Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Linberg, senior editor for the Ringer host of Button Mash and Ring of Verse Recoments. And I'm here today in the latter capacity to deliver. Ring of Verse recommends our edition for August 2026. This is the show where at the end of every month, we wrap up a bunch of nerd culture, adjacent releases that came out in the preceding weeks that we didn't have time to devote a full episode of the Ring of Verse or House of R2. We've had our hands full. We had House of the Dragon wrapping up this month. We've had lanterns, of course. And so a lot of stuff has slipped through the cracks until now, of course. So we will be starting with the big screen and moving to small. I will be joined by critic Adam Naiman, who pops up around the ringer. And we will be talking about three movies released in August the end of Oak Street, the dog stars in Coyote versus Acme. We will actually be recommending at least two of the three, but we will be talking about each of them in some depth, only spoilers about the end of Oak Street, but we will warn you before we get to those. Then I'll be bringing in Jomiad Deneron and Daniel Chin. And we'll do a little roundup of animation. We've got a lot of DC to catch up with. My adventures with Superman, season three Batman, Cape Crusader, season two Batman Nightfall, the new TV movie, even a little bit of Star Wars on the docket today because we have visions present the ninth Jedi. So we'll get into all of that and maybe a little bit more today. As always, you can submit your own nominations to ringerverse
[email protected]. So send your submissions for September and next month we'll be back with much more. I'll be back at the end of this episode to pass along this month's listener submission in a bonus recommendation of my own. Talk to you then. But before then, let's roll out Adam. Well, I'm joined by critic, lecturer, author, ringer contributor, both to our website and to the big picture podcast, Adam Neiman. Welcome, Adam. Hey. How are you doing? I'm very happy to be here. Doing great. Happy to have you. Are you ready to talk about some movies where dogs are in danger? That's the theme, I think, to all three. That would sort of seem to be the common denominator, yeah. I'm here for it. This is definitely a check. Does the dog die.com situation for anyone who is sensitive to pets in jeopardy? Which does include me. But I made it through. I do it for content. So we are going to talk about the dog stars, the end of Oak Street and Coyote versus Acme, the latter two of which you wrote about for the ringer.com. What a great website. Before we do just to set the scene, we're having a pretty decent summer box office. We're a record or near record box office totals. That's if we pretend that inflation doesn't exist and that there aren't fewer movies and fewer moviegoers paying more per movie. This has been quite a summer slate, including some of the movies at least that we're about to talk about. You know, on the inflation topic, when I do this economics film class at U of T, I always ask them to guess the top 10 movies of all time adjusted for inflation, the one that not even the smartest because like they all get gone with the win, you know, no one ever gets Dr. Javago four hours of Julie Christie and beautiful hats, you know, slogging through the snow, pretty, pretty good movie, but it really is, I think number, I don't have the list in front of me, but they're like, it is number eight or nine. That's not just modern blockbusters that are long enough to need an intermission. It is funny how we all just kind of collectively pretends that the dollars are the same across areas because it leads to flashier headlines like this might be the biggest summer blockbusters summer season ever aside from maybe 2013, it's going to come down to the wire these next couple of weekends, but it does sort of seem like something for everyone, I guess, right? I mean, this season has largely delivered. Well, the Odyssey is even is even a kind of throwback to that era too, you know, not a lot of people were invoking Ben Hurr or Cleopatra Spartacus because Christopher Nolan kind of trumps all of that as an artistic personality. And I think there's a lot of things with the Odyssey that are obviously very different. But, you know, those were the great Hollywood spectaculars of the end of the first half of the 20th century, largely because the Bible or the Old Testament or Greece was a way to get around the censors, you know, funny that Christopher Nolan's Odyssey is like less sleazy than the 10 commandments was, you know, made 60 odd years ago. But certainly this summer, you know, the rhetoric about, you know, the movies are back, the box office are back, there's something for somebody is interesting. And I think all three of the movies this week have an interesting kind of industrial angle to them, you know, there's like the sleeper hits, there's the sort of high profile disappointment. And then there's the movie that, you know, Acme didn't want you to see, which depending on how you look at it, is either a real success or a moral victory or, you know, underperforming. So lots of lots of stuff to talk about. Yeah. And amid all the movies are back, box office is back, buzz, of course, the box office for the year is tracking to be the best since pre-pandemic times, which is encouraging. So that's been well covered on the big picture in elsewhere, but, you know, we're all prisoners of the present and it's hard to know if we are being biased by our lack of perspective. But are you getting the sense that with Doomsday still to come, this is going to be one of those years that we look back on and say, that was a great year at the movies, you know, you had the kids blockbusters, you had Toy Story 5, you had a movie like The Invite, which was a great date night movie for me personally and my wife on our anniversary. And we got to observe how much stronger our relationship is, hopefully. But, you know, just the biggest, I mean, Spider-Man, Dune, Avengers, there's just something really running the gamut, right? So are you feeling good about movies right now? Do you, do you recommend movies? To I recommend movies. Yeah. I always, I always recommend movies. Yeah. I'm also wary of that idea, I like that phrase, you know, prisoner of the present. I mean, the years that sort of tend to be very famous in movie history are often made so with at least a little bit of hindsight, you know, 1939 or 1999, I think 2007, the internet was not what it was, but even that fall and, you know, whatever, this dual version of Twitter existed or social media is like, oh, there will be blood, you know, a country for old men, Michael Clayton, something's kind of going on. I mean, I think that this year has been, you know, a pretty good year commercially. I cannot say it's been a year for like deeply innovative or amazing or aesthetically exciting movies any more than usual, probably not less than usual. The couple of last, last couple of years, been pretty grueling getting to the, getting to the fall. I mean, I don't know how much time of year has to do with it, but, you know, there's that self-fulfilling prophecy thing of the summer, which is like, if you release a certain kind of movie in the summer, people bring certain expectations to it. It's the same with dumpuary or the prestige movie season. I mean, the fall is the real false advertising where it's like, if this is from a modest, you know, indie or indie quasi distributor and it comes out in October, it must be a great movie. It's not, you know, this is positioning. This is recency bias. This is trying to get movies on year and 10 best lists, you know, we all know how that works. But I do think that this late summer, at least for someone who's writing about the movies and thinking about them, whether they're great or not, they're stuff to chew on, you know, and I'd include even a movie that I didn't love, like the invite in that where I agree there's kind of something to talk about. The movies are very talk aboutable or it's your point of prison or the president. We may just be in a discourse cycle where we need every movie to be chewed. Yes. Because we have so much demand to chew over, to chew over these things. But I think there's stuff in each of the movies we're going to talk about today that is worth it. Let's throw any of them away. Let's put it that way. Well, we'll see how the critical reappraisal goes. But I look forward to the ringer's 2036 10 year retrospective about the great year in Hollywood of 2026 and let's tackle our dog danger trilogy here. And we can just go and release order, start with a movie that premiered in mid August, the end of oak street, which was written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. I think the pitch is Anne Hathaway and you and McGregor versus dinosaurs. And if you've seen the trailers, you kind of have a sense of what the movie is, right? It becomes sort of a summer action flick sci-fi survival film. Though there's a bit more going on there, perhaps as you wrote in your piece for the ringer. So how would you pitch this or recommend this to people? Well, I would say this is a movie that I feel to a very small degree. I kind of failed it because there's an ending that I didn't give much credence to when I watched it even going back in my review. I mean, we all do this sometimes with a review or a podcast or, you know, pivotal moments in our personal lives where you go back and you cringe, you know, and you sort of go, I really could have gotten that more right. To me, end of oak street was a film that's very suggestively conflating like the Reagan 80s with the end of the world, not just because 40 years is the blink of an eye in terms of time, but that is going to like that's kind of where everything is peaking or depending on how you look at it kind of ending and, you know, American culture.
culture, pop culture, I always love when there's these apocalyptic movies that take place in the past, you know, then we at least high rise is another one where it's kind of like it's the end of the world, but it's also 1975. So how do you square that with, you know, history? But I kind of got the idea that this movie was playing with that and I thought those images of the humans and the dinosaurs running from the hills on fire was very resonant and lighted the Los Angeles wildfires and climate change. And then I kind of said at the end of my review, but the movie kind of stopped short of being very thorny and has a cop outending. And I don't think that that's right. I think that that last shot, I don't know how spoiler deep we go, we're going to go. Yeah, but it's a tricky, it's a tricky final image because it sort of suggests there really is a kind of loss and sacrifice and it's not that the movie doesn't care about it. It's treating it offhand kind of as a trick, you know, I think we can get into spoiler territory briefly at the end of our discussion of this movie. I will say that it's not a movie that you can spoil much of in terms of the setup, you know, a lot of a lot of things that we talk about here at The Ring of Us were going into the lore and how do they justify this and what's the science or pseudoscience of it? Really, it's just suburban Michigan, part of a town gets plopped into the prehistoric age and that's about all, you know, you know, there's some, there's some wormholes involved, but we're not really interrogating deeply how this happens or why this happens. It happens. And then you have to roll with the punches and the chumps. Another thing is that it is a period piece. It's set in 1982, so it's part of that whole sort of, you know, I guess freaks and geeks maybe started it, you know, prematurely, but the the 80s nostalgia that we've all seen so much of the stranger things, effication of everything. And JJ Abrams is a producer of this film as he is of Batman Cape Crusader, which we will be talking about later on this episode. And so you might think this is going to be very much a sort of super eight homage to that era. It's not really though, right? I mean, it has some of those touchstones and hallmarks and the fashion and all the rest of it, but in your reviews, you sort of suggested that it's mainly a contrivance or a convenience so that no one has cell phones, right? Which, you know, makes it harder to communicate and coordinate and figure out what's going on? Where are we or when are we? But there's not too much emphasis really on, you know, this is an era that we are fully exploring or nostalgic. No, I didn't feel a lot in nostalgia in that at all. To me, the longing of the characters moved in the other direction. It's this longing for a future that they're worried is not going to happen, you know, when she goes into the garage and listens to Valerie by Steve Winwood, it's not a golden oldie. It's it's, you know, the driver's license that she's never going to get to have, you know, the kid looking in the picture book or the dinosaur is a sort of contemplating what it means to be extinct when he's 10. You know, there's no, there's no comfort in that period. And I do think that the lack of cell phones is refreshing. It's not like a major artistic statement or anything, but it's kind of nice that people can't just Google what's going on. To your point, but the lack of exposition, it's nice to watch a movie where you're really not ahead of the characters. Yes. You know, their speculations are kind of just about as good as ours and they're both kind of like they're not quite up to what's going on, but they're kind of reasonable. I was like, I guess, we went back in time. Maybe if we went back, we can go forwards. We should probably look for some more of those flashing lights. I mean, I think that there's two ways to make a movie like this. There's where that spontaneity and offhandedness is because you really haven't thought things through and then there's make this movie with a kind of a design. I think David Robert Mitchell, I mean, I don't know if you've talked with us on the show already or if it's worth talking about. I mean, as a get out of J director, Jail Cart, this movie is so unusual because you wouldn't think the comeuppance for Under the Silver Lake. A movie I like, by the way, you wouldn't think that it's like after eight or nine years. It's like, here's a $90 million dinosaur movie. That's your reward for the the Andrew Garfield neo-noir that no one saw. So it's strange. And yet I would also say if you've seen it follows or under silver lake or myth of American sleepover, which I really like his first movie, it's totally of a piece with these films. Despite the scale and the budget and the dinosaurs, it's very similar to those three movies, I think. It follows with T-Rex instead of ghosts. Yeah. Yeah. It follows with T-Rex and it goes or just like suburbia as something that's kind of pressurized and anxious and a time of life that feels like it could go either way or that it's going to end. To me, that's what myth of American sleepover and it follows are getting at. And then Under the Silver Lake, the Edgar Garfield character is 35 and feels old. Like it's 2000 and whatever he's still listening to monster by REM and you know, dreaming about Kurt Cobain. Like I think he's very good with the way people measure themselves against pop culture, which is one thing that's kind of going on in this movie. I also think it's probably a good sign that half the people I've talked to about this movie think it's really mean-spirited and half of them think it's really sentimental. Because I think he kind of picks and chooses what parts of his arsenal he's using. I mean, the great moment in the movie where in certain name here gets chomped. Yes. The audience I saw with went nuts and I think I think about half of them were laughing at it and I think about half of them were were horrified and feeling terrible. I mean, that's the mark of a filmmaker who's got you engaged. Yeah. Yeah. And the effects are all strong and convincing, I think. And I enjoyed the our current understanding of what dinosaurs actually looked like. Very feathering, right? There's the scene where one of the kids, you know, there's kind of like this Jurassic Park style. I mean, they look up a dinosaur reference book that was from the 80s, right? And they're sort of the old school lizard-like dinosaurs a little bit different from the reality that they confront as we understand dinosaurs to have been. And the movie's not extremely long. It's an hour 40, including credits. Even so, there is some repetition of why we have to venture out of the house for some contrived recent, right? Sometimes to save the dog. The dog is actually quite capable on his own, but nonetheless, we have to get these folks out of their house so that they can be in jeopardy and they can be attacked by flying dinosaurs and slithering prehistoric creatures. And the dinosaurs we know and love, right? Just, you know, all the all the usual suspects and characters are here from the prehistoric kingdom. So there's a little bit of rinse and repeat and and run and survive in many cases, not in all cases, until the ultimate escape. But it didn't overstay its welcome too much for me. Well, the thing about the first Spielberg Jurassic Park, especially, which we're not going to criticize, but just as an observation, it's kind of caught between like these things are beautiful and these things are scary. You know, that's always the Spielbergian thing, you know, slack jawed awe, but also like run. And I think one of the reasons I like War of the World so much is that wonder is very short lived. And then it's just two hours of run. You know, this movie is not interested in the dinosaurs being beautiful. It's not interesting that they're moving in herds or, you know, because it's not about science. It's a supernatural or quasi-scientific phenomenon. And it treats them even more like the Jurassic Park movies did just as like animals. You know, they're like rooting around in garbage cans and jumping over fences and hunting the neighborhood calves. And they're kind of like raccoons. And I thought that that was funny until, as you say, it gets a little bit repetitive. You don't want to criticize a filmmaker when he's cooking, because the set pieces in this are extremely well-staged and designed, I mean, as choreography and things that are lost from so many green screen movies, you know, like actual camera blocking and stuff, you know, and movement and space is very good. But I got a little tired of it. And then I was glad it didn't wear out its welcome. And then again, in my capacity as a, you know, film critic, I kind of failed the ending. General dig is a huge miss, but I would have liked to have it back. Well, let's talk about that. So we'll, we'll enter some spoiler territory here and we'll, we'll put a timestamp in the show notes if you want to skip ahead to our next movie and not hear anything about the end of the end of Oak Street. But tell me what you mean about the last shot and, and what you're brewing and what you may have missed. Well, I didn't think through re, I mean, to me, you have this closing news montage, which is, you know, two years later. And it's like, remember when this crazy thing happened, we haven't figured it out yet. And I don't mind that that's tossed off. I mean, I think it's kind of funny. And you have the family is now intact because of this substitution that's been made in time. Basically, they find a way to one family member who's dead is replaced by an alternate timeline version of said family member. But also another character in the film who managed to make it out of the alternate timeline is now greeting a second version of themselves. Yes. They went back and saved that person too. And so there's this little subtext of self interest, which is that the only people who they seem to the survivors seem to pluck out of the doom timeline, where you know, they're close friends, the only people they could reach in time. Yeah. But also this idea that like the there are alternate versions of some other characters in this movie who we know and like and who didn't make it. Yes. I horribly. And the family, the family has had to be rebuilt kind of out of the corpses and are the dissolution of the earlier iteration. And it's also such a cheat to solving the domestic problem. Yes. And I
I'll just say that, you know, because we actually try and read films as, you know, images and ideas, not just plot, the way it puts this across with a particular framed photo in the foreground of one of the characters and, you know, some dinosaurs in the background doing something very funny, it's quite snarky, you know, or it has a bit of a nasty grin on it. And I think, all I mean by getting it wrong is I think I said in my review that this movie comes right up to the edge of being as kind of dark or as, you know, ambivalent as you expect from the guy who made it follows, which has such an open ending, even under the silver lake has an interestingly open ending. I found this ending kind of closed and crowd-pleasing and I don't think I was right. I think it's tricky. Yeah, I read it that way initially to some degree too, where it seems to have tied everything up neatly and very pat and almost sort of a package to spawn a franchise if it's successful and maybe doesn't really wrestle with all the implications there. But maybe there's just enough of a subtext there that it doesn't spell it out, right? Because so there's this relationship, George is played by you and McGregor, Denise is Anne Hathaway. She is chafing against the bounds of this relationship. She is squirreled away in the basement, writing about a character who is longing to escape and might actually do it and maybe she will too. And you know, we learned that that Greg has left, he's lost his job, right? He's hiding things from her. He's taking little nips from a flask in the garage, right? And so they're each hiding things. And then they get through this experience or at least one of them does. They get back on the other side of it and it seems as if all is now well, right, that the minor relationship issues, it's almost as if Denise has kind of, you know, she's gotten to exercise her authorial inclination. She's written a memoir or a book about this experience. But also she seems to have realized that well, everything that was bothering me before about this marriage kind of pales in comparison to running from your life from dinosaurs. So really maybe in the end, it's all okay. And we can just sort of sweep that stuff under the rug. And so, you know, maybe, maybe the idea as well, that really does put things in perspective. And we don't realize how good we have it, right? Or maybe it's, you know, this is not what we encounter in real life, typically wormholes and transportation to prehistoric times. And maybe we all low ourselves into thinking things are fine. And I can put up with this or that because of this other thing. So as you're inference, then you're read of this at the end that all is not necessarily well and peaceful and wholesome in this relationship. Well, a movie I thought of while watching this. And this is a high compliment for me is a science by Amnit Shyamalan, who is my, my favorite crazy pants director because he's a brilliant technician and he's kind of kind of a lunatic and his movies are wonderful. Signs is a movie that seems to suggest, I think there's a statute of limitations after 23 years of spoilers. Signs is a movie where it's kind of like. Millions will come so that you can get your faith back. And it is a one to one cause and effect ratio of just, you know, there's, you know, Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson finds God again and this was kind of the design all along. And we don't really think in signs about anything, but the farmhouse, because Shyamalan shrinks the whole world and the invasion to the scope of the farmhouse, which is very effective. It's like night of the living dead with aliens. Here I think the movie is pretending to do that where it's saying, well, this giant cosmic conflagration has sort of gotten this family back together again and they've rediscovered their faith in the family unit, except the dad is not really the dad, you know, where he's the dad minus all the experiences that, you know, the rest of his family have had in trauma. And their best friend is now basically a doppelganger of herself, there are two of her. Yes. And she is basically doubled and multiplied in lieu of her family, who she could not save. So the unit has been reassembled, but it has been reassembled in this kind of mutant version with no sense of a real return to order. And it's not the family's destiny that the universe cares about. They're just kind of random collateral damage, you know, they're just one story out of out of a hundred that this movie could have looked at. I don't think the movie is built in a way that obliges you to see it too deeply for interest, for example, there are no conversations on the couch like in signs about whether God is real or not, you know, signs is trying to be metaphysical. I think end of oak street is trying to be like a Jodhante entertainment. But David Robert Mitchell is very interested in ambiguity and disappointment and anti-climax. I would say like under the silver lake is a great example of anti-climax where he finally unravels the conspiracy and it's just like not impressive and he is still left with himself and his problems. So I guess, you know, the o-tourist in me is thinking whether this is a great movie or not or whether he's a great filmmaker or not, I don't think I'd go that far. He's consistent in whatever genre he's working in or whatever budget level he's working in. He's interested in leaving things slightly a jar. And I admire that in a 90 million, 95 million dollar movie because not all filmmakers who have that opportunity do that. I just want to give credit where it's due. There is a dark matter aspect to show that we'll talk about on this program next month of what does it mean to have a particular family unit when there's an infinite number of said family units and they're all identical up to a certain point and then they branch out because we are in spoiler territory. So it is Greg who meets his demise in the past, you and who's this kind of wholesome sort of hapless character, you know, he's very much let's look on the bright side and things will work out whether or not he believes that, but in the end does prove his metal and saves his family and saves Denise to his detriment. And then when she and the kids get back to the present, they they save the alternate timeline Greg, but not the alternate timeline kids, right? She just keeps. So she essentially dooms the alternate timeline versions of her kids to death or at least to fighting dinosaurs while saving the ones that she saved and then bringing back the other father is he bothered by the fact that his kids in his timeline are still in prehistory and possibly dead is she bothered by the fact that this is actually a different Greg when you get right down to it. We don't really know. We don't get much sense of that in the movie, which which just sort of ends at that point, but it left us asking those questions and that's probably by design, even if it doesn't answer them for us. So I did appreciate the the ambiguity of that ending. All right, let's transition to the dog stars, which we will probably spend a little less time on, but we're sticking with live action here. A lot of name brand creatives associated with this film. This is directed by Ridley Scott, his first since gladiator to written by Mark L. Smith, known for the Revenant and Twisters among other movies, based on the 2012 book of the same name by Peter heller, big name cast, Jacob already Margaret quality, Josh Broell and Guy Pierce, definitely less than the sum of those parts. It seems safe to say because that has all the makings of some sort of prestige hit. This movie bombed at the box office this past weekend after largely being critically panned. I think it has some redeeming aspects, but what was your overall view? I mean, I think Ridley Scott has become an extremely interesting piece of contested territory for oturists, you know, because for a long time he's seen as kind of, you know, a visionary and then kind of a soulless, you know, by the assignment hack. And now the pendulum is kind of swung back around for the simple fact that he gives great interviews about about being ahead of the curve. He's now referring to himself not so much as a filmmaker as an influencer. He has this great way of meeting critics head on and saying, you know, fuck you, my movies historically inaccurate or if you don't like it, you know, I know better. He gives great copy and he's also incredibly prolific and he has phenomenal stamina. I mean, we should say that as the director of the dog starts, he's 88 years old. So he is a living link to different eras of film history. I mean, he doesn't just work in intellectual property. He built some of the really sturdy ones, you know, the alien franchise and blade runner. And I think as of some, as a Ridley agnostic or skeptic, I would concede he has a great eye. I mean, compositionally, he's a major filmmaker and he does landscapes and scale and scope really well. And I thought the first five minutes of this movie, which were Jacob O'Lordy piloting his sessna over what's left of Denver, I don't think it's the basketball arena isn't actually NBA branded, but I was like, did Nikola Yokech die? Did he make it? Yeah. Did he make it out? I hope so. But you know, he's great at, and I hate this word because it's not a word for critics, but I mean, he's great at world building. The problem is that inside that world as much and I know some people, some friends of might really like this movie, they're like, well, it just kind of wanders around the world and people talk about their feelings and it's kind of a throwback and it's spacious. I just found it as a riff on the Western, it's so boring and on the beat and predictable and I found most of the characters in their exchanges kind of laughable. And I found that it was oddly reactionary or not even oddly reactionary, kind of unapologetically reactionary.
Like if you're, if you're cozy fantasy is that you are with Josh Brolin playing poker with meaningless stacks of money and then every so often you get to murder people who cross your boundary line with the millions of guns you have stored in your armory at night vision goggles. And hey, who might have said that that's not fun? This is a great fantasy. This is a homesteader, trad fantasy, where where Margaret quality is waiting for you in a baseball cap and and jeans to listen to stump clap hey music on headphones like she's in garden state, you know, who might argue with this except I just didn't have a very good time. I do like how insane the film goes in the home stretch this sort of like strange quasi-hubrick spasms where they end up in this airport presided over by Margaret Paulie who I guess represents work. Alison Jenny, right? I was sorry to say Alison Jenny, the false promises of airlines, of madman, of the sixties of civilization. Yeah. And of course, you know, the best thing to do at that point is get back to the men and I community. And you know, have have barn dances, which is sort of the vision that this movie is putting across. I guess I don't think Ridley Scott cares at all about any of these things and maybe he doesn't have to, but his detachment into just pure get the shot and move on. It does not do much for me. And if it does much, if it does something for other people and they see this as classicism or, you know, this is his version of shame or something, I mean, go go for it, go with God. I just thought it was really lousy. Of course, there is always that tension in post-apocalyptic stories of, you know, do you want to sort of, I mean, it could be some kind of immigration allegory, but, but do you want to close ranks and distrust everyone or do you have to open your heart at some point because what are we, you know, if we're treating everyone as cockroaches, right, which is how Josh Broin refers to any outsider. Well, we've lost our humanity in the process, right? And so Higg is, of course, greatly dissatisfied. You know, he likes being alive. Well, usually not always. He's not so sure on that point, actually, but he is, he's bonded with, with, with Bang Lee, this, this hardliner, this ex-military guy. And they do have very different world views. And Higg is much more sensitive, and he misses his wife, and he wants to connect. And so he wants to go to Grand Junction, where he has heard a radio signal, and it's possibly illusory, but he wants to find out. And, you know, ultimately, I think the movie suggests that there is some merit to his approach, even if his hopes are dashed, because he gets to Grand Junction and finds that it is this incredible, yes, Kubrickian linchian, sort of nightmare world, but also he just happens to stumble across Margaret Quali and find a new life partner. So, so that works out nicely for him. But, you know, it's very conventional. I mean, it feels like the book is from 2012. It feels like it is of 2012, right, where we were inundated with the walking dead, and just so many post-alcoholic cryptic stories. And this just hits all the beats, right? It's just the abandoned cityscape after the virus, and, you know, the roving bands of marauders, right? Which is one of my pebes from post-alcoholic fiction is that even if everyone's dead, suddenly, you know, no matter where you live, even if you're out in the wilderness, right? Which they are, you can't walk five feet without stumbling across some kind of cult or tyrant or people, you know, roving band of murderers, right? And we get multiple roving bands of murderers in this movie, even though they're largely trying to just keep to themselves. So that bugs me a bit. Well, he manages, he does the thing where he just restages Black Hawk down, except now they're white. And so I guess the scales are balanced. Black Hawk down is one of the more spectacularly racist, or at least, you know, problematic action movie, you know, action movies are around the beginning of the 21st century. People said so then, you know, it's no less true now. But that idea that human life is precious, I wouldn't say it's contradicted interestingly by the movie, but it's certainly contradicted by the movie because, you know, Josh Brolin goes into night vision sicko mode, and, you know, Scott is interested in how cool arterial spray looks like under black light, and it does look cool. But I compare the way this movie handles that to something like 28 years later. The bone temple, I was thinking the same thing. Yeah. Both of them, you know, a guy, a guy in Alex Garland who I think is often susceptible to, you know, fetishizing the apocalypse, whether it's happened or happening, those movies are so actually about these things. They're about family and community and sacrifice the both 28 years later's movies are about this incredible memorialization of the dead through those auxuaries, you know, through those bone temples. And they also have like spines being ripped out in the shed like they're super cool gory action horror movies, but they're I think actually humane and contemplative and funny and have shownmanship in them. I found that Ridley's version of this even the helicopter propeller blade decapitation or the the airport lounge stuff, which again, I appreciate how weird it is. Yeah. It's kind of, it kind of sags for me. It's sort of innervated and I don't want to say the problem is the actors are an actor in particular because you know, I too stand in awe of how long and like E. Jacob Allordias seems like a super nice guy, but Hig as a character, his optimism, his dreamingness, his melancholy, it's just so wrote. And the great missed opportunity to movie I thought is you have Josh Brolin playing a kind of like live by his wits coot. And you have Guy Pierce doing the same thing. Guy Pierce is Margaret quality's father who's actually pops. And I'm like, how is there no Josh Brolin guy pierce summit? Right. It does take a while for their arcs to come together, but I'm like, this is the missed opportunity. If you can give me Brolin and Guy Pierce just talking about like how to best cut down trees and yeah, you know, shortshuck a shock on I would love it. They had similar grouping habits and hygiene and hairstyles, very her suits, but we did not get much direct interaction between them. Unfortunately, that that was a lost opportunity. Yeah, it does feel again like it just hits all the the usual post apocalyptic beats. You know, I think we're overdue for for planes in in post apocalyptic movies. It's always seemed to me like that was a great idea waiting to be done as it was done by the book where this is a way to get around a little bit, you know, surely some pilots will have survived and could just hop in a sesna be a bit more mobile that plus the dog, which of course gives you the instant investment and the emotional connection at least in theory. It's much more violent than the book. I think a lot of the violence in the movie is added. It's given the Hollywood treatment. You know, there are some roving bands of violent marauders, but not so much the heavily tattooed out of their mind's cult aspect. When he comes across SEMA, the Margaret Quali character, again, they're driven away from from their home by another just band of cavalry essentially in the book. It's just a drought and they have to move to find water, right? Jasper has a different fate in the book. The eerie airport or the the grand junction airport scene, which we've been talking about, which is so out of step with the rest of the movie. That's not really in the book. That's a creation of this movie too. So there's a little bit of, you know, it has that contemplative moody aspect. And I almost wish it had gone further in that direction maybe instead of sort of splicing together that DNA from the book with the all out action fest that they incorporated. This screenwriter is responsible for a movie that I really dislike, which is the Revenant and one thing I dislike about it beside the fact of who made it and how he makes movies. I'm not an in-eerie two guy. Is it took this really lean kind of mean-spirited story of revenge? And I don't know how much of it's the writer or the director, but like the Revenant is very like sentimental and politically correct for a movie set and about what it is where it's like, well, he has a good reason to kill this guy. I mean, the reason that the Caprio character has to after Tom Hardy in the movie is very different than in the original story. And we constantly see these scenes that show what a good guy he is along the way. I feel like that violence and that depravity sit very much at odds with how sentimental this guy's writing is, not the novel, the screenplay, you know. And then you've got Ridley who is sort of underrated as an all-time kind of gore guy. He's an insane gore filmmaker. Prometheus and the counselor and alien covenant. So you know, Gladiator 2, he loves him at decapitation. So I guess these elements, I wish there was more interesting tension between them, but it isn't movie where you kind of have like tender making out under the stars and then also like 85 guys getting shot in the head at the same time. Yes. So I guess there is some, I will say he still has some range. And I should also say that with time of candidates for recanonization, it will not be me re-evaluating the dog stars because I have a lot of other movies that I would rather watch or rewatch. Do not be surprised if a bit like the counselor, though not as enjoyable to be as the counselor. I think this movie will be in for some kind of critics miss the boat because the reviews are so bad and the box office is so bad. There's a real critical instinct to seize on that and praise it. So it will happen. Yeah, I'll stop sort of praising it, but I won't.
condemn it either. I won't pile on. I enjoyed some aspects of this movie. I was I was not bored in the theater necessarily. I just felt as if I had seen all of this to some degree before. But it's, you know, a kind of competent version of some of those things. I enjoyed some of the scenery and some of the wilderness and some of the music, et cetera. So there are some reasons to see this. But don't all run out to see it in theaters, which people already have refrained from doing. But I tend to think, you know, if if almost everyone's dead, then there will be enough resources to go around. And we won't need to form bands of tattooed cults roving around the landscape. Because we'll all have plenty. There won't be as much pressure to squabble over the remaining resources. But maybe that's just me being a hig being overoptimistic and looking at the bright side. I will say that I do think the movie is quite reactionary and backwards looking. But it does make sure to throw up, throw in towards the end a scene where the dialogue is basically like, what can we do to help these sick people? Yeah. Here's some vaccine. It's true. Yes. Please, please, please take these, please take these vaccines. And, and most of your small problems will go away. Yes. So I think that when the novel, I mean, not to talk too much longer about dogs, but it is interesting that the novel in 2012, there's nothing new about, you know, influence a pandemic end of the world. Right. There's so many sci-fi narratives about that. The movie does become interestingly pressurized post COVID in a way, right? And that's where I think Scott has always had some instinct for what the mainstream is interested in and for kind of feeding off of it. So it's not so much credit where it's due as just that is part of the text now that plays a little differently than if this movie had come out in 2015 where the idea of that loneliness is like more hypothetical than experience. That's all. Well, finally, let's talk about a movie that has not been in the can since 2015, but almost coyote versus acme directed by Dave Green written by Sammy Birch with story input from James Gunn and Jeremy Slater. Of course, adapted from Ian Fraser's 1990 New Yorker humor piece starring Will Fortay primarily along with many other recognizable voices and faces, including John Cena, who commits to the bit as always. And this is, of course, the movie that has been waiting to be seen by the world for a few years now after it was shelved by David Zazlov and was ticketed for a tax reimbursement until it was finally bought and distributed. And here it is. And we are finally able to see it. So was it worth the wait? Are you happy that coyote versus acme has been freed from the vaults? Yeah, I had a very good time at this movie. I wanted to, I wanted to have a good time. I'm a widely coyote, truth or I believe he is, he is as good a candidate for, you know, the great fictional American hero. As any, you know, he's a, he's an amazing character in the movie. I think understands that. I took my, my daughter to see it in an early morning press screening. So part of the fun was having her sit in a room with a bunch of other people in Toronto. And I'm like, see, I'm pretty well adjusted. Look around. Listen, now this is, this is your younger daughter, six, my older, my older daughter. Okay, because I was debating. I went alone to the press screening. I have an almost five year old daughter. And look, it's, it's cartoon violence. But it is very, very violent from a cartoon perspective. So I think I will wait a little longer if you're wondering about the, the kid friendliness here. Yeah. Well, you know, violence where, you know, no one gets, gets hurt. No one dies. No one dies, you know, but she, she loves widely coyote. And, you know, at the, at the other end of the generational spectrum, you know, my mom is the reason I love widely coyote. We, we used to talk about them all the time when I was a kid because we just talked about how, you know, failure is noble. And to fail is human. And, you know, I'll spare you the deep, I put it in the ringer piece. I'll spare you the deeper exegesis on this. But like, if you like the road runner, your associate path, like that's the, that's the, the test for, for, for, for, for, for, for sociopathies, do you like the road runner? So the great compliment I can give to this movie is it actually redeems the road runner just slightly in a way that breaks those lunitunes rules. You know, there's a lot of debate over whether the creators of the road runner and coyote actually wrote rules about the cartoons, the writer, Michael Malte said that never happened. Chuck Jones said it did. But one of the cardinal rules is that like the road runner cannot be aware of the coyote's presence and could do nothing to harm him except by beeping. That's just the, the indignity of it is that the road runner doesn't care. Yes. And I thought that in this movie, they broke that rule by giving the, the road runner a moment of recognizance and caring. And yet it was still so on point and in tone that I didn't just forgive it, I was moved by it, which might make me a bit of a sucker. But I thought it was genuinely sweet. I thought so too. Yeah, it's a, you know, meditation on, on male friendship and isolation and loneliness. And in the end, they need each other really, you know, everyone needs an, an emphasis. Absolutely. It reminded me of the end of the, the Alan Moore killing joke, you know, like these, that this, and yet, you know, also played very lightly. And I thought that one of the things about this movie, and this is where it's not just the characters and the loony tunes, but it's the people who actually made it, you know, Sammy Birch, the screenwriter and Dave Green, the director. They don't just understand the material, like they have a really good sense of not too much. There's a lot of things in this movie where there's less than you would have thought. They hold back a little bit. There's a, there's a lightness. I don't want to call it subtlety, but a fair amount of restraint, you know, from the running time on down. It's the first Warner's live action movie that also doesn't feel purely mercenary, right? Like, whatever you say about Space Jam, that movie is just basically telling you at all times, it's like, this is selling you something, selling you Michael Jordan, selling you the NBA, selling you the loony tunes. This one inverts that equation and becomes a corporate exploitation of, of, of, of resources and talent. And it does it with a light touch, but it's a real subject, you know, it's about something. Yeah. Yeah. You're wondering how much mileage can you get out of this gimmick of we're suing Acme Corp for exploiting cartoon characters and delivering shoddy products and turns out more than enough mileage for this movie, I think. And it does continue to reveal added layers of, ah, yes, we can mind more humor from this. And also maybe some significance. I like the central performance. I almost always enjoy Will Forte. But, you know, there's that notion that if you act with Muppets, you either have to play it straight like Michael Cain in a Muppet Christmas Carol or just become a Muppet yourself, more or less like the late Tim Curry in Muppet Treasure Island. And, uh, and Forte, I mean, he's, he's an animated character, even in live action often. But also is, is able to play that pathos and that sort of insecurity, you know, he's going up against the John Cena high powered corporate lawyer. He is out of his depth. He doesn't even mean to be the one who's launching this lawsuit. He's been snookered into it by Wiley Coyote. And, you know, it's some of the best, uh, Albuquerque content not made by Vince Gilligan, right? There's a real sense of place to, to the desert and the town and just a lot of great gags. But then there's also, of course, the meta narrative, right? Which the movie nods at and winks at. Obviously it was made prior to the whole saga of it being shelved for years and knowing, knowing whether it would see the light of day. But there's enough in there. The whole, you know, warners as Akmi kind of analog, right? We're coming to this as an audience that is aware of the backstory. And I would recommend while we're recommending things, my colleague Alan Seagal's oral history of the film published at the ringer.com last week. There's all that baggage, right? Which the movie I think to its credit and, and, you know, it doesn't have a handedly not at that. And sort of, you know, it's positioned as the underdog and the fan favorite. And here we are. We finally got a premiere after all. And so you can't help but root for it. But it's not kind of pandering to that, you know, it's almost like, it's like when when Conan had the whole, you know, late night saga, right? Or I don't know, it's like sometimes you're really rooting for someone that, but then they lean into that bit and it's non-stop that, like, Colbert's farewell shows, right? Where, all right, we're all rooting for Colbert. But then we're really hammering this hard, you know, where he's speaking truth to power and he's being silenced and all this. And maybe we're going to that well one too many times that there's nothing really along those lines in coyote versus acme, except what we bring to it, right? And, and the interpretation. So I enjoyed that it works on that level without really signaling that, I suppose, really explicitly. Well, no, the history of the loony tunes is of breaking the fourth wall, right? They, they, they, they demolish that thing. And it's not that Disney never did or that the loony tunes only did. But that's how I was think of them historically is, you know, Disney is the studio that builds fairy tales and maybe personalizes them a little bit. But for the most part, it's the official story. And then loony tunes is, you know, the animator is trying to kill us or Peter Laurie, you know, works at the same studio we do. So that's a historical truth of those cartoons that they break the fourth wall. They bite the the hand that feeds, they expose their own mechanism.
And again, also, the great lute tunes are always about failures. So I feel like even if this hadn't happened with Zazlav and the movie, the filmmakers understand this in a way that's resonant. But as you say, it's all re-contextualized in a way that I think artistically is to the movie's benefit. Yeah. And makes Wiley Coyote sort of the face of the underdog in a larger way. And I try not to buy into that stuff too much. You know, I don't think there's any such thing as like the duty to see a movie. I didn't like how this got framed on social media where it's like, you owe it to the world to go see this movie. It's like, no, I hope you go see it. And I'm looking forward to it. But you know, you don't win or lose by doing that. I think that Warner Brothers or Warner Discovery or whatever we want to call it. There's been a lot at stake with it this year. And it is kind of the plaintiff or the defendant depending on how you look at it. Because it's currently hanging in the balance between like a rock and a harder place. You know, evil and more evil depending on what you want to say. But the companies that may be lobbying to buy it. There's something at stake with that catalog. And what it means. If I'm someone who happens to think the loony tunes are the most valuable part of that. There's going to be someone else for whom that's Batman or someone else for whom that's, you know, whatever else. So those courtroom scenes at the end. It's not what they're about. The movie isn't allegorizing the possible sale of Warner Brothers. I mean, it can't because it was made in 2023. But that stuff plays to not just is why like, I already going to capture the road runner. But it's just like, who do these things belong to? Attending that this isn't all a business is naive and fast. And I think with the internet, we're all kind of past that. We're hearing about it as a business and thinking about the fact that some actors or some entities are better than others. Or maybe just that some entities are more malevolent than others. It's a good thing to be. It's a good thing to be reminded of. So I like the film and think it's good. I'm glad that it exists. I'm glad that it was released all hail catch up entertainment. Whoever they are. I don't know if they're good people or not, but good for them for buying this particular. You know, for buying this particular movie. But I don't know how you felt about this. I will say inserting the old Chuck Jones cartoons into this. That is some risky business because in 15 seconds of those, you're like, that's genius. Yeah. So you are setting a very high bar by putting those things in your movie. I think it was a good idea because I think this movie is enough in the spirit of them that it doesn't embarrass itself. But that's risky to do that. And, you know, I good, good, good for them. It worked well too. And I thought the movie works because it's, it's not kind of a naked bid to rehabilitate this IP and get people into the loony tunes again, right? And, and spawn sequels. And yet, because it doesn't try to do that, it, it had that effect where, as I was watching, I was really reminded of how central loony tunes was to my childhood media consumption. It has really been absent at least in my media diet of late. And yet, every reference was landing for me. And I, I wouldn't have even thought that I knew as much about this universe as I did. But every little inside Joker call back, you know, it wasn't too easter egg heavy. But, but when it was, I got what it was going for. And I remembered just the many happy hours that I had spent watching these characters in cartoons. It was all back to me and showing that old footage was one last link to that as well. The, the circle back that we getting about how we talked about you're showing the movie or not showing the movie to our kids. I was very happy a couple of days after the movie, you know, my, my older daughter likes to write notes sometimes, you know, like kids do. She handed me one that said, I have a limited number of signs, which was, which was the hardest I left in the movie. It's a good idea to find a way to have the coyote communicate without breaking the edict of his, it's a good guy. I mean, it's such a, it's such torture in the original cartoon that the coyote has a snout and cannot scream, you know. And the road runner who can talk just says the same fucking thing over and over again, you know, the beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. We all, we all canonically beep, beep, evidently, everyone says, beep, beep. Yeah, we all, we all have those people in our lives who are like that, you know, they just say beep, beep, over and over again. But I thought that the limited number of signs was extremely funny. The first 20 minutes, I don't know if you agree, they're great. And then after that, it's good. But those, that, that, that opening passage that's very coyote, heavy, I thought was, was wonderful. Lastly, I didn't prep you for this, but if we were doing a big pick style top five animation live action crossover. I mean, this would make mine probably, but what else would be, you know, you mentioned space jam. I know you're a fan of looney tunes back in action, right? There's of course, I'm a framed Roger rabbit. You know, what else would you want to name check there on that pantheon? I think the nine or 10 year old version of me that looked at box art would pick cool world. Uh-huh. At the sexy can base sexy can basing our cartoon, which I think was very post Jessica rabbit, you know. Um, you know, so cool world frame Roger rabbit. I think the Louvre scene and looney tunes back in action is the best where they're jumping into the belly paintings and. Right. And it's, you know, what qualifies how much animation do you have to have? I mean, Mary Poppins or Elf, you know, or Mary Poppins or. Paula Abdul, an MC SCAT cat, you know, in the music video form. Um, a good one is the speaking of Joe Dante also the third segment of the twilight zone movie where the psychic kid projects people into like an evil version of a looney tunes. Okay. There's some live action animation animation combination. There's a really good animated bit in Annie Hall. When, when Alvi says that he always had a crush on the evil queen and snow white. I mean, these are all like sometimes passages in larger movies in terms of live action animation crossover for an entire feature. There's who frame Roger rabbit and there's the field. Right. I mean, that movie is so brilliantly designed and integrated and funny. This movie is chasing it too. And with respect, it's not as good as who frame Roger rabbit, but that's a high high bar. Well, you always said a high bar in your work as well. You mentioned Batman and WB. We have much more Batman to discuss on the second part of this episode, but always recommend Adam Naven in written form in audio form. Read them on the ringer dot com. Check them out on the big picture from time to time. Adam, so happy to have you make your ringer burst debut. This was great. I had a pleasure. Thanks so much. All right. Well, let's segue from the live action animation crossover of coyote versus acme into fully animated territory. It's part of the animation domination segment of ringer burst recommends. I've got company. I am no longer alone in the studio. Welcome Daniel Chen. Thank you, Ben. And joining us remotely and always animated character in LA. It's joe me a deneron. Hi, joe me. What's going on? It's crazy. I feel like I just saw you, Ben. I feel like we, we were just talking the other day. Also, you now you're in the studio. And I'm in the zone. What's going on? Yeah. This is a total role reversal. How rare for me to be here. Anyway, always good to see you and talk to you wherever we are. And we have a lot of ground to cover. So there's been a lot of superhero stuff that has been covered on the ring of verse this month. Obviously, we're all watching lanterns in the DC arena. Midnight boys covered X men 97. But we don't want to let some of the other animated superhero stuff slip through the cracks. There's been a lot of it. Superman, double dose of Batman, also some Star Wars ninth Jedi while we're at it. So maybe we can start with my adventures with Superman, which was covered a little bit on the feed Steve talked to some of the cast creators of the show. But now season three has wrapped up so we can talk about it in full. You've written about it. You've talked about it before you're a big fan of the show. So how did you feel Daniel about season three? I still love the show. I'm so happy that it's going strong like it's it was always a refreshing thing to just have a new take on Superman, whether like that's just the animation style, but beyond that, just all the technology that comes into the show, it just feels like a very fresh take on on a character that we've seen so many different times before and just to see keep on getting better and just evolving in its own ways has been really fun to watch. Yeah. Jamie, what did you make of the season? I had a lot of fun with the season. I think the main thing that keeps me coming back is not only Superman and Lana's relationship, but Jack quay, man, he's the man, like, you know, I mean, we can talk about the boys and shout out to all my star Trek lower decks heads, but the work he's doing in this show is incredible. There are some line reads that are not only like hilarious. And then there are some that are like really deep and meaningful and he's like really going for it in the show to just like keeps the momentum going keeps the energy up and I'm just having a ton of fun. I can't wait to see what they do next season with it because it's a blast. There's a lot going on in this season. I mean, we've got cloning time travel from multiple timelines, lost powers, AI brainiac is back in addition to all the romance stuff and the will they are one day with Jimmy and Cara and then the Superman romance to did it feel at all over stuffed to you at times was there too much going on. Maybe at times they do, I mean, like,
like you said, there is a lot that happens. I mean, they have that that one episode where they're all off doing the games like that one. You know, but I like the fact that they still have enough time to really focus on the characters. And like the character relationships and the things that they're all struggling to go through, I think they never lose sight of. And I think that's what's most important to me. And I think that especially with the relationship, like they really focus on the, you know, whether it's Lewis's struggling to embrace like the future that she's taking on and like overcoming her fears or it's like Jimmy actually like sabotaging himself before the relationship even starts with with with Kara. It's I think they carve out enough space for the people that are just not Superman to and and and the way that they grow over the show over the season and over the three seasons, I think it's been really nice to watch. Yeah, we got a lot of Kryptonians going on here, not just Supergirl, Superman, Superboy. Yeah, we had like Superman clone. We've got like hybrids, Clipton, like splicing going on here. There's a lot of storylines. Jomi, what was the highlight for you? Was there anything that didn't work so well? The highlight for me would have to be John coming back, both times, right? The first time, it's like, you know, John, he's like, he's having fun. Look at me. I'm out there with my aunt and my dad. It is a great time. And then coming back the second time and he's like, that's not me. That was your difference, son. I'm looking at me. I'm dark. I have a scar in the sword. I'm so tough. And like you can like, we, we, we've talked about the martial verse to death since like 2020. It's like really like exploded in in media. But I feel like this show did a really good job of, you know, keeping things fresh with this kind of stuff. You know, I have one son. I have a, and now it's a different son and a daughter. What? That's crazy. Also, I want to say, I called Lois Mata earlier. My fault. I am a day one small field watcher. Y'all know what son I'm in. You know what I'm saying? But no, like that, like, and obviously, and I talked to the creators about this, the Jimmy and Kara love, like, like, you know, the push and pull that they had this season. Was great, even all the way to the end when Jim is like, I'm in. And Kara is like, hold on a minute player. Oh, no, you, you was giving me signals how they're going, jagging out for another season. But, you know, that's that program. But no, the relationships between the characters and, like, seeing all these, like, seeing Superboy and like the new Superman on screen together. Like, that's, that's, that's a ton of fun. In terms of things that didn't work well, I don't know, man, I think DC, you mentioned it. They did have that episode with Mr. Mistletoe and they go back and like, you know, they're playing the games. But even then though, like, we're still learning a lot about these characters. Jimmy is like, yo, man, actually, maybe I do want to be with Kara. And Lois is like, hey, man, like, my, like, maybe I do want a family. Maybe I do want to like push things forward with Clark. Let me get to the end of the season. And she's down on one knee. By the way, that is something Lois would do. But have some, have some pride. Lois, come on, man. I'll be like, hey, yo, you know, small of it. Locked, yeah. You know, and Superman is easy. Are you got to do? You just got to do a couple of labs. No, he might be a little dance. But he'll get it eventually. And then he'll get the one knee. You got to worry about it. But not. I think like getting to that ending, like, they really put a lot of effort in getting from where Lois is the beginning season where he even like mentioned his family. And she's like scaring away to the point where she gets down on one knee for him. That was, I thought, really, really story telling done really well. Yeah. I like these depictions of super powered with non-superpowered couples, right? Because it's complicated with Kryptonians for various reasons, right? So you have the non-superpowered part of the couple is getting cold feet kind of for different reasons. Like with Jimmy, it's more about, I don't know if I'm worthy. She'll just find someone better than me when she does more dating. And then Lois, you know, it's not that she has reservations about Clark so much as just it's a lot of commitment to take on with someone who goes through what Clark does, right? So, but ultimately lands in a good place. But it makes sense that those would be complicated relationships. I mean, it takes you back to the boys, right? And Jack Wade there and Annie and all the just like the power dynamics are weird here and someone is always in jeopardy. And so how do we carve out time for our love life and just going on regular dates when we have our like son from multiple futures who's just transporting back all of a sudden to like, I don't know if I want to get married and have a family. Oh, wait, our family just showed up from this dystopian future. So I guess it's going to happen. Yeah, like that's what I think is so much fun about the choice of just having this this future version of their son coming in out of the story too because you got that instant gratification of just seeing like what they did as parents and like they haven't done that yet, but like this is what it could be and it just fits so well into Lois's fears and that she's trying to work through too. Yeah. Now, compared to Nightfall, which we're about to talk about, the violence is is pretty tame, I guess, but it does get, I mean, at the end there with the finale, it's pretty invincible-esque, right? I mean, Clark kind of looks like Mark a little bit, you know, just like the animation styles where it's not anime, but it's anime inspired. Yeah. But the whole just like, you know, flying, pounding people into the ground, punching holes through people like it does get kind of invincible-ish there at the end of the season. I don't know if I'll say that, but to your point though, I will, if I did have a note, it would be like every time there's this fight with the Superman or super, the multiple super-powered people, then there is a bit where one of them is finally about to go down, right? Like, you know, somebody's punching car really bad. Yeah. And then Clark will fly in, boom, and saver, and then Clark's getting his face punched in, and then Supergirl will fly in and come and they just did that every, they just switched on and off every, every super-superfight. Yeah, like a teamfighter or something, or like, basically, yeah, Superman's down, but then someone delivers an inspirational speech or something or he just like reflects on stuff and suddenly he's back up and he's stronger than very anime-like. Yeah, we talked about this last time we talked about the show. The show, you can see the influences everywhere, you know, and to even the invisible thing, I mean, you've got, we talked about this, invisible is just Dragon Ball Z for white people. Right? And so, ultimately, you can kind of see where, I mean, this is why Charles is a man. He sees the anime everywhere, you know, this is what it's all about, every nice. He's not, but he's not wrong. All of this stuff comes from Dragon Ball Z and bleak, you know, like all this stuff that we've been watching for a long, long time. And so, you can see the influences right down and how like, how the ending fight scenes are. I mean, the eradicators, frankly, are terrifying, scary, because how do you beat a Superman now, you know, in the real world, they would have just got it packed up because if you can multiply all that time, like how many can he stop at eight? Yeah. Got a feeling you could probably go to 16, maybe even 24. It kind of feels like you just know upper limit to the bounds, but now I think, yeah, it was a lot of the same fight scenes, but I didn't mind it too much. I feel like to your point, too, in terms of the violence, like they do kind of the classic like American animation thing of just getting away with going a little bit over the top because they're like robots. Well, it's like a classic like samurai jack kind of thing to like, you can get pretty gruesome with it, but because they're like, they're either robots or like clones on the other side of it, they can get away with a little bit more. Yeah. So I guess, you know, in the kind of meta narrative of DC, obviously, the the next Superman movie just wrapped filming, but that's still a ways away. But if supergirl left kind of a sour taste in your mouth, then it's nice to switch to a different depiction of supergirl or, you know, reading this month about how the the Waller series is no longer an active development. You get a little Amanda Waller here in my adventures of Superman. So it's kind of like, you know, when things aren't going great in live action, then you just dip into DC animation where things are are pretty solid and dependable typically. So you can always count on on the animated universe to deliver. So definitely. They always had to several wide variety of options as we're going to keep talking about here today too. Yeah. Any thoughts, hopes, expectations for season four and beyond with the show, anything you'd like to see it explore that it hasn't yet put Jimmy a car together. Let them be happy. Yeah. I can't watch it. I don't have enough in my heart. It's tough. I know you're listening. Okay. The creators, you know, hey, you know, we follow each other Instagram, you know, those are my boys now, you know, but no, but seriously though, like let's let's let's lock this in. Okay, I can't do another season of this pain. It hurts. It hurts. Yeah. Takes you back to your dispatch experience. All this unrequited love. It's tough for you to watch that mirrored on this. Guys, I need a girlfriend, man. I can't. This is this is brutal, man. Like I got to get outside, man. Like it's August. It's almost it's it's almost September, fellas. It's bad. You know, you all got to help me. Jimmy's. Jimmy's a great guy. I mean, we vouch for him. I don't know. I don't know what people are sleeping on, but shoot your shot. He's available. He's, I mean, extremely available, possibly down bad. So, you know, but you got to November because when CTA come out, it's over. Well, she did come on. Just you and Lucia. Yeah. Hopefully Lucia will love you.
We'll see. All right. Let's transition to bats. Then we've got a double dose of Batman Cape Crusader season two technically came out July 31st, but binge drop. So we'll count it as August. And then we will also talk about nightfall, the new TV movie that just came out last week. Part one, of course, of what's going to be a three part movie. So Cape Crusader season two. This is, you know, hearkening back to the animated series, that kind of animation style and legacy and adult themes and all the rest of it. Season two. What's your, what's your take from what you've seen. I still like to show a lot. I think I'm not as high as I was on it as I was in season one. I feel like it's more hitter, hitter miss for me in the season. I've also only seen like the first like six episodes. And I think the fifth and six are probably my favorite so far. But I don't know. There's a lot of like. I really liked in the first season that they did flip a lot of like what we thought of a lot of the villains, especially in a lot of the characters. Like they do have a lot of fun of just Really, really adding a fresh perspective on some of these characters and just and just switching them remixing them really. But for characters like like the riddler in the season, like it's just I guess the idea is that he's riddling people with holes instead of actually doing the rules. And it's just like, yeah, I'm like, I don't know what's going on here. You know, and it's, it's With things like that, though, it's just like you're kind of taking the the interesting point of of the riddler. And now he's just a classic like old school mobster. And for me, like some of that is where the show has like lost me a little bit more. It's where it's been a little bit more, more misses for me at times. Batman. How many how many bullets do I have in this gun? That's funny. I can see that I think the strength of this show comes from like the voice acting. And I think Hey miss link later, like Kevin Conway's to go, you know, resting piece to the legend, but Hey miss link later does an incredible job as the voice of Batman to where like you can feel like, yeah, this, this feels like Batman, the same way, like, I'll never not like when I'm reading Batman. I'll never not hear Kevin Conway's voice. Like forever, however, Hey miss link dirty does an amazing job. And part of that is. They also like they have the Joker in the season, right. And at first, you know, really busy August, you know, I'll tap it a cable shader when I see it. I saw on Twitter that the joker was German. Let me, let me lock it. And it's, it takes a while to get to right DC, you haven't seen him yet. You don't even, you don't know. That's what I was like the first like four episodes all end with the same tease of Joker. I'm like, is he actually going to show up? You, yeah, please, please tell me more. And he's, he's German. And I'm like, yo, this is inspired. Right. And we'll talk about some like voice acting stuff later. When it comes to nightfall. But I just thought that that was such an interesting choice in a show where yeah, they like to play on stuff. And like they like to like mix and match some stuff from early comics to like things of the time period or whatnot. And so to like You know, man, I'm not really manifest, but like reconfigured Joker into this like shit. Like I just thought it was inspired and really fun. And just like kind of ridiculous, but all in the best type of ways. Yeah, there's a lot going on here too. It's like, you know, the whole Rogues gallery shows up in these shows in these seasons. We have this, you know, injection. We have gas. We have resurrection. We've got zombies. We've got this kind of, you know, grinning mutating virus poison going on here. Right. Watching this and nightfall back to back. It's just it's not a new thought. But man, like Gotham, like, why does anyone live there? It's just just a hellscape. It's just nonstop. Just something awful is happening in the city. Despite that man's best efforts. So, you know, it's like a little dark. It's got the noirish aspects that it's it's trading on the animated series and everything. It's bringing that back. You know, like I like that it's it's TV 14 right compared to nightfall, which is our rated and is like shouldn't say hard are that's something else probably, but like, it is kind of hard arm. It's not my heart. From a parental rating perspective. It is. So, you know, like watching I watch Cape Crusader and then I watch Nightfall. And now suddenly, I'm like, oh my four year old could watch Cape Crusader. This is nothing. It's like, you know, compared to like Mortal Kombat style fatalities and stuff. And gruesomeness. But it's got for a cartoon for, you know, Saturday morning style. It's it's definitely heavy from from that sort of perspective. So I like that there's a bit more of an adult aspect to it. Right. And a darkness. You know, we all like a dark Batman. And so there's a lot to like here. I see what you mean. But I think by the end of the season. Kind of it comes around, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I'll definitely still keep keep watching it. Like I think it's a very different kind of show than my ventures are Superman, where it is like very episodic. Yeah. And like I do kind of kind of like that. And it really recaptures a lot of the spirit of Bruce Tim's old Batman series. And like I feel like there's still a lot of that in it that I that I do appreciate. But I think it's also more subject to have a few misses along the way because of that that kind of format. And I feel like. The matically it may lose some of that focus sometimes, but what the episode is when they do it, right? Like I really did like the scarecrow episode, for example, like I think it's, you know, I, I'm definitely still still with it. Yeah, Jomi any any thoughts hopes dreams for season three and beyond. Man, you know, if they're doing season three, let's, let's get some robins here, man. Let's just do it. Man, let's get the problem here. Yeah, you know, like what's what's what's digger is his parents up to right now. And they fallen from a from a trap ease. I like let's let's see what it looks like. It's all I'm saying. Sure. It's what it's Batman out there doing this thing, you know, but when is Jason Todd going to start jacking, you know, the rims of the Batmobile, you know, let's get some, let's get some Robin actually here. I like to see it. Well, still awaiting a green light for a renewal, but maybe the ringerverse recommends bump will get it over the hump. And if you want Robin, may I recommend to you Batman nightfall part one nightfall. We've got some dashes M dashes Collins multiple Collins in this title. But this is why would you call it Batman nightfall part one nightfall. Yeah, you could just call it that man. Nightfall part one. You know, I mean, you didn't have to because I'm watching it on on the thing and I'm like, okay, Batman nightfall part one nightfall. Yeah, that doesn't sound right. I don't get it in notes. Yeah, but but beyond that. So we've got handsome handsome mount is voicing a very rough Batman here. He'll come up on next month's RBR when we talk about strange new worlds season four. Always happy to see it or hear and sin, but this is an adaptation of the seminal nightfall arc from 93 94. This is part one of three. So this is part of the DC universe animated original movies series. It's hard to keep all this stuff straight. We've got like multiple live action Batman. We've got animated cartoon TV Batman. We've got TV movie animated Batman. We've got so many Batman so many robins, but this one is, you know, part one of this three part TV movie. It's not streaming anywhere as of yet. So it is video on demand will hire barrier to entry, but worth it. I think I really enjoyed this first part. The second part will be out later this year. Part three sometime in 2027, seemingly, but this is like crank up all the dark aspects of Cape Crusader to 11 and this is this is nightmare fuel. So yeah, now I had a lot of fun with this one. It had been a long time since I read nightfall. And it was fun just like revisiting this story because like I've seen dark night rises like a bunch of times and you can just see all the things that they pull from nightfall, but when you actually go closer to the source material to it's it's very fun with just all the villains that they're pulling in just like seeing being trying to wear him down and then just the voice acting is awesome. I really liked Michael Mando as as being in particular. I didn't realize who it was at first and then seeing in the credits. I was like, yeah, yeah, scorpion in here too. So here's the thing DC. You're absolutely correct. Michael Mando as Bane to credible unrecognizable legitimately amazing. I love what they do with this backstory like Santa Priska, you know, going all the way like to the beginning with Bane. I love it. Here's the problem. Tom Hardy and Hardy Quinn ruined Bane for me forever. Like I'm sorry, because like I get it and it's amazing. You're sitting there. But then I'm thinking about it right now. I'm like. Back. You think the darkness is your alarm and I'm like, well, you should that's why he should always sound like I'm sorry. Like that's what Bane sounds like in my head, you know, unfortunately for
because Tom Hardy and then Harley Quinn and Hightman hell yeah that's just like reinforced in my in my brain like I'm sorry. You're merely adopted the dog like that's what you know that's what he's just sound like I'm at the old time I'm sorry but no like going on the DC animated like movies specifically they do this thing where either they are super faithful to the comic almost to a detriment and sometimes they just be freestyling that dank they just be going crazy and this one goes more into the faithful aspect I think it's for the good because the story of knife falls off like super iconic super memorable and they they really do nail it you know when you get to the part where Bane is cracking Batman's back if you really like yo this is this is not a this is like for real like Batman can go one on one with this dude man like he does not have it and so acid mount was cooking obviously yeah Michael Mando I think is the MVP like just completely strawberry too. It's got a budget what I say that Rosario Dawson was Wonder Woman in the last the last joint so I don't know what I'm talking about but no I think this like did a really like especially it's like a part one oh yeah give me part two give me part three I'm locked in. What did you think of this as a nightfall adaptation I mean it pretty pretty faithful hit the me. Yeah I know I thought it was real and it's just like it is such a good story and like it's such a good like ending to the first part too and like I remember that just like that it's such an iconic moment in the comics and like you know they they captured it in Christopher Nolan movie too but like there's something different in like a comic book or animated form to where you just you just get the full I mean he throws Batman off of a building yeah like there he's he's not surviving this but like yeah because it's animating you can get away with some of these things. Throwing him into the walls man like you got it for first time in a while even before that wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait to see oh god a second he had like a 248 pack I was going to say like this is like Jack Fade you've ever seen yeah six pack this is 12 18 packs this is the only Bane that's scarier is Bane from the absolute Batman joy huh yeah and then it's this Bane because not only was he like nine feet tall his muscles have muscles have muscles. This is making midnight boys guests roblly filled characters looking look and slim time like it's ridiculous how Buffy was one time he does that all on this this anabolic rat diet evidently this is I mean until he gets injected with the the serum he's like he's getting super jacked just like in a in a well in a hole we're just grabbing rats that's evidently then you got to remember everything is perhaps protein now it's good protein. I was at the Walmart they had protein rat protein okay and those rats specifically have as much muscle mass as berry bonds yeah when he was juicing so basically he was eating a berry he was eating three berry bonds a day essentially so you know that's how you get that's that's got to be how you get swole like that because yeah he was not getting swole off bread and water he was not he was not yeah I like this this burned out Batman he was like looking like me as I was binging everything that I was watching for this episode of bring him to recommend the best week or so. It's like oh we've got to tap in one more series to get through we got to get do it for the tremendous content but yeah I like the Batman you know he's on the edge he's cracking he's maybe being a little little too violent at times he's losing it everyone's having their doubts is he a hero is he an anti hero has he gone too far do we need to bring him to justice so I mean that's that's the whole nightfall hook right so that's reproduced really accurately here they do not pull any punches literally or figuratively when it comes to the violence and the gore so you know this is given you the fully adult DC experience. Yeah yeah and just like we're talking about you I mean it's just I think this is the advantage of having the animated medium sometimes to where you can have these like Bane can have 300 abs you know all these things like these things can can work in the animated medium and like it's it's just it's fun to see them go go all out. Yeah so we've we've talked about this with like Spider-Man right where you have multiple Spider-Man you have movie Spider-Man you have animated Spider-Man in a few different shows you have video game Spider-Man all different continuities you have animated Spider-Verse Spider-Man and Spider-Man is kind of just clicking just firing on all cylinders in all forms and here with DC also there's just a lot to juggle and a lot to keep track all these different you know watching Cape Crusader and then Nightfall back to back it's like all right different Batman different Gotham different continuity stuff to just mentally adjust we're watching Nightfall supergirl you're looking forward to the Batman it's a lot to keep track so do you feel like you know are we in sort of oversaturation territory or are you just able to separate these things and say like this is traditional DC animation it's always been there for me and we can put that on the side and also enjoy James Gunn and whatever he's up to. Yeah I mean at least for me that that is the way I feel because I feel like we have been program we have been conditioned to have so many of these things happening of the same especially when it comes to something like Batman yeah like he's just always been ubiquitous but with with James James Gunn of it all it is interesting because I feel like that was part of what he was really selling when when he took over with him and Peter Saffron would just like how much that especially on the live action front there the properties of just kind of it was like the Wild West I think he kind of described it where where he was he was really just trying to gather things back together and make things clear but also be ambitious and say that everything was gonna be connected to we're like video games even and I feel like we haven't really seen that and this is part of it to where I don't I don't really know that it's become that much more clear I feel like it hasn't really changed that much but we're still kind of just seeing the live-action movies and TV shows come together so yeah and like lanterns is really good yeah it's hard to complain I mean you can't complain about supergirl but you know when the stuff is right then I'm okay with more right so it's it's less about fatigue than it is like fatigue with stuff that's not actually good so when we can recommend it as we are with all these things is that how you feel Jeremy you know me man I've always been the biggest James Gunn defender I've never said a mean thing about him ever so you know I'm coming from but I mean to your point though Ben Spider-Man get out of love Batman should be getting out of love too you know like like the live-action stuff is difficult you know because of the Matt Reeves and the DCU like pushing pull but in terms of Adam because he's never showing up on TV let's you know come on let's be for real like live-action TV I mean yeah the penguin or I mean Spider-Man has the same thing too you never seen a live-action spot yeah and that's he in a devil right people are like man he goes up on daredevil I was like guys guys they would know I know it they are they would rush there there's like a billion other people that show up Spider-Man will never show up on TV like he to one guy that they would never bring the television live-action and so yeah when you have an opportunity to bring that character through film animated through TV animation you do it every time there's like never not been a Batman show on TV whether like it's Justice League or the Batman of the Madame in the series or Young Justice they don't have Batman on television in animation form and in animated movie form because he's the guy he's always gonna be the guy Spider-Man is the same way we are always gonna see these characters no matter what if you know Capriciator doesn't come back with his three in two years we'll have another Batman show with another Batman doing other Batman stuff because what are they going to do not have a Batman show what that's not good for my than their wallets what do you have one of the most you have access to one of the most popular characters in the history of fiction and you'd be like yeah let's just not put them in anything that's not gonna happen so yeah we're always the pipeline too yeah yeah the pipeline of just comics to to animation or the movies too I mean the fact that absolute Batman's already coming out with a movie like this comic just like starting you know you know the grand scheme of things you know like thank you we get an absolute Batman and it's crazy yeah yeah I'm for it like yeah yeah what's that we'll for Wolverine you'll be Wolverine till you're 90 we're gonna have Batman stuff forever yeah not good for WB's bottom line not to keep churning out Batman so they will mint more Batman and we will laugh it up and speaking of oversaturated franchises that maybe have pumped the brakes a bit let's wrap up with a little Star Wars action so just when you're thinking there's there's not much Star Wars to watch these days I know Nando and Grogu about to be streaming it's it's natural habitat but beyond that there haven't really been any Star Wars shows this year except for Darth Maul Shadow Lord another show with hyphen and colon it was a show I mean there was a show they just put it in theaters yes exactly four of the Mandalorian instead of yeah more or less but just when you thought we had to wait for a socus season two or some excellent Star Wars video games including zero company which we're covering on but mission the upcoming galactic racer but we do have one more show this year it's the ninth Jedi Star Wars visions present the ninth Jedi so this show is a spin off of visions which we've gotten three seasons or
or volumes of volume three came out last year. And the ninth Jedi is a spinoff basically of two episodes, one from volume one of visions and one from volume three of visions. And we're continuing it here with its own eight episode series. Which, like the rest of vision, is not canon. It's set in a different continuity. It's set in an alternate timeline in the far future. It's not exactly clear when or where we are exactly. But we're picking up from where we left off, which is basically, well, somewhat familiar set up, actually, which is that the Jedi Order has been disbanded and destroyed somehow. And they're trying to get it back together. These masterless Jedi are trying to come back together. And of course, there's some Dark Siders and there's some Sith and there's a helmeted dark costume clad characters trying to unite the galaxy. We've seen that script before to some extent. But I like that visions is spawning its own spinoffs. And we've seen this with some others, right? With the duel, got its own novel and comic. And then the village Jedi, there's a second, a sequel to that in volume three, two. ninth Jedi was one of the candidates, also, I think, to get more, right? So you've seen most of this season, DC. What do you think of ninth Jedi? I was actually very pleasantly surprised. I did enjoy visions a lot. And I really liked how you got to see so many different sides of the Star Wars universe and just have a very creative-- they're taking a lot of liberties, like you've said, too. They still capture a lot of the spirit of it. And I think, again, we're talking about another anime inspired show. And this is really a full-on anime. Yeah, this is actually anime. I remember even the first-- I don't know what you guys did in terms of the audio. But I thought it was a little bit stiltsy at times with the dialogue, or the writing, or something. And then when I saw the credits for the first episode, it said the Japanese white cast first. And I was like, oh, I should be watching this. Go set. And then once I started doing that in episode two, I was like, wow, this is like a lot smoother. But I really just liked-- from the very first time you actually see a lightsaber fight in this, I was like, wow, this is cool. And this was really fun to watch. Yeah, it's its production IG. They're given the production IG treatment, which is one of the nice things about visions. Just writ well. And it's like Star Wars, obviously, always has this Eastern influence in samurai and Kurosawa and all the rest, but to actually go all in on anime and give people a turn at this thing. Jomi, you've seen the start of ninth Jedi. Will you be watching more? DC, you know the rules. Man, sub, not-- Yeah. Mom. It's the official position. It was like a Disney+, you have to scroll all the way to the back for the Japanese, and they also, they have a stacked English voice cast. I think, honestly, what it was was like Masioca. No disrespect to him, but I heard his voice at the end of it. And I was like, it took me out for a second, because immediately I was thinking of a blue-eyed samurai. I just felt like it didn't really fit with-- I guess his name is Ethan, is the character. Then again, they have a very star-studded cast, and again, that's no disrespect to him. But I feel like I have such associations with a lot of these actors who sometimes it can take you out a little bit. But again, I think just some things get lost in translation sometimes. And clearly, this was made by the Japanese animation studio. It's written by Japanese people. It just felt more fitting. And the voice actors are really good in Japanese, too. So that was-- yeah, and you get this Kylo Ren-like character, who's now on, who's finally, when the helmet is removed, it's basically like Sephiroth under there. It's just kind of like generic Japanese anime villain, basically, you know, blondes, just like-- yeah. But yeah, I mean, I've enjoyed visions. I like the visual variety of it, but the one disappointing aspect, even though I like a lot of the individual, the dual, the village bride, all those things, is that they do just keep going back to that Jedi well over and over again, which I get because it seems like there's not that much oversight. And it's just like, here, here's our playground and our Star Wars sandbox, tell the story you want to tell. And so obviously, all these anime studios, they want to tell their own Jedi story, right? But then we end up with like seven or eight different Jedi stories out of the season. It's like, I want to see things that are a little bit off the beaten path. And that's where we are with Nynched Jedi, too, where I was reading some reviews, and I felt like I was losing my mind, because they're talking about like, you know, a bold fresh start for the franchise. And it's like, not really. I mean, visually, yeah, OK. The visual language is a little bit different. I like the designs of the lightsabers and the, you know, handcrafted saber-smith aspect to it. Some of that iconography is cool, but the setup for this thing, even if it is in the far future or whatever, alternate timeline, it's basically like a sequel, trilogy, doover, I guess, which, I mean, a lot of people want that, right? But, you know, it is still sort of your galaxy's spanning light versus dark and higher stand-in, first-order stand-in versus Ragtag group of upstart rebels. Like, you know, the basic framework, and I get it's Star Wars. So you're kind of, you're playing the hits, and you can maybe your cover version. You start with that premise and that baseline, and then you can riff a little and put your own spin on it. But does Hugh pretty close to the setup of every other trilogy, you know? So I could not disagree more. Really? OK. Because that's how you end up with D Squad. And now we're going to get a D Squad. It's true. Now, there was like a level of, you know, yeah, they can all be Jedi, you know? And let's see some Mandalorian love, you know? Like, there are other, some dark sisters love, you know? There are other things in a galaxy far, far away that we can, we can blow on to, but fellas, come on. Let's not lie to ourselves. We're here for the swordplay and the lightsaber's and the force. Come on. That's not so about. When you're watching the first season of visions, you talk about the duel, you talk about the twins, you talk about the ninth Jedi. Those are the ones that like leave you wanting more. Like specifically the twins and the ninth Jedi for me. I was like, yo, I want to, where's the new episode for this? And so to see it come to fruition, super exciting. Like, we can't wait to like dive all the way. And I've only seen the first couple, but I can't wait to dive all the way in. Because this is what, this is what Star Wars should be. Like in a real way in terms of, let people tell their stories, man. Let's like see what other people have to say about this universe. It's been very like, you know, one track minded for a long time. You know, first it was George. Now it's Fologi and I get that like, you know, these, you know, enormous universes need to have a steward. But there are other people with other stories to tell. And I frankly think like the most, not the most interesting, but the stuff that we keep coming back to is the force and vice-versa, and people going, like, I'm sorry. Like, let's not lie. Because see, that's what you say. You say that. Ben, you like, yeah, man, I get the lightsaber stuff. Give me some, I'm gonna get on some other stuff. Well, yeah, I mean, 12 episodes, you get your chorus sign. Right, we get, but it's not enduring, it's not enduring, right? It's not, because it's not Tony Gilroy, right? Sure. He's not putting a depth end on it. He's going to be, what's her name? Mon Mothma sitting there waiting for a sitting earring. But because what's his name? The chancellor don't want to come out on time, because he too busy doing dark side stuff that you can't see, by the way, because there's no force in this show. We're not putting it in person. I'm not a hard lighter. I'm not no force at all. I'm just saying, and look, maybe it's the only way that a series like this gets greenlit. Not just a one-off episode, but a whole season of something. You got to have some epic, galactic, you know, fighting over the vision of the galaxy sort of stakes. I get that. But I am very much in that kind of like, yeah, let people tell their own stories. And if their story is just sort of remixes of the stories that we've seen before, it's like it's a fine line, you know? And I feel like we're already in niche territory here. We're talking about animated anime star wars, right? So the ceiling for that is a lot lower than your typical live-action Disney+ streaming series, right? So like, this is something that probably the hardcore are going to be checking out, you know, the diehards to begin with. So it's like, maybe for that, those consumers that constituency you could, it's not even that I wouldn't want any Jedi in visions. It's just when you keep giving me Jedi, even if it's different visions of that, so to speak. You know, like, give me some studio G, give me some, you know, Miyazaki kind of weirdness, give me some like off the beaten path out of left field sort of, because it's just like, what is star wars? Is it, is it that same framework? Yeah, like, ultimately, inherently, it's kind of good versus evil and galactic conflict and all of that. But does, you know, it's, it's pretty close to that territory that we've seen before. With some interesting changes, I think, later in the season. Ben, like the Toby joint, he liked the Toby, the Toby, uh, for visions. I mean, you're not like, you know, inside of your own, and I think like, to use Andor as an example, the thing with like Tony Giroi in that project specifically, was Tony Giroi.
I did not care about the lower that was he was not interested in any of that right and the issue with a lot of stuff is like the law is really important to a lot of people you know George Lucas is famous to say and like it's like poetry you know if they rhyme every stands that kind of rhymes to the last and I don't want to say like that's the problem with Star Wars but like it kind of is we talked about a lot on midnight boys where like the reason Star Wars is the three the way it is now is because back in the day when when George was making it he was thinking about curious how movies you know he was thinking about stuff that he was going to be like he was watching you know like old-time westerns like things like that now people who are making Star Wars grew up on Star Wars right it's like a snake eating us hotels reason why people would argue the Simpsons is not the same anymore right like back in the day they were getting inspiration for different stuff now the people making Simpsons are just watching the Simpsons and just like remaking the same type of thing right so you do need some fresh blood in there but at the same time the what the thing that makes Star Wars special is this like wide universe where anything can happen but the thing that we keep we keep coming back to the things that makes it special not only the skywalkers but the lightsaber's the force what it means to be a Jedi dark versus light good versus evil and so I can understand why people will keep coming back to that well because that's the stuff that inspires us that's the stuff that makes it special now when you get somebody like 20 get away and this is why I get and like what people are like man I wish we could get more andor you're never getting more andor no andor it's own thing I wrote a piece for the ringer you know it's like they can't all be andor like not only can you not compare everything to andor standard but also you do have to like give people red meat sometimes the stuff that makes them fall in love with Star Wars that's how you get andor where you kind of do a different spin on that stuff and say we're actually going to stay away from that and look this will be a different vision so to speak of Star Wars but you also have to keep giving people that steady supply of the Star Wars they know and love just you know we're getting a lot of that to the extent that we're getting any Star Wars these days we are getting a lot of Jedi stuff and Shadow Lord and Asoka and you know that's why I'm looking for to Starfighter that's one of the reasons that seems to be a bit different maybe at least a different timeline you know set a little after the sequel trilogy so again like I like a lot of it night Jedi it's really nicely animated great fight choreography it's a good show like I enjoyed it it's just there's a slight disappointment with visions which just feels to me like it really could be this kind of boundary breaking thing and it is visually but then in terms of the content and the tone not always so much yeah I mean I definitely I definitely see that and I agree with you for some aspects of that but I think for me at least the most when it comes to this being refreshing it's just like I feel like we've just had so many animated shows that are just like in the Floney verse and just like yeah even when it comes to like I'm like bad batch but like that's still like an extension of Clone Wars like you you really feel like you have to watch all of that stuff and even with Rebels like it's still connected to Clone Wars and like Shadow Lord things yeah exactly they're all coming into like the same kind of universe and like this really feels like it can be like a fresh start that's and like you're capturing a lot of spirit of Star Wars but you're also can just like have a bit of a blank slate and like I really love the character designs like I really appreciate just the different directions that they are taking for some of it um and just like again like they are capturing the main spirit and into Jomi's point to like you just need to have especially when you're we have like an anime yeah production studio coming in like they're they're not not gonna do like lights and like the way they use you get the studio for uh Judges of Kaisen or a Demo Slayer and they're like bit guess what we don't touch when we have 12 episodes yeah that's right we made this is our most your farming show yeah this is what it's all about you know yeah yeah yeah it's the same conversation with with superhero stuff Marvel and DC it's like people like Spider-Man and Batman you know so we can dip down the tier list in the hierarchy here and like this is for the true heads and maybe they appreciate that but the audience is not necessarily there for those lower visibility heroes so one thing I do appreciate about ninth Jedi is like when they do start getting into the philosophy of the four stuff and the way the sabers work in this show where you know it's not how it is in canon where it's like you know you have to hunt for the the kyber crystals and then like you know to get the red ones you gotta like bleed them right that whole thing here it's very much sort of like it reflects your mood in the moment and you can see for a moment to moment like oh I'm I'm getting a little dark side right now my super just looking a little red and then I'm back to blue territory I kind of like that that it's like a real time reflection it's like a you know this is my mood I'm I'm dangerously veering toward Sith's side now that I like and a lot of the exploration of like the gray Jedi stuff you know silver sabers can I just drain myself of all emotion and get this silver saber and we've seen something along those lines with the soka and kind of the gray Jedi and and the like white sabers gray sabers it's you know along those lines but I like that kind of can we just drain all passion from this and just do you know the unification of the galaxy for high-minded reasons and not bring like anger and vengeance and all that into it but then the effect of it maybe is ultimately the same and wait you know and without giving away too much about the end of the series like it it does kind of circle back around to the comfort zone of Star Wars you know light versus dark and red versus blue or green or whatever but I like that they at least dabble with that stuff I'm always I'm always into the gray Jedi stuff so interesting that Ben said a soka and then immediately followed up with draining of all passion interesting that I'm just I just I'm just notice referring to the performances no I want to say performances really I would much more say just that entire universe and that often it taught not to and I because I know I've been saying you gotta do this thing is Star Wars you have to do this do not listen to me when a soka come out in January just ignore everything you just heard okay but wait well guys and maybe this is just like healing on me you know it's just three of us what if it's good what if so because he's in tail yeah what if they fell on the herd the herd to feedback and was like three years to work on it yeah we gonna cook you know hey let's not make this like a story for children you know let's not make it a story for four-year-olds let's like give these characters some depth and you know some agency and some change and like let's not make it paint by a number of storytelling right let's do the thing that would like surprise the audience or shock the audience and make them you know understand that this is not just again a simple story that a three-year-old can understand is something that you know that can grow with this audience it's all I'm asking that's all I'm asking but again who knows fellas don't listen to me if if if he just does the same same same same old stuff don't listen to me I'm just crazy old man I'm holding out some hope for a soka season two but we will withhold our recommendations until we've seen it always love having you guys on here preserve the spirit of mint edition our ip on rangerverse recommends when we do our animation roundups joe me daniel thank you thanks ramy thanks for having us all right i'm back not joined by grumpkin the faithful docks in today because i'm in the studio maybe next month but we covered a lot of ground today talked about the end of oak street the dog stars coyote versus acme multiple batman series cape crusader and nightfall my adventures with Superman the night Jedi and more even talked a little bit about signs while we were at it we didn't get into the alternate interpretation of signs is that a plot hole that the aliens came to earth even though earth is full of water and they're allergic to it are they demons not aliens in fact maybe we'll talk about that some other time i have a listener recommendation to relay this came into ring of earth recommends at gmail.com and it came to us from anders drew who wrote is any part of the librarians franchise going to end up on the big picture or the prestige tv podcast feed no way should that stop you from enjoying this adventure fantasy series no way the librarians is for those of us who loved the adventure of the week plus some overarching stories that only buffy or stargate could bring in the next chapter join the next generation of librarians as they work to protect the world from out of control magical artifacts alongside a stellar cast of supporting characters and villains genie who wants to destroy the world we got it anger gif who gorges on the feelings of modern teenagers we got that interesting takes on classic Arthurian myths and characters it's the backbone for those of us who enjoy a true week to week adventure series about a group of rag tags that find their own family and openly embracing their nerdiness that doesn't take itself too seriously and knows exactly what it is i have to recommend the librarians the next chapter which is airing season two on tnt now always remember that all you need is your team and a good book like subscribe to that maximum i'm a big library user big librarian fan i have entirely unfamiliar with the librarians franchise i'm sorry to say so i will be checking out this uh this recommendation this is the librarians the next chapter which is a spinoff of the original librarians tv series which was itself a spinoff of the librarians tv movie series starring Noah lily not to be confused with wily coyote there's a lot of
librarians lore here that I have not been privy to but excellent recommendation. I will also toss in a bonus recommendation for a British show called Small Profits. This is a BBC series. It's the usual six episodes. This actually came out in February. So I'm cheating a little. It has not been released on our shores. So you will have to find your way to this one way or another. I cannot help you. But it's on BBC two and the BBC iPlayer was created written directed by Mackenzie Kruck who also appears in the series. Kruck played Gareth in the original UK version of the office, which was the inspiration for Dwight in the US version. And Mackenzie Kruck also made a show called Detectorists, another excellent BBC series, one of my favorite from a few years ago. It's about metal detecting very pastoral. This one has the nerd culture ringerverse aspect because it's about a man who is dealing with some loss. His girlfriend disappeared years ago. He has not moved on with his life. So he gets into alchemy and builds himself some humunculi to tell him about where his girlfriend is and if she's alive, he's got these humunculi in jars in his shed. It's really nice. It's just a little like slice a life with a little aspect of the paranormal and supernatural. Also, if Mackenzie Kruck wasn't a British enough name for you, it stars Pierce Quigley, who was also in Detectorists. So Kruck created it, wrote it, directed it, accent it as well. It's really nice. It's a tender. There's a little generational friendship going on here. Check out if you can small profits. If and when it comes to the US, or if you can find it some other way, also co stars, Monty Python's Michael Panland with a nice little guest appearance here as well. All right, coming up this month, we've got the return of ring request. We have continuing coverage of the lanterns. We have very busy but mass schedule. We have anemusha and orbitals coming up the blood of Don Walker Marvel's Wolverine will be tackling next week as well. The resident evils a cragger movie control resident silent hill townfall. We've got our hands full next month on ring reverse recommends at least tentatively. We will be talking about silo season three and dark matter season two and maybe doing a ranking of Apple TV sci fi series a little tier list. I've seen them all. I'll tell you which ones are the actual good ones. Plus Star Trek Strange New World season for 60th anniversary of Star Trek this month. Happy birthday. Maybe not the happiest birthday for this franchise, but we'll do the outlook for the future. You can contact us here again at ring reverse recommends at ringverse recommends at gmail.com. Thank you to Devin Ronaldo for producing this podcast. Thanks to our junior Ram Gopal for his senior podcast management. Thanks to you as always for listening. And until next time, we hope that you will recommend the ring reverse.
PodcastTranscript AI