Speaker 1: Warning, this podcast contains spoilers for The Flash and some
Speaker 1: theories for Secret Division. Hello on im Rosey Night, and
Speaker 1: welcome back after our short break to x ray Vision,
Speaker 1: the Crooked media podcast where we dive deep but to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture. We missed you.
Speaker 1: We're glad you're back. We did.
Speaker 2: In this episode previously on, I'm gonna give you a
Speaker 2: little refresher on The Flash's journey through production hell and
Speaker 2: obviously the controversies around it star Ezra Miller. In the
Speaker 2: air Lock, we're going to talk about The Flash It's time,
Speaker 2: and then we got a double omnibus for you. We're
Speaker 2: going to be covering the two comics that are going
Speaker 2: to be inspiring, all the stuff we're talking about Flashpoint,
Speaker 2: and then to prepare for Secret Invasion, which is hitting
Speaker 2: on the day you will hear this podcast. Jason's written
Speaker 2: an in edible omnibus on Secret Invasion in the Nerd
Speaker 2: Out and MCU Multiverse query from Homer.
Speaker 1: Ooh coming up previously on Okay, First up, some background
Speaker 1: context for The Flash, a very troubled production, focusing on
Speaker 1: the issues surrounding star Ezra Miller. First of all, I
Speaker 1: saw this film this weekend in the theater as one.
Speaker 1: I guess should I too saw it in the theater,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited to talk about our thoughts. But I
Speaker 1: will say I guess because of how pointedly troubled the
Speaker 1: production has been. I was kind of surprised that it.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is better than Black Adam. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: some parts of it. I'll just leave it there, That's
Speaker 1: what I'll say.
Speaker 2: I will say my general takeaway is that it wasn't
Speaker 2: a film that was for me, but there was some
Speaker 2: moments where I was kind of blown away by the
Speaker 2: artist tree and the good things yeah, that came out
Speaker 2: of this movie that I think was, like you said,
Speaker 2: very troubled.
Speaker 1: Okay, So where to even start with the Ezra Miller situation.
Speaker 1: Miller has been involved in a litany of legal issues,
Speaker 1: starting with an arrest and an accusation of grooming a teenager.
Speaker 1: These exploits include trespassing, choking a woman in Iceland in
Speaker 1: an incident that has been caught on camera, and other
Speaker 1: issues dating back to twenty twenty, and these issues at
Speaker 1: the time seemed to pose a potentially mortal threat to
Speaker 1: the Flash production. I think you and I both opined
Speaker 1: that there was no way that this movie could go forward,
Speaker 1: and yet it has gone forward. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think once you see the movie and you understand
Speaker 2: that Ezra is on screen for ninety nine percent of
Speaker 2: the film, you understand the quandary on a business sense
Speaker 2: that Warner Brothers was in, even though they never seemed
Speaker 2: to have a.
Speaker 1: Moral quandary about it.
Speaker 2: I still it quite shocking that this film came out
Speaker 2: and there has not been more conversation about the work
Speaker 2: that Ezra has hopefully done to kind of hopefully make
Speaker 2: themselves bare, make the people they harmed. That I feel
Speaker 2: like it's quite strange there kind of hasn't been a
Speaker 2: pr campaign or a conversation around that. But also, this
Speaker 2: movie probably cost around three hundred million dollars, so I
Speaker 2: understand that for Warner it's a business choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was part of the conversation we were having off Mike. Obviously,
Speaker 1: in the Discovery era, the David Zaslav era, Warner Discovery
Speaker 1: has been making a lot of waves by its unilateral
Speaker 1: canceling of projects that were in the works and its
Speaker 1: memory houling of various content that was on the HBO
Speaker 1: Max platform, and all of this in order to basically
Speaker 1: create write downs so that they could cut some of
Speaker 1: the enormous debt that Discovery taken on in its leverage
Speaker 1: purchase of Warner Brothers. So from that perspective, I agree
Speaker 1: with you. I don't know how they could have not
Speaker 1: done this film from a we need to cut the
Speaker 1: debt perspective. This movie cost I think the reported numbers
Speaker 1: somewhere south of two twenty yeah, south of three hundred million.
Speaker 1: But like there's a lot of scuttle but that it
Speaker 1: costs anywhere up to a half a billion, like.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, especially including marketing and the many many reshoots. Also,
Speaker 2: I think we will get into this more in both
Speaker 2: the conversation about the Flash and also in my Flashpoint omnibus.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's really interesting. I was in a comic
Speaker 2: shop in Palm Springs, one of my local comic shops
Speaker 2: that I love. I love that shop, Comics Asylum, Palm Springs.
Speaker 2: I was talking to the owner and all she wanted
Speaker 2: was to see Grant Gustin in a Flash movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so many people have said that to me.
Speaker 2: They've gone, I don't understand why they made this movie
Speaker 2: with Ezra or why they didn't just get grant like
Speaker 2: so many wide audience.
Speaker 1: There was a moment and that I thought he was
Speaker 1: gonna be in it. But we'll continue with that, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that more.
Speaker 2: But basically, the other side of this, aside from the
Speaker 2: Ezra of it all, which is the kind of I
Speaker 2: feel like the thing that has really been way and
Speaker 2: heavy on us and on many of the audience, like
Speaker 2: morally and kind of ethically, is like this seems like
Speaker 2: it's being brushed over. But even before Ezra was even attached,
Speaker 2: this movie has had an absolutely wild journey through production.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's go through it. Let's go through it.
Speaker 2: So I just want to shout out Maya, who is
Speaker 2: our crooked intern, because this is an unbelievable, like twenty
Speaker 2: years that she had to flip through it. But look,
Speaker 2: it starts with our old friend. David Goyer writes a
Speaker 2: flash script in two thousand and seven with Wally West
Speaker 2: as the lead.
Speaker 1: I would love to see it.
Speaker 2: It was one of the things that we suggested could
Speaker 2: have been done to fix this movie. Barry Allen is
Speaker 2: a sportive character, but he's the first creative to leave
Speaker 2: for creative difference. Now you will see that that is
Speaker 2: a recurring theme. Same year, Sean Levy's hired to oversee
Speaker 2: the film. After less than a year, he leaves due
Speaker 2: to his conflicts with his other film Night at the Museum.
Speaker 1: And then we should add that this was a period
Speaker 1: in which, first of all, DC theoretically writing high due
Speaker 1: to the success of Batman Begins scriptwritten by David Goyer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: directed by Christopher Nolan, of course, But this was also
Speaker 1: a period when the conversation around DC was that the
Speaker 1: leadership of the Comics creative leadership was heavily micromanaging films
Speaker 1: and had a very very particular angle and like conflicts
Speaker 1: like this would often arise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also remember this is pre Iron Man, right,
Speaker 2: so there's no MCU. We have Batman Begins. That's a
Speaker 2: game changer, and it reimagines the way that superhermovies can be.
Speaker 2: And it also puts DC on the map for the
Speaker 2: first time for a critically acclaimed live action movie in
Speaker 2: quite a few years, where they'd already been smashing it
Speaker 2: with the animated stuff. But it was a very interesting time.
Speaker 2: And so end of December two thousand and seven, you
Speaker 2: still have two more people who will be attached David Dobkin.
Speaker 2: He's going to do a spin off of Justice League Mortal,
Speaker 2: which is one of the most legendary never made movies,
Speaker 2: and that would have cast Adam Brody as Barry Allen. Now,
Speaker 2: I would personally have loved to see this. This is
Speaker 2: George Miller's very famously never made Justice League movie, and
Speaker 2: you were going to have like DJ Katrona as Clark Kent,
Speaker 2: j Barroschell as Maxwell Lord, Like this is one of
Speaker 2: those most famous kind of it never got made movies,
Speaker 2: And of course you would have had Adam Brody then
Speaker 2: as this lead of the Flash movie, but that didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Justice League mort Or gets canceled within the same year.
Speaker 2: Flash continues on with a two thousand.
Speaker 1: And eight release date.
Speaker 2: Then two thousand and seventy thousand and eight WGA Strike
Speaker 2: further delays the Flash film production. Then Charles Roven is
Speaker 2: brought on to produce with a new treatment by Jeff John's,
Speaker 2: but the film is never greenlit. Twenty ten Green Lantern writers,
Speaker 2: remember that beloved movie. Greg Balanty obviously now like the helmer.
Speaker 1: Of a lot of the guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the guy that we know from so many DC projects,
Speaker 2: especially if you watch the TV show Michael Green and
Speaker 2: Mark Guggenheimer developed They're gonna make green landin two that
Speaker 2: didn't happen and the Flash October seventh, twenty yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean you listen to that.
Speaker 1: Right here is the period when Geoff John's noted Jeoff John's,
Speaker 1: well known comics writer, creator and executive at DC, was
Speaker 1: elevated to chief creative officer and really began an influential
Speaker 1: and some would say troubled run definitely.
Speaker 2: And also so twenty ten, that's when we're last looking
Speaker 2: at this. We were just talking about, you know, green
Speaker 2: Lantin to the Flash. Flash Point happened in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: which Jeff Johns was the writer of with the artist
Speaker 2: Adam Cuba, And in twenty eleven Green Lantin came out
Speaker 2: and flopped. So you'll notice that there is no talk
Speaker 2: for another four years, and that is October seven, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: That's when the Flash show begins, Grant Gustin starring on
Speaker 2: the CW and that becomes the way that many audiences
Speaker 2: learn about the Flash, learn about the Speed Force, learn
Speaker 2: about the multiverse. Twenty fourteen, Ezra Miller is cast as
Speaker 2: the Flash, so that's how long this movie. You're talking
Speaker 2: nine years from when Ezra was cast and when Ezra
Speaker 2: actually played the Flash and the movie came out, So
Speaker 2: that's a seriously long time in production. Obviously, Ezra is
Speaker 2: planned to appear in Justice League. That happens, and then
Speaker 2: a twenty eighteen solo film, which we now know didn't
Speaker 2: come out till twenty twenty three. So here we start
Speaker 2: just with the production troubles on this film. You have
Speaker 2: Seth Graham Smith hired to write and direct the Flash story,
Speaker 2: developed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Seth Graham departs
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen creative differences. Now, this is the most
Speaker 2: famous one and the one I wish we could have seen,
Speaker 2: which is Rick Famer. You are who, obviously we now
Speaker 2: know is the unbelievable powerhouse behind some of the best
Speaker 2: episodes of The Mandalorian. He's hired to replace it. Then
Speaker 2: we get Cyborg's hired in Justice League, and apparently it
Speaker 2: is going to play a big role in the Flash
Speaker 2: solo film, which makes a lot of sense because this
Speaker 2: was when people started to realize, oh, this is a
Speaker 2: Flashpoint movie. And as we will talk about in the
Speaker 2: Flashpoint universe. There is no Superman, but Cyborg is essentially
Speaker 2: the Superman of the universe, so it's really important to
Speaker 2: have him in that role. Famaua leaves twenty sixteen. Twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: writer Joby Harold is hired to write a new take.
Speaker 2: Twenty seventeen San Diego Comicon, it's revealed the Flash will
Speaker 2: be an adaptation of Flashpoint.
Speaker 1: Important to note that at this time, Infinity War an
Speaker 1: endgame or Infinity War was twenty eighteen. In Game was
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Peak Marvel happening right now, and DC under
Speaker 1: extreme pressure to be like, where's your shared universe? And
Speaker 1: this is where Flashpoint comes in, because it is the
Speaker 1: hinged movie that would create the next level shared universe
Speaker 1: on top of Justice League stuff.
Speaker 2: It's actually really wild to think about it. Now we've
Speaker 2: seen the Flash, and you, if you're listening to this,
Speaker 2: have probably seen the Flash or you've read about it.
Speaker 2: It's kind of mind blowing because you're absolutely right. Flashpoint
Speaker 2: was supposed to be their end game. It was supposed
Speaker 2: to be their Infinity War. It was supposed to be
Speaker 2: all of those mixed into one, as well as their Avengers.
Speaker 2: It was going to be that huge crossover movie that
Speaker 2: everything had been leading to, after Justice League, after Batman
Speaker 2: Versus Superman, and it was supposed to explode the world
Speaker 2: out and introduce anyone that you wanted or bring in
Speaker 2: new people, and that obviously is not the direction when
Speaker 2: and in the end, we ended up in a situation
Speaker 2: where this is the end of the DCEU rather than
Speaker 2: kind of an expansion of it. Twenty eighteen Game Night
Speaker 2: helmers John Francis Daily and Jonathan Goldstein, who we are
Speaker 2: big fans of. They wrote the Dungeons and Dragon movie.
Speaker 2: They were ate Homecoming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were in talks to.
Speaker 2: Make a Flash movie and it was going to be
Speaker 2: very back to the future influence.
Speaker 1: That influence is still there.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, if you see they're the ones who actually
Speaker 2: have the first story credit on the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they obviously took a lot from that.
Speaker 2: So then back to the future, like we said, we
Speaker 2: saw it. The Flash movie's.
Speaker 1: Delayed in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: It was meant to come out in twenty eighteen, but
Speaker 2: because of the Fantastic Beasts.
Speaker 1: Movie, it's delayed.
Speaker 2: Then Ezra spoke about how they were working with comic
Speaker 2: book icon Grant Morrison on this kind of darker take
Speaker 2: of the Flash, which was going to be something they
Speaker 2: were going to pitch that would be a different story,
Speaker 2: which makes a lot of sense. Grants done some of
Speaker 2: the best cosmic multiversal comic book writing.
Speaker 1: Daily and Goldstein leave because the creative difference is twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Seeing a pattern here, Andy mcschetti is hired to replace
Speaker 2: them with Christina Hodson, who wrote Birds to Pray, which
Speaker 2: I love, as the new writer. Then the movie's gonna
Speaker 2: come out July first, My birthday. Twenty twenty two didn't happen,
Speaker 2: but in twenty twenty we did get a big moment
Speaker 2: that really felt like DC was doing something Marvel had
Speaker 2: not done yet, which was when Ezra's version of the
Speaker 2: Flash showed up in the Flashed TV show during one
Speaker 2: of their big crisis events and met Grant's Flash and
Speaker 2: it was like, whoa, this is actually happening. And then
Speaker 2: we hit April six, twenty twenty, and that video of
Speaker 2: Ezra choking the woman in Iceland, which they claimed.
Speaker 1: Was a joke just to put both sides out there, but.
Speaker 2: That interaction goes online and then we start into that
Speaker 2: Ezra era and everything else is more well known twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Michael Keaton's going to be in Batman. You know, Ben Affleck,
Speaker 2: Bruce Wayne will be in the film. And we start
Speaker 2: to get to where we know a little bit more
Speaker 2: about the movie. Now.
Speaker 1: The period that we just outlined, which leads us up
Speaker 1: to the James gunn era right now, was a period
Speaker 1: of executive turnover at DC. And I think you can
Speaker 1: read that through the various so many regimes, so many regimes,
Speaker 1: a lot of pocket regimes. TV didn't talk to film,
Speaker 1: didn't talk to animation. They all have these five toimes.
Speaker 1: And I think what you're seeing is with all the
Speaker 1: creative differences. As the result of that, you bring in
Speaker 1: a director or writer right and you say, what's your take,
Speaker 1: We love it, go forward, the regime changes above the writer.
Speaker 1: Now all of a sudden, that executive has a different
Speaker 1: angle or has a different creative team that they want
Speaker 1: to work with. They have notes. Things that were agreed
Speaker 1: upon previously are no longer agreed upon because you've got
Speaker 1: different parties involved, creative differences. And this is having over
Speaker 1: and over and over again, which is what you get
Speaker 1: in situations like this.
Speaker 2: It's kind of mind blowing. Like I feel like even
Speaker 2: me and you. We tell stories now in these spaces
Speaker 2: and way, and we kind of are students of Hollywood
Speaker 2: and this industry. But when you're outside of it even
Speaker 2: and when you're even a little bit inside of it
Speaker 2: the way I'm it kind of blows your mind how
Speaker 2: much this stuff is chosen on a whim. I interviewed
Speaker 2: Alex Winterer from Bill and Tedley, one of my favorite movies, right,
Speaker 2: But he was talking about Freaked, which is this cult
Speaker 2: movie that he made real practical effects, very beloved, weird
Speaker 2: cult movie. It was gonna be this huge teen focus
Speaker 2: smash for the studio because this one exec loved it
Speaker 2: and he thought it was so good and it was
Speaker 2: so weird, and they were going to do Levi's commercials
Speaker 2: and Pepsi commercials. And he left and the new exec
Speaker 2: who came in went to a screening in like somewhere
Speaker 2: in the South Bay, sat the back, saw these kids
Speaker 2: like losing their mind, like behaving real rowdy, and just
Speaker 2: was like, the movie's not coming out, and just shelved it.
Speaker 1: Because he just didn't get it.
Speaker 2: And that's like, that's the difference between you can have
Speaker 2: your champion and this is not we're not even talking
Speaker 2: about hugep here. This is an original, weird, like cult
Speaker 2: practical effects movie. But that's how much of a whim
Speaker 2: this stuff can be. And obviously, when you're talking about
Speaker 2: the Flash or something that's so much money, that's a
Speaker 2: whole different level of control that the regime won.
Speaker 1: Here's a good example, and it's kind of off topic, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of on topic. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: cases now, but a period of time AMC was because
Speaker 1: of the corporate ownership of the channel, AMC the home
Speaker 1: of Memin and Breaking Bad. James Dolan, the owner of
Speaker 1: the New York Knicks and you know, CEO of Cablevision
Speaker 1: once upon a time executive at Live Nation and various
Speaker 1: other things, had the ability to like thumbs up or
Speaker 1: thumbs down, like cuts of Madmen, Oh my gosh. And
Speaker 1: so there would be times where this is just like
Speaker 1: stuff I've heard where Madmen be like waiting to see like,
Speaker 1: oh can we do this? Like is this cutokay? Or
Speaker 1: like are we going to get a season two? And
Speaker 1: they're basically waiting for like James Dolan to be like yeah, sure, fine.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that James Dolan wanted was
Speaker 1: to have his band's music involved in some show at AMC,
Speaker 1: which ended up being Hell on Wheels the I don't
Speaker 1: know if people remember the Western show that James eventually
Speaker 1: did get his band's music on, but that was one
Speaker 1: of the things that he was trying to do. And
Speaker 1: it just goes to show you how like personalities of
Speaker 1: zex absolutely influence all the things that you see mm hmm,
Speaker 1: and we imagine that, oh, this is part of a
Speaker 1: strategic vision and there's a reason.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Sometimes like a person just is like, well, I want
Speaker 1: to put this in there. Okay, now, we got to
Speaker 1: do this, and that's just what happens.
Speaker 2: And I do think that that is relevant here, especially
Speaker 2: because not only because of all these different iterations that
Speaker 2: we're talking about that almost became the Flash, but also
Speaker 2: just and obviously there is a monetary element of this
Speaker 2: and we will talk about this more, but even the
Speaker 2: fact that David zaslav As the exec saw Batgirl, didn't
Speaker 2: like it and said this isn't worth releasing, and then
Speaker 2: saw the Flash and said, well, I think this is great,
Speaker 2: and we spent a lot of money about it, so
Speaker 2: we're going to throw all our money into that and
Speaker 2: take the right down.
Speaker 1: On bat Girl.
Speaker 2: Even there is that once again a like subjective choice
Speaker 2: on quality, as well as many many dollars and business
Speaker 2: kind of things coming into it too. But it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Perversely, David Zaslav has become something of a pioneer in
Speaker 1: the realm of write downs because once he started taking
Speaker 1: programs off of his platforms, other platforms have followed suit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Disney Plus, Netflix, Hulu, etc. Disney Plus various other platforms
Speaker 1: are also taking shows off of their system in order
Speaker 1: to take the write down, not have to pay the creators,
Speaker 1: and basically lower their debt bill going forward as Wall
Speaker 1: Street continues to hammer streaming. Now that we've talked about that,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the movie.
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Speaker 1: Today, we're stepping out of the air lock and into
Speaker 1: Central City for the Flash in theaters. Now, Rosie your thoughts.
Speaker 2: I was very happy to see Kirssy Clemens back as
Speaker 2: Iris West.
Speaker 1: I love that casting.
Speaker 2: I hated what they did with her in Justice League.
Speaker 2: I still didn't think she got enough here, but I
Speaker 2: love to see it. That was my happiest thing to see.
Speaker 2: Other positive notes that I had Andy Mische, that's a
Speaker 2: man who can direct a Batman. I understand why they
Speaker 2: gave him Brave in the bold. You know what it is, Okay,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure we're gonna agree on this, but like,
Speaker 2: let's not get to the babies yet.
Speaker 1: We'll leave the babies, the gummy babies, the babies, We'll
Speaker 1: leave them for a minute. Let's start on something positive,
Speaker 1: the much maligned, the much milized social cg rinezme sibling babies.
Speaker 2: But like, you know what, this is a movie which somehow,
Speaker 2: I don't know how this happened, but it did. This
Speaker 2: is one of the truest impacts this movie had me.
Speaker 2: I felt sad that we didn't get to see more
Speaker 2: Ben Affleck Batman.
Speaker 1: This ben Afflet Batman great. This ben Affleck.
Speaker 2: Batman who gives him that speech, who tells him our
Speaker 2: scars make us who we are.
Speaker 1: You can't take that away.
Speaker 2: The Batman, who is wearing a dark night returns cowl
Speaker 2: that looks like it was drawn by Frank Miller and
Speaker 2: inked by Klaus Jansen and colored by Lim Vallei. And
Speaker 2: he's on the motorbike and he's zooming through the city
Speaker 2: with this kind of soaring score.
Speaker 1: I thought they should have won. They should have started
Speaker 1: the movie there no babies.
Speaker 2: But also like that to me, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I was like, okay. Either ben Affleck was like, this
Speaker 2: is my last chance, so I'm gonna kill it, or
Speaker 2: he was never given the material to do something special.
Speaker 2: Because it made me feel like I would have liked
Speaker 2: to see this version of Batman.
Speaker 1: Him and Keaton, they were the highlights for me, no question.
Speaker 1: I feel the same way. I thought the cast as
Speaker 1: well was great. It was wonderful to see Belverdu from
Speaker 1: Ye Combien as as Barry's mom. I thought that it
Speaker 1: was a better film than I thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be. Like, I thought it was pretty good, actually
Speaker 1: certainly better than Black Adam. I thought there were elements
Speaker 1: of the emotional beats that actually kind of worked for me.
Speaker 1: To your point, the relationship with Michael Keaton Batman with
Speaker 1: Batman nineteen eighty nine was really I thought pretty fun. Actually.
Speaker 1: That being said, there was one moment that really like
Speaker 1: record scratched for me. Yes, And it's like eight minutes
Speaker 1: into the film. Barry after, you know, he's got to
Speaker 1: do this little thing to kind of help Batman out.
Speaker 1: This is where the Babies comes in, and on his
Speaker 1: way out, he's like interacting with some people on the
Speaker 1: street and then he says to them something about I'm
Speaker 1: going to kind of botch this, but paraphrasing, he mentioned
Speaker 1: something about mental health and how important it is, and
Speaker 1: he says that's something that the Justice League hasn't figured
Speaker 1: out yet, which clearly to me, I mean, they basically
Speaker 1: do a wink to camera. It's so like it felt
Speaker 1: like a self referential Hey, we know you're kind of
Speaker 1: aware of Ezra's issues and we are too, and we
Speaker 1: just wanted to acknowledge that that's the only way it
Speaker 1: makes sense for the inclusion of this in there. And
Speaker 1: it just felt really tenured to me, like I don't
Speaker 1: know that this is a thing to make fun of.
Speaker 2: That to me was when I just turned on the movie,
Speaker 2: like I couldn't help it. Like the CG babies, I
Speaker 2: like weird, outrageous stuff, but that.
Speaker 1: This extra I don't.
Speaker 2: It's like the ezra of it all was always going
Speaker 2: to be hard for me. Yeah, but I was like,
Speaker 2: you know what, I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Go into it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hope that they're doing the work they need
Speaker 2: to do. I'm gonna hope that co Iron Eyes is
Speaker 2: somewhere out there safe and being looked after it. I'm
Speaker 2: just going to try and watch the movie and think
Speaker 2: about the movie and think about the comics and all
Speaker 2: the people who made this movie possible, all the thousands
Speaker 2: of people who worked on it, and the CGI babies.
Speaker 2: I was like, this is objectively terrible, and I kind
Speaker 2: of love that many studio people and Tom Cruise somehow
Speaker 2: thought this was possible. And I kind of like it
Speaker 2: almost like passes into camp that people were talking about
Speaker 2: this being the greatest movie of all time and there's
Speaker 2: like CGI babies being put in microwaves. But then when
Speaker 2: they did this like nod nod, wink wink joke.
Speaker 1: I didn't like that.
Speaker 2: It was quite gross. And also for me, I was like,
Speaker 2: is this a joke about how Warner Brothers like didn't
Speaker 2: help Ezra because they're like the Justice League is still
Speaker 2: working on that, and the implication is like, well, Ezra
Speaker 2: didn't get that help, right, I just it was really
Speaker 2: gross and I know they must have done that on
Speaker 2: a reshoot. There's just no way that that joke would
Speaker 2: have been in there before.
Speaker 1: Well either way, right, I've thought about this too. Let's
Speaker 1: say it was in the original kind of out. The
Speaker 1: decision to leave it in is clearly one that is
Speaker 1: based on a acknowledgement of Ezra's legal issues in the world,
Speaker 1: because that's the only if the surely people flag that
Speaker 1: line as Ezra's shoes unfolding and somebody would have gone,
Speaker 1: do we want to do this? And I think the
Speaker 1: decision to go, if indeed it was in the original script,
Speaker 1: to go forward with it, is like, hey, let's you know,
Speaker 1: let's say that we get it. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: Tom wamscans, you know, we hear for you.
Speaker 2: It feels like, oh, we hear the big succession move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like, hey, let's show people that we
Speaker 1: get it. We understand that this is Hey, we know
Speaker 1: we're not sticking our heads in the sand. We we
Speaker 1: understand that you've heard all about this and we want
Speaker 1: to let you know that we we hear for you,
Speaker 1: and we understand that that's the only way that you
Speaker 1: go forward with this. And it just felt really weird
Speaker 1: to me. It's really weird.
Speaker 2: And also it's Ezra talking to camera, so it's the
Speaker 2: joke is to the audience as well. Like ver I was,
Speaker 2: I was not a big fan, and then luckily they
Speaker 2: distracted me with the Batman that kind of comes up next,
Speaker 2: you know, gets see Jeremy Irons again as Alfred, which
Speaker 2: I think is such a brilliant cost thing like love that.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, you spoke about Andy. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about Andy Muschetti, director of it. He's supposed to direct
Speaker 1: Brave in the Bold, as you mentioned, that's the apology movie, right, Yes, allegedly.
Speaker 1: I don't know this for a fact, but I will
Speaker 1: say that I think when you get a person who
Speaker 1: comes in and is a good soldier right and takes
Speaker 1: on a absolutely haunted cursus Poltergeist production that is beset by
Speaker 1: wild issues with its star that cannot be replaced because
Speaker 1: they are in essentially every shot of the movie, every
Speaker 1: single shot. I would say six percent of the movie
Speaker 1: they are in. I think you got a let them
Speaker 1: do brave in the bold and I think Andy did.
Speaker 1: I think he did a really good job. Great for Batman.
Speaker 1: CG issues aside, and listen, I don't like the CG.
Speaker 1: Was it weird? Yes, I thought there were some weird
Speaker 1: design choices. Obviously, people worked extremely hard and CG and
Speaker 1: they did.
Speaker 2: According to Andy Maschetti, that was a design choice. So
Speaker 2: I just want to say, I think it was the
Speaker 2: wrong choice. But this was not a case allegedly according
Speaker 2: to the studio, which you know, take it with a
Speaker 2: pinch of salt. This was allegedly a choice rather than
Speaker 2: a crunch issue or a timing issue. So people worked
Speaker 2: really hard to do what the studio asked them to
Speaker 2: make it look this way.
Speaker 1: You know, chaos spreads and influences everything, and we've got
Speaker 1: a production that is this chaotic. It's not perhaps surprising
Speaker 1: that that some of it would reach the screen. And
Speaker 1: it's I guess you know, your mileage may vary if
Speaker 1: you if you perceive the shortcomings in the cg to
Speaker 1: be an effect of that chaos. But I will say
Speaker 1: the fact that so little of that chaos reached the
Speaker 1: screen is a credit to everyone who worked on the
Speaker 1: film in Andy like that did good job, because it's
Speaker 1: incredible that you made a cohesive film out of that. Now,
Speaker 1: the Batmen, I also loved the Batman. I thought the
Speaker 1: Batman were great. A small change here in which Michael Keaton,
Speaker 1: unlike in Flashpoint, plays Bruce Wayne alternate version Bruce Wayne,
Speaker 1: not Thomas Wayn.
Speaker 2: I do want to say that was a big question
Speaker 2: I had same Why not just be Thomas Wayne.
Speaker 1: I don't get it. I understand they wanted.
Speaker 2: It to be like it's nineteen eighty nine Batman, but that,
Speaker 2: I will say in the Cannon causes a problem because
Speaker 2: if you did not know this now, I want to say,
Speaker 2: I feel like, if you listen to this podcast, do
Speaker 2: you think that I'm like a huge arrow Verse Stan
Speaker 2: That is not the case. The arrow Verse has been
Speaker 2: very hit and miss for me, but I appreciate the
Speaker 2: impact it had.
Speaker 1: On the same access.
Speaker 2: I am also a comic book story. You know, we
Speaker 2: had like the Legends of Tomorrow. That's the show I've
Speaker 2: actually watched all of them, thought was really brilliant, especially
Speaker 2: from like the third season on, but generally not a
Speaker 2: huge like passion of mine aside from the impact it had.
Speaker 2: But in the canon of the original Flash series, the
Speaker 2: original Arrow series, those are set in the same world
Speaker 2: as Keaton's nineteen eighty nine like, there are references to
Speaker 2: that that was always the way it was meant to be,
Speaker 2: So this then again brings up that canon issue of
Speaker 2: where is Barry if this is the same universe. I
Speaker 2: did think it was really interesting that he wasn't playing Thomas.
Speaker 2: I think that would have been an easy, fine, cool fixed.
Speaker 2: I don't think it would have taken away from the
Speaker 2: nostalgia because it's still Keaton, and I just think it
Speaker 2: would have been cool.
Speaker 1: I think the idea is, you know, look no further
Speaker 1: than in Fast X for a film in which decisions
Speaker 1: are made that you then get locked into for a franchise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they didn't want to lock into a world
Speaker 1: in which Michael Keaton is Thomas Wayne forever in case
Speaker 1: they want to bring him back, or a world in
Speaker 1: which he's Thomas Wayne and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: he's Bruce Wayne and you kind of have to explain
Speaker 1: it to the audience. I mean it's a past. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this was the path of least resistance and
Speaker 1: I get it. I let's talk about the babies. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this okay, So Andy has been asked about the babies.
Speaker 1: There's a spoiler. There's a sequence early in the film
Speaker 1: in which Batman ben Affleck. Batman needs the Flash's help
Speaker 1: and he's called everyone else, but they're all busy, and
Speaker 1: so Barry has to go help Batman and he has
Speaker 1: to save all these babies from this hospital that is
Speaker 1: like crumbling into a sink call. And the babies look bizarre.
Speaker 1: I don't like, there's no way. They look very very strange,
Speaker 1: like overly smooth and with.
Speaker 2: If you've seen Twilight, they look like the baby from Twilight.
Speaker 2: They over emote, they are very obviously fake, and they
Speaker 2: look I will say, this is fair, I think from
Speaker 2: Andy's said, it's supposed to look this way. So I
Speaker 2: mean they look like scratched. They don't look like it's finished.
Speaker 2: A lot of people who saw this at cinema, Coon,
Speaker 2: et cetera, was like, this isn't the Fini version, Like
Speaker 2: obviously it's going to be a launch review screenings, people
Speaker 2: thought that it wasn't going to be the finished version,
Speaker 2: and that was kind of the messaging that they were
Speaker 2: very interesting or that they were sharing. I think that
Speaker 2: was more just like their presumption because of the way
Speaker 2: it looked.
Speaker 1: But that was if you go on letterbox.
Speaker 2: A lot of people who saw the previous screenings in
Speaker 2: the lead up to the release were like, obviously, this
Speaker 2: isn't the finished version.
Speaker 1: It can't be.
Speaker 2: It's the same version they were showing at Cinema Con.
Speaker 2: It's the same version. This was a choice. I don't
Speaker 2: understand it. Well, yeah, say Andy, because I think this
Speaker 2: is very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Here's his quote. The idea, of course, is we
Speaker 1: are in the perspective of the Flash, so when Flash
Speaker 1: is accessing the speed force and using his powers. Yes,
Speaker 1: what Andy is then saying is you're seeing things as
Speaker 1: the Flash seees them. So he continues quote, everything is
Speaker 1: distorted in terms of light and textures. We enter this
Speaker 1: water world, which is basically being in Barry's POV. It
Speaker 1: was part of the design. So if it looks a
Speaker 1: little weird to you, that was intended.
Speaker 2: I hate to be a guy who is picking apart
Speaker 2: this answer because I love. I love the commitment head
Speaker 2: to support the vision. I think it's a I think
Speaker 2: it's really cool to support the CG artist like this,
Speaker 2: Like this has not turned into some chaotic Marvel esque fallout,
Speaker 2: even though as many people have pointed out, and I
Speaker 2: don't disagree, I do think the CG and this is
Speaker 2: worse than the CG in Man Quantumania by like quite
Speaker 2: a far, a far reach.
Speaker 1: I think that that's hercuous.
Speaker 2: But like so I will say something here because this,
Speaker 2: this quote specifically, my understanding is about the CG in
Speaker 2: general and very specifically one of the things that this
Speaker 2: movie does. Okay, I'm gonna do like a one sentence
Speaker 2: description of the movie, so if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 2: you don't understand. Barry goes back in time to save
Speaker 2: his mum. To do that, he accesses something that in
Speaker 2: the movie they call the Chrono Bowl, which in the
Speaker 2: comics we would call the cosmic treadmill, and that is
Speaker 2: where he essentially accesses the speed force, and he finds
Speaker 2: an area that looks kind of like a zoe trope,
Speaker 2: you know, the old way they used to show movies
Speaker 2: and moving images, and in there he can travel through time.
Speaker 2: Now doing that causes a new timeline. That's where he
Speaker 2: meets Batman. That's where he meets Sasha Karl's Supergirl. SOD
Speaker 2: comes back and they have to defeat them together, and
Speaker 2: eventually he has to go back fix it, let his
Speaker 2: mum die, and the movie's over.
Speaker 1: So that's what happens.
Speaker 2: But the Crona Bowl is the big issue with CG
Speaker 2: in my opinion, and this is what Andy's talking about,
Speaker 2: because when you go in there looks like a SIMS game.
Speaker 1: It does. That to me was weirder than the babies
Speaker 1: the cron Bowl because it's so much info and you're
Speaker 1: in there so much, it looks like a you know
Speaker 1: what it looks like? To me, it looked like a
Speaker 1: like an iTunes screensaver, exactly like a visualizer.
Speaker 2: Yes, it looks like a visualizer, but instead of nice
Speaker 2: calming images, it is people right and moments from the
Speaker 2: film but rendered in.
Speaker 1: It's a horrifying mushroom trip.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a horrifying mushroom trip. And you spend a
Speaker 2: lot of the movie in there and you wish that
Speaker 2: you didn't. So I think Andy's defense and explanation of
Speaker 2: the CG works in that framework. Because you are in
Speaker 2: the cronable is in Barry's perspective. But I will say
Speaker 2: at the beginning, even when Barry is not in the
Speaker 2: speed force and he's pulling a baby out the microwave
Speaker 2: in the normal time, the baby still look funck.
Speaker 1: I will also say that listen again, the effects people
Speaker 1: worked very hard on this, I'm sure, but I think
Speaker 1: that it's not uncommon for reshoots, particularly VFX reshoots, to
Speaker 1: like be happening late, late, late, late late in the game.
Speaker 1: I'm sure at a certain point, when you're already over budget,
Speaker 1: potentially hitting the half billion mark, a lot of that
Speaker 1: is going to your star because of their litany of
Speaker 1: very very serious legal issues. Yeah, at a certain point,
Speaker 1: it's like that's where all the money goes, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like you're just not, hey, do we
Speaker 1: have X amount to like do some tweaks on the
Speaker 1: kronabl No. Yeah, Like I don't know that that happened,
Speaker 1: but it feels like that's probably what happened.
Speaker 2: I don't see a world where you spend four years
Speaker 2: making this movie and visualizing this movie and crafting these
Speaker 2: big fight scenes and these emotional beats, and you see
Speaker 2: the Crona Bowl and you think, yeah, people are gonna
Speaker 2: love that, Like that's gonna sell our story. I just
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't see it.
Speaker 2: I was constantly pretty shocked every time we were in
Speaker 2: there that that was a choice. It was so weird,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it was not. It was not something that
Speaker 2: worked visually for me. And it definitely gave me the
Speaker 2: feeling of like like a two thousands like cut scene
Speaker 2: from like a PC game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very the Mummy. Oh yeah, yeah, definitely Scorpion
Speaker 1: King energy. Yeah. Now, there are elements of this movie
Speaker 1: that I really liked, again Batman, I liked a Supergirl
Speaker 1: Sasha Karl I thought was great. Was she'd been in
Speaker 1: it more? Was she'd been in it more? I did?
Speaker 1: Here's an issue where you feel like, okay, here's where
Speaker 1: they ran out of money for stuff? Spoiler The battle
Speaker 1: against Zod just kind of what happened? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Did we did we win? Did we not win? I
Speaker 1: think you didn't win.
Speaker 2: I think the flesh just left, the flash left, and
Speaker 2: then Supergirl gets murdered.
Speaker 1: In my mind's eye as I recall this, it's really
Speaker 1: kind of ambiguous. Is what then happens with that big battle.
Speaker 1: It just kind of like Peters Out. Okay, I think
Speaker 1: this is.
Speaker 2: The biggest issue for me for this movie compared to
Speaker 2: say a movie like venom Let there Be Carnage right
Speaker 2: now that we both had a lot of fun like
Speaker 2: talking about how crazy that movie was and how it was.
Speaker 1: Just like one movie.
Speaker 2: But I'm gonna tell you, yeah, venom Let there be carnage.
Speaker 2: That is ninety minutes of pure entertainment. That piecing never stops.
Speaker 2: You know what's happening, you know who wins, you know
Speaker 2: who loses. I will tell you guys something if you
Speaker 2: haven't seen the Flash the first hour, there are no
Speaker 2: other main characters than two Ezra Miller's playing Barry Allen.
Speaker 2: It is an hour until Michael Keaton comes into the
Speaker 2: movie and then you meet Sasha kh and then there
Speaker 2: is a battle with Odd. I feel like the pacing
Speaker 2: in this movie does not It didn't work for me,
Speaker 2: and there's Ooda is part of it. Now, I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell you the biggest issue I think with all
Speaker 2: of this, aside from the stuff we've talked about, CG. Ezra,
Speaker 2: the biggest issue is this is a flashpoint movie where
Speaker 2: over the years they have been told or they have
Speaker 2: chosen to not adapt Flashpoint, and that is the problem.
Speaker 1: There are multiple issues here.
Speaker 2: The Zodd battle, it basically becomes irrelevant because Barry has
Speaker 2: to come into conflict with his younger self, and then
Speaker 2: they have to go to the Cronabowl and have the
Speaker 2: real battle, which is between Barry and what they call
Speaker 2: Dark Flash, which is Barry's younger self who's been stuck
Speaker 2: in the Crona Bowl.
Speaker 1: This is where I thought Grant Gustin would have loved
Speaker 1: to see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But like the problem is, as we will talk
Speaker 2: about in the Flashpoint Omnibus, they miss the cyclical nature
Speaker 2: and the holistic story of the Flash. You cannot have
Speaker 2: the Flash without the reverse Flash. There is a very
Speaker 2: now quite infamous interview or quote from Andy Masha where
Speaker 2: somebody says, so, who killed Barry's mum And he says, well,
Speaker 2: I guess it was Reverse Flash.
Speaker 1: What do you mean you guessed? Like that doesn't make
Speaker 1: you call it it was reverse Flash.
Speaker 2: That's what happens in the comics. But like in the movie,
Speaker 2: there is an ambiguity here.
Speaker 1: They kind of do the reverse Flash thing in which
Speaker 1: they call it the Dark Flash.
Speaker 2: But it's like, but that's not who killed Barry's mom.
Speaker 2: That's Young Flash who gets stuck in the speed Force.
Speaker 1: Right right, right. But I'm saying they kind of they
Speaker 1: kind of do their version of the kills Barry's mom
Speaker 1: is that Dark Flash pushes Barry out of the example,
Speaker 1: causing him to enter the world in which Barry, who
Speaker 1: will become Dark Flash, gets his powers because that's the
Speaker 1: world where no superheroes are.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of again, it's like this loose adaptation,
Speaker 2: whereas in Flashpoint you learn that Reverse Flash knocked Barry
Speaker 2: out of the Speed Force because he wanted to create
Speaker 2: himself into like a paradox that Barry would never be.
Speaker 2: He needed to create himself, right, yeah, and he wanted
Speaker 2: and he wanted to create a paradox well where Barry
Speaker 2: could never kill him and he could exist without Barry
Speaker 2: because he's never been able to exist without Barry.
Speaker 1: I felt like the lack.
Speaker 2: Of the easy linear storyline of Flashpoint, which is kind
Speaker 2: of this, it's a line, but it's a circle and
Speaker 2: everything's connected. That to me was one of the weirdest things,
Speaker 2: Like there's no conversation here about who the Reverse Flash is,
Speaker 2: why they want to kill Barry's mom. What that has
Speaker 2: to do with anything. We end up with this dark
Speaker 2: you know, I hate that where the dark stuff is evil,
Speaker 2: but we end up with dark Flash instead of reverse Flash,
Speaker 2: and that comes at the end, and they haven't really
Speaker 2: been a conflict throughout.
Speaker 1: Zod doesn't get defeated.
Speaker 2: He just kills Supergirl and leaves, leaving him open, I guess,
Speaker 2: to be a different villain. But I feel like that
Speaker 2: third act struggles from those choices to not just directly
Speaker 2: adapt Flashpoint.
Speaker 1: I understand why they made a lot of these choices,
Speaker 1: but I think one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: is really cool about Flashpoint the comic is that like
Speaker 1: it just drops Barry into a world where like his
Speaker 1: mom is alive, like he's just at work, and then
Speaker 1: his mom is there and he's like that's I think,
Speaker 1: did this is it? I thought that because I think
Speaker 1: some of the heaviest lifting that this movie does is
Speaker 1: the work to make you care about Barry's parents, And
Speaker 1: it's a lot of work in one movie, Like you
Speaker 1: don't see them previously, and I think from you know,
Speaker 1: your mileage may vary again, And I'm not a big
Speaker 1: time Hollywood writer, director, but I do think it would
Speaker 1: have been quicker and faster, sorry for the pun to
Speaker 1: just drop. Flash Flash wakes up and his mom's alive,
Speaker 1: and what the fuck is going on? What happened? And
Speaker 1: now he's got to try and figure it out.
Speaker 2: I think that is the best thing, because, as we'll
Speaker 2: get into in Flashpoint, the biggest mystery, yeah in Flashpoint
Speaker 2: is who is to blame for changing?
Speaker 1: How can this happen? And you assume it's.
Speaker 2: Reverse Flash, and you get and you fight and you
Speaker 2: Barry teams up with Thomas Wayne and they're fighting this
Speaker 2: great villain and then as this movie reveals in the
Speaker 2: first fifteen.
Speaker 1: Minutes, it's Barry.
Speaker 2: And that was a huge game changing reveal that felt
Speaker 2: so shocking. And I think if this film had trusted
Speaker 2: the audience a bit more and allowed them to go
Speaker 2: on that journey, have that mystery, and have Barry have
Speaker 2: that realization, maybe even they would have wanted to blame
Speaker 2: it on Dark Flash instead of Barry. I think there's
Speaker 2: a version of that that would have worked. I think
Speaker 2: the half flash point of it all is part of
Speaker 2: why it didn't necessarily connect. I saw a lot of
Speaker 2: people online who didn't understand why Thomas Wayne wasn't in it,
Speaker 2: who didn't understand why the Aquaman and Wonder Woman's storylines
Speaker 2: weren't even like vaguely adapted from the comic. I think
Speaker 2: that the legend of it being a Flashpoint adaptation had
Speaker 2: lived longer than the reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I do think very clearly there was you know,
Speaker 1: Ray Fisher, who's had his own issues with especially within
Speaker 1: the Warner brother studios, within the Warner Brothers studio system,
Speaker 1: was supposed to be in this. Cyborg has a is
Speaker 1: a pretty big part in the Flashpoint comic. We won't
Speaker 1: spoil that for you. We're gonna talk about that later.
Speaker 1: But my sense was there was a very clear direction
Speaker 1: to move away from the Snyder verse as briskly as
Speaker 1: possible with this film. You know, once events in the
Speaker 1: wider Warner ecosystem happened with the you know, with Snyder
Speaker 1: moving on and the whole Snyder cut thing happening and
Speaker 1: fishing all out. So I think, you know, again, here's
Speaker 1: the real world intruding on the stuff you see on
Speaker 1: the screen. The reason they're not in it is because
Speaker 1: it's unclear like how much of that stuff is going
Speaker 1: to carry over into what James Gunn is doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point.
Speaker 2: And I guess like as we come to kind of
Speaker 2: the end of the movie, which we haven't really talked about,
Speaker 2: the big thing that everyone was talking about, that kind
Speaker 2: of comes into it even more because originally from the
Speaker 2: reporting that has come out, and the original ending would
Speaker 2: have seen Barry fix the speed Force, fix the time line,
Speaker 2: and at the end, Michael Keaton's Batman and Sasha Carl
Speaker 2: would have been there, and that would have shown that
Speaker 2: Barry thought he fixed it, but actually he didn't, which
Speaker 2: is what happens in the flashpoint comic leading to the
Speaker 2: you know, the New fifty two, and that would have
Speaker 2: shown that those characters would have continued on. And apparently
Speaker 2: there was also a version. Boris kitt the Hollywood Report
Speaker 2: did a great report on the three different endings. There
Speaker 2: was also going to be a version where Carville was
Speaker 2: going to be there with them, and Gal Gadot was
Speaker 2: going to be there with them, and that would have
Speaker 2: been well, Carvill's coming back. We saw him in Black Adam,
Speaker 2: and he's going to be back, and we're going to
Speaker 2: have this combined universe where they're going to introduce people
Speaker 2: like Keaton, but we'll still have that Justice League that
Speaker 2: we know. And then the ending that we get instead
Speaker 2: has George Clooney step out of the car, which is
Speaker 2: really fun and I you know, I'm a big fan
Speaker 2: of that, but that was for film six months ago
Speaker 2: and was very much under the James Gun regime. So
Speaker 2: that kind of really I think confirms what you're saying. Also,
Speaker 2: so the big thing we haven't talked about which absolutely
Speaker 2: did not work for me, and I actually have quite
Speaker 2: some moral issues with how'd you feel about those cameos
Speaker 2: which ones in the chronobol.
Speaker 1: Oh so including so okay, yeah, so we get okay,
Speaker 1: good point. Actually we get which woods. So we get
Speaker 1: wonder Woman Galgano.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she comes, she helps the very brief we also
Speaker 2: get to Mura Morrison's Tom Curry. We see him on
Speaker 2: the phone and in that world Arthur was never born,
Speaker 2: which is very interesting. It ties into the final.
Speaker 1: Stingers of the movie.
Speaker 2: But in the Speed Force we as Dark Flash is
Speaker 2: running around, they kind of do a cataclysm esque thing.
Speaker 1: They do an a normally esque thing from spite of us,
Speaker 1: and it's in the Chrono Bawl. Verry is seeing all
Speaker 1: these different worlds Now is really getting to like look
Speaker 1: into the world.
Speaker 2: I guess they don't really explain it, but it looks
Speaker 2: like they're all going to collide into each other because
Speaker 2: of dark Flash running through the speed force.
Speaker 1: Sure, but this is where you get.
Speaker 2: Those big cameos that they'd kind of been hyping up
Speaker 2: that they were definitely leaking. We were hearing people talk
Speaker 2: about from the previous greetings and they're all like deep
Speaker 2: fake nightmares in my opinion, including some that are literally
Speaker 2: like necromancy from.
Speaker 1: Oh, from bringing back from the day Now. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a larger issue that is moral issues. This is
Speaker 1: a larger moral issue that's going to become ever more
Speaker 1: present with the evolution of technology like mid Journey and
Speaker 1: the ability to like bring formally deceased actors back using
Speaker 1: their likeness. We've seen it, you know, in Rogue one
Speaker 1: with talking and we've seen it in commercials. I think
Speaker 1: that this is an issue of obviously like evolving law,
Speaker 1: And here's my issue with it. I think today, if
Speaker 1: I was an actor today and I was signing contracts
Speaker 1: and I like getting all the protections for my image
Speaker 1: and likeness, then I'd feel protected on that legal front
Speaker 1: and then I'd have a conversation with my family the
Speaker 1: aka the estate where I'd say, hey, I'm okay with this.
Speaker 1: Here is what I want for the future. I either
Speaker 1: want or don't want my likeness used for this, that
Speaker 1: and the other, and that's I think that that is
Speaker 1: probably gonna be standard and is something that's fine. I
Speaker 1: do have an issue with actors who passed away decades ago,
Speaker 1: had no idea about this technology, and who now are
Speaker 1: being you know, resuscitated onto the screen in a project
Speaker 1: that they could not have even en vision. Now. I
Speaker 1: guess there's an upside in which, you know, the family
Speaker 1: has a nice payday, I guess hopefully, but it feels
Speaker 1: off to me. It does feel weird because consent of
Speaker 1: the person should matter. Yeah, I think as well.
Speaker 2: I think the reason that people have reacted so badly
Speaker 2: to it online, and I think the reason that it
Speaker 2: didn't sit well with me is one. So the way
Speaker 2: that they showcase them right is almost like a like
Speaker 2: a movie reel, and it kind of like a like
Speaker 2: a film reel going around a world visually like whatever.
Speaker 2: But you know what, you could have just used lips
Speaker 2: from the show from the originales.
Speaker 1: I think that would have worked.
Speaker 2: You know, Adam Western, butt Ward, they loved their roles
Speaker 2: in Batman. That was something they were so proud of.
Speaker 2: So in that way, I feel like that kind of
Speaker 2: sits quite well. But as people online were pointing out,
Speaker 2: you know, George Reeves, who you see, as you know,
Speaker 2: he played Cereals, he killed himself And one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that he killed himself was from the way that
Speaker 2: people report about it nowadays, was because he was so
Speaker 2: depressed about being typecast as Superman, and the movie was
Speaker 2: released on the anniversary of his suicide. According to many
Speaker 2: angry people on the internet.
Speaker 1: Now, George Reeves played by Ben Affleck in the movie
Speaker 1: Hollywood Land about yeah, this.
Speaker 2: This kind of story, you know, And of course Warner
Speaker 2: Brothers did not drop the movie on that day to
Speaker 2: do something cruel to George Reeves.
Speaker 1: But there is a lack of thought there that to.
Speaker 2: People who care about that actor, who care about that story,
Speaker 2: it felt very cruel. Also, the one that I thought
Speaker 2: was quite shocking to me was to see them CG.
Speaker 2: Christopher Reeves as Superman, and not only cghim, but CG.
Speaker 2: Him's standing up now Christopher Reeves after he was paralyzed,
Speaker 2: became a very big advocate for disability rights, people used wheelchairs,
Speaker 2: and he even had a cameo in Smallville where they
Speaker 2: had him with his breathing tube in the wheelchair because
Speaker 2: he wanted to be represented that way. And quite a
Speaker 2: few people online have pointed out that he, while he
Speaker 2: was alive, didn't want people to reuse odd footage of
Speaker 2: him when he wasn't paralyzed, because he wanted people to
Speaker 2: remember him how he was. I thought that was an
Speaker 2: example of a lack of thought that went into this.
Speaker 2: Also Helen Slater, who played Supergirl in the much line
Speaker 2: but very fun Supergirl movie, She's still alive. Why wasn't
Speaker 2: she brought into the movie in some useful, impactful way,
Speaker 2: or even just seeing kind of sitting sipping a coffee
Speaker 2: in Metropolis at her age. There was a lack of
Speaker 2: humanity in those cameos. I felt like even Nick Cage,
Speaker 2: I love Nick k Superman lives one of the greatest,
Speaker 2: never made me. Yes, I own photographs of Nick Cage
Speaker 2: in that suit. I want to see that movie. I
Speaker 2: was so excited to hear he was gonna be in it.
Speaker 2: To me, I was shocked when I learned that they'd
Speaker 2: actually recreated the suit, as Andy Machette said, and they
Speaker 2: put him in it because he was so deaged, he
Speaker 2: was so cg that I just assumed it was another
Speaker 2: kind of deep fake version. It didn't feel like they
Speaker 2: had bought Nick Cage in and given him that role.
Speaker 2: So for me, the cameos were something where if the
Speaker 2: joke turned me against the mental health joke kind of
Speaker 2: turned me against it by the end. Even if I
Speaker 2: was kind of into some of the characters, those cameos
Speaker 2: they left me feeling quite like, ugh, like they gave
Speaker 2: me the itck, you know, like it was not a
Speaker 2: pleasant way to end the movie. Though obviously I love
Speaker 2: George Clooney Batman, so thanks for that one. James gunn
Speaker 2: like when he came in, he was looking great, he
Speaker 2: was fun.
Speaker 1: I will say again, I do think that I don't
Speaker 1: know the issues, the legal issue. I'm sure they had
Speaker 1: to negotiate with somebody, but it does. They definitely did
Speaker 1: get apparent, they got family license. It still is. It's
Speaker 1: definitely weird. And I will say that you also didn't
Speaker 1: need it.
Speaker 2: You didn't need it.
Speaker 1: You didn't really need it in.
Speaker 2: The movie either. I didn't feel like there was a
Speaker 2: cataclysm or a multiversal collapse that was gonna happen where
Speaker 2: you needed to see it.
Speaker 1: I feel like the intimacy that they created.
Speaker 2: In this smaller Yeah there was a z odd battle,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't a huge deal. But that story I know,
Speaker 2: for you, for super producer Chris, like the things that
Speaker 2: hit was like Ezra and those emotion the emotional beats
Speaker 2: that Barry had with his mum, you know the relationship
Speaker 2: between Batman and Barry ben Affleck as Batman getting to
Speaker 2: have this moment of saying, you need to explore this trauma.
Speaker 2: You need to not hide from it or run away
Speaker 2: from your past. The emotional intimate beats, that was what
Speaker 2: people cared about and what I saw people saying that
Speaker 2: they loved. I don't think you needed that. I think
Speaker 2: that to me reeks of like execs who saw No
Speaker 2: Way Home was successful and were like.
Speaker 1: We need that.
Speaker 2: Like it's so different to have a creepy, CGI deep
Speaker 2: fake of a dead pass and like looking over a
Speaker 2: universe and to have Andrew Garfield stepping through like a
Speaker 2: slingering pool.
Speaker 1: Here's how I think something like that happens. And I
Speaker 1: can see the logic behind it, even if I disagree
Speaker 1: with the execution, and if an inclusion of course, of
Speaker 1: course in general, but I think the idea is, hey,
Speaker 1: we're Warner Brothers. We have this one hundred year legacy
Speaker 1: of film excellence, and as part of that, as part
Speaker 1: of our lineage, is over half a century of a
Speaker 1: relationship with these iconic DC characters that stretches all the
Speaker 1: way back to the days of George Reeves and and
Speaker 1: Christopher Reeves and et cetera. And why not highlight it's
Speaker 1: isn't it a way to show how actually we're different
Speaker 1: than Marvel. They're kind of like the new kids on
Speaker 1: the block at us. We go back to the to
Speaker 1: the forties with our you know, television executions of these characters,
Speaker 1: and it shows the breath in the history of Warner's
Speaker 1: relationship with DC comics. I think that that is the
Speaker 1: logic of it. I agree. Do I think that it
Speaker 1: should have been here? Probably not. I again, it felt
Speaker 1: superfluous to me. I don't think. I don't think you
Speaker 1: needed it.
Speaker 2: You could have a moment where you're like showing a
Speaker 2: George Reeves Superman serial on the TV and then have
Speaker 2: ba Ben Affleck playing George Reeves talking to Barry like,
Speaker 2: there's different ways you can do it if you want
Speaker 2: to do it, but I don't, like you said when
Speaker 2: it happened, I actually had By that point, I was
Speaker 2: like watching the movie, right, so I wasn't waiting for
Speaker 2: the cameos, and when it happened, I was like, what
Speaker 2: happened to me?
Speaker 1: The big head scratch with that kind of cavalcade of
Speaker 1: characters is like, where the fuck is Where's Wonder Woman?
Speaker 1: Where's Where's allegedly she got caught? Where's Linda Cars? I
Speaker 1: think why that was like a long running three seasons.
Speaker 1: I think a television show that was a big deal.
Speaker 2: And she was in Wonder Woman recently in the Wonder
Speaker 2: Woman too at the end, and she's still looking banging.
Speaker 2: She's still an icon.
Speaker 1: I'm very very bizarre to not have Wonder Woman in there.
Speaker 1: She's another person who I feel like could have shown
Speaker 1: up in person. You could put her in that suit. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: I've seen Linda Carr. She's still beautiful, like you could
Speaker 1: have had her there. Linda Carr is kind of like
Speaker 1: the no brainer, right, like even like I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be like, oh my god, they forgot
Speaker 1: George Reeves, but I am certainly like, where's Linda Carter?
Speaker 2: They still show every single week if you live in
Speaker 2: LA if you have a broadcast down tenor if you
Speaker 2: don't have one, get one.
Speaker 1: They're great.
Speaker 2: Get amplified on tenor it's like thirty dollars Every Saturday morning.
Speaker 2: On Heroes and Icons they show and two episodes of
Speaker 2: Bama sixty six and then they show episodes of Wonder
Speaker 2: Woman that still plays.
Speaker 1: People still watch that.
Speaker 2: Linda Carr is one of the most icon conic superhero
Speaker 2: actors of all time, so I agree that felt like
Speaker 2: a strange person to not include. Maybe Lindkarr didn't want
Speaker 2: to be a cged up like that. She might not
Speaker 2: want it to be daged. Who knows got it in.
Speaker 1: Would have been nice to see her. Hopefully we'll see
Speaker 1: her again.
Speaker 2: Why your final takeaways from the Flash? Now you've seen it,
Speaker 2: it's done, it's come out. It didn't make a lot
Speaker 2: of money. We didn't talk about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a very very average superhero film. Yes,
Speaker 1: there are some things as surprised at, like how some
Speaker 1: of the emotional beats really worked, you know, Barry and
Speaker 1: Bruce is fun. There are really fun moments there. I
Speaker 1: thought that the face off with Zod. I thought Sasha's
Speaker 1: embodiment of Supergirl mm hmm it felt emotionally rich for
Speaker 1: how little of that is in the film. Mm hm.
Speaker 1: It was doing a lot with a little and really
Speaker 1: this is what really made me feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: we could have gone faster with the exposition about Barry's
Speaker 1: mom and family life. You could have just dropped into
Speaker 1: there and just like, got it. Your mom was murdered.
Speaker 1: We all understand like that that would be traumatic and
Speaker 1: otherwise like a middling film that was entertaining. I didn't
Speaker 1: feel bad that I saw it in the theater that
Speaker 1: I think will be We will quickly move on from this.
Speaker 1: This is a closing of the chapter of this particular
Speaker 1: page of the of the DC Universe, so that the
Speaker 1: James Gunn universe can be born. It was fine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: better than Black Adam. I agree. I like that, that's
Speaker 1: like your baseline. It did.
Speaker 2: I will say it did make twelve million dollars less
Speaker 2: in its opening weekend than Black Adam.
Speaker 1: Think of that what you will. I think that.
Speaker 2: Speaks to the way that people don't necessarily think that
Speaker 2: this will have much of an impact because we have
Speaker 2: this new universe. I will say my biggest takeaway is
Speaker 2: I can't wait for Blue Beetle to come out. I'm
Speaker 2: very excited that James Gun has confirmed that, you know,
Speaker 2: Hime Rays will be the first official character in his
Speaker 2: new DCU. So I really hope that people get excited
Speaker 2: to go and see that movie. I can't wait to
Speaker 2: see it. I'm excited to see a new generation of
Speaker 2: heroes leaning more into the comic books.
Speaker 1: I'm excited about all these Superman rumors that we're hearing.
Speaker 2: Boris Kit shed some really fun ones.
Speaker 1: I would love to see Emma McKay as Lois Lane.
Speaker 2: I think David corn Sweat would be a sick Clark Kent.
Speaker 2: He looks literally like him. Like you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: excited to be excited about these movies again, and I
Speaker 2: feel like the Flash is that endpoint. I love that
Speaker 2: it's connected. I had so many people DM me about
Speaker 2: this movie after they saw it and say I loved it,
Speaker 2: I hated it, you know, I didn't feel any way
Speaker 2: about it. We always say this if you love a
Speaker 2: comic book movie. I'm just happy that these movies are
Speaker 2: connecting with you. Go out read the comics, find out
Speaker 2: what inspired is the thing? An influential one, very influential.
Speaker 2: You're actually gonna be if you like Spider Us. The
Speaker 2: moment that we start our flashpoint omnibus, you guys are
Speaker 2: gonna be laughing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the way this stuff is so cyclical. There
Speaker 1: is a word that.
Speaker 2: I will say many times in my flashpoint omnibus, and
Speaker 2: you guys will realize how much all of these stories
Speaker 2: live and breathe and learn and take from each other.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I agree with you. I think you summed
Speaker 2: it up perfectly. And I just can't wait to see
Speaker 2: what's next.
Speaker 1: I'm ready. I'm ready for August. I'm ready to be
Speaker 1: excited about DC. Should we briefly talk about the Arthur
Speaker 1: Curry cameo and what that means?
Speaker 2: Yes, I think it is worth talking about. So at
Speaker 2: the end of the movie, if you wait right till
Speaker 2: the end, there is one post credit scene. Now, a
Speaker 2: lot of people have said it wasn't worth waiting for.
Speaker 2: It's just Jason Momoa and Barry and they're kind of
Speaker 2: like messing around, and Arthur Curry is very drunk as always,
Speaker 2: and he's kind of like in Central City and he's he's,
Speaker 2: you know, not feeling too great and everything, and he
Speaker 2: sort of falls into a puddle. But I actually think
Speaker 2: this is a very important bit of law that they
Speaker 2: set up. Barry tells Arthur, in every universe I go to,
Speaker 2: in every timeline and every version of the Speed Force
Speaker 2: the world that the Speed Force takes me to, you
Speaker 2: are always you. Barry says, I've seen other people it
Speaker 2: was Bruce, but it wasn't Bruce. He was a different Bruce.
Speaker 1: I've been to these.
Speaker 2: Different places, and Bruce is always a different person. Superman
Speaker 2: didn't exist, Supergirl was there. But in every universe or
Speaker 2: multiverseal timeline that Barry goes to, Arthur is always Arthur
Speaker 2: AKA Arthur is always Jason Momoa. Now I think that's
Speaker 2: very smart because as much as everybody maligned Aquaman.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 2: Sorry guys, that movie is still the most profitable DC
Speaker 2: movie of all time, and Aquaman two is coming out
Speaker 2: at the end of the year. James Gunn has already
Speaker 2: said it counts as part of the DCU, and if
Speaker 2: that movie makes a billion dollars, they don't want to
Speaker 2: have to cast Aquaman with a different actor. So I
Speaker 2: think this essentially establishes the idea that if they want
Speaker 2: Jason to be in the DCU new DCU as it
Speaker 2: exists in the James gunnerverse, they have essentially established law
Speaker 2: here that he could come back.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Yeah. Up next, a return to
Speaker 1: the Omnibus to discuss the comics origins of the Flash
Speaker 1: movie Flashpoint.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another chapter in the Omnibus where law, analysis
Speaker 2: and understanding come together. This week it's Flashpoint. We're doing it.
Speaker 2: We're talking about the absolutely groundbreaking influential. I would say
Speaker 2: it's a crisis.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It was almost like an anti crisis. It was
Speaker 1: exploding a.
Speaker 2: Universe out and bringing it back in all in one.
Speaker 2: And of course, like every comic book event, Flashpoint didn't
Speaker 2: begin or end with number one, you know, it began
Speaker 2: with many. There was a road to Flashpoint where Jeff John,
Speaker 2: Scott Collins and Francis Mannipold detailed the battle between the
Speaker 2: Flash and the Reverse Flash and kind of established a
Speaker 2: context for the scope of the world changing event which
Speaker 2: featured you know, bar Allen, and it featured a futuristic
Speaker 2: version of Barry Allen who came to stop what he
Speaker 2: called an anomaly, and the anomaly was a different version
Speaker 2: of the Flash who wasn't supposed to be in that timeline.
Speaker 2: And if you have seen Spider Man into the Spider Verse,
Speaker 2: that will sound familiar. So the mini series essentially ends
Speaker 2: on the anniversary of Barry's mum's death, and it's this
Speaker 2: really sad moment and Barry promises his mum that soon
Speaker 2: everything thing will change, and then enter Flashpoint, which changes
Speaker 2: the DC universe forever. Before we really get and talk
Speaker 2: about Flashpoint, Jason, where were you the first time? Oh gosh, like,
Speaker 2: what's your first memory of reading Flashpoint?
Speaker 1: It was like only maybe four years ago or so.
Speaker 1: I don't keep up on the day to day, week
Speaker 1: to week with DC, but I always pick up like
Speaker 1: the big events, yeah, crisis, some of the New fifty
Speaker 1: two stuff. Flashpoint was obviously a big one of them,
Speaker 1: any of the kind of big Batman crossovers. Because I
Speaker 1: read mostly DC through trades, so it was a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and it was fun. The Flashes character who
Speaker 1: I heavily Batman centric and Superman centric, and when I
Speaker 1: read DC, so I hadn't read much Flash and it
Speaker 1: was fun. Yeah, it was fun to get to get into.
Speaker 2: For me, it was I read it in the comic
Speaker 2: shop where I worked. There was a lot of quiet
Speaker 2: afternoons sometimes there you'd be there on a you know,
Speaker 2: a Thursday or a Friday in the early afternoon. I
Speaker 2: read the whole thing in a trade. I was reading
Speaker 2: a lot of DC back then, catching up on a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff I hadn't really read or kept up with.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I remember it was just like a blockbuster
Speaker 2: kind of popcorn book. Yeah, you know, And it's really
Speaker 2: fun in the context of other crisises, of this tradition
Speaker 2: that DC has of streamlining their multiple universes, the kind
Speaker 2: of sprawling canon that is created when you have hundreds
Speaker 2: and thousands of people writing.
Speaker 1: Books over eighty years.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's a very fun, interesting book, and I'm
Speaker 2: not surprised that it is such a legendary title in
Speaker 2: comic books and also DC fans in general. I think
Speaker 2: just love this book, and I understand why some of
Speaker 2: them were disappointed that Flash wasn't more directly Flashpoint, but
Speaker 2: it's really interesting. It's an era defining event. Geoff John's
Speaker 2: wrote it.
Speaker 1: The main series.
Speaker 2: Once you get into Flashpoint, Geff John's the writer Adam
Speaker 2: Kubert penciled it. Legend Sandra Hope and Jesse Delpadang were
Speaker 2: the incas Alex Sinclair colorist and Nick Napolitano on letters
Speaker 2: and It. Essentially, while fans didn't realize it at the time,
Speaker 2: its purpose was to reset the DC universe. Barry, as
Speaker 2: you pointed out when we were talking about the Flash movie,
Speaker 2: Barry wakes up at his desk and everything seems normal.
Speaker 2: He's been doing a long night of criminal forensics as
Speaker 2: he does, and he discovers that when he wakes up,
Speaker 2: he's apparently in a different universe. They're talking about villains
Speaker 2: he's never heard of. Superman doesn't exist. Cyborg is the
Speaker 2: world's most famous hero, a Superman level hero. There's no
Speaker 2: Justice League, and as he finds out when he falls
Speaker 2: down the stairs within the first pages of the book,
Speaker 2: he no longer has his powers.
Speaker 1: Oh oh ah, oh no ring, no suit, no powers.
Speaker 2: And just when things seem like they're getting really bad,
Speaker 2: something wonderful happens and he bumps into his mum. Norah
Speaker 2: Alan alive and in the flesh. She is no longer
Speaker 2: dead in this universe.
Speaker 1: She is alive.
Speaker 2: She's here and She's come to see Barry. It's her birthday.
Speaker 2: She wants to go for dinner with her son. Where's
Speaker 2: his dad?
Speaker 1: No longer in prison?
Speaker 2: No longer died in prison depending on the cannon, he
Speaker 2: did sadly pass away three years ago from a heart attack.
Speaker 1: But they lived a happy life. And Barry is reeling.
Speaker 2: But there's one familiarity, and that's at least one of
Speaker 2: DC's trinity is still around. Nora. No, she doesn't know Superman,
Speaker 2: she doesn't know Wonder Woman. Well she might, but in
Speaker 2: a different way. But she does know Batman. Everybody knows Batman.
Speaker 2: But and I will say this is light spoiler territory,
Speaker 2: but I also feel like it's one of the most
Speaker 2: famous things that this comic does, So we'll talk about
Speaker 2: it a little bit. Batman is not the Batman that
Speaker 2: fans know and love here and know to you know,
Speaker 2: love to critique lovingly about his bad politics.
Speaker 1: This is one of the cool, real cool shocks of
Speaker 1: flash Point Yeah flashes.
Speaker 2: At this point, he is reeling he's in this new world,
Speaker 2: but at least he knows Bruce. So he goes to
Speaker 2: the epic gothic calls of you know, weigh and manner,
Speaker 2: and we see this they directly adapt that scene when
Speaker 2: in the Flash and he gets there and he's calling
Speaker 2: for Bruce, but Bruce isn't there because in this timeline,
Speaker 2: as we will find out, Bruce was killed along with Martha,
Speaker 2: and it was Thomas Wayne who survived. And because he
Speaker 2: lost his wife and his son, he becomes a batman
Speaker 2: who kills. He becomes a batman who is vengeful. As
Speaker 2: he meets Barry, he almost breaks his arm. He uses
Speaker 2: small joint manipulation to try and get information out of him.
Speaker 2: He is a brutal and violent man devastated by the
Speaker 2: death of his family. And as we learn through a
Speaker 2: kind of back to the Future esque situation, yes, Barry
Speaker 2: comes to realize while talking to Thomas that he is
Speaker 2: actually in his own world. He is not in a
Speaker 2: different universe. It's just that someone has changed the timeline.
Speaker 2: So all of these things are happening to Barry in
Speaker 2: his universe, and if he doesn't change them, he'll lose
Speaker 2: his memories, he'll lose the real timeline that he lived in,
Speaker 2: and he will never have his powers of the Flash.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of the big battle that we have
Speaker 2: to see him go on here, and it is just
Speaker 2: like a really interesting, bombastic book. And as you pointed
Speaker 2: out when we were talking about the movie, one of
Speaker 2: the coolest things about this is you do not find
Speaker 2: out the big reveal of this book until, like, you know,
Speaker 2: the fourth or fifth issue.
Speaker 1: This is a mystery. We see all these different call
Speaker 1: versions in this world.
Speaker 2: Aquaman and Wonder Woman are kind of warlords, and their
Speaker 2: battle against each other has caused this huge chaotic issue
Speaker 2: within global politics. We get to see Lois Lane as
Speaker 2: a kind of roving reporter but also a spy. We
Speaker 2: get to see all these different fun versions. There's a
Speaker 2: really rad super team called the Resistance that are just
Speaker 2: totally out there. You know, it's like Grift, all these
Speaker 2: different kinds of people, Steve Trevor, you.
Speaker 1: Know, fighting Wonder Woman.
Speaker 2: I imagine that as a creator, this is like one
Speaker 2: of the most fun books that you can write, where
Speaker 2: you can essentially just completely turn upside down everything we
Speaker 2: know about canon and just put these you know, the
Speaker 2: toys that you get to play with, but you're putting
Speaker 2: them in totally different places on the chessboard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really fun. I mean that's always been
Speaker 1: part of DC's DNA you know, m hm with these
Speaker 1: kind of like upside down yeah, yeah, you know, bizarre
Speaker 1: O Superman, these kind of like crazy versions. But this
Speaker 1: was like a really unique take on it because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just like oh, wonder Woman's bad. There was like
Speaker 1: a real political reason that the Amazonians had seized the UK. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, there was like a wire war that while
Speaker 1: the main Flashpoint books don't really delve, they kind of
Speaker 1: like just touch on it. It's like background stuff. It
Speaker 1: is really interesting, Like I found myself being like, oh,
Speaker 1: I wonder what's going on there? That's really interesting. I'd
Speaker 1: like to know more about, like what's going on with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those events that actually makes you
Speaker 2: want to read all the one shots and the Yeah.
Speaker 1: A lot of times that can.
Speaker 2: Be something we can plain about as comic book fans,
Speaker 2: like you'll be loving an ongoing series and six issues
Speaker 2: in suddenly you're just reading an issue that has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with anything in your book because it ties
Speaker 2: into a wider event. But this is one where if
Speaker 2: you read Flashpoint, you'll likely find that in to reading
Speaker 2: something else, to reading a one shot, to reading a
Speaker 2: mini that led into it.
Speaker 1: I think that if you're going to read this book,
Speaker 1: you don't have to read.
Speaker 2: All four Road to Flashpoint issues, which were in the
Speaker 2: main Flash. But I would say I believe that issue
Speaker 2: four is It's like Flash Issue twelve is the last part,
Speaker 2: and I would say definitely read that before you read Flashpoint.
Speaker 2: It makes everything make a lot more sense. But it's
Speaker 2: a really interesting, fun, weird take on the DCU, and
Speaker 2: you get this kind of like it's the ultimate what if?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We love those kind of stories because the real truth is,
Speaker 2: even though it is not a major part of this story,
Speaker 2: and if you've seen the Flash, you will know what
Speaker 2: Superman's fate here is because they do this great I
Speaker 2: loved actually as something we didn't talk about. I thought
Speaker 2: it was really cool how they just did it with
Speaker 2: Kara instead of Cow the same storyline.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that was great. I thought it actually
Speaker 1: kind of worked better, to be honest with you. It
Speaker 1: worked better in the movie than it did in the comic.
Speaker 1: It worked. It was really cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But something that is cool that I like, because look,
Speaker 2: there's a few Superman comics that I love, like Superman
Speaker 2: for All Seasons and All Star Superman and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But it's not.
Speaker 2: Necessarily a character I have a deep investment in in
Speaker 2: the way I do with some of the other characters.
Speaker 2: He's a little bit too like he's the good boy,
Speaker 2: he's the center. But what I do love about Superman
Speaker 2: is is inherent goodness and the way that goodness spreads.
Speaker 2: And what I love is this is essentially the biggest
Speaker 2: what if of What if Superman never landed and wasn't
Speaker 2: raised by the Kents, What if Superman never got to.
Speaker 1: Be the good, blue eyed boy of the DC universe.
Speaker 1: This is what happens. It all goes to shit.
Speaker 2: You need Superman there, you need his goodness, otherwise you're
Speaker 2: gonna end up with these huge omnipient beings fighting each other,
Speaker 2: these global super gods. And I thought that was just
Speaker 2: I like that this book recognizes that, even though Superman
Speaker 2: is maybe in a few pages altogether. So I think
Speaker 2: it's really a very joyous read and it's a very
Speaker 2: much of its time book. Like if you read this,
Speaker 2: you feel like this book was made in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: Tell us about how this leads into DC's line wide reboot,
Speaker 1: the New fifty two, which was you know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: how the Big two copy and are inspired by each
Speaker 1: other all the time. I think Marvel had just done
Speaker 1: or was in the process of doing the Heroic Age
Speaker 1: at that time. I might be wrong about the name
Speaker 1: of it, but it was. They were also in the
Speaker 1: middle of the line wide reboots, so it was a
Speaker 1: perfect hey time to jump on at a clear starting
Speaker 1: point for these two comics companies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then Marvel saw the New fifty two and
Speaker 2: did Marvel Now in twenty twelve, which led to some
Speaker 2: of my favorite comics as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, so this is really interesting.
Speaker 2: So the story ends in almost I feel like some
Speaker 2: may think it is abrupt, but there is essentially a
Speaker 2: double page spread near the end of the story that
Speaker 2: explains everything. This is the purpose of this book. This
Speaker 2: is the reason that Flashpoint exists. After a huge epic
Speaker 2: battle where some lives are lost and some people survive,
Speaker 2: Barry is inspired to go back in time and fix
Speaker 2: the mistake that he made, which, just like in the movie,
Speaker 2: is that he tried to save his mum. So he
Speaker 2: goes into the speed Force, and instead of finding the Cronable,
Speaker 2: he sees the hooded visage of Pandora, and he sees
Speaker 2: three different versions of the most famous superheroes from DC,
Speaker 2: and he learns that he can't just go back into
Speaker 2: the speed Force and fix it because there's three timelines.
Speaker 2: There's not one timeline, and Pandora reveals and this is
Speaker 2: very twenty eleven because everything's changed since then. But at
Speaker 2: some point in the past, the DC universe had been
Speaker 2: split into three timelines. DC's New Earth, which is what
Speaker 2: we knew is the main DC timeline, Earth thirteen, which
Speaker 2: at the time was basically seen as Vertigo but is
Speaker 2: now understood to be Occult Earth with characters like Etragan
Speaker 2: and then supernatural characters like Sandman and Vertigo characters like
Speaker 2: hell Blazer and Constantine. And fifty which is the wild
Speaker 2: Storm Universe, which we now know is coming really full
Speaker 2: force back into DC. So to fix his past choice,
Speaker 2: Barry has to essentially create a singular timeline. The time
Speaker 2: for three timelines has passed, the singular timeline is going forwards,
Speaker 2: and the book ends with Barry delivering a letter to
Speaker 2: Bruce from his father Thomas, and it seems like nothing
Speaker 2: has changed, but that double page spread essentially explains what
Speaker 2: is going to come next, and that is the New
Speaker 2: fifty two, where DC essentially stripped everything down, started every
Speaker 2: book from number one, and made a jumping on point
Speaker 2: for all characters where the canon before essentially didn't exist,
Speaker 2: though obviously it did because it byed all the creators
Speaker 2: who made it, but it was essentially a new start
Speaker 2: and it was a huge deal, and at first it
Speaker 2: was a huge boon to comic shops and sold very
Speaker 2: well with lots of beautiful Jim Lee art to kind
Speaker 2: of showcase the story, but it actually didn't last that long.
Speaker 2: It would only be a few years before DC actually
Speaker 2: rebooted the universe again in Rebirth. I loved a lot
Speaker 2: of the stories from Rebirth, but yeah, it was really interesting.
Speaker 2: The New fifty two it's still, i would say, rather
Speaker 2: infamous among fans because it was such a huge leap
Speaker 2: and it all began with Flashpoints, so this is a
Speaker 2: SuperH historical kind of thing. And the craziest thing is
Speaker 2: that Flashpoint has been adapted multiple times before the Flash
Speaker 2: there's Flashpoint Paradox, one of the DCAU animated movies, which
Speaker 2: everybody loves, and it was also no surprises, it was
Speaker 2: just regularly adapted throughout the CW Flash Show, and that
Speaker 2: is something I also did kind of struggle with with
Speaker 2: the movie. It's not that it's derivative, because it's all
Speaker 2: comes from the same source point, but I did feel
Speaker 2: like a lot of the emotional beats and a lot
Speaker 2: of the ground that was covered in the Flash had
Speaker 2: already been covered in the CW, and I didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: feel like there was a lot of difference in the show.
Speaker 2: Just like the comics, Grant Gustin changed his timeline. He
Speaker 2: wanted to save his mom, and very much like the Flash,
Speaker 2: they didn't want to adapt this huge global war, so
Speaker 2: it focused on his intimate losses. It was very back
Speaker 2: to the future focused. Oh, you can't have Barry lose
Speaker 2: his connection with Iris, you can't have Barry lose his memories, and.
Speaker 1: It was very interesting.
Speaker 2: That was the opening of season three that really focused
Speaker 2: on that. In season eight, ironically, they did a reverse
Speaker 2: flash point with the Reverse Flash, and that was much
Speaker 2: closer to the comic book version, with this kind of
Speaker 2: global war and Barry having to save the world. It
Speaker 2: was really interesting and definitely you can just jump in
Speaker 2: and watch those after you've read the comics to see
Speaker 2: all the different ways that this story has been adapted,
Speaker 2: and the flashpoint Paradox is seen as one of the
Speaker 2: really great standouts of the DCAU the Animated Universe. But
Speaker 2: all of those movies are great, so they're always worth watching.
Speaker 1: Up next, more Omnibus with a discussion of Secret Invasion.
Speaker 1: Secret Invasion launching this week. By the time you hear
Speaker 1: this podcast, is very likely that Secret Evasion on Disney
Speaker 1: Plus will be out. Yeah, the first episode, first episode
Speaker 1: to be out, So we thought it'd be the perfect
Speaker 1: time to talk about the comics origins of the Secret
Speaker 1: Invasion storyline. No way to think about Secret Invasion, which
Speaker 1: first appeared June eighth, two thousand and eight to January
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, is in relation to all the
Speaker 1: other Marvel events that took place starting in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands. Now, this was a period of Marvel history
Speaker 1: where the company was just emerging from the kind of
Speaker 1: like business and creative doldrums spurred by their bankruptcy of
Speaker 1: the late nineties. And it was also a time that's
Speaker 1: kind of marked by the increasing influence and prevalence of
Speaker 1: the work of Brian Michael Bendis, who wrote the Secret Invasion,
Speaker 1: the main Secret Invasion storyline. Now, for me, this was
Speaker 1: a period where I was getting back into comics after
Speaker 1: like three years off, and it was also a time
Speaker 1: where it was like super fun to pick up these
Speaker 1: trades and kind of follow the evolution of Marvel Comics
Speaker 1: up through Secret Invasion. So I think for me, this
Speaker 1: period of Marvel starts with Avengers Disassembled, which is two
Speaker 1: thousand and four, kind of Brian's big swing in the
Speaker 1: Marvel universe proper. And this storyline is an explo of
Speaker 1: yet another ending of the Avengers. So the Avengers are
Speaker 1: kind of destroyed in a shocking manner which I will
Speaker 1: not outline because it is a really fun read. But
Speaker 1: the kind of takeaway is the Avengers are no more,
Speaker 1: and here is a Marvel Comics universe without the Avengers.
Speaker 1: The Avengers get back together shortly, they're after don't worry,
Speaker 1: of course they always do. Don't worry, But this is again,
Speaker 1: this is two thousand and four, and you get this
Speaker 1: very what, at least at the time for me, was
Speaker 1: like this emotionally evocative. All the citizens of New York
Speaker 1: standing candlelight vigil with all their pictures of the Avengers
Speaker 1: and they're standing in front of the Avengers mansion. You
Speaker 1: made really made you feel like, oh, this felt of
Speaker 1: a piece with this post nine to eleven like Iraq
Speaker 1: tragedy world in which oh my god, our heroes are gone.
Speaker 1: They get back together shortly, don't worry about it. That
Speaker 1: leads into a two thousand and five House of M
Speaker 1: of course alternate universe in which the mutants win. That
Speaker 1: is super fun that all of these events, and what
Speaker 1: I think is really cool about these events is they
Speaker 1: then would affect Marvel Cannon going forward into these other events,
Speaker 1: which was a really cool characteristic of them. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: That leads you to a Decimation, in which the reaction
Speaker 1: to House of M. Right in this alternate timeline, mutants
Speaker 1: are triumphant. It's of course put back together again and
Speaker 1: fixed by the efforts of various heroes, including Wolverine. And
Speaker 1: from there you go to Decimation, where mutants are essentially
Speaker 1: wiped out. There one hundred and ninety eight mutants total
Speaker 1: left in the world. After that, that leads us into
Speaker 1: Civil War two thousand and six. The big have had
Speaker 1: of It? Ever Heard of it? Big interne scene battle
Speaker 1: between two sides of heroes, one side led by Iron Man,
Speaker 1: feels like, hey, we got to register, we got to register.
Speaker 1: Our powers, like there's been too many times where you know,
Speaker 1: the Hulk destroys Las Vegas or the X Men, you know,
Speaker 1: blow up a city and the people are tired of it,
Speaker 1: and shouldn't we register like a loaded weapon? And so
Speaker 1: this turns into the Civil War, where a whole group
Speaker 1: of the superhero community go underground, continue their superhero ways,
Speaker 1: but as essentially outlaws. Now it's a good thing that
Speaker 1: the Hulk wasn't around for Civil War, even though he
Speaker 1: did kind of start it with his destruction of the
Speaker 1: entire American city. And because of that destruction, he has
Speaker 1: launched into space, which gives us World War Hulk. When
Speaker 1: Hulk eventually comes back, he then beats up all the
Speaker 1: heroes that sent him away, and this and the fallout
Speaker 1: from Secret Invasion lead us into another paradigm. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about Secret Invasion. So Hulk comes back, he beats
Speaker 1: up all the heroes, and then Secret Invasion happension on
Speaker 1: the heels of Civil War was devastating because public trust
Speaker 1: and superheroes was already an all time low. Then the
Speaker 1: Hulk beats the shit out of everyone and basically takes
Speaker 1: over the world for a period of time and On
Speaker 1: top of that, we discover in Secret Invasion that not
Speaker 1: only are the heroes extremely fallible, but many of them
Speaker 1: were squalls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is I would say, this is like the
Speaker 2: biggest thing that I remember about Secret Invasion that I
Speaker 2: think was so impactful. It's really interesting. We talked about
Speaker 2: Flashpoint that very much felt like it's a fun it's mombastic,
Speaker 2: but it feels like kind of like a corporate edict book,
Speaker 2: like you know that the world needs to be reset.
Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily have a lot of the lead in.
Speaker 1: You're exactly right, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: Like this does I mean, you were talking about most
Speaker 2: of the big events. You could just read like Civil War,
Speaker 2: you could read Annihilation, you could read Welbe Hulk, then
Speaker 2: you could read Invasion, and you'd kind of have like
Speaker 2: a domino effect of understanding what I remember about Secret Invasion.
Speaker 1: The marketing for this book is it was really good.
Speaker 2: Among the best marketing for any story ever. This is
Speaker 2: my biggest complaint to Marvel Studios why they are not
Speaker 2: doing a who do you trust? Marketing campaign?
Speaker 1: They apparently did send scrolls out to various locations. But
Speaker 1: that's yeah, Oh that's good. That's fun.
Speaker 2: But like so every shop you go into, every comic
Speaker 2: you're reading, it says who do you trust?
Speaker 1: Who do you trust? Who do you trust?
Speaker 2: And they start laying the groundwork for that huge reveal
Speaker 2: that you mentioned, which is that these characters you love
Speaker 2: for like thirty years, guess what, some of them are scrolls.
Speaker 2: And they've been scrolls the whole time.
Speaker 1: You don't know them.
Speaker 2: They some of them have been scrolled so long that
Speaker 2: they don't even know their scrolls. Like, it was so
Speaker 2: good and the idea of who do you trust? And
Speaker 2: the conversation everybody's having is who's a scroll, Who's a scroll?
Speaker 1: Who's the scroll? Who do you think is the scroll?
Speaker 1: It is just so cool.
Speaker 2: And not only that, but this is like you mentioned
Speaker 2: Biromichael Bendis, but the main Secret Invasion arc is like
Speaker 2: a superstar team.
Speaker 1: Leonel Francis. You one of the best artists to ever
Speaker 1: do it. One of our great Filipinos working in comics.
Speaker 2: By the way, one of the most influential communities in
Speaker 2: comics full stop was Potascio. So many icons, but like
Speaker 2: Mark Morales is inking it. You got Laura Martin on colors.
Speaker 2: This is an all star team it's not just a
Speaker 2: great story, but it is a beautifully made comic. And
Speaker 2: I just remember that who do You Trust?
Speaker 1: Was so so.
Speaker 2: Much in that space and that conversation, who is a scroll?
Speaker 2: Which one of the heroes that you love? Who's your favorite?
Speaker 2: Who you can no longer trust?
Speaker 1: It's so clever, And I will say, in a world
Speaker 1: in which the bad guys often have terrible plans, the
Speaker 1: scroll plan is actually really good. You mentioned that's really good.
Speaker 1: I'll name the one that kind of kicked off the
Speaker 1: hero's awareness that something was afoot in that is the
Speaker 1: realization that Electra has been a scroll for an unknown
Speaker 1: amount of time since she came back from the death,
Speaker 1: maybe the whole time, like unclear.
Speaker 2: Seems like scrull technology could be good for bringing someone
Speaker 2: back from the dead, just saying.
Speaker 1: And the realization that Electros a skull sets off other
Speaker 1: realizations that one Stark Tech cannot detect sculls any longer,
Speaker 1: neither can Fantastic four tech. Logan couldn't smell her as
Speaker 1: a scroll. So they've the scrolls have figured something out
Speaker 1: that has allowed them to really potentially burrow deeply into
Speaker 1: the human halls of government, and they don't wait. This
Speaker 1: is a real Pearl Harbor type plan. Like, once all
Speaker 1: the stuff starts happening, it escalates very very quickly from
Speaker 1: the Scrulls have been planning for a long time. That ready, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it escalates very very quickly from like a big fight
Speaker 1: in the Savage Land with Scrull doppelgangers of some of
Speaker 1: your favorite heroes fighting the legitimate articles too, invasion of
Speaker 1: Earth by massive scroll forces and that gets really fun.
Speaker 1: Now that I won't tell you how that pans out.
Speaker 1: It's only an eight issue arc with various other tie ins.
Speaker 1: You don't really need to read the tie ins.
Speaker 2: No, I will say the one that I think is
Speaker 2: worth reading, not for context, but just because it is
Speaker 2: one of the best Black Panther comics of all time
Speaker 2: is the Black Panther Yes tie in comic by Jason Aarram.
Speaker 2: We've talked about that a lot. Se Wakanda and Die
Speaker 2: is very very cool and I just love for me,
Speaker 2: that's like a very cool fun tie in. And it's
Speaker 2: the only one. Is hefte Pallo with the penciler. That's
Speaker 2: the only one where I think you should just read
Speaker 2: it for fun. And it's like three issues but otherwise
Speaker 2: you're right, this is the core story. You can just
Speaker 2: read it and enjoy it.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to read Secret Invasion again, I
Speaker 1: would say, get on at least it's Civil War and
Speaker 1: then go up, because I think it's important to understand
Speaker 1: that content. But you could go all the way back
Speaker 1: to Disassembled and then coming out of Secret Divisions. So
Speaker 1: the heroes do. The invasion is rebuffed, but in a
Speaker 1: world in which the trust in heroes was orid in
Speaker 1: an all time low, and the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: Captain America died at the end of Civil War in
Speaker 1: his own storyline that kind of branched off from Civil War,
Speaker 1: and so there's this real feeling of the heroes have
Speaker 1: blown it. We've given them our trust, we've tried with them,
Speaker 1: and all we get are them fighting each other and
Speaker 1: like an alien invasion that we only caught because of
Speaker 1: like luck that springs us into Dark Rain, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about a lot, which was this seemingly hair brained
Speaker 1: idea of why don't we give Norman Osborne a shot
Speaker 1: to run everything? Which sounds crazy, right, Like that sounds
Speaker 1: crazy to just say, hey, let's give the Green Goblin
Speaker 1: the reins and let But because of all of this
Speaker 1: work that start from Disassembled all the way up where
Speaker 1: you're just seeing the heroes, they win, but they are
Speaker 1: like long range kind of losing because people are just
Speaker 1: like you, guys, aren't really winning in the way you
Speaker 1: used to. It makes Dark Rain really makes sense, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you said something that I really like which I
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought of, which was Flashpoint seemed like a
Speaker 1: corporate edict like, hey, we need to bring in the
Speaker 1: new fifty two. Let's figure out a way we can
Speaker 1: do it. Now. Marvel does this too. There's a million
Speaker 1: Oh it happens all the time. The original eighties Secret War, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: The toys was if nothing then a corporate plan to
Speaker 1: sell toys. But what's really cool about this era of
Speaker 1: Marvel comics up to Dark Rain was it really just
Speaker 1: kind of felt like, Hey, you know what would be
Speaker 1: cool coming out of this what if Norman Osborne won?
Speaker 1: So if you're planning on reading Secret Evaging, it naturally
Speaker 1: leads you into Dark Rain, which is a thing you
Speaker 1: might want to read. It so fun. Now, last year
Speaker 1: they gave us a five issue limited series called Secret
Speaker 1: Invasion not Part two, just Secret Invasion once again. Now
Speaker 1: this is the new retelling of a different event, which
Speaker 1: seems we haven't seen Secret Invasion in the show yet.
Speaker 1: But this seems like very much a primer slash soft
Speaker 1: tie in to the show because it has a much
Speaker 1: smaller scope and is focused on a much smaller coterie
Speaker 1: of characters. Written by Ryan North, with art by Francesco Mabili,
Speaker 1: wonderful cover artists, various cover artists. So in the wake
Speaker 1: of the original Scroll Invasion, we learn in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two Secret Invasion that the Scrolls are back. They're here again,
Speaker 1: but it's not quite what you think. Maria Hill is
Speaker 1: the director of the CIA Shield has been dismantled to
Speaker 1: sound familiar, right, and Nick Fury is just kind of
Speaker 1: like a security consultant, like this font of wisdom, Like
Speaker 1: obviously Nick Fury's seen it all, and if you have
Speaker 1: questions about like how AI could potentially become sentient and
Speaker 1: threaten the world, or what happens if Stark Tech gets out,
Speaker 1: of course you're gonna call Nick Fury and you're gonna
Speaker 1: get him involved. Well, in his capacity as this kind
Speaker 1: of independent security consultant, Nick investigates what is thought to
Speaker 1: be evidence of a scroll invasion in the Midwest, and
Speaker 1: then he goes to Maria Hill and says, guess what,
Speaker 1: I checked it out. It was nothing. But Maria because
Speaker 1: she and Nick have this long running relationship and have
Speaker 1: thought of like all these different ways in which the
Speaker 1: world could go badly. They have like all of these
Speaker 1: security phrases for each other. So she tests Nick, who's
Speaker 1: telling him, yeah, I checked out that thing and it's fine,
Speaker 1: no scrolls involved. She gives him the passphrase, which he
Speaker 1: doesn't know, and that lets her know that guess what, Nick,
Speaker 1: Fury has been replaced by a scroll. And it turns
Speaker 1: out all these other important people but not like important
Speaker 1: people in the government, but not superheros, not superheroes, have
Speaker 1: been replaced by scrulls. I think that's very relevant. That's
Speaker 1: very relevant, right, So that sounds like a lot like
Speaker 1: what the show is going to give us, but this time,
Speaker 1: and I won't spoil it too much. What's happening is
Speaker 1: not a hardcore aggressive scull invasion with attack ships and
Speaker 1: transports and you know this very very elaborate ruse. What's
Speaker 1: happening is an internessene battle between these kind of like
Speaker 1: Scrull extremists who believe that Earth needs to be wiped out,
Speaker 1: and yes we've been trying, and yes we've failed, but
Speaker 1: we figured out a kind of smarter way to do
Speaker 1: it this time. And a sect of Scrolls who think,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is crazy the scroll because the
Speaker 1: Scroll Empire is multiple wars, like, it's not just like
Speaker 1: one quarter world. There's a lot of there's an empire
Speaker 1: and a kind of more human leaning sect of Scrolls
Speaker 1: who think, no, we shouldn't be doing it this way.
Speaker 1: And in fact, maybe there's a way that scrolls and
Speaker 1: human superheroes can collaborate much to the success of both parties.
Speaker 1: Like maybe scrolls and humans can benefit from an alliance
Speaker 1: of scroll and humans. Now, can the Sculls be trusted?
Speaker 1: This is what this Secret Invasion twenty twenty two explores,
Speaker 1: And I though it goes a long way towards selling
Speaker 1: you on yeah, maybe some of these Scrolls can be trusted.
Speaker 1: It does feel like it also sets up can they?
Speaker 1: But if you want to check out the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two Scroll Invasion of Earth, Secret Invasion again not part two,
Speaker 1: just called Secret Invasion? What's again? Classic Marvel tradition, Classic
Speaker 1: Marvel tradition. Check that out. It's only five issues. It's
Speaker 1: really fun and it feels like a direct tie in too.
Speaker 2: I think it's seeding. Yeah, it's definitely seeding this kind
Speaker 2: of smaller scale. Also, I will say Ryan North, writer
Speaker 2: of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl with Erica Henderson, which is
Speaker 2: like one of the best Marvel comics ever, So definitely
Speaker 2: check it out.
Speaker 1: She's an important part of the secret of this version
Speaker 1: of the Secret Invasion.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll finally get her in the MCU. But yeah,
Speaker 2: these we truly have been blessed. Like something that I
Speaker 2: love about the way you approach this omnibus is like
Speaker 2: there have been so many great Marvel events, and when
Speaker 2: you think about them, you're like, there are so many
Speaker 2: that I just want to go back and pick up
Speaker 2: a trade of.
Speaker 1: I love Dark Grain, I love Annihilation. Dark Grane was
Speaker 1: really cool. I love Dark.
Speaker 2: Grain is so fun. Also, it's hard to get into
Speaker 2: without spoilers. But like that first Secret Invasion book you
Speaker 2: are talking about, if you have a favorite Marvel character.
Speaker 1: They are in it. Oh, everybody's in it. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say whether they're a scroll or not. But like
Speaker 1: it opens and you have a version of the Illuminati.
Speaker 2: You're talking about a level A star famous Marvel heroes
Speaker 2: throughout that whole event, every single hero, you like, every
Speaker 2: single team, they are involved.
Speaker 1: It is like an ultimate blockbuster. So many are involved
Speaker 1: that they go deep. I mean, this is a period
Speaker 1: of time again where post Civil War, right, you had
Speaker 1: two factions. You had the Mighty Avengers, who were like
Speaker 1: the government branded licensed Avengers team Captain, Marvel, Ironman, others.
Speaker 1: And then you had the kind of like Secret Avengers,
Speaker 1: who were the underground team that refused to sign the
Speaker 1: papers to get the licenses. And that's power Man, Wolverine,
Speaker 1: Spider Man, the bad Boys, the Bad Boys. And then
Speaker 1: you had this entire you know, speaking of how deep
Speaker 1: the roster goes, you had this entire fifty states initiative
Speaker 1: where the government was like trying to replace all the
Speaker 1: heroes who went a wall because they didn't want to
Speaker 1: sign and was signed up heroes in every single state.
Speaker 1: And so you had those fifty state initiative like yeah,
Speaker 1: just got their license to drive. Heroes involved in this
Speaker 1: in this battle. I'm gonna tell you this.
Speaker 2: Two things I love about Secret Invasion and that I
Speaker 2: do hope are brought into the show. I feel like
Speaker 2: it's unlikely, but in Secret Invasion, one of the big
Speaker 2: tells that somebody is a scroll is that they eat
Speaker 2: strawberries and pickles because it tastes like a scroll snack.
Speaker 2: So keep an eye out if you watch it on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: See if anyone eats a pickle and a strawberry, or
Speaker 2: even just a pickle or a strawberry, they're probably a scroll.
Speaker 2: And my other thing speaking of deep cut rosters, is
Speaker 2: the importance of a character named three D Man.
Speaker 1: If you have listened to.
Speaker 2: The podcast before, you know I'm a three D Man fan.
Speaker 2: I hope that we end up in a world where
Speaker 2: there's some kind of version of that him and his
Speaker 2: role in the story, which is so fun.
Speaker 1: So it's just such a fun story. I'm I'm very.
Speaker 2: Interested when we have both watched Secret Invasion, which will
Speaker 2: be our you know, our episode that comes out on Friday.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited to talk about it because i feel
Speaker 2: like I'm remembering how much I love the comic, and
Speaker 2: i know it's going to be different. So I'm just
Speaker 2: excited to have that conversation up next.
Speaker 1: Nerd Out.
Speaker 2: In this week's Nerd out where you tell us what
Speaker 2: you love and why, a theory you're excited to share,
Speaker 2: or a quick question we can answer, which is exactly
Speaker 2: what's going to happen this time around? Homer asks a
Speaker 2: multiversal query about the MCU.
Speaker 1: Here's Homer. Hey, sorry if this is a basic question.
Speaker 1: But in Marvel movies and comics, what's the difference between
Speaker 1: a universe and dimension and a timeline? It seems the
Speaker 1: low key Spider Man in Doctor Straine shows movies all
Speaker 1: seem to use different items. Are they different concepts or
Speaker 1: interchangeable words with the same meaning?
Speaker 2: Great question, I was gonna say it seems like a
Speaker 2: basic question, but it is not a basic question because
Speaker 2: I actually think that is an ultimate storytelling question that
Speaker 2: comes out of the fact that you have multiple different
Speaker 2: people telling these stories, and people will say different things
Speaker 2: about universes, dimensions, timelines. They are not all the same,
Speaker 2: but they can be used interchangeably.
Speaker 1: That's how I would explain it. They are broadly interchangeable,
Speaker 1: but which term is used depends on how deeply we're
Speaker 1: going to explore that particular timeline, dimension or universe.
Speaker 2: And also I think the difference, the main difference is
Speaker 2: a new timeline can create a new universe or dimension,
Speaker 2: but universes and dimensions can exist yes, already without being
Speaker 2: created by a new timeline.
Speaker 1: That's essential. Thanks Omer. If you have theories or passions
Speaker 1: you want to share, hit us up at x raycrooked
Speaker 1: dot com. Instructions in the show notes. That's it for us,
Speaker 1: Rosie any plugs.
Speaker 2: You can find me here twice a week. You can
Speaker 2: find me on Letterbox, Rosie Marks, Instagram Rosie Marks. You
Speaker 2: can read some articles I've and writing, and check out
Speaker 2: my substat called Rosie recommends right, just recommend cool books
Speaker 2: and comics.
Speaker 1: Catch the next episode of x ray Vision Friday, June
Speaker 1: twenty third for the premier of Secret Invasion on Disney
Speaker 1: Plus Plus. X ray Vision is recording a live episode
Speaker 1: on June twenty six in which we will be discussing
Speaker 1: the fifteenth anniversary of the release of The Dark Knight
Speaker 1: in theaters. If you can't make it in person but
Speaker 1: still want to watch live, go to Crooked dot com
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Speaker 1: section to get your.
Speaker 2: Ticket, and you can subscribe on YouTube, where you can
Speaker 2: find full episodes of the show. Check out the discord
Speaker 2: to meet and hind with tons of amazing fans and
Speaker 2: me and Jason yeay.
Speaker 1: Five star ratings, five star reviews. Yes, Fie fie, we
Speaker 1: need him, We gotta have him, you gotta give it
Speaker 1: to us. Here is one from Ashvez eighty four. Rosie
Speaker 1: and Jason are so fun entertaining. Thank you. I'm not
Speaker 1: even a big comic s I five person, and I
Speaker 1: still listen because they are that good. Very appreciate their
Speaker 1: inclusivity and how they make everything so easy to understand.
Speaker 1: Rosie knows everything strong or great. Thank you here, I
Speaker 1: see you next time. Bye. X ray Vision is a
Speaker 1: Crooked Media production. The show is produced by Chris Lord
Speaker 1: and Saul Rumin and executive produced by me Jason Concepcion.
Speaker 1: Our editing a sound design is by Facillis Fatopoulos. Video
Speaker 1: production by Delon Villanueva and Rachel Gaieski. Social media by
Speaker 1: Awa Oklati and Caroline Dunfe. Thank you to Brian Basquez
Speaker 1: for our theme music.