music, courtesy of pheasantudios.com.
01:50:57
Speaker
you