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146 Plays4 years ago
Yeah, you read that right. We're actually watching Steel, the 1997 film that makes Batman & Robin seem like The Dark Knight. And it's every bit as bad as we remember. From how Shaq is the least intimidating guy in this movie, to the floppy rubber suit, and the most stereotypical black kid ever, all of it will feel our wrath.
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Transcript
Promotion and Introductions
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?
00:00:43
Speaker
No, you're not gonna tell me they let you keep the books after you done it. 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 get lots of great books, especially for fans of the show. You can listen to Super Gods by Grant Morrison, which is all about 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.
00:01:58
Speaker
Man, oh, man. I thought my tax dollars wanted to keep these windows clean. How you doing, Sparky? Great. Is that why you stopped writing me? Didn't you get my letters? I got them. And the wheelchair you sent, thanks.
00:02:29
Speaker
Must be awful for you. I could imagine how you feel. No. No, you can't. You're right. I can't. I wish I could turn the clock back. Sometimes you don't get a choice about things. Shit happens. Tell me about it.
00:03:00
Speaker
Good cop friend of mine just badly hurt on one of our weapons. They're on the streets. How is that possible? That's what I'm trying to figure out. And I can sure use your help. Yeah. I'd be a big help on the streets. I don't think so. What are you going to do? Just sit here and look out the filthy windows?
00:03:42
Speaker
I can't. Girl, you are out of here. What are you doing? No. Stop it, Irons. I don't want to go. Listen, Sparks, sometimes you don't get a choice about things. This here is a prime example of shit happening. No. Me.
Excitement for Marvel Trailers
00:04:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I am half of your host, Perry Constantine. And I am the other half, Derek Ferguson. How you doing today, Derek? I am doing quite well, my friend. How are you doing today? You look well rested. I do, really. That's kind of surprising because I didn't really get a lot of sleep last night. I went to bed around, what, like two in the morning and I woke up at like seven, so.
00:04:34
Speaker
Really? Yeah. You look like you got in like a full eight, man. Well, that's good. I don't feel tired or anything. So that's good, too. So but like we talked about, we've talked about before, like, off air, I don't really need more than like five or six hours of sleep early. My body's kind of adjusted to that and gotten used to that now. Yeah, same here. I very rarely sleep more than five hours at a time.
00:05:02
Speaker
Like I said, unless I've been doing something physical or, you know, whatever, yeah. But five hours seems, and it's been that way most of my life. They say when you get older, your sleep pattern change. Yeah, yeah. I remember I had a teacher in high school who, when he was in college, he would only get like four hours of sleep a night. And his body got so used to that that now he only needs to sleep four hours a night. Yeah.
00:05:31
Speaker
Well, everybody's different. I mean, some people need eight, some people need 10. Yeah, yeah. So we got a new trailer since we last on the show. We got to see a full-length trailer of Falcon and Winter Soldier. Yeah, we got to see a full-length trailer. And I cannot wait. Yeah. I mean, after seeing how good
00:06:02
Speaker
See, after seeing how good a job they did with WandaVision, I'm saying, OK, they're in good hands. I'm not going to worry about this anymore. They're not going to mess it up. This is going to kick ass, all kinds of ass in sight.
00:06:18
Speaker
We still haven't seen Loki yet. That's what I'm really looking forward to. Remember the trailer that they had where he did the D.V. Cooper out the back of the air? I said, yeah, I wanna see that. This is like this, I wanna see. That made me actually watch HBO Max's documentary on D.V. Cooper. Really? Because I'd never really known anything about this guy. And so then after seeing that in the Loki trailer, I'm like, well, I gotta find out more about this. Then I saw that HBO Max had the documentary and I'm like, oh, okay. So I sat down and watched it.
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah, Dan made a movie, I believe it was with Treat Williams. Oh, okay. Back in the, yeah, back in the eighties, the pursuit of D.B. Cooper, where they speculated as to what happened to him after he jumped out the plane. Because you know, they never found him and they never found the money as far as- Yeah, yeah. The documentary has like a few different suspects that it focuses on, like who it might be. And cause some of them, like a lot of these, some of these people, they said like, oh yeah, I was D.B. Cooper.
00:07:17
Speaker
Yeah, exactly, yeah. It had a number of people that have come forward and they've said that he, so of course the first thing that people say is, okay, where's the money? Yeah, yeah. You know, if you are D.B. Cooper, then where's the money? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I spent it all. Oh, yeah, all right, yeah, bullshit, come on. But yeah, that trailer, and we got the first look of Zemo in action and,
MCU Villains and Captain America Trilogy
00:07:45
Speaker
I'm really psyched to get Zemo and getting hit in the comic book costume, no less. Man, that's a bad quote. Yeah, yeah. I like that they found a way to work in the fur collar and everything. That's a bad ass quote. I love that quote. And the mask and everything. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, Baron Zemo. Don't ask me why I love Baron Zemo.
00:08:05
Speaker
I love that, you know, I've always been a big fan of characters, like, so when they showed up in the movie, like, Baytruck the Leaper. Yeah, yeah. I've always loved Baytruck the Leaper, simply because he's just such a goofy, you know, I mean, you're kind of advertising what your gimmick is in your name, pal. Maybe you might want to, you know, so when Captain America ducks out your way, he always goes, Zut the laws.
00:08:30
Speaker
You leap, it's in your name, dude. You're the leaper. And we're getting, we're getting Batrock speaking up. He's going to be in Falcon and Winter Soldier. Yeah, I'm good. Listen, like I said, I love the guy. When he showed up in the movie, I said, oh. Oh, that was great. Yeah.
00:08:48
Speaker
And I'm looking forward to seeing, for me, Baron Zemo was, I wouldn't really think much about him. It was until I read Thunderbolts. And particularly Fabian Niseis' run on the character, because he found a way to make the character a lot more well-developed and well-rounded than he's been in the past. Like it wasn't just like Nazi supervillain, it was,
00:09:11
Speaker
he actually had good reason, like he had gone through like a reformation of sorts, but it wasn't like, oh, I'm totally a good, it was his new modus operandi was like, I'm going to save the world, but to save the world, I have to take it over.
00:09:28
Speaker
I have taken over, right? Which is pretty much the modus operandi of most supervillains. You know, like, you know, your Dr. Doom's and your Red Skulls, who basically they all say, well, you know what, the world would run much better if I were in charge. You know, they don't want to necessarily kill anybody because
00:09:48
Speaker
It's no fun ruling a planet if you don't have anybody to rule over. But that's basically their modus operandi. Things would run much better if I were in charge. But I'm always
00:10:06
Speaker
Zemo, the way they handled him in the movie, what was it, Civil War? Yeah. They showed him in Civil War. Because you know what, we finally got to see a supervillain actually accomplish his aim. Yes. You know, he wanted to break up the Avengers, destroy the Avengers, and he did that. Yeah.
00:10:25
Speaker
You don't see this too often where the supervillain actually, his master plan, he actually pulls it off. Well, that was the thing too. Remember at the end of the movie when Everett Ross asked him, how does it feel to have it all fail so spectacular? And Zemo's like, did it? Yeah. And he really did. He succeeded in what he intended to do. When you think about it, you go back and you think about it and you say, yeah.
00:10:47
Speaker
He did. Good for you Zemo. And Daniel Bruhl, like he was just amazing. Oh he killed. Yeah, yeah. So he was so methodical and he was so logical and, you know,
00:11:02
Speaker
He wasn't the ranty shouting, you know, making speeches kind of super built. He just calmly went about his plan step by step by step. Right. And I said, OK, see, this is a dangerous cat. Yeah. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how they how they handle him moving forward into this into this series. Yes, I am. And, you know,
00:11:25
Speaker
And again, that's a testament to how well they've done the MCU when we're not only looking forward to the heroes, but the villain as well. Yeah, especially- Just as much as we want to see the heroes. Right, especially because now it's a longer form. So we get to, and you know, Civil War was so stuffed with so many characters. It was amazing that he got as much character development that he did, but now we're going to get to get even more of it. So I'm totally on board for all that.
00:11:49
Speaker
That's one of the amazing things about Civil War, like you said, as many characters as they had. Some that just got introduced, like Spider-Man. But still everybody, you know, got their moment and it didn't feel right. It's amazing how they did that with that many characters and yet the movie did not feel rushed at all.
00:12:09
Speaker
Well, I mean, also the vision because that was like the first, because, yeah, he was introduced in Age of Ultron, but he came in right at the end. He didn't get a whole lot to do in that movie. But in Civil War, like I was surprised at how much vision we got. Yeah, we got a whole lot of vision. And again, it didn't feel like it was rushed. It didn't feel like, OK, you know, well.
00:12:31
Speaker
I didn't feel shorted at all by any, you know, it was just, you know, Civil War is just an amazing piece next to, I mean, you know, Winter Soldier, which, well, okay, well, first of all, as much as I love Thor and Black Panther,
00:12:51
Speaker
I will always tell people that the Captain America trilogy. That's the crown jewel. Yes. Right. Yeah. I mean, three movies of such consistent quality and pacing and characterization.
00:13:04
Speaker
and special effects and emotional resonance and action. You don't see that. And it broke the trilogy curse, right? Because most trilogies, you got the first one's good, second one's the best, and the third one kind of shits the bed. This one did not have that happen. This is the one with all three movies. Kick ass. They're all excellent. I mean, it's just remarkable. It is.
00:13:30
Speaker
I mean, I find myself a lot of times going back and just watching the Captain America trilogy, all at one shot, like Saturday afternoon, I'm not doing anything. I say, you know what? I'm just gonna binge Captain America, because he deserves it. He does, he deserves that shit, you know? Yeah, it's really good. And again, like we said before, Chris Evans, I mean, you know.
00:13:54
Speaker
I mean, it's gonna be a long time before they can find somebody that's gonna play Captain America. I guess 50 years from now, they say, okay, well, we're gonna do another Captain America movie. We should probably take that long for us to forget Chris Evans. Yeah, it's...
00:14:12
Speaker
Oh, excuse me.
Superman and Lois Reviews and Casting Rumors
00:14:15
Speaker
But yeah, it's just amazing series. And, but I want to talk about a few other things too, is we're getting closer to Superman and Lois coming out. And some early reviews have been dropping on the internet. And the consensus is it's pretty damn good. Yeah, yeah. That's what I've been hearing from various people. I know somebody actually saw a screener and they said, yeah, they said it was a lot better.
00:14:39
Speaker
than he thought that it was gonna be. Which seems to be the consensus from everybody. From my understanding though, it's a little bit more removed from like the Arrowverse. It seems like, yeah, there's not a whole lot of direct ties. I mean, we know it's part of the Arrowverse because there was supposed to be a crossover with Batwoman that was only canceled because of COVID restrictions.
00:15:05
Speaker
So we do know it is part of the Arrowverse, but they haven't connected anything to it in the premiere, at least. Well, really, that's all you need to know. Yeah. That is part of it. But I think that's what's happening is that that's deliberate because, of course, we don't have Arrow anymore. Right. Supergirl anymore.
00:15:25
Speaker
Well, we're gonna get one more season of Supergirl. Yeah, one more season of Supergirl. So we'll probably get like one more big crossover. Right. Well, I don't know if we'll get one in Supergirl's last season just because of all the COVID stuff, because they hadn't announced a big crossover. The only crossover that had been announced was between Batwoman and Superman and Lois, which was canceled because of the restrictions.
00:15:48
Speaker
I don't think Supergirl will get another big crossover. I can't help but feel that we are because since it is Supergirl's last season, they will want to do something. Oh, I think there might be something like that. Like they might have, you know,
00:16:05
Speaker
Clark and Lois appear in Supergirl or Kara will appear in Superman and Lois or something like that. But I'm talking like the big, you know, universe wide crossover like crisis. Oh, no, no, no, I know. I don't think we see like that again. You know, something really after crisis on Infinite Earth. I mean, you know, how do you top that? Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's like trying to top, you know, the Infinity War. You know, you can't do it.
00:16:33
Speaker
Also, some other news that came out. The rumor is that Keanu Reeves, because we talked about Keanu Reeves might be joining the MCU, and the casting rumor right now is that they're talking to him about playing Craven. Craven the Hunter. Yeah.
00:16:56
Speaker
I can think of some other people. Yeah, well, the one... Nothing against... Nothing against Keanu Reeves. I love Keanu Reeves, but I can see... I can see other people. The one fan casting that I've seen that I think is perfect is Carl Urban. Yeah, okay. Well, Carl Urban could play anything. Yeah. But yeah, I see... I look at him and I can see Craven more than I can see. Wait, I mean, look at him in the voice. Like, he looks like Craven. Yeah.
00:17:24
Speaker
And it looks like there's also gonna be a Powerpuff Girls live action series on the CW. Why? I don't know. It's a weird series to go live action with because, I mean, I haven't really seen it very much but it just seems like it was such a, it's a property that seems so tailored specifically for animation that
00:17:52
Speaker
It seems like a weird thing to want to do that in live action. I don't know why is it that, you know, we in our pop culture world, we have such a hard time letting things for kids just stay for kids. Yeah, because you know what they're going to do. They're going to, you know, make them teenagers.
00:18:13
Speaker
and it's going to be all of this other teenager angst BS that's going to come in here and stuff like that. Whereas, you know, the Powerpuff, the animated series, was really cute little animated series, you know, about these three girls that had superpowers and it was sweet and cute and it was a cute show, you know, but, you know, nobody's content to just let anything be. It's like, it's like when,
Discussion on Adaptations for Adults
00:18:42
Speaker
Oh, what was that show? Batman, brave in the bowl. Batman, brave in the bowl, when that came out, there was a lot of backlash against it because it was a lighter Batman. Right, right. It was a little bit more jokey, was a little bit more comical and stuff like that. And people had a hard time with that. And I said, well, Batman is the type of character that you can fit him into all those different types of formats. And he works. Yeah, yeah. I make him work in a comedy.
00:19:12
Speaker
He can work in the ultra serious. He can work in between. He can work, you know, like if the, oh, the movie you've probably seen in Gotham by Gaslight. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Victorian era and he's fighting Jack the Ripper or what is it? I haven't seen it yet, but I want to see a Batman ninja. Yeah. That was good too. Yeah. I mean, Batman is that type of character. He can work in a whole variety, a lot of different things. He doesn't have to be locked into, you know, the dark night.
00:19:41
Speaker
Right, right. Well, speaking of Batman, Brave and the Bold, like I just watched the first episode because now it's on HBO Max. And yeah, it was a bit jokeier and everything. But I went in that expecting after hearing about the show for so many years. But it was entertaining. It was definitely entertaining. And it was a lot of fun.
00:19:59
Speaker
And, you know, it's so funny seeing Dietrich Bader as Bat, because he voices Batman in that, but he also voices Batman in Harley Quinn, which is much more of like the darker Dark Knight version of the character. Yeah. And he's able to and he does them both really well. So it's really cool to see to see him do it and have both those two different takes on the character. And it's amazing that
00:20:22
Speaker
he evokes the spirit of Kevin Conroy without imitating Kevin Conroy. Which is what I really like. Yeah, and you know, it's so funny because I never would have thought Deidre Bader as Batman, right? No, no, yeah. Out of all the actors,
00:20:39
Speaker
that you would have told me with a voice Batman, he would have probably been in my bottom 10. Right, right, right. Even though I liked him, I liked Deidre Bader a lot. Yeah, yeah, I do too. And so it was really funny seeing him in that. And so anyway, but along with that, I'd been doing a lot of catching up on HBO Max. So I finished, I'm all caught up on Titans. I finished season two of Titans. I'm almost all caught up on Dune Patrol. I'm up to like episode six of the second season of Dune Patrol.
00:21:08
Speaker
And there's like, so yeah, I've got like four episodes left to do in patrol. Okay. But yeah, it's been good. Titans, you know what interesting about Titans season two is they introduced Bruce Wayne because he was always kind of like a background character in season one, like, you know, and there was this like nightmare sequence or some kind of thing where
00:21:35
Speaker
when Dick Grayson goes after Raven and Trigon, he ends up having this magic induced hallucination where he imagines going back to Gotham and Batman's gone insane. And so you see him fight Batman, but you never see Batman in full, right?
00:21:58
Speaker
So, but this, you know, season two of Titans, they introduced Bruce Wayne and it was really surprising based on what we saw in season one, because they have Ian Glenn playing him. And, you know, he's not who you think of when you think of Batman.
00:22:13
Speaker
And he appeared in the, I think it was the end of the first episode of season two. And I was so surprised when I saw him like, wait, that's Bruce Wayne. Cause it's just, he doesn't look the part. But as the series went on, I kind of got a little bit more interested in it. Cause there's this one part where Dick starts hallucinating that he's seen Bruce Wayne is almost like a, like a con he starts hallucinating. He's seen Bruce Wayne and Ian. And there's one scene where
00:22:39
Speaker
Dick Grayson is trying to track down Deathstroke. And he goes to this one nightclub to talk to the owner of the nightclub because she has connections to Wintergreen. And it's like a burlesque show. And you see Ian, and he hallucinates seeing Bruce Wayne dancing on stage and Ian Glenn does the Batussi.
00:22:59
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. That's cool. I like that. That's cool. And but it was interesting seeing him in action as Bruce Wayne, because he's got this like, he's this interesting mix. It's like he's almost like a cross between Michael Keaton and Adam West in some ways. So it's really, yeah, it was this interesting little mix because he's not, you know, as Dark Knight, but he does. You could see him as an older version of Michael Keaton's Batman. Oh, okay. Cool.
00:23:28
Speaker
now see now the more you talk and the more I'm intrigued I said damn I gotta say and I keep saying oh I'm gonna watch this I want to watch this and I keep getting distracted by all the bright shiny things but now that you're telling me this yeah now I definitely want to sit down yeah um season one was a lot more grounded it was a lot slower but season two they really they leaned in more into the superhero stuff right you get um um like when you get you get deathstroke in there and the you get uh
00:23:55
Speaker
They do an interesting take on Jericho as well. And you got Ravager in there and all this kind of stuff. And it looks like season three, they're gonna have Barbara Gordon in it as Oracle. They've already cast, actually they've cast a disabled actress to play her.
Race-Switching Characters in Media
00:24:14
Speaker
Oh, very good, very good. So yeah. But I think that when you say that, you know, because season one was on DC Universe and they really didn't know
00:24:24
Speaker
where they was going to go with this, how they want to play, everything like that. I think that now that they know definitely, okay, well, we're on HBO Max now and we know we got a home and we know we got to do it. So now they know where they want to go and what they want to do with the series.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And we also get Superboy and crypto in season two. So it was really cool seeing both of them. And I was surprised we got crypto. I knew we were going to get Superboy, but I was not expecting to see crypto in live action. Nobody ever expects crypto. No. And they did it like it's comic book crypto. Like it's he's got the superpowers. He flies. He has heat vision. He's got the whole thing. Hey, if you're going to do crypto, do crypto. And they did crypto. He doesn't get the cape though, unfortunately, but he does get it. Okay.
00:25:11
Speaker
But yeah, it was, yeah. Does he have the little collar with the S shield though? No, no, he doesn't have the little collar. He does have like a collar and it does say crypto on it, but maybe season three will get it. Okay. Cause that was an animated crypto series.
00:25:26
Speaker
And he also had the collar with the little S-field. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I liked. So we might see that in season three. But yeah, I was surprised how much they leaned into it. Cause they, you know, they bring in Superboy, they bring in, they mentioned Lex Luthor and they have Mercy Graves as like one of the main antagonists of the season. And we finally get the, and the season ends with, you know, Dick finally shooting up his Nightwing. So it's- Oh, okay.
00:25:52
Speaker
So yeah I'm looking after seeing that I'm really looking forward to season three because they're going to have Barbara Gordon as Oracle I mentioned. They're also going to have Tim Drake which is interesting because season three ended with Jason Todd kind of abandoning the Robin role and they've cast Tim Drake but they've I don't know why they did this with him but they're um
00:26:13
Speaker
He's, they basically gave him Jason Todd's backstory. Like they make him like a kid from the streets and everything like that. And I'm not sure why they did it. And also a little bit more problematically. So why didn't they just bring in Jason Todd? Well, they did. He was in season one and two, but he left at the end of season two. Like he abandoned the role of Robin and you see him like hopping on a motorcycle and riding off somewhere.
00:26:38
Speaker
But yeah, but I don't know why they gave him basically Jason Todd's backstory when Tim Drake has an interesting one of his own, but even more stranger is that they got a black actor playing Tim Drake. So I'm like, why do you give him the stereotypical black kid background when you already had this other background that you could have used from the comic books?
00:27:01
Speaker
And, and, and, you know, what we've discussed this before, I'm really not a big fan of race switching just to do it. I'm really not, not, you know, and I get criticized for this all the time they said, I said no you know what.
00:27:21
Speaker
when it comes to, you know, creating, you know, let's create our own black heroes. Let's not take white heroes and, you know, that's your guys' heroes, you know? Well, the interesting thing about Tim Drake is he was kind of originally designed to be black. Because if you look back- Really? Yeah, because I think we talked about this when we talked about Batman Returns is that when they redesigned, well, I don't know if it was Tim Drake specifically, but one of the first Tim Drake action figure we got
00:27:49
Speaker
was a Black Robin, basically. I remember we were discussing that because Marlon Wayans. Right, yeah, yeah. So if you look at the Tim Drake Robin action figure from the 1992 Batman Returns toy line, he's got darker complexion, he's got like the high top hair and everything, so yeah. And I know I get this all the time from people because they say, well, it really doesn't make a difference. Well,
00:28:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, to me, it doesn't make a difference. Like, you know, I argue with people all the time when they say, oh, Idris Elba, you know, to play James Bond. Right. I say, well, no. Why not? Because James Bond is a white man. If you're gonna make him a black man, then you're gonna have to change.
00:28:35
Speaker
everything about him, the circumstances of his background and everything like that. And when you do that, it's a new character. It's a different character. You know, I'm not a fan of just plugging in the characters. Now, okay, now some characters, and see now people are gonna say, see Derek's full of shit now. But some characters you can do that with, like James Gordon. You can make James Gordon a black man. Right, right.
00:29:02
Speaker
You know, he's just a type of character that you don't have to change anything about his background. Right. You know, to make him black, which is, I guess, what I'm really trying to say here that in order to make certain characters black, you have to change that you have to change the background. Right. Yeah. That's what I'm opposed to that, you know, leave their background. That's that character's background. Yeah. You know, like,
00:29:27
Speaker
whenever you start talking about a black Batman, you can have a black Batman, but you can't have a black Bruce Wayne. Right, yeah.
00:29:36
Speaker
That's, I don't know. That's just my thing. I don't know. I'm really not a fan of it, especially because you don't see a lot of it going the other way. You don't see a lot of black characters being turned white. You don't see a lot. You don't see, okay, well Matthew McConaughey is going to play John Schaff. You don't see that. So it's one of my particular bugaboos and people say I'm crazy,
00:30:07
Speaker
you know, whatever. But anyway, in the case of Tim Drake, I'm still interested in seeing it anyway. Yeah. Even though, you know. Well, I mean, if I'm not mistaken, I think this is gonna be the first time we're getting Tim Drake in live action. Yeah, I've never heard about him. Although, okay. In the... Folks, you know when we're gonna talk about it anyway. In Justice League,
00:30:35
Speaker
when there's the costume, the Robin costume. Is that Spalding Drake's costume or Jason Todd? My assumption is it's Jason Todd because they got the message from the Joker on it. So it seems like that. So yeah, it seems like it was Jason Todd's costume. Oh, okay. Okay. But even so, there was nobody who actually played him, right? There's no... Right, nobody actually played him. I was wondering was, you know, but I guess when we see the four hour version, we'll...
00:31:03
Speaker
You know, what did you think about the thing with the, you know, Jared Leto? Oh, you know, I saw that the new image they released and it's much better than what we got in Suicide Squad. I mean, I don't know what the hell they were thinking with that glam rock reject.
00:31:19
Speaker
But so it's a much better look. And like I said, Jared Leto is a good actor, right? And I said, he was really creepy in the little things. And if they played the Joker more like that, it would have been interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with Morbius in that upcoming movie. And he was great in, what was it? The Blade Runner sequel too.
00:31:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, generally that was a good actor. He's a good actor, yeah. But it's just, the choices he made with the Joker were just really bizarre. Yeah, he really needed for somebody to just sit him down and say, listen, you may want to dial it down a little. Yeah, yeah.
00:32:01
Speaker
Um, speaking of news, I read something today, and I even wrote it down, I wrote a note, I said, ask Perry about this. What do you think about this thing with
00:32:13
Speaker
wasn't it, Josh Whedon? I was actually just about to bring that up.
Ray Fisher's Claims against Joss Whedon
00:32:18
Speaker
But yeah, so this was, I just saw this this morning, right before we started, where Charisma Carpenter released this really long statement about, in support of Ray Fisher's allegations against Josh Whedon, and she was saying about how, how like inappropriate and abusive he was, like verbally, not physically abusive to her on the set of Angel.
00:32:43
Speaker
And, and, and she says that, you know, she spent years like trying to make excuses for it and all this. And she's gotten some support too, like Amber Benson, who played Tara. She also backed Carpenter's statement. She said, Buffy was a toxic environment and it starts at the top.
00:33:05
Speaker
Charisma is Speaking Truth and I support her 100%. There was a lot of damage done during that time and many of us are still processing it 20 plus years later. And now Sarah Michelle Geller has come out as well and she said that
00:33:21
Speaker
She didn't share any specifics, but she said that while I'm proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don't want to be forever associated with the name Josh Whedon. I stand with all survivors of abuse and I'm proud of them for speaking out. So she was speaking out and she was doing that in support of what Charisma Carpenter had said. So that adds more weight to what Fisher has said. Although I still don't know why Fisher isn't providing any of these details about this.
00:33:51
Speaker
Yeah, you know, we talked about this before, where, you know, listen, dude, if you got something to say, you know, say it. Right. Yeah, yeah. And stop, you know, hitting and throwing out crumbs here and there. And, you know, yeah, well, you know, if you got something to say, you know, just say it and just let the chips fall where they may. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if he's holding back for something. Maybe he's
00:34:17
Speaker
I don't know. And this is just pure speculation, something that just came into my head, but I wonder if he's waiting to see how people respond to his beefed up role in Snyder's justice league. And maybe that'll give him some leverage into coming back to the role. I don't know. That's just something that occurred to me. And maybe that's why he's not, you know, airing out all the dirty laundry yet.
00:34:37
Speaker
That's the only thing that I can think of that he's hoping that he can have some sort of future with this franchise or whatever it's going to be. And that's why he's played me close to the vest. Yeah, again.
00:34:52
Speaker
I mean, I don't know, whereas you've got other actors like Charisma Carpenter, who, you know, they're already done with Josh. So they don't, you know, so they have nothing to lose by going here, just letting it all hang out. They got nothing to lose because they're done with him. Yeah. Well, it looks like everybody's done with Josh. We know this guy's going to have a, cause he was taken off the, um, what was it? That series he did for, uh, HBO, right? Um, I can't remember what it was called right now, but he was, he had created the series for HBO and they had parted ways with him.
00:35:21
Speaker
when all this stuff started coming out, so. You know, that's something that you have to look for when you look at certain directors and actors, and you see that people don't work with them again. They work with them one time, and then you see they, you know, like they never work with them again. It's something, yeah, you say, okay, well, there's something like,
00:35:45
Speaker
wasn't a George Lucas. George Lucas does a, cause he's not a people director. You know, he really got no interest in working with actors. So you don't see actors work with him again. It's not like people, you don't hear people say, well, I'm dying to work with George Lucas. Well, he, he famously didn't want Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. No, he didn't. No, no, they don't get, they don't get along. They don't get along a large part of that whole thing about, uh,
00:36:14
Speaker
Harrison Ford not wanting to come back to Return of the Jedi, because the whole carbonite thing, and I tell people this all the time, I'm not making this up, the whole thing with carbonite was because they did not know if Harrison Ford was going to come back. That's how much he hated working with George Lucas. Well, yeah, when people think of the Star Wars movies, like everyone, in retrospect, everyone has this impression that it was one big saga all planned out from the start, but it really wasn't. They were doing it one movie at a time.
00:36:40
Speaker
No, he made that shit up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He had that lie for years. They had this vault where all the Star Wars movie. No way. I mean, if you look at it, you could tell that. Yeah. The stories. I mean, the stories don't die. I mean, it really does, especially if you're like me and you watch all the Star Wars movie. I mean, the plot was you could tell that he was making this shit up. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, nobody knew if Harrison Ford was going to come back. Perfect.
00:37:07
Speaker
And this is a visual cue that I tell everybody. I say, go back and look at the Empire Strikes Back, the scene where Billy Dee Williams is in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon.
00:37:18
Speaker
Okay, he's sitting there, Chewbacca is there. What is Billy Dee Lee? He's dressed like Harrison Ford, thank you. He's got the vest and the... Yeah, because he was intended to take over if Harrison Ford didn't come back. And that's why he didn't really have a big role in Return of the Jedi, because they didn't really know what to do with them.
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. They didn't know what they were going to do with him. And if it turned out that Harrison Ford didn't come back, the thing was that they were going to rescue him and throw him out of the car tonight, and he was going to be dead. You know, they were still going to have to rescue and everything like that. But they were going to throw him out, and you wouldn't see his face or whatnot. But they would say he was dead. They would have a funeral for him. And then, bam, we move on from there. But, you know, he did come back.
00:38:06
Speaker
we got what we got. But yeah, nobody knew what to do with Billy Dee Williams. Anyway, the charisma carpenter thing, I'm not going to read the whole statement because it's a pretty long statement, but I recommend everybody go look it up. She posted it on Twitter. It's been in all the articles about it. They have the whole statement quoted. So it's something that definitely deserves to be read.
00:38:32
Speaker
let me ask yourself about Josh Wade because I've always been of the mind that Josh Wade, this is a guy to me that bent over backwards and to me that may be suspicious that he bent over backwards to make himself out to be like this big feminist champion and stuff like that. Well yeah apparently that's because there's the famous quote that was circling around for years when he said that
00:38:57
Speaker
this famous quote where a journalist asked him, why do you do these movies and TV shows focusing on strong female characters? And the response was, because you keep asking me that question. Apparently that whole thing is fabricated. Really? Yeah, that never actually happened. Okay. He put that out there to try and bolster his image. And when you look back at like,
00:39:20
Speaker
Buffy was very forward thinking in its depiction of women. But when you look back at it now in retrospect, there's stuff that is pretty iffy about it. Like it's a series that hasn't really aged that well. Yeah, it really hasn't. Not like Angel. Right, Angel has aged a little bit better. It's a lot more, it's a bit more timeless than Buffy is. So, but yeah, it's,
00:39:47
Speaker
It'll be interesting to see, because usually how this starts is when one person starts speaking out and other people start adding their voices, it's like the floodgates open. So I think we're going to be getting a lot more stories about this in the days and weeks ahead.
00:40:02
Speaker
So what do you think you think Josh Wade is just going to, you know, like lay low for a while? And I think he's going to be, um, yeah, I think he's going to be persona non grata for a while, but I'm pretty sure the dude's got plenty of money. So I don't think he has to worry too much. So, um, I mean, he's, he's got a vendor's money. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He'd be all right. And he still owns, you know, he still owns, you know, the, you know,
00:40:24
Speaker
Buffy Angel, Firefly, he's still getting residuals from that stuff because they've got, you know, they got a Boom Studios is doing Buffy Angel and Firefly comics. So he's got stuff coming in anyway. And I don't want to say that we should discontinue those stories. I think those stories have grown beyond Whedon anyway by this point. Yeah. Yeah.
00:40:49
Speaker
And I think that, and I probably said this before, that one of the curses of our society now is because
00:40:58
Speaker
you know, we consume stuff so quickly that we forget. So somebody who we've, you know, vilified and raked over the cold in January, by August, they're back. And we've forgotten all about what they did in January because we already raped somebody else, you know, half a dozen other actors or, you know, writers or, you know, directors or whatever, you know, what have we, you know, we've moved on to the next person, the savage.
00:41:27
Speaker
So by the time, you know, certain amount of time is going back by and we said, oh, that guy, what did he do again? You know, we don't even remember because we forgot because we just moved on that fast. So I said, give him about two or three years and he's going to be back with a Buffy reboot.
00:41:47
Speaker
Well, we'll see, I know there's a Buffy reboot being, I'm not sure if it's a reboot or a continuation or something like that, but they're doing something with Buffy, like either a reboot or a continuation or something like that. I don't know what the current news on that, because I haven't heard anything about that probably since before COVID started. I don't know why he just didn't do something like, you know, tales of the slayers and like every season do a different story about a different slayer.
00:42:16
Speaker
And this way you could do one like in Victorian England. I don't think he's actually involved in the reboot at all. So I don't think he's actually involved in it. Just like Disney, because now that Disney bought all the Fox properties, they've got the Firefly rights. And there was something, I'm not sure if it's been confirmed or not, but there was something recently that they're talking about doing a reboot of Firefly. Okay.
00:42:42
Speaker
So, I mean, we'll have to see what happens. Obviously, I'm pretty sure Wien's not going to be involved in either of those projects now, after all, this has come out, but we'll see what happens going forward. Yeah, but he'll still collect the check. He'll still collect the checks, yeah. Yeah. And know what? At this stage, it was like he doesn't want to work that hard. Yeah, yeah. Not like he did with Fire Flower first one. He doesn't want to work that hard. Right, right.
00:43:09
Speaker
Okay, so yeah, that's basically all the big news I wanted to talk about.
Critique of 'Steel' Movie
00:43:13
Speaker
So that means time to move into, I fucking hate you for making me watch this movie. Like I said, you know what? I said, let's get it over with, cause it's been the running gag since we started this thing where I've threatened people with it all the time. And you know what?
00:43:37
Speaker
I finally got tired of threatening people. I said, you know what? It's not fair to keep threatening people with steel. I said, you know what? It's been the sort of Damocles hanging over my head.
00:43:49
Speaker
ever since this running gag startups like one day he's gonna say we gotta watch one day one day yeah so yeah so we oh of course we're talking about the uh you know the the alleged superhero who sorry Shaquille O'Neal steal yeah
00:44:09
Speaker
Now, you know, what's surprising about this is, well, two things. First off. So this came out in 97, right? And I was, let me ask you something. Was this your actual first time watching it? No, no, no. I saw it. Um, I didn't see it in the theaters, I don't think, but I did see it when it came out on VHS back in the day. Okay. Um, but yeah, so this came out in 97. And so here's the thing, like,
00:44:33
Speaker
Back in the day, when I was a kid, right? You know, when you're a kid, you like pretty much every movie you watch. Yeah, exactly. You don't really understand how to, you don't really have any sense of what your taste is yet. Exactly, yeah. The first two movies, I can actively remember hating the first one I saw them, Batman and Robin and Steel.
00:45:00
Speaker
Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. These are the two movies that when I watched them, I'm like, Oh my God, this is terrible. I did not see this in the theater either. And I remember seeing it because it became like a staple on HBO for a while.
00:45:17
Speaker
You know, and I do know it was more popular on VHS than it was in the movie theaters. You know, it became like a thing where, you know, people rented for the kids. Well, actually, I read the trivia on this movie, because remember Batman and Robin famously bombed at the box office, right? Right. Steel grossed less in its entire run than Batman and Robin made in its first weekend.
00:45:44
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. So that's how much, so you think about how bad Batman and Robin bond, steal Bob like 10 times worse. You know what? Because...
00:45:55
Speaker
Okay, this was during the period Shaquille O'Neal was doing like a, Shaquille O'Neal was trying to be a rapper. It was such a weird, looking back, it's such a weird time when I remember, because I remember being around with this, like you had Shaq Fu, the video game on Super Nintendo. He was doing movies like Kazam. Yeah, he was like a video game star. He was a rapper, he was an actor.
00:46:19
Speaker
it was it looking back in retrospect i'm like how did we not realize how fucking stupid this whole was he was he he was doing everything except playing basketball which is what he was supposed to be doing pretty much and it's very interesting seeing how his career now is an is extension of what he was doing then because you see him i mean it's it's like half a dozen different products
00:46:44
Speaker
that he's the spokesman for, for Icy Hot and for the general insurance and- Okay, so we were talking about how much it bobbed. So the budget, $16 million. Really? $16 million for this piece of shit. Guess what the worldwide gross was? What? 1.7 million. Wow.
00:47:09
Speaker
I'm more surprised they spent $16 million, because this thing looks like a TV movie. It is such a TV movie. And it's like, and here's the weird thing too, is it was written and directed by Kenneth Johnson, who, yeah, has done good stuff, right? He did the Incredible Hulk TV show. He did the V mini series. He did the Bionic Woman and all this kind of stuff. And then he does this. And one of the funny things, I'm watching this movie and I'm just like,
00:47:37
Speaker
I'm sitting there and I'm watching the annoying black kid, Martin, who was like every 90s cliche of a black kid. Oh, play Ray J. Yeah. Who I can't stand anyway. I don't know. There's something about Ray J that hurts me. That hurts me. And I'm watching this and actually,
00:47:58
Speaker
out of all the actors in this movie that I wish we'd get killed, he's the one, not even Shaquille O'Neal, not even Shaquille O'Neal, who, you know what, to give him his due, he has like a sweet kind of sincerity that, you know, I can go with because he's playing the straight, you know, for the most part. But Ray J, like you said, he's like the most annoying stereotype black kid. There's never been a black kid in the history of black kids.
00:48:28
Speaker
that existed like this annoying little shit. And I'm watching him and I'm thinking, I'm like, has Kenneth Johnson ever talked to a black kid in his life?
00:48:38
Speaker
If you go by, matter of fact, if you go by the dialogue period, white and black characters, nobody in this movie, there's not a single believable line of dialogue in this entire movie. People simply do not talk like this. Yeah. And the funny thing is he took the script to, he wanted to make sure that you got the dialogue right. So he took the script to people in, what was it?
00:49:03
Speaker
He took a copy of the script to South Central, Los Angeles, and he spent a day with a group of kids to make sure the language was correct, which makes me think these kids were just fucking with him. Yeah, yeah. Because I'm sitting there, and I'm listening to some of the stuff that is coming out of Ray J's mouth. And really, I just want to reach in and just strangle him, because he's just so annoying from start to finish.
00:49:34
Speaker
And it's, yeah, but like I said, as far as the dialogue goes, nobody in this movie talks like a human being. Yeah, yeah. Nobody talks. This is scripted dialogue. It sounds like scripted dialogue. And like you said, Kenneth Johnson, the only thing that I could figure is that somebody came to him and say, listen, I need a favor. Could you write and direct this? You know, and- And Quincy Jones was involved in, was producing this.
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah, Quincy Jones is producing this. When I saw the name in the crowd, I'm like, that can't be Quincy. Not the same Quincy Jones. It's got to be a different. No, same Quincy Jones. Yeah, same Quincy Jones. I mean, like you said, it was a weird time. But, oh.
00:50:18
Speaker
My understanding is that Shaquille O'Neal is a big comic book fan as a lot of actors are and stuff like that. He even has that suit, which is shown prominently. He's got the Superman tattoo that says Man of Steel. So we're supposed to... Because of course,
00:50:38
Speaker
They can't use the origin from the comic book. And for all intents and purposes. Which is something I'm like, why can't you? Because this is a Warner Brothers movie. And they were working on. So this shows how stupid studios were back in the 90s and how little they could think about this stuff going forward. Because they were doing Superman Lives at this time. They were planning Superman Lives. So they had a death of Superman story
00:51:06
Speaker
And the smart thing to do would have been to tie this movie into that. Well, no, they didn't want to do that because this was a vehicle strictly for Shaquille O'Neal. This movie was so solely on you want to see Shaquille O'Neal play a superhero. Yeah. That's what it was sold at. That's why it was so completely divorced from, you know, the Superman franchise because it's set in Los Angeles. It's not set in Metropolis. Yeah. No.
00:51:35
Speaker
Basically, you have him playing John Henry Irons, who's now a military weapons developer. And he's working with Judd Nelson, who is a hoop in this movie. Judd Nelson's like the only one that just says, fuck it. You know what I mean, really? Also, Adam F. Gish, she actually does a pretty decent job. Yeah, she does. Yeah, she does. And I'm going to talk about her and the relationship with her and John Henry Irons.
00:52:06
Speaker
um there's uh acts well there's really not accident because judge nelson's character who should be having i'm the movie's bad guy sign hanging right right from the first scene we see him i'm this movie's bad guy i mean his logic in that beginning scene doesn't even make sense i'm like why are you even turning it to the highest setting it just won't say that okay that's the problem with this movie everything in this movie happens because
00:52:35
Speaker
The script says it has to happen. There's no character. I mean, first of all, the characterization is flat as a pancake. Oh, I mean, I think even that is doing it justice. There is absolutely no characterization in this. The characters, and I am flattering them by calling them characters, they do what they do because it's scripted that they do it. There's no rhyme or reason why they do what they do. They do it because the script says that they have to do it.
00:53:09
Speaker
Don't say I lost my train of thought. We're talking about the characters, you're talking about Judd Nelson. Right, Judd Nelson is like the only, he's like the only guy in this movie that like said, you know what, fuck it. I'm just trying to, you know, because he plays this bad guy that is such a bad guy.
00:53:31
Speaker
That's the only way I could put it. He comes right out the army after he's done killed the Senator and cripple, you know, one of his fellow soldiers. And apparently all they do is just give him a slap on the wrist and say, okay, we'll get the hell out of here. Well, something else is, is like he goes, I mean, okay. If you're trying to become an illegal arms dealer,
00:53:55
Speaker
and you're gonna take these experimental weapons and you're gonna put them out on the streets to attract attention of these international buyers. Why would you go to the neighborhood of the guy who designed the weapons and who knows who you are? I mean, why don't you go to a video game developer? Yeah. Oh my God, and that guy that is like the most stereotypical 90s villain ever.
00:54:22
Speaker
I mean, okay, we see that he's moving weapons, he's selling weapons that's on the side and everything like that. But yeah, wouldn't you go to actual arms dealers? Yeah. They say, okay, I got these new weapons and let's work together. Wouldn't you actually go to them?
00:54:42
Speaker
And why would you put them out on the streets when you could go to, like, you don't need these weapons to be demonstrated on the street. You could go to any dictator and be like, hey, look at this shit. And smuggling in them in arcade games is just completely bizarre. Why don't you go to North Korea? Yeah, yeah.
00:55:02
Speaker
You know, I say, oh, listen, look at what I got here. I have actually United States weapons. And apparently nobody followed up with Jordan Nelson after he left to make sure that, you know, I don't know. Like I said, if you think about this movie, if you give any ounce of brain power to try to figure out this movie, your head is gonna hurt massively because that's how brain did.
00:55:30
Speaker
It is. First of all, the notion that Shaquille O'Neal, a guy who's seven feet over seven feet tall, how long did you think it would take before people would figure out they just deal? Like there's that scene where they're interviewing the old couple, right? Who looked just like Oswald Cobblepot's parents from Batman Returns. Yeah, yeah. And it's just like,
00:55:58
Speaker
the most stereotypical old white couple you can imagine, old rich white couple. And they're interviewing them and they're like, yeah, he's this, you know, he's very tall. He's like seven feet tall, black, and he's very polite. And you got his grandmother watching and she's just like, huh. Who do I know who's like that? Who's over seven feet tall and very polite? Not only that, but he's,
00:56:25
Speaker
He's, everybody knows he's a genius weapons developer because he's getting all these job offers from weapons developers. Even his grandmother says, oh, you got all these job offers, they're on your bed. So you got, so I wonder in Los Angeles, how many seven foot tall black weapons developers you got walking around? I mean,
00:56:48
Speaker
And people are, well, I wonder who that guy walking around in that armor, that giant in the armor could be. You think it could be John Henry Irons? No, it could be him.
00:57:05
Speaker
It's the complete opposite of like business where people complain about Michael Keaton as Batman. I said no, well he's perfect because he doesn't look like he could be Batman. That's the whole thing. He doesn't look like he could be Batman. So it works.
00:57:23
Speaker
You know, but there's only one person who could be steel. Yeah. Really, you know, they have a police lineup. Yeah. The guy says, okay, we'll pick them out. And I mean, like she killed Neil and like he towered over everybody else. And the guy is actually scratching his head and he's having a hard time. I don't know. Maybe it could be him.
00:57:48
Speaker
Lord is actually he knew it was him, but he's like all right this guy's doing some good for the community. Yeah, yeah, it's that old thing the guy doing good in the community. And that guy is.
00:58:03
Speaker
That guy looks so much like Reginald Vell Johnson, but it's not Reginald Vell Johnson. Right, yeah. That's when I was scratching my head. I'm like, this is, I'm watching this movie and the entire time I'm thinking, is that Reginald Vell Johnson? I'm looking high in DP and everything. Yeah, yeah. I'm devoting more brain power to that than I am to paying attention to the movie. I haven't seen this movie in like 20 years. This is like the first, I watched it today. And today was like the first time I watched it in like 20 years.
00:58:31
Speaker
And I thought, so wait a minute, is that Rachel? No, that's not him. And I had to look like close at him a couple of times, because I thought it was him at first. But they do have a lot of familiar faces like there's Richard Roundtree. Richard Roundtree. Oh, God.
00:58:50
Speaker
The chef joke. Oh, I just, even Shaq looks like, are you fucking serious? What have I done here? Yeah, I mean, both, yeah, both him and Annabelle Gish, they like look at him like, really? And Richard Rountree, I'm surprised that he even said that line instead of turning to the director and said, I hope you don't really expect me to say this. He does have the best line in the movie though. What's that? Well, I'll be dipped in shit and rolled in breadcrumbs.
00:59:21
Speaker
Now see, again, who talks like that? I'm pretty sure Richard Roundtree ad-libbed that line. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. For some reason. Because that's the only line of dialogue that actually seems like someone would say that Richard Roundtree would actually say that. Yeah. When I heard it, I said, I know he didn't say what I just thought he said. OK, well.
00:59:52
Speaker
We have Judd Nelson, we have Charles Napier, who plays John Iron's commanding officer. And he's always entertaining to see. He also looks like he's having a good time. He doesn't have a lot to do, but what he does, he looks like he's enjoying himself doing it. And of course they set it up.
01:00:14
Speaker
that we get kind of like the information that he's going to be in the background helping steal, you know, in return for, you know, his assistants or whatever. That is an amusing thing where he has the voice thing to make his voice sound like Arsh Worsneger. You know, when he's talking to him. That was kind of, that was amusing. That was one of the very amusing
01:00:39
Speaker
bits in this movie that surely needs amusement. Yeah. Irma P Hall as well, who's got this weird idea to do this. And then I guess in Los Angeles, they don't have zoning laws because she just opened the restaurant in her front yard. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much.
01:01:01
Speaker
you know, she's got, you know, tables and chairs all over the sidewalk and everything like that. People are just sitting there having a good time eating and everything like that. So I said, oh, okay, cool. And you know, there's just so much in this movie that's just so bad. I don't know where to begin. And the weird little,
01:01:25
Speaker
The 90s movies had this weird thing where if there were two characters who have a close relationship, they have to have some sort of bonding gesture, right? So it was like him and Sparks, they do like this ET type thing where they touch each other's fingers. But let me say this though. And then in face off, you had the weird thing where everybody in the family would wipe each other's faces. I'm just like. But let me say this though about that. Okay, the relationship between
01:01:56
Speaker
John Henry Irons and Sparks in that, okay, first of all, it's not a romantic relationship because quite frankly,
01:02:06
Speaker
Hilo Neil is not good enough actor to pull up. He barely can pull off what he does in this movie. Like I said, mostly he gets by on his natural charm and his charisma. Which he's not charming enough to make me like him in this movie. He's charming, but he's not say like, there's some actors who have made a whole career just out of being charming. You need like Tom Hiddleston level charm to make this piece of shit work.
01:02:36
Speaker
Right, right. Some actors can just coast on somebody. He hasn't got quite to that level yet.
01:02:44
Speaker
What I did, and like I said, it would be ridiculous for these two characters to have a romantic relationship. But that kind of works because now we see a man and a woman in a movie who have a genuine friendship, genuine friends. And they work together. And when she becomes crippled, he helps her with her rehabilitation.
01:03:08
Speaker
And which is basically him. That scene in the VA clinic was just ridiculous, right? Because he walks in, she's all depressed. And all he has to do is punch the windows open. That's like just seeing sunlight suddenly heals. And then he picks up her wheelchair and walks out and everybody's cheering. And I'm like, what the hell is going on? Oh, I love that. Oh, I love that. Yeah, the officer, the gentleman.
01:03:36
Speaker
That's what he picks it up. And I swear they should have had with love with us up playing and all of the other inmates are going in there, and they have the guy I'm sorry folks that's what it was the one guy he only has one arm and you can see he's going like I didn't even catch that I was yeah yeah yeah yeah oh my god. You know when he picks up the wheelchair and he walks out with it.
01:03:58
Speaker
and uh what's up and I'm watching like you know the wheel you know what a wheelchair is right you understand the concept of a wheelchair it rolls yeah but that's but that it just wouldn't so man sir and he goes to st louis he kidnaps her and he takes her to south central to this junkyard and he's like you're gonna stay here now
01:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and he brings her to the junkyard and he opens up the bathroom, like he especially really be happy about, well, we've got a handicapped bathroom for you in the middle of this junkyard. And he looks at her, because she looks like, you got to be fucking kidding me. And he looks back at her like he's really, you know, what's the matter? You don't like it? It's got this, there's this really creepy subtext, that whole sequence.
01:04:51
Speaker
But like I said, I do appreciate the fact that they do try to take time, and Shaquille O'Neal and Anabetha Gish, they do take time to have scenes together where they try to work to build a friendship between their characters. And I appreciate, you know what, I appreciate the effort, if nothing else, I appreciate the effort. As little as it was. Oh, but it's, yeah, but it's, and the thing with the wheelchair, that's just one of the many hand-fisted things, like the fact that
01:05:20
Speaker
Every 10 minutes in the movie, he does a thing where he tries to shoot a basket and he misses. That was, cause I remember that was the thing going on in the, in the nineties. Cause Shaq was terrible at free throws. Right. And they make it, they make it a plot point at the end, right? When he has to throw the grenade and Ray J has to teach him how to shoot a free throw to throw, get rid of the grenade. And I'm saying, wait a minute, this must be the only hand grenade that's got a 60 second fuse.
01:05:50
Speaker
Cause he's actually telling him, okay, well bend that to me. First he picks it up and he holds it for about 10 seconds while he's looking for it. And then, and then, okay. Then he hands it to him and he says, okay, well bend that to me. Okay. And remember you follow through. Plus don't they have a door right there? I mean, at the time it takes Ray J to teach them the free throw, they could have run out and thrown the grenade somewhere else. Oh, for peace sake. And then
01:06:20
Speaker
The grenade blows up. They bust out of, okay, now they bust out of the place. They bust out of the place, they're on the street, and Ray J screams out, hey, you're my brother, aren't you? You're my brother, just. I say, you know something? If this movie was a person, I would be slapping the shit out of it right.
01:06:47
Speaker
And he asked if he could be Robin. And I'm just like, oh, God. Yeah. I mean, like, really kid, it took you that long to figure out that, you know, this is your brother. Yeah. Cousin, I think. Cousin, brother. Yeah. Yeah. The reference is just so weird. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who gives a shit? It's just such a weird thing. It's like, you know, Shaq's like, what, like 35 and he's got like a 10 year old little cousin or something like this. It's just, yeah.
01:07:15
Speaker
He looks good in this movie. He looks good, yeah.
01:07:20
Speaker
The armor, not so much. You can clearly tell that it's a rubber suit he's wearing. Like the helmet is like folding off at the sides. Yeah, and you can see that it's actually flapping in some scene. You know, little flaps on the side. They didn't even take the time to mold it to his face. And I noticed in the opening credits, they actually credited the guy who designed the suit. And I imagine the guy in the theater watching this and just shaking his, please don't tell people I made this piece of shit. Please don't tell people I made this.
01:07:50
Speaker
Because folks, first of all, we're not talking about Iron Man level armor here. Basically, that's what it is. It's just a suit of armor. It's such a weird suit of armor because his hands are completely unprotected.
01:08:06
Speaker
And it looks like he's got like chain mail. Yeah. Yeah. He's got like chain mail underneath and up and his lower half of his face is completely like, you know, you're going up against experimental weapons. Don't you think it might be good to have a full face mask? Yeah, just right. Exactly. But again, it's the thing that the movie is being sold on Shaquille O'Neal so we can't have this. Yeah. Yeah. Cover it up.
01:08:30
Speaker
are the only offensive weapons. Okay. He's got the thing. Cause there's, there's one part where he catches the guy that robs the old white couple and he shoots the bolt out of his wrist to put him up against the wall. And then he's got like this wire that pulls him up. And at one point, Annabelle Gish says, you know what? You're wearing a suit of armor that's 75 pounds. You know, that's when he tries to jump from one roof to another.
01:09:00
Speaker
you know, there was no offensive weapons and everything is in his hammer. You know, that's got like, you know, the sound of cannon. The sonic cannon thing and then it activates the electromagnet in his... Why would you have the hammer magnetizer? Because he turns it out and the hammer sticks to his chest.
01:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's like I said, folks, this is not, you know, we're not talking about Iron Man here. Also, I remember the scene at the end, the climax, when he tells Judd Nelson, he's like, oh, don't turn the red thing. And Judd Nelson's like, I better turn the red thing.
01:09:36
Speaker
Dumbest fucking climax ever. I mean, Judd Nelson, you know, he makes wildly coyote look like a genius. And this guy's supposed to be a military scientist. That's what kills me. He tells him, don't turn the red handle. And he looks at it and he says, well, you know, I got to turn the red handle. Really? You know what? See, I can buy Annabeth Gish as a military engineer.
01:09:59
Speaker
She, I cannot buy Shaq or Judd Nelson as military engineers, especially not the way they play these characters. Not the way they play Judd Nelson in another movie, because Judd Nelson can't play intelligent if he has to.
01:10:15
Speaker
This movie is not required to play intelligent. So he just goes the other way and he just says, well, I'm just gonna just be goofy, everything like that. Like in the scene where, okay, the guy that he's supposed to be working with, he kills her assistant.
01:10:31
Speaker
And that's it. We have no explanation of what happened after that. Didn't the guy ask, well, what happened to my assistant? Well, I dropped her down in the elevator shaft. And the elevator blows up with it. I'm like, what the hell was?
01:10:46
Speaker
What kind of building has, it reminds me of, you know, these seeds and the Simpsons when they make fun of it, when like, you know, a car crashes and all of a sudden it explodes. Yeah. And it's supposed to be a joke because that's not really what happens, but that's exactly what happens in the Simpsons here. Exactly what happens here. We have a character that
01:11:10
Speaker
We never find out what happens to her. Remember the scene where they're in the police car? Yeah, yeah. And then they go to investigate now why a police officer is taking civilians to instead of just opening up the door. Instead of saying, listen, get out. I got to go investigate. It said she goes. She takes them along with her. And then the street gang, led by Hill Harper, another excellent actor who apparently
01:11:39
Speaker
old somebody a favor, which is why he's in this movie. I'm guessing Quincy Jones just called in a lot of favors for this movie. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what I think it is. A lot of the actors that are on here, I mean, you know, the Black actors and Richard Roundtree and Hill Harper and, you know, there's a few others. That's what I think happened. He called them up and said, listen, I need a favor. And he said, okay.
01:12:07
Speaker
But after this, they're probably just like, you know what, you can lose my number now. This female, this female police officer who from the dialogue that the little bit of dialogue that, you know, we figured that they know each other from the old neighborhood. She gets caught in a crossfire and John Henry pulls her out of the police car and he tells Ray J to call for ambulance.
01:12:33
Speaker
But after that, she disappears. We never find out if she died and she recovered from her injuries. You know, nothing. No. So. It's like halfway through this movie, they realize, oh wait, Annabeth Gish can be, can play the female character. So we don't need her now. No, yeah, no, we don't need her. And that's what it felt like. It felt like she was like supposed to be like a backup female love interest slash best friend.
01:12:59
Speaker
Or even they could have used her as a motivation for why he becomes steal, because she gets killed by these weapons that he created. Right, yeah. They could have used that as a motivation, have a funeral scene, and he says, OK, well, I want to make sure this doesn't happen, because they killed my friend. And it was my weapons that did it, and I want to make sure that. Instead of just, because mind you, these guys are just robbing shit. They're just carrying on cranky and robbing shit.
01:13:27
Speaker
Yeah and and uh then Shaquille O'Neal and for all of his height the guy is seven feet tall he's simply not threatening at all. No that's the funny thing is like in the scene with like him and Judd Nelson are having that face off. Judd Nelson is more threatening. Exactly. Yeah Judd Nelson is more intimidating in that scene. The only time
01:13:51
Speaker
Jordan Nelson comes up to his neighbor. He looks up at him and Jordan Nelson has me more convinced he can kick his ass. The only, and ironically enough, the only time that Shaq comes off as intimidating is when he's carrying Annabeth Gish out of the VA hospital. That's the only time he's intimidating. He goes into
01:14:14
Speaker
you know, dynasties with Hill Harper and all that. And he's going in, he's trying to, he's trying to throw guys. And then looking at him like, man, if you don't take your big ass out of here, we just, you know, really, I mean, when you see a seven foot guy coming to you, you're supposed to stop it back up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're laughing at it.
01:14:36
Speaker
He's as threatening as Andre the Giant in Princess Bride. Princess Bride, exactly. And that's a problem when you have your main character, you want to present him as being tough and he can handle himself. I was actually scared he was going to get his ass kicked in here for a while. You know, I'm thinking out Kevin Hart, tiny little Kevin Hart would be more intimidating than Shaq.
01:15:08
Speaker
Yeah, because once he starts jumping up and down, you don't know which way this little guy's going. That's a major problem in this movie. When he had that cameo in 40 Year Old Virgin, when him and the other guy are in the, he's trying to get the discount.
01:15:29
Speaker
And he's like, he's like talking shit. You're like, he's more threat, Kevin Hart is more threatening in that one scene. Which is played for laughs than Shaq is in this entire movie where he's supposed to be playing it seriously. Yeah. Yeah. And, and like I said, that's a problem. But you have, I mean, just by the fact of his height, he can't intimidate anybody. Well, so that, that scene where they stumble upon the bank robbers and it's got the most,
01:15:58
Speaker
dumb ass foot chase sequence I've ever seen in a movie. You know what? I was actually kind of impressed he can run that fast. I mean, I'm just like watching, I'm like, this is like the slowest, most ridiculous chase scene I've ever seen. And he's jumping over, he's jumping over fences, he's climbing over fences. I said, wow.
01:16:20
Speaker
I mean because it's obviously him doing it because I mean they can't get anybody there. They couldn't find anyone who was tall enough to be a stunt double. The stunt double. Yeah so I give him credit for that because it's obvious he's doing his own stunts and he's doing them reasonably well. Something else like after he catches up to the guy he gets shot with one of these experimental weapons that can pierce a tank
01:16:43
Speaker
and he's fine. And he's fine. Yeah. We see him in the next scene. It's like, you know, the guy shoots up dead in the back. Bam. Oh shit. And he goes down. The cop who was barely injured ends up in the hospital. He gets shot point blank range in the back and he's fine. Yeah. I mean, again, things. Why does this guy even need armor now? That's what I'm wondering. Word, you know,
01:17:10
Speaker
Things happen in this movie because the script says it's supposed to happen. Not that they have any kind of logic whatsoever, because there is nothing logical about this movie. Where did they get the time and money to build the bat cave that opens up? I mean, OK, you can build that, but you can't build a decent weapon system into the armor.
01:17:36
Speaker
And the cops, these are like the dumbest cops ever, right? Because they're following right behind him. And it's like, gee, do you think maybe he went into that big mysterious junkyard with all the- Oh, they're Keystone cops. Yeah. And they've even got the helicopter flying around. It's like, oh, there's nothing to see here. Oh, nothing to see here. And Richard Roundtree, when he says before, oh, all they gonna see is just nothing but a big old junkyard.
01:18:03
Speaker
And the cop says the exact same thing. OK, what do you say? Nothing but a big old junkyard. I said, please. Are you kidding me? Really? So yeah. I'm watching it, and I'm just saying, you know what? I'm trying to find something good to say about this movie. OK, this is the only thing good I can say about this movie.
01:18:29
Speaker
This is a good movie to give to, cause it's a family friendly superhero movie. It is, it's very family friendly for all of the violence that's going on and everything like that. There's no, there's no like real violence. And I mean, there's no blood, you know, there's no bad language.
01:18:47
Speaker
You know. Well, even the cop even says, where did that son of a buck go? And I'm just like, cry. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a movie, you know. I'm wondering why this was rated PG-13 because it. It's very much a PG, you know, movie. But however, as sophisticated as kids are today, this was still even probably put them to sleep. I think so too, yeah. Especially now that they've got so many other options now. It's not like back in the day when, you know,
01:19:17
Speaker
Like you said it quite accurately, you know, where all when it came to superhero movies, you had to take what you got, because there wasn't that much out there to pay, you know how bad this movie is. This movie is so bad that if you that I do believe maybe
01:19:35
Speaker
Oh, you've been on, you know, the hub lately on HBO Max. They have Catwoman. They don't have this. Yes. Yeah. That is how bad this is. That was the first thing I did. I went to HBO Max because I figured, well, it's a DC movie. It's this movie was made by Warner Brothers.
01:19:55
Speaker
Chances are it's on HBO Max. They got Catwoman, they will put this on there. They will not put this on there. How bad do you have to be where they would rather have Catwoman rather than steal? That's how bad it is. Apparently, I don't even think this is available on DVD. It's on Prime Video.
01:20:19
Speaker
But it doesn't seem to be available. And I saw another review that some people did, cause I was doing some research and I saw another review that some people did on a comics Alliance. And they said that we couldn't find a DVD for it. We had to go back to the VHS copy. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is definitely a movie that like Warner brothers and even Shaquille O'Neal would prefer that you don't
01:20:45
Speaker
You know, you never hear him talk about it. There's a Shaq Fu remake video game. He's more proud of Shaq Fu than he is of this movie. Yeah. Yeah. This is just like a movie that Warner Brothers like kind of wishes that it would just like go away and nobody would talk about it. Yes. Yeah. Because it is so far removed from anything. And you know me, I always say, you know what? I always...
01:21:14
Speaker
tried to say, well, you know what? Nobody says I have to make a bad movie and, you know, they're sincere about what they're doing, which is the only good thing I can say about this movie, folks, is that, yeah, you see that there is some sincerity in this, but it's just so ineptly made. I mean,
01:21:36
Speaker
Okay. The main thing that it had going for it, which you pointed out, the main thing had going for it was the link to the Superman. Yes. Yeah. Michael. And they cut that off. So, I mean, you know, now you don't even have that. So what you have now is that you basically have a story about a vigilante giant in pseudo armor stomping around South central, you know?
01:22:02
Speaker
with a bunch of crazy goofy characters, doing a bunch of crazy goofy things. And yeah, and you know that's it. Folks, all I can say is that if you've seen Steel, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you've never seen Steel, this I am going to unequivocally
01:22:21
Speaker
give a stab to and say, do not watch this movie. Please don't watch, no. There are plenty of movies that I would tell you to watch for one reason or another. There is absolutely no reason at all to watch.
01:22:35
Speaker
50-some episodes now. And in that time, we've watched a lot of movies that a lot of people think are terrible, right? We've watched Batman and Robin. We've watched Swamp Thing. We've watched Nick Fury. A lot of movies that people have a lot of complaints about, and there's reason to have complaints about some of them. In that time, there are only two movies I can honestly say have no redeeming qualities. This one and The Spirit, the ones we've covered so far.
01:23:03
Speaker
And you know what? I'm going to go out on a limb here. If you gave me these two movies and you put a gun to my head and said, dirt, you have to watch one of them. I'd watch the spirit. I would too. Because at least the spirit is visually interesting. And at least you got Samuel L. Jackson chewing all the scenery. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I'd watch the spirit. Yeah. And bad as it is, but at least it's eye candy. I can look at it and I can say, OK, well, it's got the, you know,
01:23:30
Speaker
the interesting visuals going on, the special effects and Eva Mendez.
01:23:37
Speaker
And, you know, as you said, as well, you got it. And Scarlett Johansson. Yeah, exactly. You got all that going for you. And I mean, you know, yeah. And you have Samuel Jackson, like you said, chewing up the scenery. Also something else that. So at least there's that. Yeah. Something else that just thought of is he gets this job in the foundry, which is so weird, because even if he doesn't want to develop weapons,
01:24:04
Speaker
He's a genius engineer. Those skills are transferable to other things. Yeah, why is he working in the foundry? And you think maybe he's working in the foundry because that's where he's going to build the ark. But the foundry never comes up again. No, he builds it in the junkyard. He's only in the foundry. And then you've got these two hot young women just randomly walking around the foundry. And?
01:24:32
Speaker
Okay, they're dressed like they're on their way going out to the club. Yeah. But they got these people in hard hats when they hit, you know, why are you walking through a foundry in five inch stiletto heels? Walking through the foundry on their way to the club, I guess. Oh, this is the shortcut to the club. Maybe it's like the, do you remember that episode of The Simpsons when Homer's worried that Bart might be gay and he takes him to Steel Mill and it turns into a nightclub?
01:25:01
Speaker
Maybe that's where it is. Maybe that's the steel mill from that episode of Simpsons. I don't know. Maybe that's what's going on now. In this movie, there's so much illogical shit that happens. It would not surprise me. Now.
01:25:15
Speaker
What would have been more interesting and would have made more sense is that in the next scene where he says, okay, he wants to get a job and that we see Shaquille O'Neal in a suit and tie going to the same company that Judge Nelson goes to looking for a job. Well, you know what? I want to use my skills to bring joy to people. I want to design games, you know, for kids and stuff like that, which happened to both of them working there at the same time would have made for more interesting plot development than anything else that we can. Although it still would be ridiculously coincidental.
01:25:44
Speaker
It would be ridiculously coincidental, but like you said, it would make more sense for him to go put those skills he has. Why would you go work in a family? We just had a scene where your grandmother tells you that your whole bed is covered with job oil. And this is like the weirdest foundry ever because apparently they've got
01:26:06
Speaker
No, he can just take off work anytime he wants, because he spends all his time in the fucking junkyard. We only see one scene where he's in the fountain. Well, two. Two, yeah. One where we see him originally, and then one where he's on the phone to St. Louis. Yeah. And one of the chicks on her way to the club, she gives him, I guess that's his check. I don't know. Yeah. She gives him a piece of paper. We don't know what's on it.
01:26:29
Speaker
And then he just hops out of plane, goes to St. Louis, kidnaps Adebeth Gish, takes to the junk, and we never see or hear of the foundry ever again. We never see or hear of the foundry again, which again, like you said, you logically would think, okay, well, he's going to build a pseudo armor there. You know, he builds it in the junk yard.
01:26:48
Speaker
What an anvil. And also like Richard Rautry's character just comes out of nowhere as well. It's just like she, he just takes her to this junkyard. He's like, oh, by the way, here's my uncle Joe. He has this junkyard and we're going to build a suit of armor. Yeah. And he's got some computer part that he, I guess that's,
01:27:05
Speaker
the script way of telling us that he's a genius too, because he tells her, oh yeah, well this is a, you know, high max 86, 96 gigahertz processor and everything like that. And then he makes a sly reference, because she asked him, she said, well, where'd you get it from? He said, oh, well, things fall off the truck all the time here.
01:27:25
Speaker
You know, just make another, here, just make a list of what you need and you know, we'll find this stuff. So in other words, you're stealing this shit. That's really what you're doing. Which again, if we had seen that he was like a master thief, that was like stealing all these computer components and everything, that still would be more interesting than what we got in this movie. Yeah. Yeah. And also I remember the scene at the beginning when he, he lifts the concrete off of sparks and
01:27:55
Speaker
They linger on that scene for so long and Shaq's face, when he looks like he's trying to strain again, it looks like he's taking the biggest shit of all time. Yeah, again, it's another scene where he's this big guy. And you're supposed to, because in the comic book,
01:28:18
Speaker
John Henry Irons, you know, he's such a big guy that his strength is almost near superhuman anyway. Yeah. You know, but you don't get that in this thing that, because like you said, they linger so long on him, like trying to strain this piece of, what does a big piece of concrete? Okay, admittedly, but it's not, I don't know, there's something not right about that shot. Like you said, they just linger on it too long. Yeah. And he's not a good enough actor to convey
01:28:47
Speaker
um effort without strength yeah like he should look like he's having an effort to look at but like you said it looks like he's trying to you know he's having like this bowel movement that he's really which is which is kind of telling you what kind of movie you're going to get
01:29:03
Speaker
Right. Yeah. My theory is like that is him about to shit out this piece of shit movie. He's simply not that good of actor. He's not that good of actor. I mean, you see him today, he's doing these little 30 second commercials, which is to be, that's the extent of what he can do. Yeah. You know, which is why he never made any more movies. I think he made
01:29:27
Speaker
I think he made three movies. There was this, there was Kazam and there's, I'm pretty sure there was some other ones, but I'm having Lincoln out of now. Yeah. That was it. He made three movies and that was it. Cause yeah, he's simply not an actor. Fred Williamson, he's not, he's not even Jim Brown. No. He's been in a lot of movies in like small parts, but I think
01:29:53
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, he's done a lot of cameo stuff. But I think Kazam and Steele were the only ones that he was really supposed to be like, they were supposed to be like his star turning roles. But I mean, he couldn't even get like Hulk Hogan type of acting career out of his fame. Oh,
01:30:18
Speaker
Okay, no one he was good in that I saw a couple of years ago, there was a movie called Uncle Drew. But he played a basketball player. Oh, yeah. So it wasn't like a stretch for him. Yeah, it wasn't like a stretch. Now he was good in that one. Cause again, like I said, he was playing a basketball player. Yeah, Hulk Hogan wasn't an actor either, but he had something that Shaquille O'Neal doesn't have. First of all, Hulk Hogan knows how to be threatening.
01:30:48
Speaker
you know, he could do that. And I would, I would say that arguably based on, he had more of a fan base than he did. Well, also as wrestling is, there's a lot of acting involved in that too. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So Hulk Hogan had that like manic stare and intensity that would, that it, it can be fun to watch.
01:31:13
Speaker
Right. Jack doesn't even have that. Like he's got nothing other than, he's got really nothing at all to offer. Yeah. And like you said, I didn't think about it that way, but yeah, you're right. Professional wrestling is a certain level of acting that you've got to bring to the guy anyway.
01:31:29
Speaker
So yeah, so Hulk Hogan, and yeah, so, cause yeah, he's got nothing to fall back on here. And like I said, he tries to carry the movie with charm and charisma and sincerity and to a certain point it works. I mean, there are some scenes he has, you know, with the woman that plays the grandmother. That's kind of sweet and sincere.
01:31:57
Speaker
But I didn't feel, for me, it just felt too, how was it? It felt way too like, yeah, it felt like way too family sitcom level sincerity. And it's just like, and well, yeah, dialed up to 11. Yeah. Well, that's why I didn't, that's why it didn't work to me. It just like, I just found myself rolling my eyes at all those scenes.
01:32:19
Speaker
Well, as we both said early on, this is basically a TV movie. First of all, this should have never been put in theaters. This should have been put on Saturday morning. Yeah, I'm wondering where did that $16 million go? Listen, somebody put that shit in their pocket and walked away. They did. Somebody put a big chunk of that money in their pocket and they just walked away.
01:32:41
Speaker
because it's not on the screen no definitely not it's not i've seen movies made for half of that much that looked like it was made for two or three times yeah that much yeah you know it but it's not it is definitely not
01:32:58
Speaker
is definitely not in this movie. This is like one of those movies that they made it like, I mean, you know, somebody got a tax break. Yeah. That's what, yeah. That's what this movie feels like more than anything else. Somebody made it as a tax, as a tax dodge or the lawn and money, or, you know, yeah. Yeah. Somebody's got to have a look into Quincy Jones's finances, see what he was trying to hide. Yeah.
01:33:24
Speaker
But yeah, this, yeah. Because he, and even though this movie was filmed in Los Angeles, you don't really see a lot of recognizable locations and stuff like that. You see like a shot here and there of, you know, the skyline, stuff like that. But you know, like, usually when you film in like Los Angeles or New York or something, you see recognizable landmarks or something. And I've never seen Los Angeles so fucking empty.
01:33:51
Speaker
There's like nobody, there's like no extras in this movie. It's a curiously depopulated Los Angeles. It reminds me of, what's that movie? Oh, excuse me, The Warriors.
01:34:11
Speaker
You ever seen The Warriors? No, no. OK. Basically, you don't see anybody in the movie except for the cops and the gangs. Oh, OK. There's nobody else. New York is curiously depopulated. In the Avengers movie, and I'm talking about the one with Mrs. Peele and John Steepe. Oh, OK, yeah, yeah. London, you don't see anybody.
01:34:32
Speaker
You know, it's curiously the pop. Well, so the Burton Batman movies kind of especially the first one had kind of that where it's like because it was all it was all filmed on set. Like there's not a whole lot of extras in that movie either. It's a very populated Gotham City.
01:34:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you don't see a lot of people, you don't see street scenes. No, no. Like when people just walking around, which you usually do see and you have like these montage shots of people going to work and you know, hanging out in the park. Even in the, even in the foundry, right? I think like Shaq and those two women go to the club are the only ones who work in that foundry. You see a couple of guys in the background doing something. You don't know what they're doing, but they're like way, and they're way in the back.
01:35:14
Speaker
Yeah, you don't see it's a curiously depopulated Los Angeles. Like I said, somebody took a big chunk of that money and you know they walk with it. And also there's the scene too where Shaq breaks the phone. Right, he's on the payphone, he just breaks the damn payphone. For no reason at all. For no reason at all. And then also
01:35:41
Speaker
And then there's one guy on the street that Stockton looks at, one guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you just got a giant here who just breaks a public pay phone and it's just like, okay, whatever. Yeah. And also the military, right at the end, they come in and arrest Burke. I'm like, what? How is the military operating on US soil? They're not allowed to do that.
01:36:06
Speaker
What did they ever find it because? Yeah, they get them at the end, I think. Or they come in at the end, at least, and they arrest some people. They come in at the end, but I think he gets killed because Charles Napier makes reference to something like, well, they're still picking up his teeth. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:36:23
Speaker
And remember that because remember that he had because he fired the massive cannon that's on top of the home V. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And still turns around and it bounces off his back, which is the stupidest way of killing a villain I've ever seen in a movie except for Moonraker.
01:36:41
Speaker
Um, and it hits the thing and it drops on the roads and everything like that. Yeah. So he's dead. Yeah. But I still don't understand how the military is even operating on foreign soil like this. It just doesn't make any sense. And how, again, everybody is so fucking stupid in this movie because Charles Napier never thinks, gee, maybe the weapons developer who warned me about Burke,
01:37:06
Speaker
is the seven foot tall black weapons developer who warned me about Burke, maybe he's connected some way to the seven foot tall black guy in the suit of armor who just stopped Burke. Unless in this universe, you got a whole bunch of seven foot.
01:37:24
Speaker
fat guys in Auburn just stomping around South Central. This is the only way, okay, this is even better than what people always complain about. They always complain about, well, I don't see how Clark Kent can get away with just wearing just gray glasses and nobody knows he's Superman. I don't see how John Henry Irons gets away with nobody looking him up with, well, do you think he could be Steve?
01:37:54
Speaker
You don't know. You know, I don't see it. I mean, well, you think just because there are these two seven foot tall black guys that they got to be the same person to all seven guys. Yeah. Oh, that's racist. Oh, every said, oh, every. Oh,
01:38:23
Speaker
Oh, oh, I see where you're going with it. So every second we're told black man wearing all but it's gotta be.
01:38:32
Speaker
Oh, man. Also, I love when he's riding up the escalator that comes out of nowhere after he steps on the escalator. The escalator comes out of nowhere. He hands him back this stuff, that purse and everything like that. And you know, listen, on behalf of the city of Los Angeles,
01:38:52
Speaker
I like to apologize for this. You know, you take care of that. And he steps on an escalator that was not there. 10 seconds to go back, escalated with, and he just glides. Oh, I cracked up. I think what happened is, I imagine they're getting there and they're filming this scene. And they're like, OK, so this is the scene where he flies away. And someone else is like, oh, no, no, no, no. We don't have flying in the budget. It's like, oh, shit.
01:39:20
Speaker
bring in an escalator. Right. Because I actually rewound it. That escalator was not there in the previous scene. They said, well, we got to do something. And yet, well, he can't fly. And he steps back, and he just gluds. And they're looking at him, they're going. Even they don't know where the fucking escalator came from. The man's looking at his wife like, oh.
01:39:48
Speaker
Oh, man. It's good we can laugh about this. You got to laugh because otherwise you got to drink.
Future of the Steel Character
01:39:56
Speaker
It's 11 o'clock in the morning. It's too early for that for me. I mean, you know, listen.
01:40:02
Speaker
I can't listen. I will never watch this again. Oh God, you know what, while watching it, I had a good time. I did, I had a good time. And I'm glad you brought that up because I remember watching that so wait a minute, wait to escalate and come from, and I rewind this escalate was not there. 10 seconds ago.
01:40:24
Speaker
When I had the movie located, they had to find an escalator. And okay, well, you just step back and just go up. So when I when I started watching this movie last night, I had, I was off doing something in the kitchen or in the room or something. So I was watching, I was looking after Helena and I'm holding her.
01:40:43
Speaker
And as soon as the movie starts, I looked down at her and she's looking up at me. She's like, are you fucking serious? Even the kid knew. Yeah. And I'm telling her, I'm like, newborns, they don't really have any long-term memory. So I looked down at her. I'm like, I really hope this isn't your first long-term memory. Oh, no.
01:41:00
Speaker
And then a Cotonal comes in and she's, and you know, she starts to sit, watching part of it. And she's like, she's like, do you have subtitles for this? I'm like, no, and trust me, you don't want, you're glad. Yeah, you don't want to watch this. You don't want to watch this. Trust me. So that was Steel. And you know, it's, it's so disappointing that we haven't gotten anything else because Steel is a legitimately awesome character in the comics. Yes, he is. He is. He is one of my favorite characters.
01:41:30
Speaker
And I can only hope that sometime in the future, somebody will make a movie that will do this character justice. Well, you know, now that we got Superman and Lois, I think that would be the per... And you've got stuff opening up on the WB. I think now would be the perfect time to introduce Steel through Superman and Lois. Mm-hmm. Because, you know... We can only hope. We can only hope. I mean, I'd much rather see them do like a Steel series than whatever the Black Lightning spinoff is with... What's his name?
01:42:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really curious character to pick to do a spin-off. Yeah. Instead of like, I mean, one of the daughters or something. Yeah, yeah. Which is what you would think would be the natural, logical thing. That's kind of weird. It is, yeah. Or do like an outsider series and have Cress Williams continue on as Black Lightning and bring in, what's her name, who played Katana on Arrow.
01:42:30
Speaker
Yeah. That would be, that would be a better idea as well. Yeah, that definitely would be a better idea. There's half a dozen better ideas that I could think of then. Yeah. That one character. I, but then again, this is why I'm working TV. Yeah. But you know, hopefully we get something, you know, honestly,
Conclusion and Podcast Promotion
01:42:50
Speaker
if anybody from DC is listening to this or watching this on YouTube,
01:42:55
Speaker
Christopher Priest did a run out, did a steel solo series back in the 90s. And it's never been collected. It's not available like anywhere. So put that shit out in a, put out some trades with that thing.
01:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, because the character that we get in the comic book is almost like a Tony Stark type character. He builds the ironworks, and he becomes like the weaponsmith to the Justice League and stuff like that. So he is legitimately an awesome character with a tremendous amount of potential. If you put the time and money and decent writers and directors into it, yeah, a steel series could be fantastic.
01:43:37
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So that was Steel. I'm going to have to drink after I'm done with recording this. Folks, it's over. You know it. You will never hear me mention Steel again. Yeah. That's all. That's it. That's it. Done Steel. Done Steel. So if there's one thing that we take away from this, I will have to find a new bad movie to threaten. Oh, God. But I will not be threatening you with Steel anymore.
01:44:07
Speaker
So that means we got one final movie for Black Superhero Spotlight. Now, since this is your idea, since you came up with the list, do you want to pick the last movie or do you want me to pick it? You can pick it. Listen, you sat through steel. So I owe you. I owe you, man. All right. Well, I'm not going to be as cruel as you were. So I thought about doing Spawn as revenge, but I decided I'd be nice. I mean, you didn't give me Deadpool 2 for Christmas.
01:44:37
Speaker
I figured let's go with blade two. Ah, the best of the bunch. The best of the bunch, yeah. So I figured we're gonna end this month on a high note and go on with a good black superhero movie.
01:44:50
Speaker
Oh, one of the best, one of the best. Not only a good superhero movie, a good horror movie. Yes, yeah, yeah. Effectively blends horror and superheroics into a near perfect mix. And action too. Oh, one of the best action movies I've ever seen, yeah. And some of the best one-liners, right?
01:45:15
Speaker
entertaining as hell. It's funny as hell. It's a very funny movie. It is, yeah. It's a very funny movie.
01:45:22
Speaker
It comes damn close to being comedy, you know? It does, yeah, yeah. Especially when you got Ron Perlman riffing all the time in it. Ron Perlman, I'm about to say, yeah, I mean, Ron Perlman, yeah, he walks away with a lot of the best one-liners in this. Yeah, yeah. And just his whole attitude and demeanor. Yes, yeah. So join us next week. We'll conclude this month's spotlight on Black Superhero movies with Blade II.
01:45:48
Speaker
And in the meantime, head on over to Facebook, go to Look Up Superhero Cinephiles, our Facebook group. We got a Facebook page as well. Like those things, please, if you like the show, rate and review it on Apple Podcasts, on Stitcher, on YouTube. Subscribe to us on YouTube, because the more subscribers we get, the more people get to see this. And tell your friends. Tell your friends, yeah. If you like what we're doing, you know,
01:46:16
Speaker
Share it with, you know, your friends. Right, yeah. And superherosinifiles.com is our website, and we're on Twitter and Instagram at SuperCinemapod on both of those. And that does it for this week. Thanks so much for listening, for watching, and we'll catch you next time when we talk Blade 2. Okay, thank you for, thank you for suffering, folks. Yes. I love you. I appreciate you. I will not do this to you. God bless.
01:46:42
Speaker
You have been listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at SuperCinemapod. Join our Facebook group by searching for Superhero Cinephiles, where you can interact with us and other superhero fans. If you'd like to support the show, you can become a regular supporter at Patreon or make a one-time donation through PayPal, both of which can be found at our website, SuperheroCinephiles.com. If you buy or rent any movies through the Amazon links at our site, it helps support the show.
01:47:09
Speaker
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