Could You Be Suffering From Superhero Fatigue?

0:28This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Buying a car shouldn't eat up your week. That's why Carvana made it convenient. Car buying that fits around your life, not the other way around. You can get pre-qualified for an auto loan in just a couple of minutes and browse thousands of quality car options. All within your terms. All online. All on your schedule. Turn car buying into a few clicks and not a full week's endeavor. Finance and buy your car at your convenience. On Carvana. Financing subject to credit approval. Additional terms and conditions may apply.

1:00At Sierra, discover great deals on top brand workout gear, like high-quality walking shoes, which might lead to another discovery. 40 ,000 steps, baby! Who's on top now, Karen? You've taken the office step challenge a step too far. Don't worry, though. Sierra also has yoga gear. It might be a good place to find your zen. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving.

1:29Hello and welcome to The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde And me Richard Osmond, hello Marina Hello Richard, it's nice to be back It's lovely to be back isn't it, I didn't think we'd make a second show It's incredible, I feel like I've won now whatever happens The podcast lottery, lots of things to talk about today You're going to be talking a little bit about what's up with Marvel I'm going to talk a little bit about Robbie Williams, David Beckham and Ronnie O'Sullivan, those documentaries What are we talking about third? Something I think people wouldn't think we're talking about I've heard about a recently deceased Henry Kissinger.

1:57It may seem surreal that it's appearing in the entertainment podcast, but wear with us and it will become clear. Exactly that. And then lots of recommendations about what to watch, what to read, all sorts of things. And a little something from you, I hope, on what to do when your format hits an emergency. Yes, strictly this weekend, Nigel pulled out the worst possible time, if you know what I mean. And so I'm going to talk about format emergencies. Just a brief aposue, and I'm going to talk about the worst format emergency I ever had, which involved Mel C. Oh, okay. So we've got Henry Kissinger and Mel C coming up.

2:28They've worked together before, of course. Of course they have. Right, let's start with Marvel. Marvel is in quite a bit of trouble, which seems absolutely extraordinary in many ways because this is a cinematic universe that basically sort of launched in 2008. It's pulled in 33 billion, 40 billion in merchandise because let's not forget these things really need to shift plastic. That is a big part of their job. But today, as we're recording this on a Monday, Today in New York, the trial for domestic violence starts of Jonathan Majors, who was slated and has been already unveiled and starred in one movie as their big villain for phases five and phases six.

3:07Bear in mind, they talk, Marvel talks about things in terms of five year plans, rather like some of the great monsters of the 20th century. But I'm here for it. I digress. I digress. So we started with phase one in 2008. Been through the first four phases. We're about to start phase five. We've technically started phase five. Did you notice at home we technically started phase five? I should say at this point that the reason I've been fully immersed in Marvel in the past couple of years is I'm writing on an HBO comedy which is set behind the scenes on a superhero franchise movie. They have been masterminded really by one man, a guy called Kevin Feige, who's the sort of president of Marvel Studios.

3:44They start in 2008. Bear in mind, they don't have very good superheroes. They have like second string. Now they seem like the biggest thing in the world, the Avengers. but at the time, you know, Thor, Iron Man, these are not Superman. They're not Batman. They actually do own Spider-Man, but they've licensed it to Sony, so they can't even use Spider-Man. But what they do, I think, what's so successful with Marvel films is that they've eliminated sort of endings. So you get a beginning and middle, and then there's a new beginning, and each film begets another film. And instead of putting out one film a year, they were putting out three a year, which fans felt like they had to watch in order to understand all the different plot lines and kind of interrelations, and it's become this huge sort of sprawling thing, which for a long time was unbelievably successful.

4:26Well, these franchises have really taken over Hollywood. There has never been a more successful... I mean, it's extraordinary, the universe that they've created. And there is a string of genuinely brilliant films as well. So it's not just they found some IP and they've sort of dressed actors up in costumes. They've made some brilliant films. Iron Man was a brilliant film. Iron Man 3, that's my favourite. There are some wonderful films and they go into comedy. They go into all sorts of different areas. So it's an extraordinary thing that they've created, which looked like it wasn't coming off the tracks, but you think now maybe the wheels are coming off?

4:59I don't think the wheels are coming off, and obviously reports of their death are wildly exaggerated. They are still massively successful. But what they have got is a serious problem with what people are talking about a lot at the moment, which is superhero fatigue. I know you say they've gone into comedy, they've gone into these other genres. I don't believe they have, actually. I'm rather less of an evangelist than you. What they have is superhero movies. Everyone's saying, Kevin Feige sometimes says, you know, we have all the genres. We have a female feminist legal drama. I'm like, is that She-Hulk?

5:28You haven't. You've got a really bad superhero series that's on streaming. I haven't seen She-Hulk. Is that She-Hulk a lawyer? I've seen things you wouldn't believe. I really have seen things. I've seen every episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Okay, so let me tell you, I am a completist. However, as you rightly say, what is the star is the IP, is the brand. And fans have come back and back to the cinema for the brand. And one of the sort of, I think, upsetting things that that means is that people don't really go to the movies for movie stars anymore. You go to see the brand. You know, as Marvel will show you, three guys can play Spider-Man, even in one movie.

6:06You know, tell me, what is a Tom Holland movie other than, I hate to say it, a bomb? If he's not wearing the suit, they don't do well. And I mean, even the same with someone like Jennifer Lawrence, who when she's in a franchise, the movies perform very well. But otherwise, it's hit and miss and it's more miss than hit. But isn't that good? Isn't that the producers and the writers making the hits rather than actors? Well, I don't know. I'm a rather romantic. I want movie stars to open movies. And I don't really want the sort of greatest actors of their generations to be stuck in these properties where they're kind of having to make these things do an awful lot of kind of heavy lifting.

6:41And you have to say, oh, I'm, you know, we're exploring really interesting themes of, I don't know, colonialism or anti-imperialism, all this. It's like, are you really? I mean, I honestly just feel I'm watching a superhero movie. And we used to have lots of films that did that. We had films that actually did that rather than did it wearing a cape. And now the problem is that there's nothing left. There's no room for that. The mid-budget film has been killed by these things. Everyone feels they need a universe. And so obviously in the summer, You all saw Mattel's Barbie. I mean, that is a toy movie.

7:12I personally really liked it and so did lots of other people. But it is a toy movie. Greta Gerwig was working for Mattel. Mattel have some extraordinary other properties in that burgeoning universe. Lena Dunham's Polly Pocket movie. I know you're thinking that's a joke, but it's actually real. Daniel Kaluuya's Barney the Purple Dinosaur movie. No, come on. I'm not joking. Is this one of those ones where you give me three and one of them is true? I'm afraid they're all true, Richard. They're all true. And when they first announced that Barney the Purple Dinosaur movie, they said, yeah, it's going to be very surrealistic, quite dark, quite A24.

7:43Anyway, and of course, they have now course corrected and they've said it will not be an odd movie. So just in case anyone thought they might be getting something quite dark and surrealistic with the Barney the Purple Dinosaur movie, they won't be. Oh, phew. I worried it was going to be a bit Mike Lee. Genuinely, I will seed fund that. he may end up directing one of these things for i'm joking of course but actually young directors that's the sad thing that has happened as well they call it the sundance to spandex pipeline and they get these really hot young directors you've had some indie hits and they grab you at sundance and say we'd love to see your take on whatever property in the franchise they're being given of course what they really mean is that they don't want to see your take at all they want to use your indie cred and they want you to make an exact copy of other marvel movies you know and so Someone like Edgar Wright, who directed Shaun of the Dead, Hot Files, all those sort of things, actually had to exit and not do Ant-Man anymore because they say they want an Edgar Wright movie, but they don't.

8:40They want a Marvel movie. He said he can't watch it as well. So Edgar was saying recently, he said he thinks that possibly they're releasing these things too close to each other, which I think they are because they have so many different superheroes that if they release one Ant-Man every three years, they're also releasing an Iron Man, they're also releasing Avengers. So I think it's become like EastEnders. I think the storylines now are so convoluted that you go, I worry I go into one and I think, oh, where's Doc Cotton? She's not here. You know, and who's this new guy? I don't even know who the Brannings are let alone the new cousin who's come along.

9:14You've got no heritage. But I think it's like that. I think it's slightly, my son is encyclopedic so, you know, he will know absolutely, he'll go, Thanos is doing that because of what happened like five movies ago and what's going to happen in four movies time. I'm like, oh. Oh, you mean like when Dirty Den came back from the dead, when they pushed him in the canal? So I think it's got too confusing. And I think Edgar is right that there's so many of them. If you look at Grand Theft Auto and the trailer just launched this week. The trailer just launched this week and people went insane. And that's because it's been 10 years since the last Grand Theft Auto.

9:49That's made$30 billion, Grand Theft Auto. So they're doing all right for themselves and they're doing one every 10 years. Imagine if Marvel did that. That'd be amazing. they'd still make money. In the meantime we could have lots of lovely indie films that really were about colonialism and about you know feminism in the legal industry and you know every 10 years we go oh great we get Robert Downey Jr is back in his suit. The question now is where do they go? For people who say they plan everything meticulously the Jonathan Majors trial that is happening today which is obviously a pretty awful story however it shakes down there's also a report of domestic violence coming from the London police from while he was over here.

10:26And I cannot see a way back for him, although they have not said that yet. They've never been in these sort of territories before. Do they be cast? Do they replace it, some people are saying, with Doctor Doom, a much better character anyway, they say, the fans. The fandom is another horse you have to ride. The thing I would do, is my solution to anything in Hollywood, Paul Mescal. He's the answer, is he? That's Kang him. Paul Mescal as Kang. Okay, yeah, that's a suggestion. Who's complaining? Well, I'll tell you what. The fans will complain because they complain about everything. It's quite a lot managing the fandom.

10:58That's like Pointless. Whenever we change the rules on Pointless, people go crazy for a couple of weeks and then they're fine. If they introduce Paul Mescal as the co-host on Pointless, people for a couple of weeks would be like, oh, no. And then they go, I really like him. Wow. You know what? I really like him. Marvel stans versus Pointless stans. This is a battle I would love to see. There's a film. Yes, it is. I wonder sort of in another way why they became so popular at the time they did. I was looking back at the history of cosplay the other day and cosplay comes up. Cosplay gets really big in Japan right after the Japanese financial crisis in 1991.

11:30And people retreat. Obviously, there's been huge institutional failure. And people, young people retreat from a world of sort of uncertainty and, I guess, kind of structural failure into this kind of Manichean world where things are good and evil and things are very simple. But it's also allied to a real aromanticism. romanticism and it's very sort of non-erotic and it's very almost childlike and infantilized. And then I look back at when Iron Man was released and becomes this massive hit and it's 2008, the global financial crisis in 2008. And I wonder if there's something similar that people have retreated into these quite simplistic worlds where someone is coming to save you in a world where we know that the institutions consistently fail us.

12:10Well, you know, the biggest franchise of all in the whole world by a mile, bigger than the MCU, bigger than Star Wars, bigger than any of that stuff, bigger than Call of Duty, biggest one in the whole world, by almost double is Pokemon. You know, the Pokemon universe and that's exactly what you're talking about. Did you know what I thought you were going to say? Oh no, what? The Bible. Yeah, do you know what Marina? It's interesting you're talking about because I know a superhero. There are people trying to make the Bible into a franchise. Oh, they would go crazy. They're like, great, it's not even copyrighted.

12:43This is IP. Yeah. So this is IP out there for the exploitation. I mean, there's a lot of money in that. Isn't there the Bible franchise? Yeah, I mean, it could be huge. I mean, there are those kind of quite far-right Christian films that do quite well that are sort of siloed off, which we should do a deep dive on at some point. Really interesting, the actors that are involved in those. And they're kind of siloed off in a part of the world that you don't necessarily see if perhaps you and me are not interested in those particular things, but they're really big business. I'm interested. You're interested in seeing what Kevin Sorbo is doing now, are you?

13:16Yeah, of course I am, because I'm interested in what Christ is up to. Yeah, of course. And what the former star of Hercules is up to. Exactly that. That is right in the centre of your Venn diagram in that case. I mean, literally, when I approached Goldhanger first, I wanted to do The Rest is Christ. And I want to do it with Kevin Sorbo. Yes, please. Can I ask one question, which is this? I always think that culture is a pendulum, and you swing so far one way and when you get to the very end of the pendulum, it swings back. Do you think it's possible with production getting slightly cheaper, certainly with actors getting cheaper because the star system has broken down a bit, that we might be ushering in another golden age of Hollywood where we can start making mid-budget movies and lower budget movies and story movies?

14:00Do you think that Marvel, when it finally does fizzle out, will actually lead in to have a vacuum which will be filled with meaning and romanticism and all of these things? God, I mean, I'd really love to think so. I think times are really tough for theatrical release. For movies that you actually see in cinema, times are really hard and very few things make money in cinema. Horror still makes money in cinema, which I kind of love, which is a really interesting story. Five Nights at Freddy's, brilliantly. I mean, it's extraordinary the amount of quite low-budget horror films that do make money in the cinema and are still out there, kind of keeping the lights on.

14:30Family, to some extent, makes money, but can be very hit and miss. Yeah, I would love to see a return to, sounds ridiculous,$60 million movies, which explore all sorts of interesting questions. And which are, I mean, the other funny thing about it is, are they capable of winning awards? All movie studios want awards. And Kevin Feige was so happy when Black Panther got their Oscar nomination and maybe felt like, oh, now we're being taken seriously in all our movies. But what else are you ever going to nominate? Black Panther was a good movie, but there are so many other ones that are complete draws and they're never going to get nominated.

15:06But then you have this completely absurd situation where the awards circuit is movies that no one goes and watches. I mean, these things fall off the screen. I was looking at the Oscar contenders this year and it was like, nope, nope, no, wow, no. I mean, I hadn't heard of any of them. If you were in a position where you were about to make a film about a full pensioner solving crime, would you be confident or not confident about the box office? You know what? It's based on one of my favourite entertainment properties, Richard, the Thursday Mother of the Club so I'm pretty sure that the movie based on your birth will be very much the Pokemon of its day so yeah Marvel honestly I think they've done brilliant things I think they've done some extraordinary things I think there's too much of them I've lost the thread and I'm hoping that at some point the huge amount of money that's gone into that can spread out amongst Hollywood and we can have another sort of 5 or 10 years of just great movies again trickle down economics trickle down when has it ever worked but yes when has it ever failed Let's take a quick break.

16:04And when we're coming back, we're talking about Ronnie, Robbie and Bex.

16:32Free$250 credit for the next one. Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBCLIS, Librikizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

17:08Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EBCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglis. Before starting Epglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about Epglis and visit epglis.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979.

17:39I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back, and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the internet last year, and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season, and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online and in store.

18:11Welcome back to The Rest is Entertainment. I want to talk about three documentaries and I've lumped them together because they're all about men, three men who were born within 18 months of each other, all working class lads, all fit, in a game of shag marry kill it would be shag shag shag with these three's I think and it's and it's the documentaries on Robbie Williams David Beckham and Ronnie O'Sullivan now you've seen all three I've seen all three I'm afraid there's an avoid in there for me but that's good well let's start with what I think will be your avoid because I think it's creatively the most interesting which is the Robbie Williams documentary so Robbie Williams documentary it's that classic thing now of it's all archive but what we also have is this sort of goggle box thing which now comes into everything which is Robbie Williams watching the archive himself so the only footage we got is stuff that happened at the time and we got Robbie talking about it and people I think have found him quite solipsistic in it and I think the reason for that is he is able to comment on everything that happened whereas nobody else is I wondered if there was anyone left who would speak up for him I really got that impression.

19:21Can I just say, he also does this, commenting on the footage, he is sitting there in a vest and his pants in bed most of the time. He's pretty good on talking about his self-loathing, but I think he's rather quiet on his self-love, which I have to say, Sean, quite heavily through for me. That's the problem, I think. No one else gets a word in. So there's various moments. He breaks up with Guy Chambers, who he had this incredible songwriting partnership with, And you watch them slightly fall apart and all you get is Robbie sort of, it's quite unpleasant. And you think, oh my God, they must absolutely hate each other.

19:55And you look into it, actually, they started working together again. But all it would take is for Guy Chambers to go, yeah, that was a difficult time for us. So you have that. He gets back with Take That, which to me is a very moving moment. And they write The Flood, which is the greatest Robbie Williams song of all time. Probably the greatest Gary Barlow song of all time as well. It's big talk. But it is. Listen, I can't think of what would beat it. so he gets back with them and you think this is very moving because a lot of the film is about how bitter he was left by leaving Tate that and suddenly you think oh this is lovely the sort of therapy of getting back together with the boys but because you just have him talking about it he doesn't really talk about it a great deal and you don't have Gary or Mark saying do you know what it was so lovely to have him back in because all you're seeing is archive but why don't you have that is it that they won't turn out for him or that he won't even give them one second of the airtime because the other two documentaries which we won't get onto yet but we are going to talk about you can't move for people who want to talk about Ronnie O'Sullivan and you can't move for people who want to talk about David Beckham and I was left feeling as Robbie paced his various mansions that he either didn't want them to speak or else they didn't really want much to either I think it's a directorial choice and I think it's one that served him ill so it's all going to be archive, great, we get that but Robbie you're going to be watching the archive so that's the creative proposition there because the archive is brilliant there's some great stuff of Robbie when he's very young and you realise, by the way, how open he always was about his struggles.

21:19You know, he's being interviewed by people and he's literally telling them. He's telling them, yeah. He's telling them, I'm well, I'm ill, I'm unhappy. And they're going, oh, but could you say something about looking forward to the gig as well? That stuff is really mesmerising. It's like a kind of horror movie where someone is telling everyone and no one can hear them. It is really extraordinary. And you go back and look and think, gosh, you know, I probably watched some of those interviews on telly while they were happening. Yeah, and you're going, oh, Robbie always had a drink, that one, hasn't he?

21:43And you think, oh no, he was clearly suffering. But that's the picture. And once you say that, look, it's just you watching this stuff. So there will be other voices in it. But it's like, Jerry Halliwell is in it, because there's lots of lovely home video of her. Guy Chambers is in it. But all through archive. You can't then say, oh, why don't we get Guy to do a piece to camera? Because that's not the style of the film. There's no space for that. There's also, interestingly, in the Robbie thing, he talks about a gig at Roundhay Park in Leeds. and he says that this was the real low point and this is where it all fell apart.

22:16But he finds himself incapable of watching it. He said, I can't watch this. So they fast forward through it. So you are not ever told what happened. So all the way through this thing, which feels clever, which is it's just archive and Robbie's watching it, it stops the storytelling. You don't hear from his parents. You don't see his parents at any point. Presumably there's no archive. And you think, I can't really get a full picture of you unless I know who they are and where they were at various points. I think there's a much better documentary to be made. I get why they made it that way, and it sounds great.

22:44But the real star, and she appears about three or four times, is Robbie's daughter, who comes in occasionally. Robbie's in his vest, and she's looking so miserable. And his daughter comes in, and it's so delightful. What are you watching, Daddy? And he goes, I'm afraid I'm watching a real low point of my life. You're going to have to go into the other room. She goes, oh, come on, can I watch? And he goes, no, you can watch when you're older. But at the moment, yeah, I'm afraid this is really bad for Daddy. And she gives him a big cuddle. And off she goes, and there's clearly love there. It's the only time in the whole film you see genuine love, and it's delightful to see.

23:16But, yeah, I think he's ill-served by the format of it, whereas Beckham, he obviously had complete control over his documentary and is just brilliant. Well, this is the one that's made by Fisher Stevens, who some of our listeners may know better as, he's a brilliant documentary maker, but you may know him better as Hugo from Succession. And it's really funny, when I was talking to some of the Succession writers and one of the big questions they kept being asked when the final episode of the show aired was like, oh my God, would you ever do a spin-off series? And for a joke, they were always like, yeah, only one with Hugo though.

23:47Because they all loved Hugo so much. They loved Fisher Stevens. Thought he was a fantastic guy in real life. And he is the maker of this documentary commissioned by its subject. Although Beckham now has a new brand manager. He was with Simon Fuller for many years and he's got this guy called Jamie Salter who's got this big, big company called Authentic Brands. he's the one who's driven this particular project. Anyway, carry on. No, I think it's exactly that. It's so prestige. And as you say, it's the exact opposite of Robbie in that everybody wants to talk about him. You know, every single person from the world of football, I mean, everybody wants to chat about him.

24:23Every single story in it, you know, if you're a sports fan, you know that he scored from the halfway line for Man United. You know the stuff that happened with England. You know him going to America before he should have done. But it's so genuinely compelling to watch all that and watch him. So they have him watching, which is beautiful, but then they've got Gary Neville talking. Yeah. I think that's what Robbie needed. You know, he needed Jonathan Wilkes to come in and say something about him. What I find really fascinating about it is that after all this money and all these years and all the sort of dramas and scandals, they still love being famous and they really, really want to be famous and to stay famous, which is why they are doing this.