133: Is ‘Black Adam’ a Must-See or a Must-Skip? Plus: Why has Star Wars stagnated at movie theaters?

Hey,

everybody. It’s Sunny. I just wanted to apologize. The the sound quality on my file is not great because hours before taping. We lost power at my house because of a storm.

And I had to record via the hotspot on my cell phone, which necessitated me going to an entirely different room, which is terribly echoey. And also not using my fancy microphone because I was afraid that it would drain the battery and the the computer would crash and we’d lose the whole who’s the whole thing? So I didn’t wanna do that. Again, apologies. There’s there’s a minor reduction in your normal standard of quality.

I hope you will still enjoy the episode.

Welcome back to Across the MovieEye presented by Bulwark Plus I am your host, Sunny Bunch, Culture Editor of The Bulwark. I’m joined as always by Alyssa Rosenberg. I’m the Washington Post computer suitorman of Reason Magazine. Alyssa Peter, how are you today? Swell.

I am happy to be talking about movies with friends.

First, not in controversy and controversy. What’s going on with both Star Wars movies? Yes, the TV shows are doing okay. Though outside of a bona fide hit that is the Mandalorian, things are kind of more hit and miss than the studio might like, particularly as evidence by Andor’s lackluster ratings and lack of online buzz. But it’s now been three years since a Star Wars has graced the big screen.

And meanwhile, the earliest we might see one is, hold on. I’m a check my astral charts here, the the mood. Twenty twenty five, That’s like six years, man. And if that’s that’s that’s frankly if any of the projects that are currently being discussed actually materialized, pretty big if given that none of the movies being tossed around as possibilities had, you know, actually been in Greenlight yet and some of them don’t have scripts, some of them don’t even have stories as we’ll see. We do get big announcements or leaks of big news every few months.

Right? For instance, news broke this weekend that Damon Lindeleff is working on a project. To be directed by somebody who hounded a couple of episodes of miss Marvel. Cool. Before that, there was big news that Taika Waititi is doing a Star Wars movie.

And the the latest update on that is there’s no script, and he hasn’t even quite cracked the story yet. And oh, look, don’t worry. We’ve got Patty Jenkins big x wing move. No. That’s not happening.

And then there are the trilogies from Ryan Johnson. And the Game of Thrones guys. Right? No. No.

Those aren’t happening. Honestly, the most likely project is the one that we know the least about, which is whatever Kevin Feige is working on with Lokey show runner Michael Wagren. And, frankly, I think that’s probably because Fige has the power to actually get things made at Disney, which brings us to one possible sticking point here, Kathleen Kennedy. Now a year ago, Chuck’s Matthew Melanie suggested that it was time to move on from the Kennedy era. And it’s hard to say anything has really improved on the theatrical front for Star Wars in the intervening twelve months.

His latest newsletter highlights myriad problems. Within Lucasfilm’s movie division, there’s indecision, there’s conflicts with creators, there are panic moves, and then there are flops that have been turnfield more indecision and more conflicts with the creators. Now ballet doesn’t come right out and restate his belief that Kennedy has to go, but it’s all kind of there in between the lines. Lucasfilm is paralyzed. By the difficulties they faced as he knows saying, quote, Kennedy, say, those who have spoken with her, seems to realize that the next installment needs to actually be good and different from the d plus stuff and also kind of the same.

And it needs to steer the franchise away from the fan service based on the original trilogy, but also be rooted in the things that people love about Star Wars. And did I mention it has to be good and quote, look, I don’t envy her. I have trouble coming up with new column ideas twice a week. And the stakes are a little bit lower for me and my loyal readers which are in the dozens I say. Peter, are we all being a bit too rough ON CATHERINE KENITY AND SHOULD FOLKS BE WORRIED ABOUT THE FUTURE OF STAR WARS MOVIES?

THAT’S TWO DIFFERENT QUESTIONS AND I THINK THE ANSWER TO THE FIRST ONE ARE WE BEING TOO ROUGH Kathleen Kennedy, is no. Is that she has not led the film the feature film part of this franchise well. And that’s crazy. Star Wars is in some sense that the template for all of modern Hollywood. It is the it is like and what everyone wants to be these days is Star Wars.

The problem is that Star Wars itself has not figured out how to be Star Wars. A series of feature films that just that everyone goes to see, that everyone talks about that are consistent huge blockbuster moneymaker. And I think the problem was that Star Wars was understood to be when Disney acquired it from Lucasfilm for four billion dollars, which, you know, they’ve made their money back. When that happened, Star Wars was understood to be too big to fail. And so Kathleen Kennedy was put in charge and she played it safe.

She played it way too safe. The the JJ Abrams with a sort of stop for Ryan Johnson in the middle films were were just far too unwilling to break the mold of what previous Star Wars movies had already done. They sort of follow it along, you know, that the Skywalker family, they’d sort of like and in some ways, okay. This was supposed to be a resolution, but but all they did was kind of repeat the same notes with a little bit of different casting and a little bit of updating. And reminding you that, oh, man, you really did like Harrison Ford as Han Solo.

And so she played it safe to not quite disastrous effect, but in a way that I think really undermined the strength of the series. She also as this as the feature films were being made, she made a lot of what looked to be bold decisions, but I think we’re actually reflective of indecision. And so in particular she fired the directors of the Han Solo movie, like, ten weeks into shooting to a halfway or two thirds of the way through production, which is way way into the development of a movie like this. It’s not like in the script stage. It’s not like, you know, sort of as they were thinking about it.

And that’s that’s just a crazy huge move that is inevitably going to undermine the final product. It’s very difficult to produce something good. Under those circumstances. But she also fired Garrett Edwards from Rogue One at the end brought in Tony Gilroy to do a bunch of reshoots. I think that movie still end up being the best of the bunch.

And then, you know, the last Jedi fired the director, the Jurassic Park director a Jurassic World director who was initially gonna be on it. And brought in JJ Abrams who’s just a few months to spare to sort of retool the whole thing, completely rebuild it from the ground up, and there are indications that even as the movie was shooting, they didn’t really know what the final product was going to be, and the final product was a disaster. It was just a truly awful movie that underperformed as well and left fans with, I think, you know, understandably a kind of bad taste in the mouth. So She doesn’t know what it is that she wants Star Wars to be. She doesn’t have a vision there.

And that’s why you keep seeing all these big name, you know, creatives being signed up. It’s because she’s looking for someone to deliver that vision to her. Except every time someone tries to do that, she fires them and doesn’t let them actually deliver on that vision. And that’s just to me seems like it’s really irresponsible IP management just from like a corporate perspective. You have what is arguably the single most valuable franchise in modern Hollywood history and they are not making movies with it and not making money off of it they’re making some pretty good TV shows, maybe even one very good TV show.

I think Andor is excellent. And I should compliment Kathleen Kennedy on her management of the Disney plus series because I think the worst of them have still been watchable and Andor is truly exceptional and in some ways like the kind of thing that I’ve wanted from Star Wars for a long time, what’s notable about Disney plus series is their lower stakes, and the visions are somewhat different from series to series. And I think that’s ultimately what she needs to do. Is not try to have one singular defining vision of what Star Wars is, but allow a bunch of different ideas to come to fruition. And just sort of say, look, this is in the hands the creators, we’re gonna empower them.

Some of them will present, you know, sort of different tones, different ideas. Sometimes it’ll be funnier, sometimes it’ll be darker. Sometimes it’ll be more of an homage to kind of classic westerns, whatever it is, but she doesn’t seem to be willing to let anybody actually come in and put their stamp on star Wars. And so instead, what we’ve gotten is a a sort of fan servicing muddle that doesn’t please anyone.

Well, isn’t she? She’s kind of a victim of her own success here, right, Alyssa? Because I mean, let’s let’s be clear.

The the

Force Awakens huge hit. Gross near I I I two billion dollars. Right? Everyone was like, oh my god. This is this is, you know, this is a huge win for Disney.

It’s a huge win for Lucasfilm. Everyone thinks that this is going great. And then, Rogue One, as Peter mentioned, she, you know, fires Garrett then words after the film’s completed. She brings in Tony Gilroy. For the reshoots, and that movie also turns out to be not only a huge hit, but also a critical success as well.

I mean, it it worked. You know, maybe maybe the maybe the issue here is that she just got kind of lucky with those at the beginning. Right? It’s

possible, but I wanted to go back to something you said in your introduction to this segment, which is that you used to deliver something that is what people like about Star Wars. And I think part of the problem here has been a disagreement about what it is that people like about Star Wars. And, you know, long term listeners of this podcast know that I am like true Star Wars Dork in this community. Like, you know, I still have copies of Michael Stackpole’s Rogue One novels on a shelf in my office. Next to the desk where I am recording this.

I, you know, I wrote Star Wars fan fiction back in the day. I was really, really, really into not just the original movie and the prequel trilogy, but the sort of, you know, kind of sprawling expanded universe canon that exists did around Star Wars. And I think Kathleen Kennedy and Disney have sort of on the big screen at least have assumed that what people liked about Star Wars was sort of the Jedi and specifically like the Skywalker Saga as they’ve described it. And you know, as a longtime Star Wars Dark as the sort of person who should have been lining up should just, like, give Kathleen Kennedy all my money, that’s totally wrong. Right?

Like, what I have always liked what I always liked about Star Wars was the sense of sort of infinitely unfolding possibility and the complexity of the universe. You know, I, you know, I’ve read some of the expanded universe stuff that followed the, you know, continued adventures of Loop Skywalker. Like, there there’s a really hilarious novel that involves Han Solo kidnapping Princess Leia, after she’s, like, about to make a political marriage to, you know, the republic, the resources and ease, like, hunt down the last remnants of the empire. And, like, It includes, like, the like, a romantic comedy style, like, bad cooking scene. You know, there is, like, there’s an incredibly weird novel where, like, Luke Skywalker ends up, like, land crash landing on a novel with a bunch of force sensitive witches and, like, you know, the sex stuff gets really weird.

Like, these, you know, these books are strange. But to me, the best ones were the ones that were spun off into additional parts of the story. Right? That said, you know, you’ve got this elite squadron of fighter pilots. What would it be like to reconstitute that and make them sort of a combination of, you know, hotshot fighter jocks, but also like commandos and guys.

And I think in the television shows, Kennedy and Lucasfilm have lean towards that sort of fan of. Right? I mean, the Mandalorian is, you know, the one of those shows that I’ve enjoyed. The most in part because it’s like, yes. Let’s, you know, let’s spin off beyond this existing story into, you know, something else that existed in a universe that wasn’t triggering.

And just, you know, set all the other stuff largely aside for the moment. I I think it is a sign of how dissolutioned a, you know, old school dork like me is, like, acting impress, I have not watched Andor. I know I probably should. I didn’t watch the book of Boba Fett. You know, I think that in the movies at least, you know, even with like Solo or Rogue One, you know, there was still that, like, we need you know, this needs to be every character needs to be a variant of sort of the original Trio.

Right? It’s like, you need to have a young Jedi, you need to have, like, someone who isn’t really sure they wanna be involved in or the rebellion who gets involved in the rebellion, or you need somebody, like, you know, noble and principled and committed. And that has just been a total of missed for me. And so, you know, what is it that people like about Star Wars?

I think

in TV, they

have

a sense of it. And on the feature film side, they they just guessed wrong.

Well, I I I do I wanna push back on that slightly because I do think that this kind of gets to the heart of a a felony is discussing in his newsletter, right, which is that you No, Francaissa. I I I love you and I consider, you know, myself to be a bit of a Star Wars store too. But Like, the the the people that you need to appeal to to get to pay twenty dollars to go see a movie in a theater, frankly, there aren’t enough Star Wars expanded universe, novel lovers out there for that to work financially. Right? So you need you need the folks who recognize Star Wars as the tale of Jedi and laser swords and space magic.

And, like, specifically, the skywalkers. And I, you know, I don’t know if that just means that the world of movies for these projects are are just kind of inherently limited. Which would be I mean, look, that’s a problem. That’s a problem just for Disney as a business matter, but also Star Wars just creatively. Yeah.

I

mean, I guess the thing that you could have done that I think the extended universe does fairly well is treat the original trio as important secondary. Characters. Right? Like and that’s what a lot of the expanded universe stuff that’s not explicitly about them does. Right?

You like, you have a new generation of Jedi, like, coming up in the world. And that, like, to me, that was one of the stranger things that the sequel trilogy did was, like, blow everything up with the Jedi and really go back to the beginning as opposed to having Luke Skywalker, like, you could do a series that’s like him traveling around the universe looking for, like, four sensitive individuals and essentially you’re doing like an x men show with him as Professor X. Right? You could do like a political, you know, you could do political spy subplots. With Luca and Leia where you bring in other characters, like develop fan favorites, like, you know, they could have The weird the big mistake isn’t necessarily keeping those characters around.

It’s skipping like thirty years into the future undoing everything that happens in the original trilogy so you can have a hard reset. Yeah. I

mean, I think if you went back to two thousand five, then you said, that the biggest franchise in movies over the twenty tens is gonna be built on the characters of Thor, Iron Man, but also Ant Man and Guardians of the Galaxy. And it, like, Marvel is gonna dig way deep into the, you know, Cubic’s canon of like weirdo characters that no one has ever heard of, people would have just said no, people like X Men and Spider Man. And maybe the fantastic four, but there’s not, you know, multiple billion dollar franchises out there to be drawn from, I don’t know, wanda, like, wanda Maxim off, like, a nine episode show and then, like, like, the villain and I’m like, people would have just said that’s crazy. And the fact is that Star Wars just hasn’t been able to develop the certain their deeper well of of stories and has been unwilling to do so in feature film format. And on TV, they’ve done a much better job with that.

The cartoons also, which I haven’t mentioned, the Dave Felloni cartoons, have done a very good job of that and even introduced and built new characters. Who are fan favorites now. Yeah. And I

mean, you could have used the original trilogy like the way Marvel used Iron Man once that character was built up as a bridge to the next thing. And instead I mean, I also think it’s, like, in addition to sort of not using that appropriately, the decision to sort of hit the hard reset meant that everything the characters went through ended up being for naught. Right? Like, you you invalidate the victories and the work of episodes four through six. And it I mean, it’s, like, weirdly, emotionally and narratively anti climatic.

Yeah. That that all makes sense. Alright. So what do we think? Is a is the frozen in carbonite state of the Star Wars film slate?

A controversy or an controversy? Alyssa. Hell

yeah. It’s a controversy. Peter.

It’s a conferencing. It’s IP. What’s the word I’m looking for? Mailpractice. Mailpractice.

Yes. That’s exactly the right word. It is IP malpractice. They’re supposed to be fracking this thing. They’re supposed to be making a billion dollars a year, and they’re just not even making movies at all.

That’s the

that’s that’s both correct and the saddest thing I’ve ever heard about the state of the film industry. Frack that IP. Get it. Get it. Get it.

It is a controversy. I mean, I I I don’t quite understand what what is going on exactly. And I do think that I I I think that the way that Melanie puts it in his newsletter that there there’s a a a fear that has kind of frozen everybody. Feels about right. Secondary controversy or controversy is a controversy or controversy that Alyssa hasn’t started watching and or Peter?

Well, I I I think that Elsa has a lot going on. I will just say it’ll be a controversy if if six months from now she still hasn’t watched it. Alyssa,

is it a controversy or an controversy? It’s

a controversy that Kathleen Kennedy has so burned me out on what should have been like the thing that I embarrass myself by freaking out over. Yeah. It’s controversial. I should watch it. It’s

a non traversy. It’s okay to skip things. That’s my that’s my It’s

not okay to skip this and or is excellent. One thing you

won’t wanna skip is this week’s bonus episode where we’re gonna be recast the first season of Game of Thrones spin off House of the Dragon, which wrapped up Sunday evening. Very exciting. Fun to talk about. Alright. Now on to the main event.

Black Adam, a k a murder Superman. It’s Dwayne the Rock Johnson, and his first foray into the wild world, a big budget comic book filmmaking. Johnson Stars as the titular Adam. Though for most of the movie, he goes by his given name, you know, five five or six millennia ago or whatever. Teth Adam, which I thought for the first half or so hope the movie was actually death with a d Adam.

I thought he was death Adam. And I was like, I have excellent sense of me because he spends most of this movie just killing people. Just just murdering them on screen in various brutal ways. Don’t worry though, they were all bad. We could call it a true lies theory of on screen killing.

Right? When they’re all bad guys, doesn’t really matter if you kill them. The guys, Adam, is after in this movie, their mercenaries who have taken over the fictional Middle Eastern Nation of conduct. So in order to extract the precious resource known as ethereum, the unobtainium of the DC universe, He is the promised champion. He’s returned after five thousand years to free his nation’s people from oppression.

Just as he freed them from an evil king, all those will anyway go. But he is a threat to global stability, hence the decision made by Amanda Waller, who’s played by Viola Davis, to deploy the Justice Society to capture Black Adam. Note, not the Justice League, but the Justice Society that’s Hawk Man is played by Aldis Hodge, doctor Fate played by Pierce Brosnan, Adam Smasher, played by Noah Centennial, and cyclone, it was played by quintessus Swinwell. The movie leaves us with many lingering questions like, who are these people? What are their powers exactly?

Is Hot Man just a guy with wings? Or is he an actual alien? Like he is sometimes in the comic books? Why are they at the beck and call of the lady who runs the suicide squad? I thought this was actually gonna be a suicide squad mission.

Now first, then, oh, nope, just society. Sure. Whatever. Speaking of global stability and the immorality of defending injustice, so as not to upset the international Applecart, the politics of this movie are weirdly incoherent in kind of fascinating way. On the one hand, it is couched as a pretty straightforward, progressive, anti imperialist picture.

No character actually says, hey, stop tone policing Black Adam and his murderous rage when Hockman, you know, says to to death Adam, you gotta stop killing people so they can face justice. Right? But you could imagine somebody saying it in this movie. It’s the sort of movie where that sort of thing would be said. And yet, Mike, Adam, is let’s be honest, series.

Basically, a neofoundry, right, at least in his initial form. Right? He’s a moderate rebel who’s armed by a superpower, the wizards, right, the old wizards of Islam. With the intent of instituting regime change. So as to improve the human rights of an oppressed people, the people of conduct, look, all that said, all my joking, all my all my kidding around.

I mostly enjoyed this movie’s brand of gleeful brutality. It’s the closest DC has gotten to making a Zach Snyder movie since he left midway through the production of justice league, from the slow motion to the nearly r rated violence to the dark humor on the fringes, to the ideological preoccupation with how humanity would react to gods being found in our midst. It was like old times again in the DC EU. Alyssa, what did you make of murder Superman? I’m sorry.

I mean, black Adam. What did you make of black Adam? You mean

anti colonial murder Superman?

Anti lonial murder Superman. This is

a dumb bad looking movie, which is a say I will say it was interesting to me to see it as a sociological experience because I, you know, I frequently see movies at a specific theater in DC on, like, Friday afternoons because with two kids, it can be hard to get out for screenings. And the theater that I go to, it’s like it’s Usually, it’s like me and one or two other people in this theater. And the screening was packed noon on a Friday. And the couple sitting next to me sort of during the long, like, rockless prequel to the movie leaned over to me and just said, this is the rock movie. Right?

Like, they were very concerned that they had walked into the wrong movie. And clearly, all they knew about the movie was that it had the rock in it, and that’s what they were there for. I think this movie is an interesting testament to Dwayne Johnson’s Star Power, even in a movie that, like, does not make terribly good use of his

talents. I

find and the sort of anticholonial superhero movie is really interesting. And I imagine we’ll get a better version of this in Wakanda forever or come fall. But, I mean, it’s very interesting to have a movie that has as text like, hey, Western superpowers just haven’t done anything for us. We’re gonna have a hero of our own. He is gonna operate, buy our values, not buy those that people are trying to impose on us from outside.

You know, we have been colonized, and we’re gonna throw that off by force. But at the same time, it’s really fascinating that the culinary answers are like random mercenaries who somehow operate

like checkpoints

and a huge mining operation. Like, they’re sort of state level actors, but they’re not a state. Okay.

Alyssa let me give you a complete history of the inter gang in DC comics. Let’s I’m gonna start with No. It’s there is a whole Like, that I’ve I’ve actually seen this argument play out online where, like, comics nerds are, like, actually, the intergang has been around for decades in DC comics. And like, that’s fine. But in the movie, they’re not the thing they are in the comics.

If this is

a movie that is like, if there was a criminal indicate that controlled a, like, a resource a vital resource rich state. Like, what are the chances that Amanda Waller wouldn’t have, like, could that place or had the suicide squad, you know, infiltrate intergang, or that, like, some league of nations wouldn’t have attempted to boot them out. Right? Like, this is a movie about colonialism. There’s no idea how colonialism actually works in part because it’s unwilling

to have

the colonist be like a state actor. Right? And so it’s this movie is a perfect example of the extent to which you, like, you cannot do politics if you want to sell superhero movies in a, you know, in a like, global movie environment because, you know, talking about, like, having actual colonizers in your movie is sort of politically impossible thing to do. Black Panther has been able to do it by sort of flipping the, you know, the colonization script on its head. Right?

Like, Wakanda is the only nation that, you know, African nation that was never colonized and, you know, the, like, sort of, the tension in the original Black Panther movie is about whether, you know, Wakanda’s isolationism has doomed the diaspora. And that’s a really, like, that’s a really interesting thought experiment, but it’s also one that, like, doesn’t really implicate the rest of the world. Right? Like, they’re you know, it’s not like T’Challa is off like negotiating with Belgium for reparations. But a movie like this

is

like it wants to be political but not at the cost of saying anything about politics. And also it’s just like it looks terrible. It just it looks like such complete garbage. It’s an awful looking movie. Like Johnson is does, like,

like, ten

percent of what he’s capable of in this movie, certainly with, like, settling the humor and everything else. In part, because it’s a script that, like, you know, makes him basically stupid. Right? It’s just like, I have arrived in modernity. Now, I need to be told how to do things by like a hyper thirteen year old.

Yeah. I thought this movie was dumb and bad, but sort of interestingly dumb and bad in terms of what it says about the extent to which superhero movies can be about politics at all. Yeah.

I mean, I I it’s interesting. And, Peter, I wanna get your take on this as well because the the the movie that this reminded me most of political at least, was the first Iron Man film, which has this weird has this weird tension of like, oh, he’s he’s a he’s an international arms dealer, Tony Stark, is. But he’s only trying to sell weapons to the good guys. But the villain is trying to sell them to the bad guys, so he’s just not gonna sell them anyone, and he’s now gonna be the superpower in the like a beep. Well, it’s like it’s this weird it’s this weird thing.

And I I don’t It’s both incoherent and kind of amusing as you watch them stumble their way through all of the problems. Peter, you hated

this movie. I did not like it. I I actually did hate it, but I don’t think it’s very good. It’s it’s an incredibly mediocre film. And even more than that, it’s a disappointing movie for a bunch of reasons.

So I I agree with both of you that the politics here are deeply confused. But I also think what’s what’s just as confused is the film’s attempt to critique the superhero industrial complex. And there is this sense that the movie, at least, did this in the middle stretch where you first have the Justice Society confronting Black Adam or Teth Adam, as he’s called at that time. The the movie is like, hey, wait, these the superheroes that you are primed to think of as the good guys because even if you don’t really know who Doctor Fade and Ockman are, You probably heard of them. Right?

You kinda know they’re good guys for the most part in the comics, and they’re called the Justice Society. First of all, Justice is good. And second of all, that sounds a lot like the Justice League, and you know the Justice League, bunch of good guys. And yet, they show up and they are clearly not agents of good in the Black Adam movie where Black Adam is the good guy. And they are trying to stop him from doing the thing that that the people of of the conder I believe it is.

Of Condor want him to do and the thing that he wants to do which is murder a bunch of intergang dudes because they’re just there to promote what is it global stability And so this movie does, like, sort of gesture at a genuinely interesting critique of superheroes, not just of this isn’t I mean, this is both this is political, but it’s a like, it kind of says that superheroes as we conceive of them are actually just agents of, like, the existing regime of the status quo who don’t care about helping people, what they care about is just keeping things going, you’d as they are. And that’s in some ways, like, you can extend that to a critique of superhero movies, which don’t try to do anything to to original. But of course, Black Adam just ends up participating in that, like, actually, let’s not do anything to original. It allows the justice society to basically become the good guys at the end. In ways that don’t really add up or make all that much sense, it’s just sort of convenient because they all need to team up to fight the true bad guy.

Who’s like some random demonhorn CG character who just sorta appears in the third act and is look like looks completely awful. And so The movie doesn’t just waste an opportunity to offer us a a a political theory of superhero movies and waste an opportunity to critique other superhero films and, you know, sort of leaves that sort of thing to, like, it shows like Amazons to boys. And so I you know, it’s just it’s just a waste of actual of some actually good ideas because I think there is probably space in the world of superhero movies at this point. We’re now all so familiar with them. To critique the those heroes.

I think there’s I also think it’s a waste of some of the supporting characters. If you know DC comics, Hawkman and Doctor Fate are really interesting characters who just don’t get very much that’s to do here. Now believe me, end up getting another Doctor Fate down the line just because how this one goes. But like these characters have deep, rich, weird histories, this movie totally fails to mind. It just sort of treats them treats both of those characters as well as cyclone and Adam Spencer effectively is like, well, here’s a set of powers.

I mean, like, when they introduce cyclone in particular, It’s just it’s like a thirty second voice over monologue by someone else who’s explaining that she’s really smart and can, like, make cyclones happen. And it’s all she does in the movie. There’s no characterization whatsoever. You have no idea what this person’s like or anything about them. And so it’s a waste of interesting characters and it’s Also, as Alyssa said, it’s a real waste of Dwayne Johnson who can, at his best, be incredibly funny, incredibly charming.

Like, he is a he is a great leading man who is just reduced to being dour and glum and kind of kind of boring in this movie Once he finally shows up, it takes twenty minutes for Dwayne Johnson to show up in the Dwayne Johnson movie. And then the one thing that he like, that we’re supposed to relate to him because at the end is because, like, actually, he’s a sad dad. It’s just it’s it’s really it’s not a very good movie. And it looks like the whole thing looks like it was just sort of rendered through a really crappy Instagram filter after they did the bad c g. I’m pretty like, on this show, I’m the one who defends Bad CG on television.

But on when it’s in a two hundred million dollar movie, it just shouldn’t look this bad. This movie looked as bad or worse than than like anything that anybody has complained about on House of Cards or She Hulk. But this is a movie that costs more than a million dollars a minute. Shouldn’t happen. It’s it’s a mess.

I also here like, I’ll just leave you guys with a question. Does anybody have any sense of why this was delayed from August to October? I don’t think it was because they were finishing shots or something like that. Or or reediting it. And like it seems like this movie would have done better if they’d gone ahead and released it into that big dead release window in August and September.

And just let it play through those months. But, like, this this would have been a a fun dumb summer, like end of summer film.

My understanding is that they were still working on CG. Like, there there’s been a big CG pile up with all the the movies that were coming out, the the pandemic, you know, requiring a lot of work from home. So that might be that might also explain why you don’t like the CD. I I I have to disagree with basically all of that. Everything that you said either because I think I I I I think that I think why I love it.

I mean, the movie the movie is very explicitly working as a critique of other super care of movies. I mean, like, to the point that it’s almost it’s almost like, you know, beating the dead horse with, like, seventeen sticks at the same time. I mean, I don’t know how many times we have to be told, like, your conception of how superheroes work is wrong in this circumstance because you know, you don’t understand what it’s like to be a powerless colonial person. And that’s what’s actually the the the most interesting thing about this movie is the the way it it again, the the the the thing that is great about the DC movies and the thing that everybody hates except for me apparently, is that they all have the same idea, which is basically how would people react to being confronted with super powered individuals. And I don’t think I don’t think that the response that this movie has to that question is wrong or uninteresting.

And I think they do a pretty good job exploring it. I mean, I like, maybe too much of a job exploring it, frankly. I mean, there’s a whole scene in this movie where Hot Man has to be like, you can’t kill the guys who were going after because you have to let them live long enough so we can torture them for information. Like, they almost literally say that. I think they I think the phrase they use is so we can break his mind.

But, like, I don’t know I don’t know what else how else we’re supposed to to to read that, which again is like a very interesting, very subtle little thing that they’re

doing. I don’t think it’s that subtle. Well,

whatever. I mean, but it but at the very least, it’s interesting. And it, like, is it is doing exactly what you’re you’re talking about. It is interrogating the idea of these superhero movies and, like, what what the actual purpose of all of these no kill rules really is. It’s to either maintain the status quo at the behest of somebody like Manda Waller, or it’s to torture them for information.

I like, that that’s I I mean, again, I think it’s I think it’s an interesting idea. And I also think that the whole thing with the, you know, the idea of superheroes being used to perpetuate global stability at the cost of like the horrible treatment of innocent civilians is like super interesting and like, I don’t know. It’s not it could be read very easily as a critique of, say, realism and people who are like, look, you gotta let rush to have Ukraine. Because otherwise, global war. We don’t want that.

We don’t want nuclear war. So the the Ukrainians have to be. Sacrifice on the altar of stability. I’m I’m frankly surprised that the two of you didn’t like this movie more. I mean, I

wanted I wanted to like it anti colonial murder Superman, like, should be a movie that I like a lot. I think that I had trouble getting over sort of how thin the writing and characterization were, how bad it looked. And the,

you know, this

would have been I

think Peter is right that it

would have been super interesting to see a group of characters that we had seen carry out this mission in favor of, you know, superheroes only intervene in, like, the western world. They only intervene in certain ways. Like, mean, you’ve got Hawkman as, like I mean, and I love Aldous Hodge as an actor. Like, I think I adore him, and it’s a bummer to see him wasted here at Dido Pierce Brosnan. Like, this is a guy who’s living on, like, any like, this Louis couture style estate in Louisiana.

Right? Like, you could build up a bunch of interesting stuff about the extent to which these characters are upholding an order that, you know, to a certain extent, they have a tenuous position in. Right? Like, I mean, it’s interesting to have you know, a, like, you have this sort of wealthy super powered black band. You have like a very explicitly Jewish superhero.

You have a young black woman. Right? Like, it would be a really interesting story. It would be really interesting if this was like the second movie in a trilogy where like, you’d seen them do their thing. They got brought up against this character who sort of, you know, challenged their sense of mission and their norms.

And then everyone sort of walked away from it. Somewhat changed and then you had that stinger with, you know, Superman showing up shocked black Adam that suggested that you were gonna have some sort of larger upheaval in the superhero universe. But because DC has gotten so atomized, you know, they didn’t do the necessary purposatory work to set up that sort of conflict. Or to show us like how it would play out. And that’s kind of a bummer.

Right? Like, that is the downside to, you know, kinda letting go of strict continuity. Is that you sacrifice some of those, you know, intellectual and political and character building moments. I

definitely agree that this movie was atomized. Boom.

Boom. Boom. Alright. So what do we think? Thumbs up or thumbs down on black listen.

Thumbs down. Theater. Thumbs down, but I’m

glad that DC is making movies that Sunny Bunch likes.

It’s a thumbs up. The critics are all everyone is wrong about this movie except me and the audiences. I’m a man of the people. I love when pressers are murdered by a giant hulking murder superman who are also called Death Adam. I think that’s a I think that’s a good movie right there.

Pro Death Adam. Alright. That isn’t for this week’s show. Make sure to swing by a t m a dot work dot com for our bonus episode on Friday. Make sure to tell your friends.

Strong recommendation from a friend is basically the only way to podcast audiences. If we don’t grow, we will die. Like all of the people killed by Black Adam. If you did not love today’s episode, please complain to me on Twitter, ask for a bunch. I’m gonna to that it is the best show in your podcast feed.

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guys next week.