In short
The episode is a “Big Picture” discussion of two new movies and the surrounding industry news. They start with movie news: A24’s Jesse Eisenberg writer-director musical starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti (coming this fall), and the uncertain release prospects for a big-budget film about Sam Altman/AI that reportedly lacks a distributor (Netflix/A24/Focus passed; Mubi/Neon possibly pursuing). They also debate optics after Google invested $75M into A24 for AI filmmaking tools. They touch other trailers and releases: a Sense and Sensibility reboot (Georgia Oakley directing; Daisy Edgar Jones, George Mackay, Katrina Balfe), an Illumination animated alien movie starring Timothy Chalamet and Selena Gomez (April 2027), and a Blair Witch reboot set for 2027.
Main focus
Supergirl (directed by Craig Gillespie). Guests argue it’s a tropey, vague, technically messy James Gunn DCU “bench-building” entry that fails to hook viewers; they cite weak villain/side-character development, unclear geography, and a standout Superman scene. They also discuss Jackass: Best and Last as the final film in the franchise.
Guests
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins host; Chris Ryan is mentioned as joining for Jackass discussion.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOCarvana Experience
1:20 to 1:50
Discussion on the host's seamless experience selling a car.
“That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.”
Jesse Eisenberg's New Film
1:50 to 4:30
Exploration of Jesse Eisenberg's upcoming movie and its similarities to pop culture.
“And so a lot of news has been transpiring.”
Status of a Controversial Film
4:30 to 8:01
Analysis of the challenges facing a film about Sam Altman and its potential distributors.
“That's exciting for you in the mountains.”
AI in Filmmaking
8:01 to 11:43
Discussion on the implications of AI investment in A24 and the film industry.
“But it does also seem like such an opportunity for some upstart or someone.”
Sense and Sensibility Adaptation
11:43 to 14:01
Debate over the new adaptation of 'Sense and Sensibility' and its comparison to the 1995 version.
“In addition to the fact that it's a director who we really like, and so we really want to see the movie.”
Comfort Films and Adaptations
14:01 to 14:55
The hosts discuss their comfort films and adaptations, particularly focusing on 'Sense and Sensibility'.
“I put it on when we had to stay up until, had to.”
New Animated Film and Celebrity Cast
14:55 to 16:18
Discussion shifts to an upcoming animated film starring Timothy Chalamet and Selena Gomez, along with thoughts on cast dynamics.
“This new version is directed by Georgia Oakley.”
Awards Season Predictions
16:18 to 18:04
The hosts predict potential nominees for the upcoming awards season, discussing various actors and films.
“It's coming in April 2027, which is very soon.”
Tom Cruise's Digger and Marketing Strategies
18:04 to 20:08
A conversation about Tom Cruise's upcoming film 'Digger' and the marketing strategies surrounding it.
“Michael Mann noted how excited he is about the film Digger online.”
The Blair Witch Reboot
20:08 to 24:38
The hosts discuss the upcoming Blair Witch reboot, its implications, and the challenges it may face.
“And yeah, I lit up as soon as he was on the screen because he has a movie star to us.”
Show all 32 chapters
The State of Superhero Movies
24:38 to 28:00
A deep dive into the state of superhero movies, reflecting on their cultural significance and future.
“Speaking of chemical associations, would you like to talk about Supergirl?”
Fandomification and Comic Book Movies
28:00 to 29:06
Explore the impact of fandom on the perception and quality of comic book movies.
“the throttle that that has on the way we consume and talk about entertainment.”
Introducing Supergirl and Its Context
29:06 to 31:11
An overview of the film 'Supergirl' and how it fits into the DC Universe.
“to some of the grand eloquent theorizing around it.”
Tropes and Formulaic Structure in Supergirl
31:11 to 32:33
Critique of the film's reliance on clichéd storytelling and lack of depth.
“Well, I mean, I think there are two problems.”
Technical and Creative Failings
32:33 to 34:29
Discussion on the poor technical execution and creative choices in 'Supergirl'.
“So I would say it's both creatively and technically empty.”
Character Development and World Building
34:29 to 35:49
Analysis of character development and world-building flaws in the film.
“Superman is like a hyper sincere Boy Scout.”
Plot Overview and Revenge Motif
35:49 to 37:08
Summary of the film's plot and the revenge theme involving Supergirl and Ruthie.
“It was one part press screening, one part fan screening.”
Performance Insights and Casting Choices
37:08 to 39:51
Insights into the performance of Millie Alcock as Supergirl and casting implications.
“But you went to the bathroom during the five minutes of the film when David Coren Sweat meets Supergirl and shows up as Superman.”
Directorial Choices and Representation
39:51 to 42:00
Examination of directorial choices and the implications for female representation in superhero films.
“which is probably 80 % a performance choice and in the script, but also thus hard to pull off because you are trying to communicate this sarcastic, spiky, unlikable person, but also you have to be the hero of the movie.”
The Struggles of Female Superhero Films
42:00 to 44:08
Discussion on the representation and quality of female-led superhero films.
“I didn't see it on a big screen, and so it's harder to judge that one particularly.”
The Struggles of Female Superhero Films
44:11 to 44:41
Discussion on the representation and quality of female-led superhero films.
“Upsizing to a large popcorn, smart move.”
The State of Superhero Films
44:41 to 46:44
Exploration of the current landscape and challenges facing superhero films.
“I think there's also, you can see other components.”
The Evolution of Fandom Culture
46:44 to 48:55
Examination of how fandom culture has changed and its impact on the industry.
“And I do see this in a somewhat similar context.”
The Balance of Commerce and Creativity
48:55 to 51:59
Discussion on the intersection of commerce and artistic integrity in film.
“We don't have to unpack all of those things.”
The Balance of Commerce and Creativity
56:00 to 56:41
Discussion on the intersection of commerce and artistic integrity in film.
“Or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2.”
The Future of Comic Book Movies
57:18 to 1:05:01
Examining the evolving landscape of superhero films and audience expectations.
“Like, Fantastic Four First Steps, which I did not think was successful, still made$500 million.”
Reflecting on the Superhero Genre
1:05:01 to 1:05:56
Discussing the changes in superhero narratives and personal connections to the genre.
“Hey, two things that I want to say to you.”
Introduction of Jackass: Best and Last
1:05:56 to 1:06:31
Welcoming CR to discuss the Jackass film series and its impact.
“I think I, anything else you want to say as we close the book?”
Analyzing Jackass: Best and Last
1:06:31 to 1:10:01
Breaking down the themes and categories in the latest Jackass movie.
“She did not rise to the occasion, so to speak.”
The Anatomy of Jackass Humor
1:10:01 to 1:21:26
Explore the various comedic elements and themes in Jackass films.
“So that to me falls in the second category, which is dick pain.”
Reflections on Jackass Legacy
1:21:26 to 1:22:10
Discussing the impact and legacy of the Jackass franchise.
“He's going to miss having a reason to get together with these guys and come up with stupid shit and get paid for it.”
Setting the Tone
1:24:11 to 1:24:31
Explore the importance of energy in discussions.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:15Sean Fennessey:I'm Sean Fennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture A Conversation show about two new movies, both signifying the end of something beautiful and painful. The first is Supergirl, the first superhero comic book movie in nearly a calendar year, and the second feature from James Gunn's DC Studios. The second is Jackass Best and Last. It is allegedly the final installment in the decade-spanning five-film self-harm extravaganza, which Chris Ryan's going to join us to discuss, thankfully. But first, let's get into some movie news right after this. This episode is brought to you by the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo.
0:51Sean Fennessey:The Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book, your favorite hotel site, your go-to airline, and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants, and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway, from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. Learn more at wellsfargo.com slash autographjourney. Terms apply. I sold my car in Carvana last night.
1:21Well, that's cool.
1:22Sean Fennessey:No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So, what's the problem? That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothie. I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow, you need to relax. I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood? I think it's laminate. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough. Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. We've been pre-taping some episodes. And so a lot of news has been transpiring.
1:54Sean Fennessey:Do you feel ready to break down each and every component of this news? Most of it, yes. Okay. Let's start with the debut. This is one of the only movies that we did not mention when we had our little side text chain about potential Oscar contenders last week. We didn't know the title of the movie. We didn't know when it was going to come out. But it has been on the slate for A24 for a long time. It's Jesse Eisenberg's new movie as writer-director. He has also written the words and music to this alleged musical, sort of a musical. It stars Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti. We have a trailer. You know, as I recall, Jesse's previous film, not your favorite movie of that year.
2:37That's not fair. I liked it. And I even liked Kieran Culkin's performance.
2:41Sean Fennessey:Oscar winning. And once we decided in like July that he was going to be the Oscar winner, I think it was actually a telly ride, but it was at least six months in advance. And he steamrolled through the season. I just I didn't think it reached that level. And I was also annoyed with the lack of interrogation of that decision. But I like Jesse Eisenberg. I liked the movie. OK, cool. I like everyone involved with this movie. Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti. Nervous about singing. You know, that's a blanket situation for me. OK. I don't like it when people sing. You know, Paul Giamatti doesn't have an Oscar.
3:18that's true because you and I denied him one for the holdovers it was us personally that wasn't
3:24Sean Fennessey:that wasn't I claim no responsibility for that uh you know I I do like Jesse's last movie quite a bit this movie looks interesting you know there's a very famous episode of the Simpsons in which Marge joins a local theater production of I believe a streetcar named desire I think the name of the episode is a streetcar named Marge and uh this movie's plot looks eerily similar to that episode of the show. Well. In which Julianne Moore plays a middle-aged woman who discovers her soul and creativity in a local theatrical playhouse. And that's funny because, you know, Obsession was also inspired by a Simpsons episode.
4:00Sean Fennessey:And I feel like this is going to keep happening. The Simpsons, the well runs deep. We have all come of age. People who grew up with the Simpsons, both like interpreting and regurgitating old culture and then inspiring new culture are now being given small to medium-sized budgets. Yeah. This looks like a nicely mounted film. Sure, yeah. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to that. It's coming this fall, and I suspect we'll be at some of the film festivals. This feels like a Telluride movie to me. Does it not? Absolutely. Okay. That's just a guess. That's exciting for you in the mountains. Some musical singing.
4:38Julianne Moore hanging out. Julianne Moore seated like fourth row. Third row at the Knicks games?
4:44Sean Fennessey:Yeah, well, a longtime Knicks fan. Exactly. But once again, there were certain individuals who will not be named who displaced her to the third or fourth row. But she was there with dignity and with purpose. But what we really respect about her is in 2017, when things were bad, bad, bad, she was in the front first row with her husband in like game 48 against the Hornets. And, you know, she was showing out. So she earned this title as well. I'm a little mad that she didn't get Courtside for the moments of actual glory. But, you know. Let's get her Courtside at the Academy Awards. That's what I say.
5:18Sean Fennessey:Okay, next thing. Artificial status. Status check. This is a film that does not have a distributor. It has a director. It has a cast. It has a completed scenario. Right. It's a movie about Sam Altman. We talked about it last week. As of June 21st, Netflix A24 and Focus reportedly passed. Mubi is reportedly pursuing and Neon is also possibly circling. Is this movie going to come out? Gut check. I, I, yes. That's not a very confident response. I mean, they're releasing the Looney Tunes movie now, right? Yes, they are. Coyote versus Acme. But they never released Batgirl, right? Batgirl, yes, was deleted from the hard drives.
6:05So I'm trying to think of other recent instances. Now, those were both like tax justification, quote unquote, tax justification.
6:14Sean Fennessey:I believe that's the case. For Warner Brothers, that it was cheaper to do a write-off given their various debt restructuring. Who can even know what's going on at Warner Brothers, which is something we will discuss later in this episode. But this is different because this is content. And as we discussed, I don't remember at this point when that episode was last week. Several years ago. It's really about who doesn't who is not compromised enough by big tech money to take this on. And we went through the list and we knew that, you know, Netflix, Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, whatever's going on there, we're never going to compete.
6:57We didn't think that Universal would be in the mix because they don't take on this type of controversy. A24 we had some wobblings about. Ben, would you like to move to the next?
7:09Sean Fennessey:Just amazingly well-timed information that Google invested$75 million into A24 to develop AI-powered filmmaking tools. Now, they went to great pains to communicate that this was separate and distinct from their film library and their film content, and this would not be a generative AI filmmaking structure. However, you know, there's optics here about that, and people seem a little bit mad. Right. Anytime AI is associated with the film business or any creative arts, people are going to get mad. And this kind of association, in addition to, you know, Thrive Capital being a major investor in AI. And also in A24.
7:48Yes. It was 2024, I believe.
7:51Sean Fennessey:Yes. So, you know, all of those relationships, I think, make all that a little bit dicey. And so, yeah, I mean, Luca, he might just find himself without a chair in this game of musical chairs. It's possible. This does happen. Sometimes these movies just go away. And, you know. It does. But it does also seem like such an opportunity for some upstart or someone. You have Luca, you have Andrew Garfield. Those are big names. You have that this is a very negative movie about Sam Altman at AI at a time where there are many people who seem ready to receive that. And now you have the controversy of, as we said, the movie they don't want you to see.
8:31Yeah. So the question is if there is anyone left related to the movies or anyone left in a distribution capacity who is untouched by and not just AI, but really tech at this point, because big tech has put so much of its money into like making AI happen. And yes, that was a Mean Girls Fetch reference. So. I don't know. I mean, like it would be really fun if someone gets creative. It does feel a little bit like we're going to make, you know, someone live stream it like Rob Mahoney on his Instagram. But I don't know. I would crowdfund for that.
9:09Sean Fennessey:It's tricky because it's obviously an expensive movie. It's a big budget Hollywood drama. You know, it's not a small indie. And so 10 or 15 years ago, this sort of thing, when this sort of thing would happen, movies could more quickly find homes. Because in addition to the fact that I think some of the kind of like shingles inside of the majors were more adventurous in terms of the kind of movies that they would put out. There were some more small companies, small distributors that would be able to take on a movie like this. Ketchup Entertainment is taking on Coyote vs. Acme. It's a very thin pool.
9:38Sean Fennessey:Even a bunch of the new studios, you know, Roque, Black Bear, a bunch of the distributors who kind of emerged in the last 12 months, it's proved a little challenging for them to really gain a foothold. And so taking on tens of millions of dollars investment in a movie like this, I mean, I'm sure Amazon will eat some of the production cost to give the movie away. I don't really know how all of that necessarily works, but it does remind me a little bit of the state of the Mets roster where we've just got a lot of guys who are making a lot of money and we just need other teams to just take those guys away from us forever.
10:10Sean Fennessey:And so I don't have to think about them anymore. And one of the only ways you can get people to do that is to pay down some of the salaries. and this might be a similar situation where to get this movie off the books, you might just have to pay down some of that budget. I mean, that seems incredibly likely. I assume that anyone who does take this movie will get a discount, as Matt Bellamy put it on his episode. I've just been Googling the various investors in Mubi and Neon. Sure, famously Sequoia Capital in Mubi. Exactly, which is a major investor, or not a major investor. No one sent me the, you know, deal sheets.
10:46but it's in AI, in open AI specifically. So that's tricky. And then I'm looking because Neon recently got an infusion of capital.
10:57Sean Fennessey:They did. That was through, well, reportedly through Department M, which is a production company. But where their money is rooted is unknown specifically. And that's the thing. Like you said, all of these places are compromised in one way or another. You know, if we're being really honest, every movie studio forever has been compromised by where their money comes from. You know, the great wealth that engenders artistic opportunity very rarely comes from, you know, charitable organizations. That's not how this works. Yeah, Paramount, a Gulf and Western company. Like, we all know. Yeah, this one is extremely challenging because the subject matter of the film is rooted in the origins of the money.
11:39Sean Fennessey:And so, you know, it's a fascinating story, a fascinating test case. In addition to the fact that it's a director who we really like, and so we really want to see the movie. And who needs to win? He does need to win. I mean, that's not really fair. Challengers was like two years ago. But if you're only as good as your last movie. Yeah, queer and after the hunt, neither went over super well. So we'll see what happens. We'll keep checking in on this. Sense and Sensibility. Yep. The new retelling of the famed novel. It's not a retelling. What is it? It's just the latest. Latest adaptation. Reboot.
12:14Sean Fennessey:Yeah. It's a reboot. It's a prequel. It's just like, Austin is like Shakespeare. People are just doing interpretations of the cortex over and over again. Trailer came out. Yeah. You say what? Well, this we saw in Vegas at CinemaCon. I just have to claim like a personal, what's it called in golf? Where you take a penalty or you take a - A mulligan? A mulligan. Okay. Yeah. You have to take a mulligan on the film? Yeah, or I don't know. I don't know if that's the right sports comparison, but I'm too close. I'm too close to the 95 version, which is not to say that anyone can't do this. Let's use Chris Ryan's golf game as a way to portal into this metaphor you're attempting.
12:58What everyone was hoping for when we talked about a Jane Austen adaptation.
13:01Sean Fennessey:Chris lines himself up on the first tee of the golf course. Yes. He pulls out driver. Uh-huh. He looks down the fairway. Yeah. He gets his mind clear. He bees the ball. Takes a big old whack. Yes. First swing of the day. Shanks it far right, right into a tree. Okay. Hits the tree, bounces all the way back at him. In the parlance of golf, he can take a mulligan. That first shot doesn't count. Okay. He takes the second shot. He pipes one right down the fairway, and he's off and running, and he's going to have the game of his life, the round of his life. Okay. So is that what you're saying you're going to do here?
13:40I think that my opinion probably shouldn't count.
13:42Sean Fennessey:Oh, wow. Like, I think that I am just... What a joy to hear that out loud. I am just, in this one case, and maybe you could learn from me as we talk about all the rest of the world of cinema, which is catered to your interest. No, thanks. But this one's catered to mine, and I'm too close. I am too close to the Emma Thompson 1995. I've seen it too many times. I have, like, it's my comfort film. I put it on when we had to stay up until, had to. But the canned ticketing system was such that with time zones, we needed to stay up until midnight a lot of nights in order to be able to get tickets, which for me at my phase of life is difficult.
14:22Put on Sensibility one night just to hang out. And that was the 1995 version. So I don't know how to respond to this. I can't respond to this. I would say that Daisy Edgar Jones does not bring the same things to cinema that Emma Thompson does to me. But Emma Thompson's version was also an adaptation. So I'm not trying to keep people away from this. I just have one truth. And that truth is Ang Lee's 1995 Sense and Sensibility.
14:54Sean Fennessey:Okay. Thank you. This new version is directed by Georgia Oakley. As you mentioned, Daisy Edgar Jones, George Mackay, Katrina Balfe, Frank Delane. Good cast. We'll see. Yeah. What if I love it a lot more than the Ang Lee version? Then what happens? We'll cross that bridge when we get there. Okay. Timothy Chalamet and Selena Gomez are going to star in an animated alien movie. Okay. Cool. I don't know. Get that check. Of all the ways that Timothy Chalamet has been getting checks in the last three months, I have fewer problems with this. We need to get some of the Timothy Chalamet money to Mitchell Robinson to keep the Knicks together next season.
15:32Sean Fennessey:Okay. Do you think we can make that happen? So that's attention? That's a... Yes. That's an issue. Yeah. Yeah. He's a free agent. We need Mitch back. And who is the... Who's the problem there? Is it Dolan? The problem is the collective bargaining agreement of the National Basketball Association. Okay. Which, if you exceed the second apron, enter the second apron financially, there's dramatic penalties involved. And we're trying to avoid that. Okay. Trying to maintain flexibility and keep the team... You're going to the dunk tank. Okay. No, you're disallowed from making certain kinds of tricks.
16:06Sean Fennessey:Have you ever met in a dunk tank? No, no. I have thrown a ball at a target and put someone in a dunk tank, but I've never sat in the chair. We should figure out a way to bring a dunk tank into the big picture in 2027. That's one of my goals. Will you sit? Sure. Okay. I like water. Let's put a pin in that. This movie is coming from Illumination. Okay. It's coming in April 2027, which is very soon. Yes. And this will come on the heels of his Oscar win for Dune Part 3, no? Yeah. Right? Totally. One month later? Who is best actor right now? It is, it's June? Is it June right now? Are we recording for June or July?
16:45Where am I?
16:46Sean Fennessey:We don't know. No, this is the June 26th episode. It's June. Okay. So we're at that six-month mark. All right. Who's best? I mean, it's Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary. I mean, nomination, yes. Is there anyone else on the board? and Sebastian Stan from Fjord. I think that's in play. Yeah, that seems possible. Not a lot else that we've seen out there. Do we think that Jeremy Strong is going to run in Best Actor or Supporting? Feels like Supporting. Feels like the A story is Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison in Social Reckoning. Okay. And then obviously, of course, Jeremy Allen White is the large hut.
17:23Sean Fennessey:Yeah, Road to the Hut. Yeah. Yeah. Rod of the Hut? Rod of the Hut. Right. Stinky. Stinky, yeah. But, you know, also jacked. Did you see The Bear season four yet? It's out? Yeah, it came out yesterday in full. No, and also they made a new season of The Agency starring Michael Fassbender. Yes, yes. And they dumped that all in one shot as well, just like The Bear. I don't know. I haven't seen any TV in six months, but I'm going to get into it. All right, turn it back around. Let's come back to binging streaming TV because that's related to some of what I want to talk about with Supergirl. You know who best actor is.
17:57Sean Fennessey:Sure. It's, yeah, here we go. It's Tom Cruise. That's right. We segued ourself. Digger footage was released this week, as was a clip reel of some highlights from Tom Cruise's career, which was then, I'm sure, very organically shared by several dozen notable people on social media, including our boy Glenn Powell, J.J. Abrams. Michael Mann noted how excited he is about the film Digger online. Okay. obviously just watching Tom Cruise be entertaining in a clip reel that's just something I like I can't pretend I don't want to just watch highlights of Tom maniacally smiling and delivering dialogue I love that there's very little Digger in this compilation that was circulated it's a three and a half minute video maybe 20 seconds of Digger you think they're hiding this for some reason the Digger footage?
18:51Sean Fennessey:Yeah, because the film's coming out in three months. I don't know if hiding is what I would use. I'm sure that they have a very carefully calibrated release schedule of when they think they want to put this stuff out. And because, as we know from the poster, Digger is a comedy. Yeah, it is. It includes some of the jokes. We've seen footage from Digger. They did show it to us at CinemaCon. A big extended trailer we saw. so with a trailer for a comedy you end up putting a lot of the jokes and the setup in the comedy so i maybe they think they can just sell tom cruise instead of having to sell this movie i mean i think that's probably why they're doing yeah so do they need to put it out that soon i don't think so it's really interesting because you know i liked what we saw and i'm not as you know not the biggest in a retu fan been really cold on him for the last 15 years um i do think that there's a lot of like straining in the marketing and everything around it.
Read the full transcript
19:50Sean Fennessey:But I love a strange lovey and over the top satire that has big scale and a big performance. Like I'm kind of I'm into that. I mean, I'm into the idea of this movie. And they're not really, as you say, selling the movie. There's plenty of time. A trailer can come out in three days and, you know, we can dispense with this conversation. But I found it interesting that they were basically like, also, there's a movie coming out. Like you love Tom Cruise and that's the most important part of this marketing campaign well i mean i think it's savvy because of the footage we saw what i responded to most was tom cruise doing tom cruise stuff and i'm i'm a little more nervous about the inner e2 of it all even in what we saw because sure in in concept um you know a big concept biggish budget yeah uh apocalyptic comedy i'm interested but you know who's who's doing it but the other half of it Who is doing it is Tom Cruise.
20:47And yeah, I lit up as soon as he was on the screen because he has a movie star to us. So they guess, marketing-wise, they know what they're doing.
20:55Sean Fennessey:It's so funny because in that clip reel too, there's plenty of movies that don't really have a lot of cultural weight. Rock of Ages is featured in that clip reel. That's not a movie anybody really cares about and is not one that's... He gives an amusing performance in that movie, but it's a blip in his career. So it's interesting the way that they kind of pick and chose how to highlight his magnetism as a movie star. You know, obviously we'll be very Digger forward in the month of October. So we'll circle back. Film Academy, Ampus invited 529 new members. Okay. Including some of your goats, Jacob Elordi, for example.
21:37Sean Fennessey:The Safdies, my boy Zach Kreger, whose Barbarian was announced on 4K Steelbook. What? Congratulations. We did it. Disney somehow decided that this would be a good idea. Thank you to them. Tiana Taylor invited. Jenna Ortega. Joshua Connor. John Bernthal. I was going to say John Bernthal. Many other people invited. You know, yet another year in which hundreds more people are joining the Academy. And we're getting, I think we're over 11 ,000 now. And a lot of young people added to the mix here. Some names that I was surprised were not previously in the mix. and so we'll see how that affects voting for Tom Cruise in nine months.
22:16I'm excited for Josh O 'Connor.
22:18Sean Fennessey:Yeah, sure. He needs a win. I would love, hey, hey, that's mean. I agree that people didn't, were not as kind to him as they should have been. It was the role. He wasn't supported. Yeah, he wasn't supported. And he was wonderful on the press door. So love to know how much of his time, I would love to see his voting process. They should open up his ballot and just follow him around. And then he's gardening and then being like, I guess I'll watch this short film. He strikes me as a man with very good taste. Amazing taste, but also like maybe not fluent with this streaming interface. Oh, interesting.
22:59Sean Fennessey:You think of him as like kind of an older gentleman. He doesn't know what TikTok is or he didn't for many years. But neither do I. I mean, what does that mean? Right. No, but I think he literally like didn't know what TikTok was. Someone asked him, will you do a TikTok with me? And he said, I don't know what that is. That must be such a great way to be alive. I completely agree. And he's got great clothes and a little earring. I'm going to start fantasizing about that. Okay, one last piece of news. The Blair Witch movie reboot lands a 2027 release. Now, this new movie, which features producers and stars from the original film and will be associated with the original film in some ways, but has a completely new filmmaker, I know has been in the works for a long time, but it feels very responsive to the moment in horror that we are having with a young filmmaker with a lot of YouTube experience and leveraging some history to make something new.
23:50And also trying to recreate a generational phenomenon in the horror genre. You know, watching Backrooms, I think many of us thought, okay, so this is Blair Witch for young people. Yes. And Blair Witch was Blair Witch for me, and it was very powerful. You cannot reheat a souffle, but, you know, try and make some money. It's a tall order because, you know, they've tried with this movie before.
24:16Sean Fennessey:Adam Wingard had a remake or sort of like a reboot circa 2017, I think. Obviously, Blair Witch 2, Book of Shadows went down in the annals of terrible movie sequels. But the original Blair Witch, there's something special and there's still a chemical association with a feeling. of that movie. So I look forward to seeing what they do with it. That is coming out next fall, I want to say. Speaking of chemical associations, would you like to talk about Supergirl? I'd love to. Can I please foreground this conversation in a blanket statement? Wonderful. Yes, go ahead. It's not directed at you. It's directed to the listeners at home.
24:58Sean Fennessey:Sure The sweeping declarations That I am Perhaps too fond of making Are gonna come with like Context I know That the Spider-Man movie Comes out in one month And I know that Avengers Doomsday Comes out in December And that in all likelihood Those movies will be very big I look forward to both of them Spider-Man more than Avengers But I honestly look forward To the Avengers movies I do think that this conversation that we're about to have though is in part about something ending it doesn't mean it's the end of superhero movies or comic book movies but the era in which they basically dominated our adult lives feels like it's wrapped up and it doesn't mean that something new can't start it doesn't mean that there won't be movies like this again there will be there'll be a lot of movies like this because movies like this can make a lot of money especially if they're done well.
25:55But I felt like a certainty, like a calm, actually, when this movie ended,
26:02Sean Fennessey:where I was like, all right, the ability to do this specific thing, which we will get into in one second, I promise you, does feel now ended. And I'm trying to be sort of measured and dramatic at the same time when I say this, because I've spent a lot of time talking about these movies for the last 10 years. And you've watched me twist myself in knots about their relevance, their power, their loss of power, you know, what they mean to the box office, what they mean to creativity, how movie stars were sidelined for years playing with these projects, what it meant for generations of filmmakers who got shuttled into these stories.
26:38Sean Fennessey:You've heard it all from me. You know, you've mostly sat patiently. Sometimes you've whinged about it. Sometimes you've enjoyed it. I've seen all the movies. I've been sort of on the other half of that conversation. And I think that I care or not even that I mean, I do care less, but I'm less interested in the subject matter, which gives me more distance, I think, than you have to talk about it, which just makes me, you know, a different perspective than yours. But I agree with you. You know, it it honestly it just feels like I have to spend less time on this And that makes me happy. But there was a time when doing this job, it was so central to the culture of movies and to the culture around movies, which are symbiotic but different things, that I just had to consume it and know about it.
27:34And at this point and with this movie, we went to the screening. We had a drink. Like, then we went home. We're going to podcast about it. And then we never have to talk about it again. That's right. And they live within their container, which I think is a healthy way to consume entertainment. And to me, this is a little bit of the undoing of the superhero fan culture or the mainstreaming of that, the throttle that that has on the way we consume and talk about entertainment. That's it. And to be totally fair, to be totally clear, I have always objected way more to the fandomification of movies and our universe than I have to the movies themselves.
28:19Some of them are not very good, and some of them I enjoy. Like, I can turn my brain off and be stupid and watch people fly around. so yes I'm happy and I'm happy to hear you say that but this isn't like a victory dance and I can hear you anticipating all of the discourse and the people yelling and many of those so-called fans
28:44sharing their opinions and you guys can do that
28:47Sean Fennessey:well they've been in a defensive crouch for two or three years because they feel it's slipping through their fingers and I think they will very understandably say well, there have always been bad comic book movies. It's not, this isn't really Supergirl's fault. It's more just a moment of kind of finality. And let's use it to get into the movie because then we can kind of circle back to some of the grand eloquent theorizing around it. This movie is directed by Craig Gillespie, who has directed many movies over the last 20 years, including Dumb Money, Cruella with Emma Stone, the Oscar-winning I, Tonya, Lars and the Real Girl.
29:22Sean Fennessey:It stars Millie Alcock, probably best known from House of the Dragon as Supergirl, Matthias Schoenartz, Eve Ridley, Emily Beecham, David Krumholtz, David Kornsweat returning as Superman, and Jason Momoa who returns to the DC universe not as Aquaman but as Lobo who is a character that you now know about. No, I've known about him for some time because you and Chris have said Lobo for about a year and a half and so when he showed up on the screen I had a real Once Upon a Time in Hollywood moment just being like Lobo! Lobo. Lobo is in the movie. Here's the story. Kara Zor-El aka Supergirl joins forces with an unlikely companion on an interstellar journey of vengeance and justice when an unexpected adversary strikes too close to home if that sounds vague it's because the movie is very vague this is an attempt by the James Gunn DC Universe to not just add a layer to the Superman story that he started last year with his version of that film but to build a bench, you know, to tell more stories with new characters in this world.
30:29Sean Fennessey:And it's a very old-fashioned version of that. It feels like a Marvel movie from 2014, where you've got a new character who maybe was teased in a previous film, but we didn't really learn much about them. And we need to send them on an adventure. And in the course of that adventure, we will learn a lot about what happened to them and why they are the way that they are, and why they are on a mission to ultimately become heroic. They are reluctant at first, but they will eventually get on board. Right, and we will physically get them back to the main stage and the main characters so that they can join the team.
31:03Sean Fennessey:Yes, this is a very tropey adventure story structure. And it's very unsuccessful. It's unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. Let's identify some of them. I can give you two. Fire away. Well, I mean, I think there are two problems. And one, you've identified that it is so tropey and formulaic while also unspecific. And so the places, the villains, the side heroes who are actually secretly the main heroes come out of nowhere, have no backstory, have no development. And so you're just not invested in either Supergirl or in any of these people. It just doesn't do the fundamental thing of making you invested in the story.
31:56Or it didn't do that for me. Maybe some people will, but I'm coming in as a blank slate. Don't know a lot about Supergirl. I think I turned to you about 20 minutes in and I said, what's her damage? And I think for these movies to be successful as movies, they do have to separate themselves from the homework and the lore and be able to create a basic on-ramp for you to be invested in the stakes. And this just doesn't really do that. It's not that interesting. and then it is also just on a practical technical filmmaking level hot garbage yeah it's really not yeah like looks very bad very groany script there was a music cue where I almost you know slid under my seat and but also like a music cue that is supposed to communicate to you a sense of triumph and all the themes of the movie.
32:51So I would say it's both creatively and technically empty.
32:59Sean Fennessey:Yeah, it's the brownest movie of the year. It takes place on a series of nondescript desertish planets. We don't really have a sense of the geography of the story. We know it's intergalactic in some way, but we don't really feel like we know how far from Earth Kara is or why, you know, it's her birthday week. The film takes place during her birthday week. You know, I think she probably acts the way that you act during your week, you know, just getting shithoused, going to bars, pub crawling. And we know it's her birthday week because of the elegant expositional storytelling of David Cordswet as Superman.
33:31FaceTiming her or Zoom calling her. I'm not really sure what the technology is on unnamed planet.
33:37Sean Fennessey:Video phone. Sure, video phoning. And honestly, they didn't even, they just, they put him on like a Sears photo drop to video phone her. They didn't even like make it at his home. I don't know where he is. I'm so confused. I mean, maybe maybe he has Zoom backgrounds on his version of Skype, but he's just like, hey, it's your birthday. Happy birthday. Yes. Kal-El is Kara's cousin. And I guess they're close. Kara was some years behind Superman and her arrival to Earth. They weren't classmates in arriving to Earth to realize their superpowers together. And she's, you know, she is a little bit less interested in following the kind of dopey, sincere, but very powerful mission that Superman has.
34:27Sean Fennessey:And one of the problems with the movie is that like, I think James Gunn really got Superman. Superman is like a hyper sincere Boy Scout. And I think that that could be a very powerful tool in telling a story. And what's not that interesting to me is a character who's like, oh so over it and burnt out and you know like sarcastic like gen xy like oh god okay guys i guess i'll go kick your ass now and we've seen that many times in superhero movies before and this is just like it just feel and the thing is is like it's not again not supergirl's fault like this is kind of based on woman of tomorrow with tom king uh series about supergirl it's it's somewhat in keeping with that characterization it's just and and people rave about that that series.
35:13Sean Fennessey:I haven't read it, but it's a movie we've seen. We've seen this over and over again and done better. And so it looking the way that it looks and it having this really rickety foundation where it feels like the movie has been kind of chopped up and you can feel the places where the edits are moving quick and we're trying to get to the next stage of the story because we don't have enough material to make this stage of the story coherent enough. And you could just kind of feel people in the screening squirming in their chairs a little bit. And that was notable for us at our screening because that was a captive audience that we saw the movie with.
35:49Sean Fennessey:It was one part press screening, one part fan screening. I would say one part press screening, two parts press screening with also a baby. Two parts fan screening. Yeah, two parts fan screening plus a baby. Yes. Who was not interested in the movie. No. The baby needed to be walked around in a stroller during the screening. That was a choice. The baby kept going back and forth. Listen, sometimes parents do need to see movies when you have a baby. I don't blame the parents for that. I do have some questions for Warner Brothers, and I got yelled at by a trivia person. But anyway. Yeah, there was trivia.
36:22Sean Fennessey:A lot of people wearing Supergirl t-shirts. Yes. So it was a home crowd, and it was pretty much silent. There was no laughter and definitely no cheering at moments of triumph, possibly because there aren't really any moments of triumph? There are battle sequences in which Supergirl and Lobo and Ruthie emerge victorious. Ruthie E. Ridley's character who plays a young woman who has witnessed her parents be murdered by Krem, who is Matthias Schoenerts' villain figure. We have also witnessed that. We witnessed it as well in a flashback. And her brother. And her brother. And she is seeking revenge on him.
37:00Sean Fennessey:Simultaneously, Krem has also shot a poison dart into crypto Supergirl's dog's neck threatening his life yeah and so while Ruthie seeks vengeance for her family's death Supergirl is seeking an antidote for the poison dart I guess that's a plot of a movie you know it's just a real thin gruel relative to even Superman which I thought was real good like I really enjoyed it I was very charmed by it and so you chose to go to the bathroom at an inopportune moment. I did. Which is, listen, life happens. But you went to the bathroom during the five minutes of the film when David Coren Sweat meets Supergirl and shows up as Superman.
37:48And he's there in person. It is Supergirl, Kara arriving on Earth. And that kind of like ice winter palace that we saw in Superman.
37:59Sean Fennessey:The Fortress of Solitude. Yes. And because she has just come from Kryptonite? Krypton. Krypton. Right. Kryptonite is the element. Since she has just come from Krypton, she does not speak English. And this scene actually just does really give her the only character development that I responded to, which is that, you know, unlike Superman, she was born somewhere else. She had a life somewhere else. So she's been put at this place. She can't communicate. She doesn't know anyone as opposed to Superman who has grown up and is is an all American boy as much as he is, you know, an alien with superpowers.
38:36So. But anyway, so she's there silent and it's David Cornswit acting and speaking to her in English and talking to her and welcoming her and doing all his Superman stuff. And the movie just comes alive. He's really good as Superman. Yeah. And it's really unfortunate that the best scene in the movie, Supergirl, is a movie in which Supergirl does not speak.
38:56Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and I don't think that it's really the fault of Millie Alcock. And I do understand why she was cast in this part as a kind of subversion of the, like, you know, Gal Gadot, like, six-foot-tall, Amazonian, like, beautiful, long, sweeping hair. Like, there's clearly a decision to kind of upend that expectation of what a female superhero should be. And her performance style is, like, kind of interesting and does feel a little bit unpolished. Where she is doing, she has kind of, like, gosh, it's almost like all the characters from Heathers became one person, you know? And where it's, like, a little biting, but then a little soft.
39:38Yeah.
39:39Sean Fennessey:And you can never really figure out when she's going to decide to be one or the other. I just don't think that the script serves her very well. No. I don't think the way the film is shot serves her very well. I think that she is checked out from the movie, which is probably 80 % a performance choice and in the script, but also thus hard to pull off because you are trying to communicate this sarcastic, spiky, unlikable person, but also you have to be the hero of the movie. Yeah. So I don't think the script serves her. And then I did sort of wonder if maybe she became aware of the mess that was swirling around her at all times.
40:21Also, presumably, she's just on a green screen for large swaths of this.
40:26Sean Fennessey:Yeah. The other thing is, like, this is a Craig Gillespie movie, for better or worse. And I think it's more usually for worse. And he's got a lot of stylistic habits that feel borrowed from better filmmakers. And especially trying to deploy them in a movie like this. is very obvious and uninteresting. James Gunn is somebody who uses needle drops really effectively. He has kind of made one of his signature components as a filmmaker is having these kind of counteracting needle drops. He didn't invent that. A lot of filmmakers have been doing it for a really long time. Martin Scorsese probably does it better than anybody.
41:02Sean Fennessey:Craig Gillespie also apes a lot of stuff for Martin Scorsese. He tends to use slow motion. He tends to use these really diagrammatic camera movements where there's a real like, oh, wow, quality that you're supposed to have while watching them. But they feel they're very rarely rooted in intention. They're just moves. Like if you watch Cruella, it's the same thing. There's a lot of flashy stuff going on in Cruella, but it never really psychologizes the characters. It never really puts us in a place where we feel like a deeper sense of understanding of what the world is. And in a world like this, which is just like junk trader, Mad Max Fury Road, like low low low grade Fury Road it's not elevating anything it's not making us feel differently about the story that he's trying to tell and so you know you can see why somebody like this gets this job right he's like a safe pair of hands he's run a lot of big movie productions in the past and so you know in theory he'll be able to handle this hundred million dollar superhero movie but it's just boring like one this is a lame complaint but like not finding a woman to direct Supergirl girl is just weird like it's just it's 2026 like what i mean i wanted to talk about this because you you know invoked gagadot and and wonder woman but i was thinking through all of the standalone movies about a woman superhero and across both marvel and dc with the exception of the first wonder woman which i was really delighted by even though one movie um and looks good and at least until the end and all of the slop and is definitely helped by the Chris Pine supporting performance but busy all of the standalone girl movies are are not good and not well handled and that's a real bummer and I think that says something larger about the machines and also yeah it's it's depressing I think I think Black Widow is not bad I think it It has some things about it that are cool.
43:02Sean Fennessey:I didn't see it on a big screen, and so it's harder to judge that one particularly. The movie that this movie reminded me a lot of is Captain Marvel, the original Captain Marvel movie with Brie Larson. And I can almost feel them, Millie Alcock and Brie Larson, giving somewhat similar performances where they almost don't know what movie they're in. And that movie was directed by two filmmakers, one of whom was a woman, is a woman. but I think I'm not trying to be some like progressive saber rattling about how like women need to direct more of these movies. It's more just like for the perspective of the story, why is like a middle-aged British guy directing this movie?
43:40Sean Fennessey:It's very strange. I mean, and that was not like my argument either that only a woman could have made those good. It's just that this is an entire, not even subculture of movies now, but like the dominant culture of movies. and they just have not figured out how to make successful women characters, both by male or female directors. It's an industry issue, not any individual director. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Upsizing to a large popcorn, smart move. Staying for the post-credit sequence, smart move. Finding ways to be financially savvy, very smart move. Maybe the smartest, especially when you choose to bundle home and auto with help from one of State Farm's 19 ,000 local agents, bundling just another way to save with a personal price plan.
44:28Sean Fennessey:Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. I think there's also, you can see other components. A woman, Anna Noguera, did write the screenplay for this movie, but like there's a moment in the movie where Kara has been felled by Krem with kryptonite and the only way that she's saved before he cuts her head off is that Lobo shows up out of nowhere and it's a real like we're in the Supergirl movie we can't we shouldn't having just having Lobo save her and at the climactic moment of the movie just feels like real retrograde stuff that I felt like we were past and I feel like James Gunn especially like knows better than he's really smart about this stuff.
45:17Sean Fennessey:Part of the reason why the Guardians movies are so good is because they feel kind of new. They feel like iterative of something from the past, but they feel like an elevation of that thing. So, you know, when I'm making these proclamations at the top of the episode and trying to put context around them, it's because movies like this keep happening. You know, we keep getting Captain America Brave New World. We keep getting lousy movies. And this is a lousy movie. It's not good. And it's supposed to be a big summer tentpole. And we're coming off this wonderful 12 weeks of movie stuff going on. And the projections for this movie are going down and down and down.
45:57Sean Fennessey:The word of mouth is very bad. There's been some very funny posts of reviews from influencers who are like, even I cannot tell you that this is good. And they hit them with an Inception 6 out of 10, you know. And it's just like from an influencer, that's tough. Yeah. So, you know, I've been trying to process and think about what all this was. I wrote about it in the newsletter this morning. I'm curious what you think it means. I have been drawing the comparisons to the big budget musicals and to the westerns in the mid-20th century a lot, where those were really the dominant forms, the dominant genre forms in the movies for about 30 years, 35 years.
46:38Sean Fennessey:And they kind of expired. And when they expired, the new Hollywood filled the vacuum where they broke it and they filled the vacuum. Yeah. And I do see this in a somewhat similar context. I don't know if you think about it in that same way. Sure. In terms of it is a genre that like came to prominence at one point in time and we've just been making tons of them and interpolating other genres into the genre. And it's really a framework. So, yeah. And certainly it's been dominant. To me, the influencers leaving you is very important because for a while, superheroes and the superhero genre were too big to fail.
47:20But that required a participation of everyone, of the studios throwing all of the money at it, and then the fans also doing their work to keep it up. And, you know, like it was a group effort and fascinating from like a both an economic and cultural perspective. And I think what has like weirded me out so much about fandom culture is just how much it felt just like a gross capitalistic exchange. Right. And all of these people were just doing the work for these companies and accepting less. And now that pact is broken, which I'm happy about. But it does seem like what happened is they lost the fans or they lost that magic agreement of we're all just going towards the same cause and we're all going to pretend that this is working.
48:21It's cyclical.
48:22Sean Fennessey:It's not working. It will be back when Spider-Man comes out. Like, it's going to come back. And it will absolutely be there for Avengers because we were there in the room at CinemaCon, which many longtime CinemaCon attendees said to us, like, that was very strange. It feels like they brought a lot of fans into the room. CinemaCon didn't used to be like this, but they had to, you know, fanification of the industry event. So it'll definitely be a thing. There's a very naughty conversation to be had, too, about sort of like, what is the media and what is the responsibility of somebody who has a platform to talk about things and so on and so forth?
49:01Sean Fennessey:We don't have to unpack all of those things. And also, like, it's not an accident that we, the press, were also at an influencer and fan screening because who Warner Brothers or who any studio decides to show their movie to ahead of time and for what reason? It's their right to decide, but it is more valuable for them at this point to show it to people who are going to post positive things. No doubt about it. The fact that it didn't seemingly didn't work on this one is fascinating. But, you know, this was true. I saw Masters of the Universe last month and it was the same thing. I was, you know, I was at a fan screening.
49:34Sean Fennessey:Me and Rob Mahoney and Steve Allman were at a fan screening. and that is how it goes now because that is effectively all that is left in that space now here's the thing I agree with what you said that there was a very transactional quality to the rise of fandom influencer culture but I do think that it was born out of sincerity and I think that as negative as I have been about this stuff for the last six years if you listen to the show before 2020 you'll hear a person who's frequently like this is so fun and I loved this And I was never in that like cohort of fandom influencer, but I understand if you're 27 right now and you were, you know, nine when Iron Man came out and you grew up loving those movies and you watched the Dark Knight happen, you watched the Raimi Spider-Man trilogy, you watched how James Mayagold kind of screwed up Wolverine and then fixed it with Logan.
50:30Sean Fennessey:You know, you watched movies like even Superman last year. Like, I think a lot of the fandom is sincere and hard-earned. And it did eventually become this thing about access and lore. And it became a really kind of like overheated engine. And ownership also because there is this very strict version of fandom and sticking to the canon and what can or cannot be included. that always gets toxic. But no, I think you're totally right. And, you know, this is why it wasn't all bad. And it was both a very smart, creative, and certainly financial decision to take something that like a lot of people love and are really passionate about and then give them what they want.
51:18And for the most part, do it well. And like, you know, because we live in capitalism, that can't exist on its own. then it just has to keep getting bigger and bigger and more people have to like be brought along for the ride because we always have to keep growing forever. That's right. But it's, it's smart and it's also influenced, you know, many other movie companies. Like we have, we've got Nolan bros now, we've got A24 bros, we have Barbenheimer, we have like the eventization and the, as you call it, the hyper niche, you know, ification of pop culture, where what you do is you find a passionate fan base and then you try to serve things.
51:57Colleen Hoover, same thing. And that's not new, but this superhero era proved that it can make you a lot of money. The problem is that no money is ever enough.
52:10Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and I think the up until the right trajectory of all this stuff obviously ultimately soiled it. It always kind of ruins all genre exploitation from the studio side. I think something that I've heard frequently from people who do like these movies, but know what's been going on for the last five years, which was brought on by COVID streaming, but most specifically that Marvel in particular had this 12-year project to get a story told, the Infinity Saga. It wasn't always as perfectly mapped out as it might have seemed at times. It changed a lot. You should read Joanna Robinson's great book about the MCU, which details some of the stops and starts along the way, but they finished a story.
52:55Sean Fennessey:They did a thing that had never really been done before, a serialization of movie going that is wildly commercially successful, sometimes artistically successful, and no doubt generation defining. And they did it. And it worked. And even irony-poisoned dicks like me were like, oh my God, this is so fun. And then they kept going. Yes, that's it. And you know why they kept going? They've got shareholder interests and they're part of a massive corporation and they've got their livelihood. Like, and I don't blame them for keeping going, but if they'd stopped, and the thing that I hear from the people is if you'd stopped, you would have been Irving Thalberg.
53:33Sean Fennessey:It would have been like, this is one of the greatest achievements in American commercial artistic history. And now we're like, well, fuck these movies. But more, more, more, you know? I mean, that's what it is. That's the problem with TV as a medium. Yeah, that's a it's a problem with many things and not just artistic endeavors, which is, you know, no one ever knows when to stop or market forces will not allow you to stop. It's true. But, you know, but you're right that that run, even though someone had to some by someone, I mean, Chris Ryan had to explain to me why people were cheering when Captain America got the hammer.
54:05It's like that just looks like a hammer. It is just a hammer, but it's not powerful.
54:11Sean Fennessey:Of course, it's powerful. What's it made of? It's a North mythological tool called Mjolnir. What is it made of? Which elements? Cadmium? No, I was trying to remember. What's the... Xenon? No, no, no, no, no. What's the Wolverine one? Adamantium. It's not made of Adamantium. Okay. He's from Asgard. But you got... Adamantium is an earthbound... That you know. True. Yeah. Fair point. Have you been to Asgard? No, I haven't been. Do they have mines there? Like, what's going on? A wonderful question. Yeah. I feel like we should get you in the writing rooms to some of these films. because you're asking those salient questions.
54:48Anyway, it didn't mean to me what it meant to a lot of people who were on that project and who were from that original fan base and not even from that original fan base because you've talked a lot about how your little sister, she's like, she really, really grew up with those movies and that is a defining movie-going event for her. So that stretch through Endgame did create a whole world and did bring a lot of people to the movies and train them to watch movies in a very specific way. That's right. And they were thrilled and they were jazzed and it worked. And then they kept going. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey?
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56:34Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbounce.lily.com. So good, so good, so good. New summer arrivals are at Nordstrom Rack stores now.
56:56Sean Fennessey:Get ready to save big with up to 60 % off brands like Rag & Bone, Levi's, Adidas, and Free People. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. And, you know, these movies shifting, they're not ending. I'm going to repeat this. Like, Fantastic Four First Steps, which I did not think was successful, still made$500 million. You know, Spider-Man will clear a billion. Doomsday will clear a billion there'll be other stuff next year I'm not even sure what it is that is coming after this but this stuff's going to keep happening and doing well but they're making way for Minecraft you know they're making way for another kind of movie that is going to start doing this and Obsession in Backrooms is kind of baked into this as well and this sort of like demand for something new that is originating from something that feel like that younger people feel like they have more ownership of and now what has happened is you know, 25 years in, these are not the movies that belong to Gen Alpha.
58:05Sean Fennessey:This is like my thing and maybe Gen Z's thing, but it's not for 10-year-olds anymore. And so there's something kind of fascinating about Doomsday coming around and being this, I compared it in the newsletter to How the West Was Won, the 1962 kind of mega Western that featured lots of very familiar but aging Western stars in this film that is directed by three different people in this beautiful format, but it's like a slow, rickety old Western. Doomsday might end up looking like that. You know, Robert Downey Jr., is he in his 60s? I mean... These guys are getting old. But he's got a lot of tinctures and stuff.
58:45I mean, he looks amazing. In his geodesic dome in Malibu. He's a beautiful man and I love his work. You're saying that Infinity Vision is going to be the most beautiful format we've ever seen?
58:53Sean Fennessey:There's something very Trump-coded about Infinity Vision. Of course! Yeah. Very, like, Trump coin, crypto, yeah the whole thing I am I'm really really interested in this stuff not just because of my adolescent interest in comic books but because it does hit that meeting point of how I think the movie business more than any other artistic business is a very public thing it's a very analyzable thing and you can look at what's inside of the movies and see what was going on in the real world I wrote about how I genuinely think that the rise of superhero movie culture was attuned to a post 9-11 world where we had good guys and we had bad guys.
59:33Sean Fennessey:We had terrorists and we had the American way. And movies about superheroes could be dichotomous in that way. Like, I really believe that there's something to that. That wasn't going to last. We've cycled through multiple political presidential administrations over time. We've seen the rise of totally different political movements. And one of the reasons why I think this has stopped being as relevant as it is, is that people every day fight online about truth, justice in the American way. And we don't need avatars to do that. And like whether they're on the left or the right or in the middle, they are the ones who are like, today I stand to thwart history and I say, no mas, you know?
1:00:13Sean Fennessey:And so there's all the, I find all this stuff in the stew to be really fascinating, but that's all, it's all external. It's all being in the ideological minefields. It's not really like, it doesn't change the fact Supergirl is just a bland, forgettable superhero movie. Yeah. It's not good. That's the other problem. It's just not good. They didn't do it well. No, they didn't do it well. And there have been a series of five, ten years. What was the last very good superhero movie? I liked Thunderbolts. It was, yes. I guess it cleared the bar of if you had a good time watching it. It wasn't bad. Yeah.
1:00:56Sean Fennessey:I liked that. I liked the Batman. Don't remember that. Yeah. I liked, you know, some things about Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. We're getting into that, like, there's stuff I enjoyed about it. Right. But what has happened is that there's more stuff like Thor, God of Love and Thunder, where you're just like, well, this just stinks. Like, this is just terrible. There are more and more movies that are like this, that are like Supergirl, you know, that are like Craven the Hunter where you're like, this just stinks. Right. Like, it's just terrible and it's going to be forgotten instantaneously.
1:01:30Sean Fennessey:And there's been a much higher preponderance of those. Yeah. And I wouldn't overlook that. That just like when things are quite bad, people check out. You're right. And when there's nothing to hang on to, then you don't. Then you find new audiences. Let me ask you an unanswerable question in the parlance of the Rewatchables. if COVID didn't happen and if the only way to really get Marvel storytelling was through streaming shows didn't happen oh it didn't happen okay I was like if you didn't have COVID then why would you need to stream at all they did they were gonna make the streaming shows regardless but they became the primacy of Marvel for like 18 months because Black Widow went straight to to VOD and the other movies basically had to take a pause and they couldn't launch new heroes like Shang-Chi.
1:02:18Sean Fennessey:They failed to kind of effectively do that in the imagination of the fans. So if the pandemic doesn't happen, is any of this different? Does this have a longer shelf life? Are you divesting creative and technological and filmmaking resources to the streaming show still? You are. Then that's, then no. Because I do honestly think that there was always going to be a downslope because you finish Endgame and, you know, when you find an ending, stick to your ending. And of course, they weren't going to do that. And also just, you know, as you said, there are cycles. People get interested in new things.
1:02:56People grow up. Your sister's a grown-up now. You know, it's like, you know, life moves on.
1:03:02Sean Fennessey:I should ask her if she's going to see this movie. But I do think that some of it is just like they're all quite bad. And it is because they're using less resource material. They're more... The effects and the number of people who can work on the effects and how much they're being paid. And it's just... There's a resource constraint going on now. Yeah, for sure. So I think that as long as that continues, and also if the streaming shows exist, then in this web that they've created, everyone, the shows and the movies and everything still have to speak to each other and you become It's Always Sunny guy, you know?
1:03:39Sean Fennessey:That was a big, big problem for them. Yeah. They clearly made some major mistakes by putting too much of the necessary understanding in the streaming series, which people just clearly were not engaging with at a certain point. And it's a numbers thing, right? Just if the more you try to do, the more that can go wrong. I mean, I always think of the Matt Damon on Bill Simmons podcast as being like making a movie is really hard and everything can go wrong at any time. And so you multiply that and you add in all these streaming shows and all of these things. I just, the numbers are against them, which is fine because they have billions of dollars from the other stuff.
1:04:14So they could have just retired. But I guess they don't like the beach.
1:04:19Sean Fennessey:No. No, and people want to work because they feel a sense of purpose. I won't take that away from them. I don't either. To me, it's not about the individual people at Marvel or DC or even the movie studios per se. It's much more structural. Like there was no way they were ever going to be able to turn the faucet off. the same way that they didn't turn the faucet off on Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967, even though it was like, you know, Thoroughly Modern Millie made some money. It got some Oscar nominations. You know, these things are they're systemic. They're not individuated. And so it's the same way I'm like Supergirl.
1:04:53Sean Fennessey:Yeah, they kind of fucked it up. They fucked it up. Well, you know, it happens. But it does. It will augur change in the business pretty meaningfully over the next 10 years in a way that I find interesting. Hey, two things that I want to say to you. One, appreciate you hanging with me on superhero movies for 10 years. Oh, you're so welcome. Two, I promise to not make the Spider-Man episode this. And I promise to not really do this anymore about this genre. Because I feel a sense of finality. The same way that like all my box office freakouts in 23, 24, 22. You're renouncing them? I put those to bed.
1:05:26Sean Fennessey:And I'm putting this larger concern to bed. I feel I've written through my idea too. And I'm like, I figured it out. I figured out how I feel about it. You need like, you know, some sort of like bell or, you know, stage like situation, like some sort of thing here, like a ceremony to like set you free. You know? Yeah. Let's release the demon. Ascending forth. Congratulations. Thank you. I feel whole again. Yeah. And now, you know, I can enjoy Deadpool 4. Oh my God. I forgot that that was happening. You know, like there'll be plenty of more stuff for me to like. Okay. Spider-Verse movie. You know, those are my favorite movies.
1:05:58Sean Fennessey:Spider-Verse movies. They're good. They're very good. Yeah. Okay. I think I, anything else you want to say as we close the book? It's been a great ride. I loved every minute of it. I'm sure you did. Okay. Let's bring in CR and talk now about the end of something else. Jack asked best and last.
1:06:21Okay.
1:06:22Sean Fennessey:CR has appeared magically. Hello. Hi. You showed up like a, like a bull. I did. In a ring. To gore you guys. You're going to, you're going to take us out with your takes. We just spent an hour plus doing an emotional rending of superhero garments about Supergirl. What's Kara? She didn't. I think you'll find it's Kara. Kara. Kara. She did not rise to the occasion, so to speak. You will, though, as we talk about Jackass Best in the Life. Okay, weird movie. Yeah. This movie. Easily one of the best times I've had at the movies this year. I'm not sure that that makes it a movie. No. No, it's definitely not a movie, but we had fun.
1:06:59Sean Fennessey:We had a lot of fun. The three of us saw it together last night. This is the fifth installment in the Jackass film series, although there have also been the bad grandpa, bad grandpa, dirty grandpa. Yeah, and then there was like, because a couple of them, and I would put this in the category, as many people have noted, is this is a 0.5. It's like a degree, just a clip show, some greatest hits, some very poo forward stunts, which I think is probably where those guys have wound up where like in their 50s, they're like, what we can do is experiment with poo, but we can't really get, you know, thrown out of moving vehicles anymore.
1:07:33Sean Fennessey:That's right. The movie, which is probably 40 % new stunts and gags and 60 % retrospective celebration of some of their greatest works. And where they're at now is that they have to downshift physically into what they're allowed to do, able to do to survive, especially Knoxville, Steve-O, Danger Aaron, Chris Pontius, Dave Englund, the guys who have been around for the majority of these movies. Now, I'm not sure if we've ever podcasted about the Jackass movies. Now, Chris and I certainly have at least once and maybe even twice. But it was very fun to see the movie with you too because you dug it.
1:08:12Sean Fennessey:You were having a grand old time. But it was funny to see when we laughed. And sometimes, and I think I laughed at different things than the two of you did. And then I also laughed when you guys really lost it. But I wasn't laughing at the movie as much. I was laughing at you. But we were talking on the way out that I guess we haven't podcasted about jackass, but jackass is very important to my life because I live with three men. And I do feel like there are some things that I don't understand that's happening in my house. And it grows every day. And it does often remind me of jackass. And I feel like it has been a skeleton key to understanding the primal urges and relationships of the people that I cohabitate with and also predictive of what's to come.
1:09:04But there is something, you know, this is a very poop forward movie, as is my life on a day to day basis at home. So there's something cyclical about it in a way. And there was one, I mean, there are many different types of poops that you see over the course of Jackass.
1:09:22Sean Fennessey:This is the most scatological of the Jackass movies. Yeah, and many of them are quite gross. But there was one where I was, some of them I was like judging the texture based on like what I dealt with, you know, earlier throughout the day. And I was like, oh, this seems fine. and then I was like oh I never thought about using crunchy peanut butter in that way but yes yeah that's exactly right yeah but see like you don't know also Zach's still only one arm so I am changing all the dirty diapers in my house okay let's try to break up the jackass experience into three distinct strata filum whatever you want to call it there is pure pain there is a giant hand smacks you in the face there is you launch yourself to a rocket and you fly off into the ocean I don't like saying that in this new film a man that has to walk on a balance beam while a shock collar is attached to his penis.
1:10:13Sean Fennessey:So that to me falls in the second category, which is dick pain. Dick pain is a category of jackass stuff. There is as low grade as a robot just hits you in the nuts. Or just nut taps. Lots of guys doing dick taps. A lot of taps throughout the entirety of this franchise. And then the third is shit, vomitous, this, you know, smell anxiety. Like this, like we're exposing you to a bodily orifice that will make you ill in one way or another. Now, number one is my favorite. The glee of watching another man get hit in the face and then his group of friends laughing at him. Yeah. That to me is when Jack has it at its very best.
1:10:59I would like to add to like a subcategory of that where like a hit that sends someone flying into the air. so it's really like when someone takes flight I think you and I are Knoxville originalists yeah of course we are I want to see him strapped to the back of a rocket I want to see him with a bull we are I don't think anybody's ever seen the footage that opens this movie is that right? which is crazy so insane which is so fucking nuts I don't even want to spoil it I am I go Knoxville and then probably like I would say Steve and Pontius while I respect what they are capable of are like a little lower down the power ranking for me for like just pure nudity running up to guys and being like here's my penis or we'll just go for it yeah uh not something you've done things that i'm pulling out of or putting into my bum yeah that to me there was in terms of like penis and i guess i understand that testicles are different than penis but there was some ball listen no the bad grandpa like i know about penises in one way but also like i'm having to learn about them in new ways well i mean enumerate them what are the ways in which you know about them i'm not mallory so um but so i found jackass instructive in that way as you also try to like i don't know how to teach two young
1:12:17Sean Fennessey:kids about their penis see it's the exploration of the the male body right but you guys i think laughed the most of anything, if I recall, at the stunt involving just like very, very like elongated anatomy. I like I don't want to spoil anymore. And that physically being on display. And that was when you were looking and you're losing your mind. That was the most giggling that I saw. I it had also the element of jackass that I think that they've probably lost as their celebrity has grown, which is their ability to go guerrilla filmmaking. Yeah. And I have to say, I mean, obviously Knoxville in the course of this film has several emotional moments, say, realizing that he can no longer do this.
1:13:00And, you know, I think not unlike Mission Impossible 4, they never really truly turned the franchise over to a new generation. and YouTube sort of market corrected for a lot of the prank stuff. But the guerrilla filmmaking side of this and the moment where I found myself getting very emotional is towards the end of the film, there's a multifaceted stunt that they do and they go to the control room and Spike Jonze is there. And I was like, I can't believe that this is one of our great filmmakers, like one of the greatest filmmakers of our lifetimes. And the thing that gives him the most joy is still the thing that gives me the most joy, which is seeing Dave kicked in the nuts 50 times by a contraption
1:13:39Sean Fennessey:that is a wheel of spinning shoes yeah yeah I there's I felt a little sad during that sequence seeing Spike it's the only time Spike is really on screen you hear his voice a couple of times through some of the retrospective stuff but he hasn't made a movie in over 10 years and he was that was one of my guys that was you know going all the way back to the music videos and obviously he is a critical part of this because he comes out of the skate culture and skate videos that all these guys are born out of. And all these guys have this interesting thing now where especially that first generation of jackasses are skate and surf punks.
1:14:16Sean Fennessey:And they're not like ideological punks. They're anarchy punks. And it was a very particular flavor of dude that I certainly knew. They're very prevalent in California. And the mischief and the sense of glee that I always felt like Knoxville and Steve-O. And then the other component is Bam. and Bam Margera is featured in this movie and he's had a lot of troubles over the last 10 years and Ryan Dunn is featured in this movie he's no longer with us so there's a little bit of a teardrop in the film too but they do actually kind of get the band back together for one specific stunt in the movie which is maybe like the funniest idea if not the funniest execution about the dark room with the snake which I enjoyed and it was nice seeing Bam be very scared of snakes because actually as you noted on the 2010 movie draft it's an incredible content I was surprised they didn't take us back to that moment.
1:15:06Me too. They describe it. But yeah, I mean, I really enjoy the sequences where like jackasses happening out in the wild. There's one that I think has been pretty big on YouTube, so I'm hoping I'm not spoiling anything, but where Brad Pitt gets abducted outside of Pink's Hot Dogs. What era Brad Pitt is that? That's 01. It's like summer 01, so he has the rusty Ocean's Eleven haircut and vibe. It's just post like Fight Club. That's so fucking cool.
1:15:37Sean Fennessey:Yeah. That's so cool. That was a great thing. But wasn't that stunt on the show? It was. Like I see, you know, I knew about that and that's sort of, I mean, that is how Jackass comes into like Amanda's pop cultural orbit and is more of a frame of mind than me having every single stunt memorized but I remember them abducting Brad Pitt. Yeah, it was interesting to see how they picked and chose what their most iconic moments were or what were the launch pads for discussions between Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine, the longtime director and producer of the series and Steve-O and, you know, kind of the godfathers of the thing.
1:16:09Sean Fennessey:And I think the fairly uneasy integration of the new class of people, which I think they struggled with in Jackass Forever 2, where it was like, it's cool to watch, you know, Zach Holmes or Jasper do stuff. And I did watch, I really enjoyed watching Jasper get rammed by a ram for 20 minutes in the movie. That was one of my favorites. That was one of the best bits. There's nothing. But Rachel doesn't do it. She doesn't get anything to do. I relate it. She's just wandering around in the back. Yeah. Not ideal. They don't even let her be in the grocery cart. Yeah, let her get rammed by a ram, for Christ's sake.
1:16:43Sean Fennessey:I know. But I just, I like watching Knoxville get throttled. Like, that's just, there's a primal quality to this series where when he, like, when he gets gored, which we saw, you know, it's from a previous film. But when he gets gored and he gets hit once and then they're like, we got to do take two. That sequence of filmmaking. I was like, something is alive here. And he gets knocked out and everybody is like, that's why he's Knoxville. And that is the thing that I guess. And then he's put in the, like literally an ambulance doing like tricky dick figures on the stretcher. He's like that bull didn't like magic.
1:17:18It's funny. It's like, obviously it's like if you had invented Facebook, you would have invented Facebook. like this was is been done like other prank shows there are other fear like fear factor there are things on youtube you can watch of people being like i'm i'm jumping through a plate glass window you know whatever these guys are kind of stars um and it is really weird to be in my late 40s um a little bit younger than these guys having watched them for most of my life like half of my life and seeing a little bit of the toll it takes on them. You know, and I think that this is like an appropriate place to end it, you know?
1:17:57Yeah. Do you think it is the ending? I mean, no, who can say? I did wonder, you know, this is a Paramount film and a Paramount franchise, though conceived over previous owners. And you start to wonder how risk averse or not the new ownership is going to be. So like, will they be able to get away with all of this stuff?
1:18:21Sean Fennessey:I don't know. It's a really interesting question. And it dovetails with, I think, a lot of that Knoxville's emotionality around the movie. Like he's done interviews over the last couple of years where he's talked about how he's basically been told like you cannot get another bull oriented concussion. Like your life will be in jeopardy if you keep doing this to yourself. And he's really sad about it. And he has this like really complex relationship to being punished on screen and knowing that it's kind of his calling. Like it is his art. And the films have made this very smart association with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and the history of kind of physical comedy.
1:18:55It opens with basically a dance, a big dance number, this film does.
1:18:59Sean Fennessey:That is sort of Jamiroquai inspired, the sliding rooms. And so it's weird to have like big feelings around jackass that are not hilarity. But this was true when Chris and I did the jackass forever conversation too. I don't there's no other movie that gets me just moving around as much in my seat you know reacting so profoundly it's pure cinema it really in that way it is pure cinema it is like cover my eyes crying with laughter like like wanting sequences to go on forever wanting sequences to be over in one second and I do love these and I'm not joking it captures something about like the male urge like that that I don't understand and don't have but have never seen so clearly articulated.
1:19:48I'm grateful for the work. And then also, I mean, this one, one of the final stunts is the premise is based around colonoscopy prep. So we are all of an age, you know, and that we're recognizing that and seeing it. And so are the people on the screen. And, you know, life comes at you fast and it's horrible.
1:20:08Sean Fennessey:I hope this isn't a HIPAA violation. Yeah. Chris and I have both had colonoscopies this year. and the prep is the worst part. It's awful. I had to do it for a different surgery recently. It's horrible. I'm traumatized by that drink. The drink is the worst thing I've ever had in my entire life. When you see them chugging it, you're like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. And there's something so ingenious though at being at colonoscopy age, which many of those guys are, being like, let's just do a gag built around this. You know, there's something very real and honest, even though the gag they do is let's play Twister.
1:20:41Like, you know, all the stuff that I love about early jackass is why they can't make any more jackass because this show airs. I don't remember seeing the box before.
1:20:53Sean Fennessey:I don't remember it either. And so they basically put Knoxville in a cardboard box and throw him down the stairs. And he's like, I herniated two discs. I'm like, yeah, they said they couldn't air it. Sean sat on his wallet weirdly for like six months and had like crippling back pain. Imagine throwing you down the stairs. But they said they weren't allowed to air it because it was too replicable. Oh, too replicable. And that people could figure out a box and tape yourself in it at home. But it is like the origins of the show are so wonderfully adolescent in that way where that is the kind of thing you would do when you're 11 years old with your friends.
1:21:26Sean Fennessey:Well, that's what he's going to miss. He's going to miss having a reason to get together with these guys and come up with stupid shit and get paid for it. I know. It's a wonderful thing. I think it should be celebrated. It is not really a movie. And yet, like, it didn't really matter. I had a great time. It was 90 minutes long. I was happy to actually be watching the retrospective stuff and to be reminded of it and to be seeing it in a room with a lot of other people laughing. And it kind of, I feel like normally I'd be pretty cynical about this. I'd be like, this is a cash in or whatever. But I'm like, these guys might die.
1:21:50Sean Fennessey:So if this is the best they could do, it's fine by me. It's also just like, you know exactly what you're getting when you're going to these movies. So like there's nobody in the theater who's like, oh, I can't believe I'm being subjected to this. It's like, you knew what it was. You know what it is. Yeah. Enjoy it or don't watch it. It was like a family reunion. It was like this slideshow projected at a family reunion. Well put. But any closing thoughts? Do you want Jackass New Blood? Like, do you think Paramount will leave this alone? I don't think they'll leave it alone because money is money, right?
1:22:19Sean Fennessey:But whether it will ever get back to... I don't know. There's something specifically about when Knoxville, like, tasers somebody and then starts giggling when they're in extreme pain that, like, you cannot replicate. Like, there's never going to be that specific feeling of anarchy and mania. They also have to have like a certain brat. I mean, like they talk about how when they brought on the new people, they would talk about what they're scared of. And Tremaine's like, I can't believe this guy's just telling me everything he's scared of. I'm definitely just going to have him put in all of these situations.
1:22:51And he does, you know. I don't know. We always have like the previous TV seasons and the movies, so. And also you can come to my house. I could come to your house. Maybe that's where the next season is happening. Go running around. Jackass 6.
1:23:05Sean Fennessey:The Dobbins Barron household. Okay. Okay, well, CR, fortunately you're sticking around because you're doing another episode with us. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support. Next week, I think we're going to have three episodes. But you're not sure. This is the magic of podcasting. And I'm not going to even tease what it might be. It will be a solo pod by me, direct to camera. I stand with Supergirl. See you then.
1:23:54Turn it up! Storm has zero sugar and 200 milligrams of caffeine, so you can turn that workout up a notch. Good energy in, good energy out. Energy for life. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+.
From the publisher
Sean and Amanda open the show by covering myriad movie news headlines, including the status of Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Artifical’, new footage released of Tom Cruise in his highly anticipated film, ‘Digger,’ and the Academy inviting 529 members, including Jacob Elordi, Teyana Taylor, Josh O’Connor, and more. Then, Sean and Amanda use the new DC film, ‘Supergirl,' which they found creatively and technically empty, as a springboard to have a wide-ranging conversation about the decline in importance of superhero movie culture. Finally, Chris Ryan joins the show to discuss the (potentially) final film of the ‘Jackass’ franchise: ‘Jackass: Best and Last’, a movie they all thoroughly enjoyed.
(0:00) Intro
(0:49) Movie news
(23:42) ‘Supergirl’
(45:12) What was the superhero movie era?
(1:03:23) ‘Jackass: Best and Last’ with Chris Ryan
Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins
Guest: Chris Ryan
Producer: Jack Sanders
Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh
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