Project Hail Mary and The Dark Knight Returns — Sincerity, Heroism, and the Millennial Rewrite of the Superhero (w/Tom Libby)

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this

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is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast.

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Episode number. Well, it doesn’t matter what the

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episode number is. It’s a bonus episode. This is a

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summer bonus episode. We’re going to do a little. We’re going to take a little

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focus. We’re going to take a. Take a little jog

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down, down the world of, or down the road

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of movies, because there’s a couple of different things I’d like to

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discuss. And you know, if you’ve listened to this show

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for any period of time, that, that Tom and I are

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huge movie guys. We, we always find a way to

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insert assertions or

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illusions or ideas from film into

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our literary conversations. As a matter of fact,

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we’ve got several films coming up that are on the docket right now that we’ve

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already discussed on the show, including the Odyssey.

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And we will be discussing Neuromancer coming up in September.

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That’s not going to be on Apple tv. That’s gonna be an Apple TV show.

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Currently working my way through that book. And so

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there’s a lot of different areas that Tom and I sort of discuss

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and, and film is one of those areas. And there’s some larger sort of

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cultural critiques that I’d like to make about film

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that I think are relevant for leaders. But I also think it’ll just be a

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fun and exciting kind of little, little, I don’t know,

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break from our usual July fair where

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we cover deep and serious topics like the Constitution,

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the Federalist Papers, the anti Federalist Papers, and of course, our

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episode that we just did that we released on July 4 for the

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250th birthday of the United States of America, where we

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talked with my friend De Rolo Nixon about the Declaration of

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Independence. So this is a nice little break from that.

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So sit back and listen to Tom and I pull our

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best Siskel and Ebert muscles

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possible, if that is

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indeed possible. So I’m going to open, as I usually

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do when this is a. More of a literary pursuit, by. By reading something

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that I wrote. So Tom didn’t know this, but I do have

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a substack that you can go and find. It’s called A Voice

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Crying in the Wilderness. So can you. You can go on substack.com and look up

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a voice crying in the wilderness and you will see all of my writings. No,

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you don’t have to pay anything. I don’t have enough subscribers to charge

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anybody anything. I think I have like 22, if I remember correctly.

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22 subscribers on this substack because I’m not making it. I’m not making it popular.

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I’m not marketing it. I’m not trying to blow it up. I just use it

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to work out ideas and work out ideas in public and then

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watch other folks work out ideas. By the way, I think Substack is

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significantly better platform than Medium. So

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I would like to read from an essay that I do have published

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on substack, a variation of it called the Sun Setting of

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the Dark Night to open our show today. And

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I quote from myself

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to well, all of you movies and

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superheroes have always gone together like peanut butter and jelly,

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starting in the 1970s, actually really the 1960s with a

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campy Adam West Batman, and then continuing into the

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1970s with a serious Superman. Filmmaking has

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taken representing the secular gods of superheroes to the general

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public, to all new heights. Christopher

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Reeve, by virtue of being the first portrayal of Superman on the big screen,

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is thought to embody the iconic and virtuous image of what a

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superhero actually should be.

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At least he was until the 1990s came along.

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And then you had Michael Keaton, who starred in Tim Burton’s

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Batman. Again, by virtue of being the first non

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campy, quote, unquote serious actor to take on the mantle of

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Batman, Keaton’s representation of Batman is considered by many

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in a particular generational cohort to be the iconic and darkest

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image of what a superhero. Here’s that term again, should

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be. But times change and

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tastes change and movies evolve. The superhero movie, of course, has

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evolved, and now we live in a cinematic backwash in

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2026 of the first Iron man movie,

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released in 2008, with all of its various and sundry

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offshoots and sequels. Of course, with this evolution

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came the rise of the Dark Knight in film, with the three most iconic movies

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to ever accurately or realistically ground

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the character now played by the British actor Christian

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Bale in 2005, 2008, and 2012.

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Following those releases, it was 10 years and a

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multiplicity of Marvel movies later that the

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Batman was released in 2022 to little

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fanfare and low grosses.

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And this is how we will set the table today. I want to talk about

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Batman and Superman, but I also want to talk about Project Hail

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Mary. And I want to talk about Masters of the Universe. And I want to

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talk about what all this means for heroics,

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what all this means for generational cohorts, and with all this

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means for all of you listening out there, because I think there’s something

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here that we all should be paying attention to.

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Now, you may not know this. Actually, many of you don’t know this.

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Just like many of you didn’t know until I just said it that I had

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a substack. You might not know that a long time ago I used to write

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movie and cultural reviews for a website on the Internet. No,

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I’m not going to give the name of the website. I’ve already looked for it.

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And the person who owned it, who I do know, he’s done some other work

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with me on some other projects, has taken it down,

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so it is no longer available. But I do have all the original writings because

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I write things on Microsoft Word and then I upload

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them to WordPress because as my mama used to say back in the day, God

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bless the child who holds onto his own ip.

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Now, I did this writing

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back when everyone was still captured by the mcu. The Irishman

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was being touted as the return of Scorsese, Pesci, De

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Niro, and Pacino. And I was a little bit younger.

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I learned in writing for this film and culture website,

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and I learned a lot by having to organize my thoughts about film

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and culture and even the prevailing winds of politics, how those all sort of

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interact in our modern world. I also learned a lot about working with

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people who weren’t nearly as organized or disciplined as I was in

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writing, much less in organization, time management, and how to scale a

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business. It turns out that you can learn a lot more from your failures

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than you can from whatever nascent successes might come your

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way. In the process of banging out

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500 to a thousand words a day, every day, for weeks at a time,

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I had an epiphany, which I still hold on to to

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this day. No one in the film critic

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world ever examines the cultural trends behind why some movies work and why others do

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not. And when the few critics who do seek to tie viewership, audience

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attention, and popular political positions to movies do right, they are

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almost universally ignored for not expressing the quote, unquote, right,

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whatever that may mean. Opinions.

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The last critic to even touch on this area whose name you would recognize

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was Roger Ebert. I mean, yeah, Leonard Maltin did try a little bit,

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but Roger Ebert was really the pioneer of this and the

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best one to ever write such larger cultural analysis.

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The the best critic to ever write such larger cultural analysis, whose name

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no one ever mentions anymore in any film conversation,

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was the very, very caustic writer who even

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pissed off Orson Welles, Pauline Kael.

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She didn’t care who you were. She was Just going to write the truth.

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But today on the show, we are,

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Tom and I are going to go there as we’ve gone there before.

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So like I said today we will talk about

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movies because leaders, culture,

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movies, books, music, these things matter. To

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paraphrase from the movie High Fidelity way back in the day, it’s

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less about who you are sometimes than about what you like.

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Of course, to talk about what we like. I’ve already mentioned him a couple times.

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Today is my usual

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partner in crime, partner in cinematic crime, Tom

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Libby. How you doing today, Tom? How’s it going?

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It’s going, it’s going well. I was so many times during your opening

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there, I was like, I was half tempted to just throw a couple of jabs

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in, you know, like, you know, I just wanted to because

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it’s funny like that you say, I was thinking about Pauline

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Kale for a minute. I mean she died what,

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2000-1999-2000-2001. It’s been like 30 years.

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Yeah, it’s been, it’s been 25, 30 years. I often, you know, it’s

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funny because I don’t think of her until a really bad

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movie comes out. And then I wonder what she would think of

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this because I know what Roger Ebert and Siskel,

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I know what those guys would think of it. Right. Like, but she,

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to your point, she was very vocal about poor cine,

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poor cinema. Like she was very vocal about. And, and I’m,

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I am not a Marvel fan, so I, you’re talking about the whole Marvel

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super whatever. And

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I like, I wonder what she would think of all that, that all that

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sequentialness of the Marvel movies and the, the, the, the,

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the, the tie ins and the like all this stuff that,

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that Marvel requires for it to be classified as a Marvel movie or

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whatever. Because I think she would have just ripped it apart. I really think she

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would have, yeah, she would have hated all of it. She

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would have called all of it trash. She would have had, had nothing

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to do with any of it. Maybe the first couple of movies like Iron man

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would have maybe caught her eye. Maybe. But,

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and partly because of that think about. Marvel didn’t do anything. What the very, very

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first Marvel movie came out in 1944, 45, somewhere around there with Captain

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America. And then they did nothing after that for, until

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2008, when. Right, yeah, well, and I, when I say

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they, I don’t think Marvel actually had anything to do with the original Captain America.

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It was just a, it was just a Marvel character that somebody made a movie

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out of But I’m not sure Marvel had anything to do with it until 2008

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when Marvel decided they wanted to be in the movie business essentially.

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So. Well, well, Disney. Disney partially acquired Marvel.

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Right. And when Disney acquired Marvel Comics, they

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were going to mine all of that ip. Like it was just. They were just

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going to do it. Right. And I remember. So the Marvel, the

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original Captain America movie.

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Yes, there was a very. So here’s the thing about movies and like superheroes.

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And I start off with movies and superheroes because I didn’t want to go into

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like radio and the other representations. But superheroes were on radio

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back in the 30s and 40s and 50s

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primarily. I mean, that’s where you go from,

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you know, old time radio shows, which I’m also a huge fan of. That’s another

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sort of thing that I like, like the Shadow, you know, who

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knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men all the way to the

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lives of Harry Lime, which starred Orson Welles, which was a spin off of

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the. Spin off from the Third man. Book or not? But. Well, yeah, book

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and also movie with that zither music by Anton Karas.

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Oh my God. Incredible. But you

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go from that. Oh, the Lone Ranger. Lone Ranger and Tanto, which.

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Okay. But like you go from that in the 40s and

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50s through to sort of the

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rise of television. And that’s where Adam west shows up with Batman

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and. And George Reeves. I know people are going to object. They’re gonna be like,

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well, what about George Reeves, you know, in the 50s on TV? Yeah,

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okay, sure, George Reeves, you know, Superman. Some people will say he was the

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original Superman. But Marvel, I

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mean, so Marvel Comics started in the

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60s, you know, under Stanley and Steve Ditko

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and Jack Kirby and all those guys. And

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they didn’t really start getting traction until the 80s.

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And they did some significant things in the 70s, don’t get me wrong, with Gene

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Colon and oh gosh, Chris Claremont’s entire

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run on X Men, which started in the 70s and all of that. But they

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didn’t really pick up until the 80s when John

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Byrne was doing things on was. Was writing and drawing on Superman

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over at dc. Marvel was trying to figure out how to

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best compete with them. And you’re right, like one of the first superhero

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movies was Captain America that was in the late 80s. And then fantastic Four.

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Like there’s. There is a version of Fantastic Four floating around

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that is horrible. From the 1980s, early

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1990s. And. And then.

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Yeah, like nobody ever thought you could actually. And this is how. Because I was

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a comic book guy for 10,000 years, and I still love the medium. I just

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don’t buy them anymore because they’re trash now. And we’ve wrecked the medium in

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America. Oh, my God, we’ve wrecked the medium in America. Don’t get

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me started on that. But, but the,

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as a comic book person, I didn’t think there was any possibility

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of ever getting these, these, these characters on film.

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So when Iron man showed up, I was like, oh,

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this is good. They actually, like, have figured it out. This is good. And when,

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and then, of course, when Chris, what’s his name,

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who played Captain America, when he showed

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up, I was like, oh, oh,

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Marvel’s actually serious. Oh, they’re actually going to try to put something together. Are they

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going to try to do the Avengers? And. And then they did a Hulk movie

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that didn’t suck. And I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, we’re gonna do

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something. And, you know, and everybody who was a comic book person, like, really got

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really excited. And that, that drove a lot of the cultural zeitgeist, at least early.

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But now, 20 years, almost 20 years later on from Iron

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man, now there’s. There’s no, there’s

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no more excitement. No. Well, again and again, I think, I think

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part of it is too, like, we talk a lot about the,

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like, does the writing, does the. When you, when you’re watching a

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movie, as a, as a person who loves movies, is the

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writing worth it? Like, is the writing actually worth the movie? And

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does the actor bring anything to the table? Right?

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Meaning, like, and I tell my friends and family all the time, if you watch

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a movie and you cannot envision any other actor playing

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that role playing, because that actor did such a good job. That’s,

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that’s the pinnacle. Like, that’s what you want right there. And that just doesn’t

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happen very often. Like, you just don’t watch a movie and say,

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I cannot picture anybody else doing that role because that person,

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like, they made you believe that that role was written for them. Right? That,

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that’s like. And you, you see it every once in a while. And there’s, there’s,

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you know, there’s examples of it all over cinema. And the genre doesn’t matter

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either, by the way. No, in my opinion. But I think the

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superhero movies, it’s work like, it’s under a microscope even

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worse. Like, because you just look at it and go,

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like, the Hulk, for example. Just as an example,

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when we were kids, when we were kids, there was a TV show on about

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the Hulk. And by the way, folks, the.

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The big green guy was actually played by a guy.

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This was not cgi, but the guy that they got to play.

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Bruce. Sorry, David. No, Bruce

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Banner. Bruce Banner. Sorry. Thank you. Bruce Banner.

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Like, he wasn’t the stature of, like, the leading man

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roles that we think of today, right? Like the 6 foot 2,

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like, 225 pound, chiseled, whatever guy

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that you expect to be in that lead role. And again, by the way, I’m

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not suggesting that this has to be an action movie because we have the same

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kind of ideology. Regardless of whether it’s a drama or whoever, we just want this

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imposing person. And they picked

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the guy who played Bruce

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Banner in the original Hulk was like 5 foot

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6 and like 140 pounds. Yes, right.

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Like, I forget the guy, I forget the actor’s name, but he was not a

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big guy. He was not an imposing person on the screen. He was very. But

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then when they changed him. Bill Bixby. Bill Bixby. Bill Bixby. I actually

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liked it. I thought he was very good. I thought he did a really nice

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job at this. And, like. But when he changed into the Hulk, by the way,

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folks, it was a guy. It was Lou Ferrigno. It was a bodybuilder that turned

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actor that was just a ginormous man. Like

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this mountain of a man in real life, by the way.

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Yes. And it just worked. I thought the whole. When I saw the

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very first Hulk movie that was like CGI and all that stuff, I was

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so. My heart actually hurt a little bit. I was like,

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what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? We

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have. We have massive human beings on this

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planet that could have played that role. And you didn’t have to

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because you were trying to make them larger than life. And he was supposed to

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be. It was supposed to be like,

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like, we’re recreating, like, a dinosaur or some garbage. Like, some.

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Like, what are you doing? Like, he just needs to be

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freakishly big and freakishly strong and green because of the

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radiation. I get it. Like, you turned it. You

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turned it into, like a modern version of a diamond

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score. I mean, come on, stop. Well, and I think. I think to your

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point, that’s why I have such a problem with them, with the Hulk ones, too,

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by the way. No, I. Well, I think to your point, like,

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the. So

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superheroes have always been cartoonish. Let’s just. Let’s just acknowledge that for. Just. Just

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to say, right. And to your point about Lou Ferrigno,

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who, by the way, for those of you who don’t know, you should look up,

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like the Mr. Olympia videos with him and

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Schwarzenegger going back and forth in the 80s. It was kind of ridiculous between

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the two of them. But. But

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I think you wind up in. You wind up in a weird spot with

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superheroics, right, because you’re already

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being. You’re already asking the audience to accept something

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about this person. Right.

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That’s beyond where they are already at. So even on.

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And this is why Bill Bixby. They weren’t putting Bill Bixby in the gym.

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They were going out and getting Lou for Rick, though, because that was the best

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they could do. And if they’d had CGI in 1984

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or 83 or whatever the show was on, they would have put. They would have

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built. They would have CGI the hell out of Bill Bixby. Right. They would have.

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If they’d had the capability to do that. So you’re asking

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the audience to accept something larger than life. And

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we’re going to get to this, by the way, when we talk about Masters of

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the Universe, because my. My son and I went to go see this movie a

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couple of weeks ago, and he was. Well,

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let’s just say his review was. Was very interesting, but

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as a member of the Gen Alpha crowd, his. His review was very. He’s nine.

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So it was like, okay,

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but you’re asking the audience to accept something larger than life. You’re asking

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them to accept a fantasy as reality. So you’re asking two things of the

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audience right away. This isn’t like Westerns. Like, I’ve heard people say that

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superhero movies have replaced Westerns as a genre of

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fantasy. But the Western was based on historical

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reality. Now we can argue about whether that historical reality was

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exaggerated or not. I mean, you know, you could talk about John

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Wayne in the Searchers, or you can talk about Shane, or you can talk

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about Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood in

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the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Yeah. You know, or the High Plains Drifter.

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Or you could even talk about the pulling apart of the

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Western genre in what was quite possibly the last good Western ever

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made, Unforgiven by Clint Eastwood.

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You could talk about all that. You could talk about Native American representation. You could

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talk about black American representation. You could talk about women. You could talk about

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environmental. Environmentalism. You talk about all these things. But the

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westward expansion of the United States actually

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happened. That’s a historical fact. Right. We can argue

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over how that’s represented and who got rooked where,

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but at the end of the day, you can’t disagree with that.

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There was never. At least to my

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knowledge. And I’m g. You know, I’m going to use Superman. There’s never been

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an alien child sent to Earth from a dying planet.

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And to save humanity from itself with Marlon Brando giving him, like,

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you know, instructions through

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crystals. That’s never happened. That’s a total

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fantasy element. By the way,

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Superman, one time I heard a quipped that

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Superman is the ultimate. The ultimate allegory for Jesus Christ

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written by two Jewish kids from Cleveland.

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Which is amazing, actually. Yeah,

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Absolutely amazing. So I think, to your point,

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I understand the disappointment, but

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on the other hand, I’m like, we’re already being asked to, like, we’re being asked

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to accept all kinds of things in this. In this paradigm, like, so what the

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hell, why not? Why not cgi? And this is why, like, Guardians of the Galaxy

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works as a movie, you know, at least the first one does. The second and

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third one are kind of a nightmare. But the first Guardians of the Galaxy works

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because. Well, I mean, I’m already like. You’re already asking me to, like, float in

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space with nebulas and, and stuff. Like, okay, why not? Like, sure, go

357
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ahead. Why not have a talking raccoon? Yeah, why not have a talking trash can?

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By the way, where did the raccoon come from? They have

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raccoons on other planets. Yeah, of course they do.

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I always found that part of it fascinating. You couldn’t just make up your own

361
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version of a creature. You had to pick a raccoon. It was the 70s.

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It was the 70s. Guardians of the Galaxy comes out of the 1970s. It was.

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It was a rough time in America when they wrote that

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stuff. I’m just saying.

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By the way, out of all the Marvel movies, I, I. Fun fact about me

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and you know how I feel about Marvel movies, by the way. Oh, yeah. Not

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really a big fan, but the Guardians of the Galaxy is probably one

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of the few that I can tolerate much. I. I

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tolerate it really well. So this gets back to that idea of

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Pauline Kael and what she would say about these kinds of movies. She would

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not take them seriously. I think we could probably agree on this. She would not

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take them seriously as high art. They’re. They’re

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commercial, for lack of a better term. Nonsense.

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And she would, I think, like I said, I think she would be

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just fine with the first Iron man movie, but then after that, she would get

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off the. Off the table. I even think she would get off the. The. The.

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Or get off the train. I even think she would get off the train with.

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And this is, this is where I want to go with us today, because I

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don’t really want to talk about the Marvel movies, although we have to, because they’re

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just so dominant. They’re like the Jupiter in, like, the sky of like Marvel

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of, of superhero movies in the last 20 years. Because they had a

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formula and it worked and it’s Disney. So, like, give me a break.

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But. Well, and to your point, about, about monitoring the

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cultural wave. Yeah, that’s

385
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essentially what Disney did. They saw. They. They created that formula based on what

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they saw in the cultural atmosphere. And to your point, and

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they’ve made billions and billions and billions of dollars. Billions because

388
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they understood the cultural atmosphere

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and how the, how that cultural atmosphere responded to

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cinema, like, to cinema in general. So they saw shifts. They saw.

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00:24:13,570 –> 00:24:17,130
I don’t know how the hell they got ahead of some of these with predictive

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analytics and all that stuff, but they just did. And they understood it and they

393
00:24:20,500 –> 00:24:23,620
got it and they got ahead of it. So anyway, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no,

394
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I mean, they’ve been, They’ve been owning. There’s a quip about Disney. They’ve been owning

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culture since the 1920s in this country. Like, it’s fine.

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And, and so when you think about it,

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you know, I think Pauline would have had a much more.

398
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She would have been much more open minded to, I think, the Dark Knight,

399
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not Batman again, she would have been like, what is Christopher Nolan doing? But

400
00:24:48,380 –> 00:24:52,100
the Dark Knight, I think she would have liked that movie. Not. And not

401
00:24:52,100 –> 00:24:55,100
because of Heath Ledger’s performance. I don’t think she would have cared about that.

402
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I think she would have eviscerated that as overblown and too much fantasy,

403
00:25:00,380 –> 00:25:04,060
too much comic, too much whatever. Right. Nobody

404
00:25:04,060 –> 00:25:07,300
could. Her. Her critique would have been no one could possibly be that

405
00:25:07,300 –> 00:25:10,620
sociopathic and walking around in real life. Yeah, right.

406
00:25:11,260 –> 00:25:14,580
The problem is that Pauline came from a different sort of paradigm where we think

407
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about people. I think of her sort of like a Joan Didion sort of type,

408
00:25:17,860 –> 00:25:21,710
where she’s like, monitoring the unraveling, but in film. And she doesn’t really know

409
00:25:21,710 –> 00:25:25,350
what she’s seeing. She’s just documenting it and just sort of like throwing it out

410
00:25:25,350 –> 00:25:28,670
there. And by the way, I’m saying this as a person who has a book.

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I have a book that’s a collection of Pauline Kael essays.

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There’s like 5,001 of them. It’s ridiculous, like, the

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number of like. And I read her writing sometimes and I’m like, I’m Blown away.

414
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But. But

415
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dc. So Warner Brothers, you know, DC Comics,

416
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DC Studios went in a different direct. They could go in a different direction because

417
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they have two of the most iconic characters, comic book characters ever

418
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created. They have Superman. Again, a Jesus allegory.

419
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But then you have Batman. And Batman is the

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character that I think that I want to focus on a little bit for right

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now that we can switch to Superman. But I think

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there is not enough cultural understanding around who Batman

423
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actually is as a character. There’s just not. And I think that’s because

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he’s a very specific.

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He’s a very specific sort of animal. And I

426
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using that term on purpose.

427
00:26:32,290 –> 00:26:35,330
So he’s sure. He’s a rich guy, okay?

428
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He lives in a house, a mansion, okay? His

429
00:26:39,530 –> 00:26:43,010
mommy and daddy got shot in the street in a robbery attempt,

430
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okay? And instead of going to therapy to deal with

431
00:26:47,340 –> 00:26:50,460
this, he decides he’s going to dress up like a bat and beat people up

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with. With no formalized training,

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no special serum or special powers,

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all he’s got is money, which could buy him toys.

435
00:27:05,900 –> 00:27:09,740
And so what is the differentiator? Why does Batman get to stand next to Wonder

436
00:27:09,740 –> 00:27:13,340
Woman and Superman inside of everybody’s brain when they think about what the Justice League

437
00:27:13,340 –> 00:27:16,600
might be or. And the Flash and Green Lan Lantern. Why does he get

438
00:27:16,920 –> 00:27:20,760
to walk in that pantheon of heroes? Superman could break him in

439
00:27:20,760 –> 00:27:24,480
a heartbeat. The Flash can outrun him. Wonder Woman can tie

440
00:27:24,480 –> 00:27:28,280
him up with the Lasso of Truth. Green Lantern

441
00:27:28,280 –> 00:27:32,080
can get him with his ring and throw him off the top of

442
00:27:32,080 –> 00:27:35,840
a cliff. Why does Batman get to stand in there? And

443
00:27:35,840 –> 00:27:39,400
I will be fully and completely transparent here. I’m a Batman

444
00:27:39,400 –> 00:27:43,160
guy. My nickname in college was Batman. I’m that guy.

445
00:27:43,320 –> 00:27:47,120
I know that guy’s brain, right? But why does that guy get

446
00:27:47,120 –> 00:27:49,560
to stand there? And the reason he gets to stand there is not because of

447
00:27:49,560 –> 00:27:52,200
his money. It’s not because he’s a rich guy. It’s not because of the toys.

448
00:27:52,840 –> 00:27:56,640
It’s because he understands something about human nature that none of those

449
00:27:56,640 –> 00:28:00,240
other guys, none of those other characters get. Because

450
00:28:00,240 –> 00:28:02,920
he’s down on the street. He’s with the people. He’s.

451
00:28:03,720 –> 00:28:07,320
He’s a part of the dark underbelly. Right.

452
00:28:07,320 –> 00:28:11,050
Of human society. He’s willing to stare into the abyss and.

453
00:28:11,120 –> 00:28:14,360
And not let it stare back through him. Or. Or maybe he’s fine with it

454
00:28:14,360 –> 00:28:17,360
staring back through him. You’ll never really know because he’s not going to be your

455
00:28:17,360 –> 00:28:20,720
friend. He’s not there to be your friend. Like one of The. One of the

456
00:28:20,720 –> 00:28:24,520
greatest lines at the end of Batman Begins when a

457
00:28:24,520 –> 00:28:28,240
Gary Oldman who’s playing Commissioner Gordon, he says to him, you know what? Hey, we

458
00:28:28,240 –> 00:28:31,800
never said thank you. And Christian Bale in that stupid

459
00:28:31,800 –> 00:28:35,560
gravelly voice that got worse over the next two movies, he

460
00:28:35,560 –> 00:28:39,400
says, and you know what? You’ll never have to. And he just leaps

461
00:28:39,400 –> 00:28:42,760
off the building into the night. And I like. I love that. And for me,

462
00:28:43,480 –> 00:28:47,000
Batman, and this is my whole thesis of today, Batman

463
00:28:47,000 –> 00:28:50,760
represents the entire Generation X cohort. That’s our guy.

464
00:28:53,240 –> 00:28:56,360
That’s our guy. Never getting a thank you.

465
00:28:57,080 –> 00:29:00,720
Not getting any respect. No, you know what? I believe you. I believe you. That’s

466
00:29:00,720 –> 00:29:04,530
our guy. Because like a lot of other Gen Xers, I’m sorry, I. I

467
00:29:04,530 –> 00:29:07,730
disagree with you a little bit here because that’s. Okay. Good. He did. He does

468
00:29:07,730 –> 00:29:10,730
not. He’s not in the. He’s not on the ground floor with anybody. He’s a

469
00:29:10,730 –> 00:29:14,290
wealthy guy. When he’s not that man. He’s sitting up at some penthouse

470
00:29:14,290 –> 00:29:18,050
somewhere with whatever. Any toy. He wants any drink. He

471
00:29:18,050 –> 00:29:21,730
wants any. No, he doesn’t understand what I’m going through when I’m walking

472
00:29:21,730 –> 00:29:25,450
through the city. But he’s. By all of that. I’ll stop.

473
00:29:25,690 –> 00:29:28,410
Like, listen, the problem is

474
00:29:30,080 –> 00:29:33,760
he’s. But. But. So he tries. I agree

475
00:29:33,760 –> 00:29:37,560
with you that he’s. He’s kind of Gen X, his version of what

476
00:29:37,560 –> 00:29:41,160
our. Whatever our psyche. Because he tries to

477
00:29:41,160 –> 00:29:44,920
fix problems he knows is there without having the experience to go fix

478
00:29:44,920 –> 00:29:48,520
the problems and without asking for help. Without it.

479
00:29:48,520 –> 00:29:51,360
Without asking for help or permission. Yes.

480
00:29:52,480 –> 00:29:56,240
Yeah, that. You just define Gen X right there. That’s exactly.

481
00:29:56,630 –> 00:29:59,270
We’re. We see a problem, we’re going to go fix it. Nobody asked us to

482
00:29:59,270 –> 00:30:01,990
fix it. Doesn’t matter. We’re going to go fix it because it fixed. It needs

483
00:30:01,990 –> 00:30:05,750
to be fixed. Ask anybody’s permission. And if. If nobody says thank

484
00:30:05,750 –> 00:30:09,030
you, we’re just going to move on and do something else anyway, like understand what

485
00:30:09,030 –> 00:30:12,829
you’re saying about this. But let’s not. Let’s not come up

486
00:30:12,829 –> 00:30:16,630
with the delusion that Batman understands the common man because he’s

487
00:30:16,630 –> 00:30:20,310
part of the common or the underbelly. No, he’s not. He’s not part.

488
00:30:21,590 –> 00:30:25,110
Hold on, hold on. What’s going on down there? Hold on, hold on. He doesn’t

489
00:30:25,110 –> 00:30:28,850
live in that world. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me. Let

490
00:30:28,850 –> 00:30:31,970
me defend my boy here a little bit here. The only reason he is in

491
00:30:31,970 –> 00:30:34,610
that world in the first place is because he injected Himself in it.

492
00:30:36,610 –> 00:30:39,890
How else? Okay, how else is. And

493
00:30:40,370 –> 00:30:44,210
again, I’m talking about. I’m going to limit my comments. I’m going to live my

494
00:30:44,210 –> 00:30:48,050
comments purely to the film version of Batman. I’m not going to

495
00:30:48,050 –> 00:30:51,090
talk about the comic book version because the comic version is a totally different thing.

496
00:30:51,170 –> 00:30:54,900
There’s all kinds of things happening in there. It’s very confusing to follow

497
00:30:54,900 –> 00:30:58,420
the bouncing ball. So. And by the way, in the comic book,

498
00:30:58,500 –> 00:31:02,100
just so that, you know, in the last, I would say,

499
00:31:02,100 –> 00:31:05,940
20 years, they’ve stripped Bruce Wayne of all of his money. And by the

500
00:31:05,940 –> 00:31:08,740
way, he’s still been Batman. Yeah.

501
00:31:10,100 –> 00:31:13,860
Because at the core of it, it’s not about the money. But anyway,

502
00:31:13,860 –> 00:31:17,580
let me. Let me go just to film. Just the film version. I think Batman

503
00:31:17,580 –> 00:31:21,160
Begins did a great job of showing

504
00:31:21,160 –> 00:31:23,760
Bruce Wayne rejecting

505
00:31:24,880 –> 00:31:28,720
that status. Right. Which is the part of the. That drives us crazy

506
00:31:28,720 –> 00:31:32,080
is if you have all this money, why don’t you just do

507
00:31:32,640 –> 00:31:36,159
what. And by the way, this movie came out during a time of

508
00:31:36,159 –> 00:31:40,000
Occupy Wall Street. So, yeah, you know, Occupy Wall street

509
00:31:40,000 –> 00:31:43,800
was going. Going around. People were talking about income inequality. This was

510
00:31:43,800 –> 00:31:46,800
like back, what, 2005, we were talking about income inequality.

511
00:31:48,240 –> 00:31:51,560
Barack Obama hadn’t quite run for president yet, but everybody was tired of the Iraq

512
00:31:51,560 –> 00:31:55,360
and Afghanistan war. And then in 2008, the Dark Knight

513
00:31:55,360 –> 00:31:58,320
came out. And it’s like, oh, my gosh. I mean, that movie made a billion

514
00:31:58,320 –> 00:32:02,000
dollars. It was insane, you know, for a superhero movie. But the

515
00:32:02,000 –> 00:32:05,760
reason why Batman Begins works is because to your point

516
00:32:05,760 –> 00:32:09,600
about cultural zeitgeist and Disney, Warner Brothers was able to

517
00:32:09,600 –> 00:32:13,440
tap into a certain level of cultural zeitgeist. And the cultural zeitgeist at the time

518
00:32:13,440 –> 00:32:15,840
was very much a Gen X cultural zeitgeist, which was

519
00:32:17,520 –> 00:32:20,680
these rich guys, we need to string them all up. That’s why there’s this great

520
00:32:20,680 –> 00:32:24,360
scene in the Dark Knight where the scarecrow from

521
00:32:24,360 –> 00:32:27,680
the original, from Batman Begins, who was the villain in Batman Begins,

522
00:32:28,000 –> 00:32:31,040
is doing like French Revolution type trials.

523
00:32:32,080 –> 00:32:35,720
Yeah. Oh, no, that was in the Dark Knight. Sorry. No, that was the Dark

524
00:32:35,720 –> 00:32:38,920
Knight. That was in the third one, the Dark Knight Rises. That was the third

525
00:32:38,920 –> 00:32:42,400
one when Bane lets out all of the criminals or whatever and

526
00:32:42,480 –> 00:32:46,140
he’s like running the trials because the scarecrow is crazy, of course, and

527
00:32:46,300 –> 00:32:49,260
he’s running all the trials. And then he’s pushing the rich guys and the bankers

528
00:32:49,260 –> 00:32:52,540
out on the. Out on the ice. They can walk across the ice. If they

529
00:32:52,540 –> 00:32:55,500
can walk across the ice, they live. But if not. Oh, well, sorry, that’s when

530
00:32:55,500 –> 00:32:58,940
we’re dead, banker. That’s the revenge of average people

531
00:32:59,180 –> 00:33:02,980
on, on, on, on rich

532
00:33:02,980 –> 00:33:06,300
guys. So I will

533
00:33:06,300 –> 00:33:09,780
defend Batman. I will defend Bruce

534
00:33:09,780 –> 00:33:13,590
Wayne in saying that when he rejects his status in

535
00:33:13,590 –> 00:33:17,350
Batman Begins and runs off and gives away the coat to the homeless guy, and

536
00:33:17,350 –> 00:33:21,070
he’s like, just run. He just leaves, goes to the night, abandons all that, he

537
00:33:21,070 –> 00:33:24,230
has to go all the way across the world to find somebody who’s never met

538
00:33:24,230 –> 00:33:27,230
him, but doesn’t know that he has status. So he has to go to, like,

539
00:33:27,709 –> 00:33:31,430
you know, someplace in China or something. Right. To

540
00:33:31,430 –> 00:33:35,270
meet Ray’s Al Ghoul, played by Liam Neeson, and do his training and

541
00:33:35,270 –> 00:33:36,270
all that kind of stuff.

542
00:33:39,370 –> 00:33:43,130
So, I mean, he’s perfectly capable of rejecting all of that. And he does.

543
00:33:47,370 –> 00:33:51,130
Just because. Just because you would be up there in the penthouse.

544
00:33:51,850 –> 00:33:54,490
And by the way, by the way, there is something in the movie, by the

545
00:33:54,490 –> 00:33:58,250
way, there is something in the movie because his, his, his. Liam Neeson actually

546
00:33:58,410 –> 00:34:01,890
says to him, you just need to do, like, what your father did. Just build

547
00:34:01,890 –> 00:34:05,570
another hospital. It’ll be fine. Just go ahead, give away your money. It’ll be fine.

548
00:34:05,570 –> 00:34:09,410
That’s all you need to do. And the subtle dig there is, of course.

549
00:34:10,210 –> 00:34:13,810
Oh, just go be a socialist. Just go ahead, give away your money, and you’ll

550
00:34:13,810 –> 00:34:17,450
suddenly fix everything. How dare you remain a. Don’t. Don’t

551
00:34:17,450 –> 00:34:21,250
remain a capitalist. Just, you know, give away all your money. That’s the way to

552
00:34:21,250 –> 00:34:24,530
show your show, your pure, show your show, your purity.

553
00:34:29,900 –> 00:34:33,740
Anyway, I didn’t sell that,

554
00:34:33,740 –> 00:34:36,140
folks. He’s not buying that. No, it’s fine.

555
00:34:37,580 –> 00:34:39,340
You don’t have to buy. I ain’t selling it.

556
00:34:42,620 –> 00:34:46,340
But to your point, about, like. Like with no, you

557
00:34:46,340 –> 00:34:50,140
know, formal training, like, with all this money, you couldn’t go get some martial

558
00:34:50,140 –> 00:34:53,980
arts lessons? Like, what the hell he did. He got. He went all the

559
00:34:53,980 –> 00:34:56,310
way across the world, though, to do that. Yeah.

560
00:35:01,350 –> 00:35:04,870
All right. Anyway, I played all my cards on the table. I’m a Batman guy.

561
00:35:04,870 –> 00:35:08,470
I am. Oh, listen, if I had to pick one.

562
00:35:08,630 –> 00:35:12,310
So just for the record here, for the record, I. I

563
00:35:12,390 –> 00:35:16,190
host another podcast, as you know. Sure. Yep. It’s in the. It’s in the sales

564
00:35:16,190 –> 00:35:19,790
and marketing world. But during the interviews of these sales and

565
00:35:19,790 –> 00:35:23,340
marketing consultants that I have, I always ask every one of them,

566
00:35:23,980 –> 00:35:26,940
if you could be a superhero, which one would you be and tell me why?

567
00:35:27,020 –> 00:35:30,660
That’s part of my interview process. And by the way, I

568
00:35:30,660 –> 00:35:34,460
also asked that question of interviewers, like, when I’m interviewing for actual

569
00:35:34,460 –> 00:35:38,180
business roles, Because I just, to be honest with you, it’s a

570
00:35:38,180 –> 00:35:41,860
question that nobody ever asks. It’s kind of off the cut. Like, it

571
00:35:41,860 –> 00:35:45,260
surprises people. It doesn’t give them a lot of time to think and they have

572
00:35:45,260 –> 00:35:49,000
to react to it. Which to me, as a really good tool to have

573
00:35:49,000 –> 00:35:52,640
if you’re a salesperson, right. Like somebody asks you a question, you have no idea

574
00:35:52,640 –> 00:35:56,200
how to answer, how quickly do you think on your feet and like, yeah, is

575
00:35:56,200 –> 00:35:59,920
the answer actually a thoughtful answer, even though you only had 30 seconds to

576
00:35:59,920 –> 00:36:03,679
think of it? Like, so there’s certain characteristics in there I’m looking for. But anyway,

577
00:36:03,679 –> 00:36:07,360
but on the podcast, I ask all these, these sales and marketing

578
00:36:07,360 –> 00:36:11,120
consultants and they come up with everything under the sun. Superman, Batman,

579
00:36:11,120 –> 00:36:14,970
you know, whatever. Wolverine. I’ve actually had people say,

580
00:36:14,970 –> 00:36:18,730
can I create my own? Because I wish I had a superpower like this. Whatever,

581
00:36:19,050 –> 00:36:22,730
fine. But the Batman

582
00:36:22,730 –> 00:36:26,450
one, when people ask me, they say,

583
00:36:26,450 –> 00:36:29,090
well, you know, what would you do? And I go, well, I would pick Batman

584
00:36:29,090 –> 00:36:31,370
for the reasons that you’ve pointed out, which is

585
00:36:33,130 –> 00:36:36,570
they consider him a superhero, yet has no superpowers.

586
00:36:37,770 –> 00:36:41,090
He uses every advantage he has to solve

587
00:36:41,090 –> 00:36:44,520
problems, whether it’s himself, his brain,

588
00:36:44,920 –> 00:36:48,360
technology, the counter into

589
00:36:48,520 –> 00:36:51,880
the counter intuitiveness it takes to think like your

590
00:36:51,880 –> 00:36:55,480
opponent, the whole, you know, senzu kind of thing.

591
00:36:55,480 –> 00:36:59,320
Like, so he leverages all the right

592
00:36:59,320 –> 00:37:03,120
things also for all the right reasons. So as much

593
00:37:03,120 –> 00:37:06,360
as I give you crap about the. The Batman thing, like

594
00:37:06,680 –> 00:37:10,400
in. In. I still find it be partly because we’re

595
00:37:10,400 –> 00:37:14,000
talking about the actual movies. And I find flaws in the movies,

596
00:37:14,000 –> 00:37:17,680
not necessarily in the character that the movie is supposed to be portraying

597
00:37:18,400 –> 00:37:21,920
to a certain level, which they don’t ever do, in my

598
00:37:21,920 –> 00:37:25,360
opinion. I always just think they fall short and what, yeah. What

599
00:37:25,360 –> 00:37:29,040
Batman is to me and what we. And to be

600
00:37:29,040 –> 00:37:32,520
quite honest with you, growing up and watching the reruns of Adam

601
00:37:32,520 –> 00:37:36,350
West’s version of it, I. I gotta be

602
00:37:36,350 –> 00:37:40,110
honest, I don’t think any of them have come to his. To the

603
00:37:40,110 –> 00:37:43,870
way that that TV series was written and the way

604
00:37:43,870 –> 00:37:47,510
that, like, it was like that, that’s what

605
00:37:47,510 –> 00:37:50,870
I, the movies have fallen short for. Of that. Interesting.

606
00:37:51,030 –> 00:37:54,710
Okay, so, like, if you think about how Adam west was portrayed,

607
00:37:54,710 –> 00:37:57,670
what his, what his version of Batman stood for, the

608
00:37:58,230 –> 00:38:01,430
justice the. And again, the, you know,

609
00:38:01,850 –> 00:38:05,090
and the Adam west version, because it was a TV series, he had a different

610
00:38:05,090 –> 00:38:08,850
villain every week, like somebody different every week. But he never

611
00:38:08,850 –> 00:38:12,690
wavered on what, what was important throughout any of those

612
00:38:12,690 –> 00:38:16,530
battles and in all the movies since a lot

613
00:38:16,530 –> 00:38:20,290
of those Messages are hidden and they’re like, they’re like,

614
00:38:20,290 –> 00:38:24,130
they’re not up front, they’re not forward facing. And you said

615
00:38:24,130 –> 00:38:26,730
something earlier about Superman, which to me,

616
00:38:27,940 –> 00:38:31,380
Superman did a better job with what the, what the

617
00:38:31,540 –> 00:38:35,300
superhero stood for. Ultimately, throughout the course of the

618
00:38:35,300 –> 00:38:38,900
movies, whether the movie was good or bad, you still understood what Superman stood for

619
00:38:39,140 –> 00:38:42,820
all the time. Now you could say that there was come some crappy

620
00:38:42,820 –> 00:38:46,540
versions of Superman. Sure. Yeah. I’m not gonna argue that there’s been some

621
00:38:46,540 –> 00:38:50,260
pretty crappy Superman movies. This last one was not good. I’m

622
00:38:50,260 –> 00:38:53,590
sorry. I know it earned a lot of money. I did not like it. I

623
00:38:53,590 –> 00:38:57,230
did not think it was very good. The story was heinous. And

624
00:38:57,550 –> 00:39:00,830
the only thing good about that movie was the kid who played Lex Luthor

625
00:39:01,150 –> 00:39:04,990
was amazing. Like his acting was good. He

626
00:39:04,990 –> 00:39:08,789
was right for that role. But that’s about it. Like that, that is

627
00:39:08,789 –> 00:39:12,590
the only thing. I mean, come on, the, the Iwo Jima thing with

628
00:39:12,590 –> 00:39:15,870
the kid in the flag. Come on. The movie was bad.

629
00:39:16,270 –> 00:39:19,990
But anyway, go ahead. So I’m not going to defend the most recent Superman

630
00:39:19,990 –> 00:39:23,710
movie. Instead what I’m going to say is this. There’s

631
00:39:23,710 –> 00:39:26,910
a reason that. Remember man of Steel with Henry Cavill?

632
00:39:26,910 –> 00:39:30,470
Cavill, yes. Okay. Man of Steel failed to work.

633
00:39:31,350 –> 00:39:35,150
And it’s, and it’s amazing to me. It’s absolutely stunning

634
00:39:35,150 –> 00:39:38,950
to me. The man of Steel didn’t work, but I think I know why. So

635
00:39:39,670 –> 00:39:43,310
let’s go through sort of the, Let me read through sort of the analysis here.

636
00:39:43,310 –> 00:39:45,790
That way we can. Because I want to talk about Superman now because these are

637
00:39:45,790 –> 00:39:49,440
our two poles, right? Batman and Superman. Yeah. So the first Superman

638
00:39:49,440 –> 00:39:53,280
film. And again I’m reading from my sub stack article called Sunsetting

639
00:39:53,280 –> 00:39:55,760
the Dark Knight. You should go check that out on a voice crying of the

640
00:39:55,760 –> 00:39:59,600
wilderness. Or you just type my name, Hasan Sorrell’s in substack and you’ll find

641
00:39:59,600 –> 00:40:03,080
it the first Superman film, and I quote from myself, the first

642
00:40:03,080 –> 00:40:06,600
Superman film since Superman 4. The Quest for Peace. Superman

643
00:40:06,600 –> 00:40:10,440
Returns was released in 2006. By

644
00:40:10,440 –> 00:40:14,240
the way, that starred Brandon Ruth, who was not a terrible Superman. He was

645
00:40:14,240 –> 00:40:17,830
not a terrible representation of the character. And while it went on to

646
00:40:17,830 –> 00:40:21,430
gross $320 $392 million worldwide,

647
00:40:21,510 –> 00:40:25,350
it was considered to be a dud against a 270 million dollar budget.

648
00:40:26,390 –> 00:40:29,790
Warner Brothers went back to the well again on

649
00:40:29,790 –> 00:40:33,510
Superman in 2013 with man of Steel. That one starred

650
00:40:33,510 –> 00:40:37,270
Henry Cavill in an attempt to jump start a shared universe without

651
00:40:37,270 –> 00:40:41,030
committing to doing the hard work of Audience capture. Man of Steel did much

652
00:40:41,030 –> 00:40:44,840
better, probably because Henry Cavill looks more superheroic. He

653
00:40:44,840 –> 00:40:48,200
looks more like a Superman character than Brandon Ruth, grossing

654
00:40:48,200 –> 00:40:51,640
$670 million worldwide against a

655
00:40:51,640 –> 00:40:55,360
$225 million budget. Unlike

656
00:40:55,360 –> 00:40:59,200
Superman Returns, man of Steel was unapologetically an appeal to

657
00:40:59,200 –> 00:41:02,960
the older Gen X audiences who wanted a grounded, quote, unquote,

658
00:41:02,960 –> 00:41:06,800
realistic Superman of their own. Now,

659
00:41:08,330 –> 00:41:10,650
man of Steel didn’t work because

660
00:41:12,170 –> 00:41:15,890
I think we live

661
00:41:15,890 –> 00:41:19,610
in a late stage decadent America. And I think the

662
00:41:19,610 –> 00:41:23,210
reason why man of Steel didn’t work for Gen X is because

663
00:41:23,290 –> 00:41:26,570
no matter how dark you make Superman,

664
00:41:27,450 –> 00:41:30,730
he’s still quite frankly, a heroic archetype

665
00:41:31,290 –> 00:41:35,040
and Gen X. And I’m saying this

666
00:41:35,040 –> 00:41:38,880
as part of this generation. Tom’s part of this generation. We are not part

667
00:41:38,880 –> 00:41:42,680
of the heroic archetype. We’re part of the Nomad archetype, which is

668
00:41:42,680 –> 00:41:46,520
much more of a Batman sort of archetype. And I’m getting these archetypical

669
00:41:47,000 –> 00:41:50,600
kind of ideas from Strauss and Howe’s generational theory

670
00:41:51,080 –> 00:41:54,920
around the fourth turning. And I sort of explain

671
00:41:54,920 –> 00:41:57,440
all of this in the substack article. I don’t want to go into a whole

672
00:41:57,440 –> 00:42:01,070
lot of depth with this, but just know there are certain archetypes that, that exist

673
00:42:01,150 –> 00:42:04,990
and survive and thrive during certain

674
00:42:05,310 –> 00:42:09,030
historical cycles. And we have lived in the last 25 years. Some

675
00:42:09,030 –> 00:42:12,190
would say we’re not even out of it yet. I think we’re coming out of

676
00:42:12,190 –> 00:42:15,470
it. But we’ve lived for the last 25 years in a state of

677
00:42:15,470 –> 00:42:19,070
historical chaos, cultural chaos, moral chaos, political

678
00:42:19,070 –> 00:42:22,910
chaos. And the Nomad archetype survives

679
00:42:22,910 –> 00:42:26,600
really, really well in chaotic times and after an

680
00:42:26,600 –> 00:42:30,160
unraveling. But typically after a Nomad

681
00:42:30,160 –> 00:42:32,600
archetype, you get a heroic archetype.

682
00:42:33,800 –> 00:42:35,400
Most millennials were born between

683
00:42:36,520 –> 00:42:39,920
1984 or so and

684
00:42:39,920 –> 00:42:43,360
1997. Anyone born between 84 and

685
00:42:43,360 –> 00:42:47,120
97 is now either in their 40s or mid-40s or in

686
00:42:47,120 –> 00:42:50,200
getting into their. Into their. Into their mid-30s. Right.

687
00:42:50,920 –> 00:42:54,310
And so that archetype, that

688
00:42:54,310 –> 00:42:58,110
heroic archetype, they are crying out cinematically

689
00:42:58,110 –> 00:43:01,110
for a hero, which is why to double back to the MCU for just a

690
00:43:01,110 –> 00:43:04,950
second. Marvel movies work so well because it hit them during

691
00:43:04,950 –> 00:43:08,670
a time when they were looking for that archetype. But

692
00:43:08,670 –> 00:43:12,150
I think at the end of the day, they need a Superman, and that’s why

693
00:43:12,150 –> 00:43:15,910
Henry Cavill didn’t work. So let’s talk about Superman

694
00:43:15,910 –> 00:43:18,270
for just a minute. Superman is.

695
00:43:20,550 –> 00:43:24,030
Yeah, well, you know, truth, justice in the American way. Right. He’s a child of

696
00:43:24,030 –> 00:43:27,750
the light. He’s not a child of the dark. He’s even powered by the

697
00:43:27,750 –> 00:43:30,710
sun. He’s literally a child of the light, right?

698
00:43:32,470 –> 00:43:36,270
Yes. Sent to Earth from a dying planet to save all of us from

699
00:43:36,270 –> 00:43:39,790
ourselves. Yes. Okay. That’s the Jesus Christ sort of framework

700
00:43:39,790 –> 00:43:43,510
there by parents that he’s never met.

701
00:43:44,640 –> 00:43:48,280
And now he’s got this adopted, you know, Mon PA Kent, who, by the

702
00:43:48,280 –> 00:43:51,960
way, taught him different lessons about the world than Thomas and

703
00:43:51,960 –> 00:43:55,680
Martha Wayne taught. Bruce Wayne bleeding out

704
00:43:55,680 –> 00:43:59,280
in the street. Right. And this is something, by the way, that’s important to

705
00:43:59,280 –> 00:44:03,080
note. Just bringing the comic books for just a second. There’s a great

706
00:44:03,080 –> 00:44:06,400
scene in the Dark Knight Returns by Frank

707
00:44:06,400 –> 00:44:10,000
Miller from back in the day. We actually covered the Dark Knight Returns

708
00:44:10,320 –> 00:44:14,160
when we did our comic book episodes. Oh, gosh. It’s like episode number six or

709
00:44:14,160 –> 00:44:17,400
something. We also covered Watchmen on this show. And

710
00:44:18,360 –> 00:44:22,040
there’s a great bit in there where Superman remembers. Well,

711
00:44:22,040 –> 00:44:25,680
Clark Kent actually remembers how Bruce Wayne showed up to a Senate subcommittee

712
00:44:25,680 –> 00:44:29,520
when the US Government in the comic book is trying to. Is trying to get

713
00:44:29,520 –> 00:44:33,200
all the superheroes to register for a superhero registry. And

714
00:44:33,200 –> 00:44:36,880
Bruce Wayne shows up and basically he laughs at all the

715
00:44:36,880 –> 00:44:40,640
parents and he laughs at the senators and. Because they ask him, like,

716
00:44:40,640 –> 00:44:44,360
what’s the difference between you and a criminal? And basically, Bruce Wayne says, and

717
00:44:44,360 –> 00:44:47,440
Clark remembers it this way, says, oh, you laugh that scary laugh. And all the

718
00:44:47,440 –> 00:44:50,640
parents groups and the senators, and you could have just gone along, but you didn’t.

719
00:44:51,040 –> 00:44:54,840
Because this is Bruce Wayne, too. This is classic Gen X. You

720
00:44:54,840 –> 00:44:58,560
know, he said the truth to the subcommittee. Bruce Wayne goes, we’re

721
00:44:58,560 –> 00:45:02,400
always criminals. We’ve always been criminals. We’re always going to be criminals.

722
00:45:02,640 –> 00:45:05,620
All of us who are. We’re all vigilantes. Like, what’s your problem?

723
00:45:06,340 –> 00:45:10,180
And then much like Tony Stark in.

724
00:45:10,340 –> 00:45:12,900
In like, was it Iron Man 2? Where he like,

725
00:45:14,020 –> 00:45:17,860
like, goes off from the subcommittee and then just leaves, like, I’ve privatized world

726
00:45:17,860 –> 00:45:20,820
peace. You all should be thanking me. And then just leaves.

727
00:45:23,300 –> 00:45:27,140
Bruce Wayne did basically the exact same thing. It’s like, we’re always criminals. We’ve always

728
00:45:27,140 –> 00:45:30,020
been criminals. The hell’s your problem? And then just leaves.

729
00:45:32,750 –> 00:45:36,430
Clark Kent will never do that. That will never come out of Clark Kent’s

730
00:45:36,430 –> 00:45:39,870
mouth. And this is part of the reason I think man of Steel didn’t work.

731
00:45:39,870 –> 00:45:43,390
No matter how dark you make Clark Superman’s costume,

732
00:45:44,830 –> 00:45:48,430
the guy in there is a child of Iowa.

733
00:45:48,430 –> 00:45:50,990
He’s a child of the light. He’s a hero.

734
00:45:53,150 –> 00:45:56,880
Thoughts on Superman? Yeah. So

735
00:45:56,880 –> 00:46:00,560
I was never Like, I was never a big Superman fan, honestly.

736
00:46:00,560 –> 00:46:03,560
Like, I, I mean, I’ve seen, I’ve seen the movies, don’t get me wrong. Yeah,

737
00:46:03,560 –> 00:46:07,400
yeah. Again, because I, I mean my, my wife makes fun of me constantly because

738
00:46:07,560 –> 00:46:11,280
she has stopped asking me, hey, have you seen

739
00:46:11,280 –> 00:46:15,040
this? Whatever Enter movie, TV

740
00:46:15,040 –> 00:46:18,680
show, whatever, like, and she’s like, you know,

741
00:46:18,680 –> 00:46:21,960
have you seen this episode of what? I’m like, yes, you know, whatever. Anyway, so,

742
00:46:22,130 –> 00:46:25,970
so I still will watch them partly because I just want to

743
00:46:25,970 –> 00:46:28,810
pick on them. Like, I just want to rip them apart. Right? But to your

744
00:46:28,810 –> 00:46:32,290
point about Superman, I think, and again, I, I think if you, if you want

745
00:46:32,290 –> 00:46:36,050
to put it in some real layman’s terms, right, Superman is the,

746
00:46:36,610 –> 00:46:40,210
the home cooked meal, warm

747
00:46:40,210 –> 00:46:43,330
apple pie, dessert after dinner kind of environment.

748
00:46:43,970 –> 00:46:47,530
And, and Batman is down and

749
00:46:47,530 –> 00:46:50,420
dirty. I’m gonna, I’ll eat on, I’ll eat on the run.

750
00:46:51,380 –> 00:46:55,140
Like, I, I can be alone by myself, doing my own thing and like the

751
00:46:55,140 –> 00:46:58,860
loner archetype, like, I, I don’t need anybody’s help, right? And

752
00:46:58,860 –> 00:47:02,220
Superman wants, even though he doesn’t need it because he’s

753
00:47:02,220 –> 00:47:05,980
Superman, he wants everybody’s buy in. Like, he wants the world,

754
00:47:05,980 –> 00:47:09,060
he wants the Kumbaya, right? So to your point,

755
00:47:09,940 –> 00:47:13,660
you can’t really make that dark. And, and when you do it, it

756
00:47:13,660 –> 00:47:17,490
seems comical. Almost half the movie I was laughing, I was like, what

757
00:47:17,490 –> 00:47:21,130
am I watching here? What are we doing? What are we doing, folks? Like, what

758
00:47:21,130 –> 00:47:24,930
are we doing? Like Superman, warm

759
00:47:24,930 –> 00:47:28,490
apple pie in the American way, right? Like, well, and this is, and this is

760
00:47:28,490 –> 00:47:32,090
the thing that I saw in the most recent Superman film, you know, which

761
00:47:32,090 –> 00:47:35,570
grossed significantly less. I think it grossed, it grossed like the

762
00:47:35,570 –> 00:47:39,370
Brandon Ruth Superman Returns numbers. I think it did somewhere around 600 million

763
00:47:39,450 –> 00:47:43,040
worldwide, so somewhere close to that. But it’s been green

764
00:47:43,040 –> 00:47:46,800
lit for a sequel. So James Gunn is going to

765
00:47:46,800 –> 00:47:50,560
do another one after the Supergirl flop, which is, don’t get me started

766
00:47:50,560 –> 00:47:54,320
on that. But he’s going to do another one. And

767
00:47:54,640 –> 00:47:57,400
I haven’t seen that one yet, by the way, and I’m not sure I’m going

768
00:47:57,400 –> 00:48:01,000
to bother. I honestly, it’s like a train

769
00:48:01,000 –> 00:48:04,800
wreck you have to watch, right? Like I probably will once it comes out on

770
00:48:04,800 –> 00:48:07,520
streaming, that I don’t have to pay for it. Like, because I’ll probably watch it

771
00:48:07,520 –> 00:48:09,520
when I don’t have to pay for it. And then I’ll make fun of it.

772
00:48:09,970 –> 00:48:10,210
But

773
00:48:13,650 –> 00:48:17,170
my kids went to see it and my daughter, my daughter came back, she goes,

774
00:48:17,170 –> 00:48:20,770
I just watched a superhero movie about A dog. And I was like, wait, what?

775
00:48:22,690 –> 00:48:26,450
She’s like, yeah, spectacular. Half the movie was about the dog. And I was like,

776
00:48:26,690 –> 00:48:28,970
oh, maybe I do want to see this. Maybe I do want to see this

777
00:48:28,970 –> 00:48:32,050
movie. No. So I.

778
00:48:32,930 –> 00:48:36,770
The. The prob. There’s several problems with Supergirl. The biggest

779
00:48:36,770 –> 00:48:40,010
problem is Supergirl has always been a second tier,

780
00:48:40,650 –> 00:48:44,490
God help you, third tier character for sure, because you

781
00:48:44,490 –> 00:48:47,890
don’t need her. There was even a Supergirl movie that was released in the

782
00:48:47,890 –> 00:48:51,090
1980s that everybody forgets about. I think

783
00:48:51,090 –> 00:48:54,850
86, maybe 85. 86, somewhere in the

784
00:48:54,850 –> 00:48:58,530
mid-80s. And it didn’t even do big numbers because she’s always been a

785
00:48:58,530 –> 00:49:02,130
second tier character. Unfortunately, we live in

786
00:49:02,130 –> 00:49:05,770
cultural times where. And

787
00:49:05,770 –> 00:49:09,330
Tommy disagree with me on this, but we live in cultural times where

788
00:49:09,650 –> 00:49:13,370
equal representation has to be had by everybody. So,

789
00:49:13,370 –> 00:49:17,090
like, you can’t have a. Now, let me be very

790
00:49:17,090 –> 00:49:20,530
clear. Superman is an immigrant. So he’s from an

791
00:49:20,530 –> 00:49:24,330
alien from another planet, which I would think all the millennials would get on

792
00:49:24,330 –> 00:49:28,130
board with that. And don’t worry, he could take on ice agents. It’s

793
00:49:28,130 –> 00:49:31,820
fine. Like, fine. It’s not a problem. He’s got laser

794
00:49:31,820 –> 00:49:34,860
vision. What’s the issue? So you don’t really need a black

795
00:49:35,100 –> 00:49:38,940
Superman, you don’t need a female Superman, you don’t need a Latino

796
00:49:38,940 –> 00:49:42,460
Superman, and you don’t need. I’ve got to step on the toe here.

797
00:49:42,700 –> 00:49:46,180
I’m gonna go ahead and do it. You don’t need an LGBTQ Superman

798
00:49:46,180 –> 00:49:49,620
either. He’s already an alien. The

799
00:49:49,620 –> 00:49:53,420
waterfront’s covered. Yeah, yeah, he’s got pink

800
00:49:53,420 –> 00:49:56,910
skin and he fits in with the Caucasian people. So what?

801
00:49:56,990 –> 00:50:00,750
He’s still from another planet. Okay. So, like,

802
00:50:00,830 –> 00:50:04,110
you don’t need all those multiple representations of Superman,

803
00:50:06,430 –> 00:50:07,710
and with that being said,

804
00:50:10,110 –> 00:50:12,750
you need him to represent an archetype

805
00:50:13,710 –> 00:50:17,030
that fundamentally, I think has to have a cultural

806
00:50:17,030 –> 00:50:20,630
resonance, which is why they’re getting a sequel, because the

807
00:50:20,630 –> 00:50:24,370
cultural resonance of the millennial audience. And

808
00:50:24,370 –> 00:50:27,810
this is my core point today, the cultural relevance of the

809
00:50:27,810 –> 00:50:31,450
millennial audience. I have two more film examples to bring to this project, Hail Mary

810
00:50:31,530 –> 00:50:34,890
and Masters of the Universe, which I think also

811
00:50:35,770 –> 00:50:39,210
tie up my idea here. You have to have cultural

812
00:50:39,210 –> 00:50:43,010
relevance, not cultural, sorry, heroic archetypes for

813
00:50:43,010 –> 00:50:46,610
the millennial audience. And I think they have to ascend past the

814
00:50:46,610 –> 00:50:49,810
superhero. But I think it all starts with Superman. By the way, this is the

815
00:50:49,810 –> 00:50:53,290
reason why the 2022 Batman movie with Robert Pattinson didn’t work

816
00:50:53,450 –> 00:50:57,030
and why they’ve been struggling a sequel out for that. And that

817
00:50:57,030 –> 00:50:59,750
won’t work either. Because the millennial audience,

818
00:51:01,030 –> 00:51:04,870
the Gen Gen X is Gen Xers have aged out of Batman.

819
00:51:05,990 –> 00:51:09,830
I don’t need to see another Batman movie as I approach 50. Yeah,

820
00:51:09,830 –> 00:51:12,550
right. I’m kind of good with that. I, I kind of. I’m set.

821
00:51:14,150 –> 00:51:17,990
And the generations behind me, the two generations behind, actually three generations

822
00:51:17,990 –> 00:51:20,470
behind me, the millennials, Gen Z

823
00:51:22,320 –> 00:51:25,480
and then the profit types were going to be Gen Alpha who are like my

824
00:51:25,480 –> 00:51:28,800
nine year old son, right? Those three,

825
00:51:29,600 –> 00:51:33,040
Batman ain’t going to work for them. But Superman,

826
00:51:33,760 –> 00:51:37,279
Superman will work for at least a couple of generations. And so as much as

827
00:51:37,279 –> 00:51:40,760
you didn’t enjoy that Superman movie and by the way, I saw it on a

828
00:51:40,760 –> 00:51:44,320
plane just to be, you know, to tell you I watched it on a

829
00:51:44,320 –> 00:51:47,930
plane. This is my

830
00:51:47,930 –> 00:51:51,130
Superman review. Superman by James Gunn

831
00:51:52,410 –> 00:51:56,210
review. So bad. I think it

832
00:51:56,210 –> 00:52:00,010
holds. So the internal logic of the film holds up, which is really

833
00:52:00,010 –> 00:52:03,050
hard by the way these days to get internal logic to hold up in a

834
00:52:03,050 –> 00:52:06,690
film because there’s people doing all kinds of characters violating all kinds of internal

835
00:52:06,690 –> 00:52:10,290
logic. And you’re like, why are you doing that? And it’s because it’s for, let

836
00:52:10,290 –> 00:52:13,770
me put this in air quotes, the message, whatever that may be, that we have

837
00:52:13,770 –> 00:52:16,990
to get across to modern audiences. Okay, fine,

838
00:52:17,630 –> 00:52:21,350
but Superman didn’t do any of that. James Gunn actually tried

839
00:52:21,350 –> 00:52:24,670
to do a pure, straightforward,

840
00:52:25,550 –> 00:52:26,430
millennial

841
00:52:28,670 –> 00:52:32,110
archetypical hero who floats above everything,

842
00:52:33,390 –> 00:52:37,070
tries to get people to work together, is still an immigrant,

843
00:52:37,630 –> 00:52:41,240
will come in and lecture the bad guy, but at the end of the day

844
00:52:41,400 –> 00:52:45,080
doesn’t want to be too tethered or too tied down. It

845
00:52:45,080 –> 00:52:48,760
works. It works at that level. And it’s just. And just like

846
00:52:48,760 –> 00:52:52,520
Project Hail Mary and just like Masters of the Universe.

847
00:52:52,760 –> 00:52:56,520
It doesn’t need to work for me. And that’s where I’m

848
00:52:56,520 –> 00:52:59,360
okay with it. It doesn’t need to work for me. This movie is not for

849
00:52:59,360 –> 00:53:00,360
me. And it’s okay.

850
00:53:03,560 –> 00:53:07,400
And I watched it with my 9 year old son and his review of Superman

851
00:53:07,400 –> 00:53:11,230
was, well, that was interesting. Dad, can

852
00:53:11,230 –> 00:53:12,230
we watch something else?

853
00:53:18,150 –> 00:53:21,830
Which was amazing. We’re on a plane, like flying back

854
00:53:21,830 –> 00:53:25,190
home or whatever from someplace I can’t remember where might have been, Florida or something.

855
00:53:25,190 –> 00:53:27,910
It was like a four hour flight and we watched it for half of it.

856
00:53:27,910 –> 00:53:31,190
And he goes, well, okay. I don’t know.

857
00:53:32,950 –> 00:53:36,800
I just started laughing. And

858
00:53:36,800 –> 00:53:40,200
yes, I was annoyed by the dog, by the way, the dog

859
00:53:40,200 –> 00:53:44,000
crypto. It’s not a terrier mutt. It’s supposed to be

860
00:53:44,000 –> 00:53:47,680
a golden retriever, James Gunn. But I understand you have a terrier mutt, so you

861
00:53:47,680 –> 00:53:51,440
had to put your dog in the movie. Come on. Yeah. It was

862
00:53:52,000 –> 00:53:55,280
so stupid. But it’s not for us. It’s not for us.

863
00:53:55,600 –> 00:53:59,400
About. About half. No. Maybe. All right, maybe half of what the

864
00:53:59,400 –> 00:54:03,200
dog did. You could have used a real dog. Why are you using the CGI

865
00:54:03,200 –> 00:54:04,960
garbage? Because. Because it’s.

866
00:54:06,940 –> 00:54:10,500
It’s for a different audience. We have to put our brain. This is genuine

867
00:54:10,500 –> 00:54:14,100
empathy, Tom. We have to have genuine everything. We have to put our heads. We

868
00:54:14,100 –> 00:54:17,300
have to say that what we want and what we desire doesn’t matter. Put that

869
00:54:17,300 –> 00:54:20,900
aside and understand that there are other people who have other desires and those

870
00:54:20,900 –> 00:54:23,420
desires might matter. And that’s genuine empathy.

871
00:54:25,020 –> 00:54:28,740
Sure. So we’re going to make bad movies for people who don’t understand how movies

872
00:54:28,740 –> 00:54:32,460
are supposed to work. Exactly. All right, I understand now. I get

873
00:54:32,460 –> 00:54:35,940
it. Okay. Yeah. And the whole thing will just continue to roll on and it’ll

874
00:54:35,940 –> 00:54:39,640
be fine. And some. The alpha generation will

875
00:54:39,640 –> 00:54:43,440
come by and say, what is this garbage? Let’s make better movies. There you go.

876
00:54:43,440 –> 00:54:46,560
That’s right. That’s exactly. I’m playing a long game here.

877
00:54:49,760 –> 00:54:53,480
Speaking of playing the long game. So you and I talked about Project Hail

878
00:54:53,480 –> 00:54:57,240
Mary. Yes. I want folks to go back, not

879
00:54:57,240 –> 00:55:00,640
go back. I want folks to know that we’re going to switch

880
00:55:00,880 –> 00:55:04,720
and I’m going to sort of rerun what I said about Project Hail Mary

881
00:55:04,800 –> 00:55:08,560
at this spot right here. So if you. Hold on. We’re going to rerun

882
00:55:08,560 –> 00:55:10,460
it at this spot right here.

883
00:55:15,180 –> 00:55:18,300
All right. And we’re back. So you just heard my pro. Our Project

884
00:55:18,860 –> 00:55:22,700
Hail Mary review that we did a. Oh, gosh, probably about a month

885
00:55:22,700 –> 00:55:25,580
and a half ago maybe when the film first came out.

886
00:55:27,660 –> 00:55:30,900
I watched it again this weekend, this time with my kids because now it’s on

887
00:55:30,900 –> 00:55:34,700
Amazon because MGM owns Amazon or whatever

888
00:55:34,700 –> 00:55:38,540
or Amazon owns MGM now and they produce the movie and

889
00:55:38,540 –> 00:55:42,200
so it’s been released to streaming. So I watched it this weekend with my

890
00:55:42,200 –> 00:55:45,920
16 year old daughter and my 9 year old son, the aforementioned 9 year old

891
00:55:45,920 –> 00:55:49,000
son who we also saw Masters of the Universe and

892
00:55:51,720 –> 00:55:55,520
watching it again. I was watching it not for my reactions

893
00:55:55,520 –> 00:55:59,320
or responses or my wife’s. My. My wife and I’s reactions or responses to that.

894
00:55:59,560 –> 00:56:03,280
To it. Because I already kind of knew what I needed to know about

895
00:56:03,280 –> 00:56:07,100
the movie. And actually the ending is a lot. It was

896
00:56:07,100 –> 00:56:09,980
a lot more palatable for me because I actually saw how it all like tied

897
00:56:09,980 –> 00:56:13,260
together. It actually made a lot more sense. So I was like, oh, okay. It

898
00:56:13,260 –> 00:56:16,340
doesn’t violate its own internal logic as much as I thought it did,

899
00:56:17,460 –> 00:56:21,180
but still, it’s not. It’s fundamentally not for me. But

900
00:56:21,180 –> 00:56:24,260
my 16 year old thought the film was brilliant.

901
00:56:27,460 –> 00:56:31,140
Interesting. And my 9 year old was like,

902
00:56:32,430 –> 00:56:36,230
huh. So. So they just went to

903
00:56:36,230 –> 00:56:38,990
another plant. He just went to another planet with the rock people.

904
00:56:40,430 –> 00:56:43,510
So funny thing. So my youngest, my, like my

905
00:56:43,510 –> 00:56:47,310
24 year old looked at me and said, oh, it’s.

906
00:56:47,310 –> 00:56:50,030
It’s basically our, our generation’s version of ET

907
00:56:52,510 –> 00:56:55,870
And I went, oh, my God, you’re right.

908
00:56:56,030 –> 00:56:59,470
Like, I mean, the reversal was like. I mean, E.T. was here on Earth. I

909
00:56:59,470 –> 00:57:03,270
get it. And he wanted to go home. In Project Hail Mary, they’re

910
00:57:03,270 –> 00:57:05,910
out in space and both of them just want to go home. Just want to

911
00:57:05,910 –> 00:57:08,030
go home. Yeah, it was like. It was one of those things that, like, it

912
00:57:08,030 –> 00:57:11,510
hit me. I was like, oh my God, why

913
00:57:12,230 –> 00:57:14,870
can’t we just come up with a new idea? It is easy.

914
00:57:16,870 –> 00:57:20,630
I gave that movie some credit, by the way, for being a fresh new

915
00:57:20,630 –> 00:57:23,830
idea, and my kid just squashed that for me.

916
00:57:24,710 –> 00:57:28,550
Well, okay, so I could see the ET Parallels. I could absolutely see that

917
00:57:28,550 –> 00:57:29,670
at. In reverse.

918
00:57:33,580 –> 00:57:37,380
I think the emotional beats are fundamentally

919
00:57:37,380 –> 00:57:41,100
different. And the

920
00:57:41,100 –> 00:57:44,820
Sandra Hooler character, the. The chief scientist or whatever,

921
00:57:44,820 –> 00:57:48,460
who like shanghais him off, you know, gets his ass on the.

922
00:57:49,020 –> 00:57:49,980
On the rocket.

923
00:57:53,980 –> 00:57:57,280
There’s no parallel for that in E. T.

924
00:58:00,320 –> 00:58:03,760
Even the male scientist that comes to the house, the scientist that comes to the

925
00:58:03,760 –> 00:58:06,960
house and like, tries to convince them to, like, give up ET and all this

926
00:58:06,960 –> 00:58:10,600
other kind of. Maybe you could, maybe, but. But

927
00:58:10,600 –> 00:58:13,520
it’s not. And there’s a. I think there’s a clear reason why that’s not a

928
00:58:13,520 –> 00:58:15,840
one to one parallel, but go ahead. Sorry, I was just gonna say that. I

929
00:58:15,840 –> 00:58:18,920
was gonna say like, I think the idea too, the concept or the difference here

930
00:58:18,920 –> 00:58:22,740
is like ET Was essentially made

931
00:58:22,740 –> 00:58:26,300
for kids. Right, you’re right. Yeah, that was, that was written for kids. They

932
00:58:26,300 –> 00:58:29,620
wanted. They wanted kids to love the movie so they had no choice but to

933
00:58:29,620 –> 00:58:33,460
not have her character in the movie. Right, right. Whereas Project Hail Mary, to

934
00:58:33,460 –> 00:58:37,020
our point before, there’s bits and pieces. It.

935
00:58:37,100 –> 00:58:40,620
It, it’s like, it’s like Disney movies. Like when you go to watch a Disney

936
00:58:40,620 –> 00:58:43,340
movie with your kid, there’s humor in it that you get that your kid doesn’t

937
00:58:43,340 –> 00:58:47,100
get. Right. Like this. I think Project Hail Mary, that’s the

938
00:58:47,100 –> 00:58:50,860
same kind of environment where it. There’s pieces of Project Hail

939
00:58:50,860 –> 00:58:54,540
Mary that are like, for everybody. They did a really nice

940
00:58:54,540 –> 00:58:58,300
Job making. Like, not every bit of the movie

941
00:58:58,300 –> 00:59:01,780
was for us. Not every bit of the movie was for your son. Not every

942
00:59:01,780 –> 00:59:05,059
bit of the movie was for my daughter. But we can all sit there and

943
00:59:05,059 –> 00:59:08,580
watch it and still enjoy the movie at different pieces and components for the same.

944
00:59:08,580 –> 00:59:12,340
For. For different reasons. We all enjoy that movie for different reasons, which

945
00:59:12,340 –> 00:59:16,100
ET Wasn’t trying to do. So. Right. I do agree. I think

946
00:59:16,100 –> 00:59:19,820
her statement still holds true in a sense that, like, think about. Think about

947
00:59:19,820 –> 00:59:22,780
this way. What other movie

948
00:59:23,820 –> 00:59:27,260
depicts aliens in a positive light like that?

949
00:59:27,500 –> 00:59:31,260
In a warm and fuzzy light in a car, an actual

950
00:59:31,260 –> 00:59:34,780
character light, where it’s somebody that you want to associate

951
00:59:34,780 –> 00:59:38,540
yourself with. Like, think about all the other Alien movies that are available to us,

952
00:59:38,620 –> 00:59:42,460
whether it’s Aliens, Predator, some

953
00:59:42,460 –> 00:59:45,980
of the. Even Guardians of the Galaxy to a certain degree. Like, there’s only some

954
00:59:45,980 –> 00:59:48,060
of those aliens you want to be around. Not all of them. Some of them

955
00:59:48,060 –> 00:59:51,780
are bad. Like, it’s like, there’s no other movie. The movie did a nice job

956
00:59:51,780 –> 00:59:55,500
trying to make it, like, relatable, even

957
00:59:55,500 –> 00:59:59,260
though it was Alien, so to speak. So I think this is part of.

958
00:59:59,260 –> 01:00:02,900
I think what you’re sensing is part of a sea shift that’s beginning to occur,

959
01:00:02,900 –> 01:00:06,260
and this is why. This is. This is part of our thing today. Right.

960
01:00:06,740 –> 01:00:10,350
I think there’s a cultural shift occurring where

961
01:00:11,390 –> 01:00:14,630
we are moving away from, and this is why

962
01:00:14,630 –> 01:00:18,310
Disclosure Day didn’t work. Like, Disclosure Day

963
01:00:18,310 –> 01:00:21,350
should have worked. I didn’t see that yet. I want. I do want to see

964
01:00:21,350 –> 01:00:24,950
that. Okay. So the

965
01:00:24,950 –> 01:00:28,110
I. And by the way, I haven’t seen it either. But when I say work,

966
01:00:28,510 –> 01:00:31,830
I don’t mean work in terms of the film or in terms of the subject

967
01:00:31,830 –> 01:00:34,910
matter. I mean work in terms of box office numbers.

968
01:00:35,980 –> 01:00:39,180
The box office numbers are reflective of the

969
01:00:39,340 –> 01:00:42,940
cultural shift that has occurred. But

970
01:00:42,940 –> 01:00:46,620
Hollywood is, like, two to three years behind the curve on this one.

971
01:00:47,580 –> 01:00:51,380
So there’s a movie out right now called Upset. It’s a.

972
01:00:51,380 –> 01:00:55,220
Either Obsession. No, Back rooms. Backrooms, which

973
01:00:55,220 –> 01:00:58,860
is based off I saw Obsession. I didn’t see Back Rooms yet either. Okay. Or

974
01:00:58,860 –> 01:01:02,540
it might be Obsessions. I don’t know. Anyway, I think it is

975
01:01:02,540 –> 01:01:06,300
obsessions based off of some YouTube short about back rooms or

976
01:01:06,300 –> 01:01:09,940
whatever. It doesn’t matter. Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know.

977
01:01:10,020 –> 01:01:13,700
So the first time I saw the trailer for Whatever this Thing Is,

978
01:01:13,700 –> 01:01:17,540
it’s, like, blowing it away. I was like,

979
01:01:17,540 –> 01:01:20,620
this is like Blair Witch Project. Why do I need to watch this again? And

980
01:01:20,620 –> 01:01:24,420
I moved on, and that was my first initial, like blush

981
01:01:24,420 –> 01:01:27,860
on it. Right. But it represents

982
01:01:27,940 –> 01:01:31,660
again that shift where we’re going to go the business

983
01:01:31,660 –> 01:01:35,000
of Hollywood. We’re going to go grab an original idea from

984
01:01:35,000 –> 01:01:37,680
YouTube, which they should have been doing 15 years ago

985
01:01:39,440 –> 01:01:43,200
in Hollywood. And we’re going to give these YouTubers who don’t

986
01:01:43,200 –> 01:01:46,920
have a SAG card and don’t know what unionization is, we’re going to give them

987
01:01:46,920 –> 01:01:50,720
$100 million and tell them to go make a movie. And

988
01:01:50,720 –> 01:01:54,560
actually 100 million. We’re going to give them 15 million. They did

989
01:01:54,560 –> 01:01:57,560
that movie for 1 million. They did a movie for 1 million. Oh, even better.

990
01:01:57,560 –> 01:02:01,330
Well, if, if we’re talking about obsessions, yeah, that movie was made for about

991
01:02:01,330 –> 01:02:04,450
a million bucks. One million bucks. Million bucks.

992
01:02:05,170 –> 01:02:09,010
We’re going to give a YouTuber a million dollars. We’re gonna make back. How

993
01:02:09,010 –> 01:02:12,370
much money is that movie made? It’s in the hundreds of millions at this point.

994
01:02:12,450 –> 01:02:16,170
Insane. Insane. We

995
01:02:16,170 –> 01:02:19,730
work with startups in our regular lives. That’s an insane

996
01:02:19,730 –> 01:02:23,570
roi. That’s. That’s a unicorn, as we say in the startup world. That is

997
01:02:23,570 –> 01:02:27,100
a unicorn. That is a unicorn, but it’s a

998
01:02:27,100 –> 01:02:30,540
unicorn from YouTube. Well, who is the predominant

999
01:02:30,540 –> 01:02:34,260
audience for YouTube who grew up with cutting their eye teeth visually

1000
01:02:34,260 –> 01:02:37,980
on YouTube? It was the millennials. It wasn’t us. You know,

1001
01:02:37,980 –> 01:02:41,420
our generation created the platform that is YouTube,

1002
01:02:41,739 –> 01:02:45,020
but we didn’t cut our eye teeth on the content. And taking that thing to

1003
01:02:45,020 –> 01:02:48,780
the next level, that’s the millennials and the gen zers. And so

1004
01:02:48,780 –> 01:02:51,580
the cultural shift that’s occurring in film

1005
01:02:52,500 –> 01:02:56,340
is away from our generation and by the way, away from the boomers

1006
01:02:56,340 –> 01:03:00,180
too. Like a movie like, honestly, a movie like Disclosure

1007
01:03:00,500 –> 01:03:03,940
should have never been made. Spielberg should be making

1008
01:03:04,660 –> 01:03:08,220
small, intimate arts

1009
01:03:08,220 –> 01:03:11,940
types films with like Dame Judi Dench and like,

1010
01:03:12,500 –> 01:03:16,300
you know, some other old male actor, Sam

1011
01:03:16,300 –> 01:03:20,020
Neill, I mean, he passed away this weekend, but Sam Neill, like Sam Neill

1012
01:03:20,020 –> 01:03:23,380
and Dame Judi Dench showing up, talking in hushed tones

1013
01:03:24,020 –> 01:03:27,740
about, you know, some existential, ordinary people crisis. Like

1014
01:03:27,740 –> 01:03:31,100
those are the kinds of movies that. But he can’t get that movie made. He

1015
01:03:31,100 –> 01:03:34,900
can’t get that movie made because the economics of movies have been so warped by

1016
01:03:35,220 –> 01:03:38,260
Marvel and everything else. He can’t get that movie made.

1017
01:03:38,900 –> 01:03:42,300
But that’s the kind of movie he should be making for the boomer crowd. That’s

1018
01:03:42,300 –> 01:03:45,630
what they want us

1019
01:03:45,870 –> 01:03:49,670
as Gen Xers. We’re gonna get skipped over. It’s fine. It’s

1020
01:03:49,670 –> 01:03:53,270
the usual. It’s fine. Don’t bother talking to us because we have A higher

1021
01:03:53,270 –> 01:03:57,070
tolerance level for all of this garbage. That’s why. Because they

1022
01:03:57,070 –> 01:04:00,230
know they can just pump out whatever they want. We’ll be like, ah, whatever. We’ll

1023
01:04:00,230 –> 01:04:03,630
just go see it. Yeah, whatever. I’ll go watching a romancer on Apple tv. It’ll

1024
01:04:03,630 –> 01:04:04,110
be fine.

1025
01:04:07,710 –> 01:04:11,510
But the millennial audiences are different. They’re. And

1026
01:04:11,510 –> 01:04:14,910
now the Hollywood culture is moving more and more towards them.

1027
01:04:15,330 –> 01:04:18,530
And I think Project Hail Mary is, along with

1028
01:04:18,930 –> 01:04:22,610
obsessions or backrooms or whatever the hell it’s called, is a canary in the

1029
01:04:22,610 –> 01:04:26,050
coal mine kind of film. This is going to tell you where things are going.

1030
01:04:26,370 –> 01:04:29,250
And by the way, Ryan Gosling in that. In that movie. And I see this

1031
01:04:29,250 –> 01:04:32,770
now more in the second viewing of it than I do even did in the

1032
01:04:32,770 –> 01:04:35,130
first viewing, because I kind of got in the first viewing, but now it’s really

1033
01:04:35,130 –> 01:04:38,930
solidified with the second viewing. Ryan Gosling is your

1034
01:04:38,930 –> 01:04:41,650
new archetype for a hero with no superpowers.

1035
01:04:43,830 –> 01:04:47,270
Maybe. Yeah, maybe he’s the ultimate archetype. Like, you’re going to see a ton of,

1036
01:04:47,270 –> 01:04:50,710
like, archetypical Ryan Gosling type

1037
01:04:50,710 –> 01:04:54,190
character acting going on in millennial heroic

1038
01:04:54,190 –> 01:04:57,710
movies moving forward over the next five to 10 years. Right. Because it just

1039
01:04:57,710 –> 01:05:01,470
works. Their version of a hero is. Is smaller

1040
01:05:01,470 –> 01:05:05,030
scale. Right. It’s minor. It’s. You did this one thing that had this

1041
01:05:05,030 –> 01:05:08,670
huge impact. Like, I’m not saying their impact isn’t big. I’m saying the.

1042
01:05:08,670 –> 01:05:12,430
The millennials have this, like, I’m gonna control what’s in front

1043
01:05:12,430 –> 01:05:15,870
of me. I’m not gonna look, I’m gonna have blinders on. I’m gonna solve this.

1044
01:05:16,030 –> 01:05:19,110
I’m gonna solve this one problem in front of me in hopes that this one

1045
01:05:19,110 –> 01:05:22,950
problem has a ripple effect and has a big impact. And don’t ask me to

1046
01:05:22,950 –> 01:05:26,790
do any deep blue hero stuff. I’m not a boomer. Don’t ask me

1047
01:05:26,790 –> 01:05:30,550
to do any deep blue hero stuff. I’m not jumping on the grenade. Right.

1048
01:05:30,550 –> 01:05:33,910
Like, I’m not gonna jump on the grave grenade. I’ll try to find a piece

1049
01:05:33,910 –> 01:05:37,510
of metal to st over the grenade so that we save everybody, including myself.

1050
01:05:38,710 –> 01:05:42,310
Yeah. Because I can’t. There’s the great. The great scene in there. The great scene

1051
01:05:42,310 –> 01:05:46,070
in there where he’s, like, sitting there and they, like, Sandra Hooler is,

1052
01:05:46,070 –> 01:05:49,590
like, gonna give Ryan Gosling the choice to get on the thing. Yeah. Yeah.

1053
01:05:50,469 –> 01:05:53,990
And she already knew, by the way. When I saw this again, I thought, oh,

1054
01:05:53,990 –> 01:05:56,830
my God, she’s a Gen Xer. Oh, my God, that’s a gen Xer, move right

1055
01:05:56,830 –> 01:06:00,560
there. We’re just going. Since it’s come out on streaming, I’ve watched this for

1056
01:06:01,120 –> 01:06:04,720
three additional times. So four times total. I’ve watched this movie now four times.

1057
01:06:04,720 –> 01:06:07,440
Okay, so you know exactly, so you know exactly what I’m talking about.

1058
01:06:09,280 –> 01:06:11,640
She did such a good job in that movie. You could see it in her

1059
01:06:11,640 –> 01:06:14,600
eye. And she was just acting. It wasn’t real, but I, I swear to God,

1060
01:06:14,600 –> 01:06:15,760
I think she thought it was real.

1061
01:06:19,680 –> 01:06:23,280
Switch. That happens on her face. You know how, like, you know, like in, in

1062
01:06:23,280 –> 01:06:26,960
the real world, we have these micro expressions that you have no control over.

1063
01:06:27,310 –> 01:06:30,710
I don’t know how she did it, but I’m telling you, she believed what she

1064
01:06:30,710 –> 01:06:34,430
was doing was real. At some point, the micro expressions on her face, you

1065
01:06:34,430 –> 01:06:37,710
could see the click and you’re like, whoa. She’s, I’m telling you,

1066
01:06:38,270 –> 01:06:41,470
Sandra has some millennial in her life

1067
01:06:41,950 –> 01:06:45,710
that she has had to shanghai into doing something, and they didn’t want to

1068
01:06:45,710 –> 01:06:49,470
do it. And she just went, well, okay, this is going to

1069
01:06:49,470 –> 01:06:50,750
hurt you more than it’s going to hurt me.

1070
01:06:52,990 –> 01:06:56,600
Exactly. I, I, I saw it as I watched that movie on the, I don’t

1071
01:06:56,600 –> 01:07:00,360
know, whatever, the third or fourth time, and I’m sitting there going, dude, she believes,

1072
01:07:00,360 –> 01:07:03,120
I swear to God, she believes this. Like, I don’t think, you know, like, they

1073
01:07:03,120 –> 01:07:06,520
talk about method actors sometimes where they get so engulfed in their

1074
01:07:06,520 –> 01:07:09,720
character that they become that character for that period of time. And then

1075
01:07:10,280 –> 01:07:14,040
like, and you, you’ll hear this about really good performances, right?

1076
01:07:14,040 –> 01:07:17,800
Like people, I’m trying to remember. Well, the Heath Ledger one that you talk,

1077
01:07:18,040 –> 01:07:21,080
specifically that we’re talking about right now in the Dark Knight,

1078
01:07:21,320 –> 01:07:24,520
supposedly he never got out of that, which is what was his demise,

1079
01:07:25,170 –> 01:07:28,770
right? Like, he was never able to get himself out of character. So that was

1080
01:07:28,770 –> 01:07:32,330
part of what happened with him in his death. And there have been several other

1081
01:07:32,330 –> 01:07:35,410
people. Robin Williams have, has done it, and there are people,

1082
01:07:36,050 –> 01:07:39,850
Dustin Hoffman and Rain Man. He talks about how long it took him

1083
01:07:39,850 –> 01:07:43,490
to stop acting like that because they get so engulfed in this. I

1084
01:07:43,490 –> 01:07:47,290
think she did that without knowing she did it. But yeah, I’m just to

1085
01:07:47,290 –> 01:07:50,450
your point, she must have had some vision in her mind of some millennial that

1086
01:07:50,450 –> 01:07:54,230
she had to deal with in her personal life. And it just took over. She

1087
01:07:54,230 –> 01:07:57,550
was just like, now, now

1088
01:07:58,110 –> 01:08:01,870
I see. Well, and, and, and, and you’re not going to

1089
01:08:01,870 –> 01:08:05,150
ask. This is the thing. Heroics. Right?

1090
01:08:07,470 –> 01:08:10,590
And this is why, this is again, this is why Superman works. So the new

1091
01:08:10,590 –> 01:08:14,350
Superman works the Superman to Ryan Gosling

1092
01:08:14,350 –> 01:08:18,180
link is it. Click, it’s there. And then the other

1093
01:08:18,180 –> 01:08:21,660
movie that I see recently, that sort of. Because. Because for me, one

1094
01:08:21,660 –> 01:08:24,540
movie, okay, that’s a one off, whatever,

1095
01:08:25,340 –> 01:08:28,900
two movies. Now, there might be something, but three

1096
01:08:28,900 –> 01:08:32,379
movies is a pattern. That’s. That’s. That’s basic

1097
01:08:32,379 –> 01:08:36,020
fundamentals of the rules of math, right? It is correct. One could be an

1098
01:08:36,020 –> 01:08:39,700
anomaly. Two is a coincidence. Three is a pattern. Three is a pattern. So my

1099
01:08:39,700 –> 01:08:43,110
third movie that I would like to submit to a

1100
01:08:43,190 –> 01:08:46,870
orderly film world or disorderly one, like the one we’ve set up

1101
01:08:46,870 –> 01:08:50,710
here so far is Masters of the Universe. So I don’t know if you’ve

1102
01:08:50,710 –> 01:08:53,830
seen Masters of the Universe. You’re gonna have to do some of the talk because

1103
01:08:53,830 –> 01:08:57,350
I did not see this yet. And I really, really, really, really wanted to.

1104
01:08:57,990 –> 01:09:01,670
And again, so something that I think that you alluded to

1105
01:09:01,670 –> 01:09:05,110
in. In our correspondence about this episode

1106
01:09:05,510 –> 01:09:09,230
that, you know, we grew up with. Super. With. With. Sorry. We

1107
01:09:09,230 –> 01:09:12,270
grew up with He Man. Right. Like, we grew up with the Mattel version of

1108
01:09:12,270 –> 01:09:16,000
he man. The cartoon version of he mail. He Man.

1109
01:09:16,000 –> 01:09:19,840
Sorry. I’m sorry. And Dolph Lundgren, right? So Dolph under played he man

1110
01:09:19,840 –> 01:09:23,560
in the movie when we were kids, so I had to see

1111
01:09:23,560 –> 01:09:26,680
this. I have to see this movie because I want to compare it to all

1112
01:09:26,680 –> 01:09:30,280
of that, and I know that you can, so I’m

1113
01:09:30,280 –> 01:09:33,800
curious to what you’re thinking about it. And I don’t care if you ruined

1114
01:09:33,800 –> 01:09:37,360
Plotter, but I’m gonna watch it anyways. Don’t worry about it. Okay? I’m not gonna

1115
01:09:37,360 –> 01:09:40,240
ruin plot. I’m not gonna reply. I. What I will say is this. All the

1116
01:09:40,240 –> 01:09:43,300
beats are there. So Dolph Lundgren shows up

1117
01:09:43,940 –> 01:09:47,140
in a great bit in the gym. It’s

1118
01:09:47,140 –> 01:09:50,340
spectacular. So Dolph Lundgren shows up.

1119
01:09:52,180 –> 01:09:55,980
Jared Leto absolutely kills it as

1120
01:09:55,980 –> 01:09:59,780
Skeletor. Oh, my God. Kills it. If there were an award

1121
01:09:59,780 –> 01:10:03,340
for, like, Villain of the Year, beyond, like, Razzie, if there were

1122
01:10:03,340 –> 01:10:07,110
Oscars given out for villains other than to, like, keep ledger, they should give one

1123
01:10:07,110 –> 01:10:10,950
to Jared Leto, number one. You never see his face. You never see his facial

1124
01:10:10,950 –> 01:10:13,950
expressions, but he totally, completely embodies

1125
01:10:14,350 –> 01:10:17,990
Skeletor. And you don’t need to see his face. Like, you believe

1126
01:10:17,990 –> 01:10:21,350
it. You’re like, oh, yeah, that’s. Yep. Even down to the

1127
01:10:21,350 –> 01:10:24,030
sarcasm, the wit, the.

1128
01:10:26,750 –> 01:10:30,590
The. Like, this is ridiculous and stupid. What are we doing here?

1129
01:10:31,550 –> 01:10:35,250
Look, that all of that Leto

1130
01:10:35,250 –> 01:10:38,170
embodies that character. He crushed it.

1131
01:10:40,570 –> 01:10:44,210
The supporting characters around he

1132
01:10:44,210 –> 01:10:46,890
man are Interesting. So

1133
01:10:49,930 –> 01:10:53,770
I’m. They had to set up the backstory, right. For all the

1134
01:10:53,770 –> 01:10:56,690
people that don’t know the show. And so they spent a lot of time on

1135
01:10:56,690 –> 01:10:59,890
setting up the backstory. And it was a good setup. Like, the first 15 minutes

1136
01:10:59,890 –> 01:11:01,560
is just good backstory setup.

1137
01:11:04,430 –> 01:11:08,150
The guy who plays he man. Let me bring up his name

1138
01:11:08,150 –> 01:11:11,390
for just a second here, because I always forget it. By the way, he’s also

1139
01:11:11,390 –> 01:11:14,910
in a movie called. Which we watched in my house recently, called

1140
01:11:14,990 –> 01:11:18,430
Sheep Detectives. I love that movie.

1141
01:11:19,550 –> 01:11:21,950
Come on. That movie’s great.

1142
01:11:25,630 –> 01:11:28,790
It’s a movie that I didn’t. I didn’t think they were gonna. It was possible

1143
01:11:28,790 –> 01:11:30,730
to be made, just put it that way.

1144
01:11:32,650 –> 01:11:36,450
So, yeah, Nicholas Galitzine. That’s

1145
01:11:36,450 –> 01:11:40,010
right. Nicholas Galitzine plays. Plays.

1146
01:11:41,210 –> 01:11:43,450
Plays he man. Right? And

1147
01:11:45,850 –> 01:11:49,690
Prince Adam, right. Separated from his sword. And he plays it with

1148
01:11:49,770 –> 01:11:53,410
such. He plays

1149
01:11:53,410 –> 01:11:56,170
Prince Adam with such sincerity and believability,

1150
01:11:57,370 –> 01:12:01,210
and he plays it genuinely, honestly, like he’s genuinely

1151
01:12:01,210 –> 01:12:04,970
trying to be he man. So there’s no. Like. And this is. So this is

1152
01:12:04,970 –> 01:12:08,610
the link from Superman to Ryan Gosling and project

1153
01:12:08,610 –> 01:12:12,210
Hail Mary Ryland Grace. So from Superman to Ryland Grace to Prince

1154
01:12:12,210 –> 01:12:15,290
Adam, here’s the link. Sincerity,

1155
01:12:15,770 –> 01:12:19,130
that’s the link. Not cynicism.

1156
01:12:20,250 –> 01:12:24,040
Not. Sarcasm. Not. I’m trying to look

1157
01:12:24,040 –> 01:12:27,520
for something deeper. Matter of fact, there’s this whole sequence with Skeletor

1158
01:12:28,080 –> 01:12:31,640
where, like, one of the characters is trying to find something deeper, and. Or no,

1159
01:12:31,640 –> 01:12:34,840
I know it is. Yeah. Prince Adam’s trying to find something deeper in Skeletor. And

1160
01:12:34,840 –> 01:12:38,400
Skeletor’s like, I’m just evil. Nothing. There’s nothing deeper than that.

1161
01:12:40,480 –> 01:12:44,320
Like, I’m just right. I’m just evil. But

1162
01:12:44,640 –> 01:12:48,360
you have to understand, Millennials came up in an environment set

1163
01:12:48,360 –> 01:12:50,560
for them by Gen Xers where we,

1164
01:12:52,890 –> 01:12:56,570
quite frankly, had to see the gray in the world, which is why

1165
01:12:56,570 –> 01:13:00,410
Batman works for us, because we really wanted black and white, where, like,

1166
01:13:00,410 –> 01:13:04,090
the evil was really like, there’s evil and there’s good, and there’s

1167
01:13:04,090 –> 01:13:07,850
this. Unfortunately, if you are a child of divorce,

1168
01:13:07,850 –> 01:13:11,650
if you grow up in a culture of unraveling, there’s a lot of nuances and

1169
01:13:11,650 –> 01:13:15,130
grays, and you have to figure out how to navigate that. You also

1170
01:13:15,290 –> 01:13:18,510
wind up with a species of. And I’ve said this on the show before, you

1171
01:13:18,510 –> 01:13:19,910
wind up in a species of

1172
01:13:21,990 –> 01:13:25,030
cynicism and sort of a lack of.

1173
01:13:25,670 –> 01:13:28,950
Not even lack of sincerity becomes a

1174
01:13:29,190 –> 01:13:32,910
weapon to be used against you rather than a tool of

1175
01:13:32,910 –> 01:13:36,630
heroism. And what you see from Ryland

1176
01:13:36,630 –> 01:13:40,390
Grace through To Superman, through now to Prince Adam and Masters of

1177
01:13:40,390 –> 01:13:44,220
the Universe is absolute total sincerity. Like,

1178
01:13:44,220 –> 01:13:47,940
that was one of the things in he Man. Like, you actually believe he’s

1179
01:13:47,940 –> 01:13:51,780
he man because he believes he’s he Man. And

1180
01:13:51,780 –> 01:13:55,620
he’s not faking. He’s not pretending, he’s not sarcastic.

1181
01:13:55,620 –> 01:13:59,260
He’s not cynical. He’s not going to, like, see the

1182
01:13:59,260 –> 01:14:02,460
gray in the villain at the end. There’s none of that.

1183
01:14:04,300 –> 01:14:05,580
And it’s weird,

1184
01:14:11,750 –> 01:14:14,230
I hate to say this, this. And you’re gonna. You’re gonna take away my Gen

1185
01:14:14,230 –> 01:14:17,750
X bona fights on this. But it’s fine. It’s weirdly refreshing.

1186
01:14:19,590 –> 01:14:23,230
It’s weirdly refreshing. And so

1187
01:14:23,230 –> 01:14:27,030
Masters of the Universe is built for a Gen

1188
01:14:27,030 –> 01:14:30,630
X audience with all the throwbacks and everything to

1189
01:14:30,630 –> 01:14:34,190
things we remember. But it’s.

1190
01:14:34,190 –> 01:14:38,010
It’s built on. That’s the structure that it’s built on top of.

1191
01:14:38,010 –> 01:14:41,050
But what’s inside that structure is millennial sincerity.

1192
01:14:43,690 –> 01:14:47,450
And this is why it hasn’t done well, because it’s trying to bifurcate an audience.

1193
01:14:48,010 –> 01:14:51,689
Rather than going full in one direction or full in another, it’s trying to

1194
01:14:51,689 –> 01:14:55,450
bifurcate an audience and have it both ways. And you can’t have it both ways.

1195
01:14:56,650 –> 01:15:00,410
Well, do you think that’s partly. Partly in. In part because

1196
01:15:01,860 –> 01:15:05,540
the characters can’t do that? Like, think about. Think about what you’re saying,

1197
01:15:05,540 –> 01:15:09,340
right? Like, yeah, the. The characters weren’t written

1198
01:15:09,340 –> 01:15:12,980
like that originally. They weren’t designed for that. They were designed for what they

1199
01:15:12,980 –> 01:15:16,340
were. And like, you’re trying to now. So you’re doing the opposite. You’re trying to

1200
01:15:16,500 –> 01:15:20,100
enforce a. A system or. Or you’re trying to project

1201
01:15:20,100 –> 01:15:23,780
onto the characters what you want them to be instead of who they

1202
01:15:23,780 –> 01:15:27,340
are. Like, that’s. Yeah. So. So Gen Xers are probably

1203
01:15:27,340 –> 01:15:31,150
watching this, going, cut the crap. Yeah. Like, just let him

1204
01:15:31,150 –> 01:15:34,950
be he man. Right? Like, yeah. Where’s Battle Cat? That’s all. Like, I

1205
01:15:34,950 –> 01:15:37,270
really. I want to see what they did with Battle Cat. I want to see

1206
01:15:37,270 –> 01:15:40,950
how they did that. Like, that’s. That’s one of my major things.

1207
01:15:41,670 –> 01:15:45,070
So Battle Cat is in there. I won’t spoil the surprise, but what. Battle Cat

1208
01:15:45,070 –> 01:15:48,590
is in there. What’s the guy? Sergeant. The

1209
01:15:48,590 –> 01:15:51,190
sergeant guy. What’s his name? Oh, yeah, he’s in there, too.

1210
01:15:52,630 –> 01:15:56,320
But they. Did they try to wussify him at all? Like, because, like, if they.

1211
01:15:56,640 –> 01:15:59,120
If they do. If they try to make. If they try to make. That’s what

1212
01:15:59,120 –> 01:16:02,400
I’m saying, though. Like, where you’re. You’ve Got these very.

1213
01:16:03,200 –> 01:16:06,760
By the way, even the women in he man. In the he man universe and

1214
01:16:06,760 –> 01:16:09,280
Masters of the Universe, the women were like,

1215
01:16:09,840 –> 01:16:13,600
macho for. Oh, yeah, yeah. And if they, if they try to change

1216
01:16:13,600 –> 01:16:16,880
that, then no wonder why it’s failing. Like, you can’t do that.

1217
01:16:17,200 –> 01:16:20,640
Well, so part of the other millennial sort of stroking in there

1218
01:16:20,720 –> 01:16:24,300
is. There’s a whole bit in there and it’s a running bit about HR

1219
01:16:24,450 –> 01:16:27,410
are and girl bosses. Yeah.

1220
01:16:28,690 –> 01:16:32,530
But it’s not. It’s not a bit. It’s

1221
01:16:32,530 –> 01:16:36,370
not. It’s a bit that’s designed to. To.

1222
01:16:39,250 –> 01:16:42,690
So there’s Gen X cynicism and sarcasm, and there’s millennial

1223
01:16:42,690 –> 01:16:46,450
cynicism and sarcasm, and it’s definitely millennial cynicism and

1224
01:16:46,450 –> 01:16:50,170
sarcasm. So there’s still this sincerity of like, I want to do

1225
01:16:50,170 –> 01:16:53,960
well at work. And there’s a whole. There’s a whole sequence where he’s

1226
01:16:53,960 –> 01:16:57,760
in prison. Prince Adam gets thrown into prison, and he’s

1227
01:16:57,760 –> 01:17:00,720
in prison with all of the other character. Well, all the other. The pop. Well,

1228
01:17:00,720 –> 01:17:04,200
not all, but a lot of the population of Eternia. And he has to. He

1229
01:17:04,200 –> 01:17:07,680
has to rally them to. To be heroic. And

1230
01:17:08,480 –> 01:17:11,920
he’s like, well, if there’s one thing I learned in hr, it’s. It’s how to

1231
01:17:11,920 –> 01:17:12,400
have a meeting.

1232
01:17:19,490 –> 01:17:23,090
Okay. Yeah. And I’m like, that’s okay. Yeah, That’s.

1233
01:17:23,570 –> 01:17:26,450
That is what the millennials have learned. They’ve learned how to have a meeting.

1234
01:17:29,330 –> 01:17:32,930
And it’s. So it was one of those moments where,

1235
01:17:33,170 –> 01:17:36,850
sure, they know what to do from meeting that

1236
01:17:36,850 –> 01:17:40,370
meeting. Right. They can run the meeting. They can run the meeting and they know

1237
01:17:40,370 –> 01:17:42,460
what everybody’s role should be in the meeting meaning.

1238
01:17:44,220 –> 01:17:47,820
And so it was one of those, like, pokes in the eye a little bit.

1239
01:17:48,540 –> 01:17:52,300
And it works in the context again, of the internal logic of the film.

1240
01:17:52,300 –> 01:17:55,900
All sticks together. It all loops together. It all holds

1241
01:17:56,700 –> 01:17:59,260
even the more ridiculous elements of it hold.

1242
01:18:00,780 –> 01:18:03,900
So I think you’ll enjoy Masters of the Universe. I don’t know that you’ll give

1243
01:18:03,900 –> 01:18:07,620
it an A. My. So now, now I will

1244
01:18:07,620 –> 01:18:11,220
say this. This. You and I grew up with one version of Masters of

1245
01:18:11,220 –> 01:18:14,420
Universe. Kevin Smith created

1246
01:18:14,740 –> 01:18:18,500
Mall Rats and Clerks, and that guy created a version of

1247
01:18:18,500 –> 01:18:22,260
Masters of the Universe for Netflix a couple years ago. That’s the version

1248
01:18:22,260 –> 01:18:25,460
my nine year old knows. And I think that’s the version that most folks between

1249
01:18:25,460 –> 01:18:28,580
five and nine, if they’re watching it at all or know.

1250
01:18:29,380 –> 01:18:33,180
And he was. So he gave Masters of the Universe a big

1251
01:18:33,180 –> 01:18:36,650
thumbs down because it

1252
01:18:36,650 –> 01:18:40,170
Wasn’t like what he’s seen in the Kevin Smith version.

1253
01:18:42,570 –> 01:18:44,890
And I had to tell him, listen, kid,

1254
01:18:46,170 –> 01:18:49,770
what you’re watching on Netflix isn’t.

1255
01:18:50,170 –> 01:18:53,850
That’s not the real thing. That’s something that like this guy named

1256
01:18:53,850 –> 01:18:57,210
Kevin Smith made. And you don’t need to know who Kevin Smith is. You don’t

1257
01:18:57,210 –> 01:19:01,050
need to know how, to use a millennial term, how problematic he actually is.

1258
01:19:01,390 –> 01:19:05,230
You don’t know any of that. You don’t even know any of that. My

1259
01:19:05,230 –> 01:19:08,910
point is, that’s not the real thing. You’re watching a reboot. So you’re basing

1260
01:19:08,990 –> 01:19:12,630
your idea of what you think is original off of a reboot. But

1261
01:19:12,630 –> 01:19:15,350
yeah, he was, he was out. He was like, well, this isn’t this and this

1262
01:19:15,350 –> 01:19:18,590
isn’t that. And they do this. And I’m like, that doesn’t.

1263
01:19:18,990 –> 01:19:22,110
That’s not the thing you’re watching. This is based off of the original thing, the

1264
01:19:22,110 –> 01:19:25,470
OG thing. And he’s like, well, all right, fine. Where can I get more popcorn?

1265
01:19:27,160 –> 01:19:30,800
So is the Kevin Smith version actually called Masters of the Universe? Yeah, it’s called

1266
01:19:30,800 –> 01:19:33,480
he Man. The Masters of the Universe. Yeah. Okay, all right. I don’t know why.

1267
01:19:33,480 –> 01:19:36,160
Yeah, you can find it on Netflix. Yeah, I’m going to go look for it,

1268
01:19:36,160 –> 01:19:39,880
actually, because I don’t remember this. I’m probably going to watch one

1269
01:19:39,880 –> 01:19:43,640
episode and go, oh, that’s right, I’ve seen this. Yeah, yeah,

1270
01:19:43,640 –> 01:19:46,120
yeah. Watch with your 20. Watch with your 24 year old. Be prepared to be

1271
01:19:46,120 –> 01:19:47,400
disappointed. Anyway,

1272
01:19:52,370 –> 01:19:55,690
To sum up today, so we talked about these four movies, right? We talked about.

1273
01:19:55,690 –> 01:19:58,530
Well, not really four movies. We talked about. Well, yeah, we did. We talked about

1274
01:19:58,530 –> 01:20:01,530
Superman and the Dark Knight and we talked about Masters of the Universe and Project

1275
01:20:01,530 –> 01:20:05,250
Hail Mary. And I do think

1276
01:20:05,250 –> 01:20:09,050
that, I

1277
01:20:09,050 –> 01:20:12,250
do think we are, I do think we’re experiencing a sea change in

1278
01:20:12,250 –> 01:20:15,850
heroics on film. And I think that that’s fundamentally a

1279
01:20:15,850 –> 01:20:19,490
thing that whether it’s good or bad, will time will tell.

1280
01:20:19,920 –> 01:20:23,200
But I think it’s, it’s, it’s been growing for a while and I think, I

1281
01:20:23,200 –> 01:20:26,760
think the wave is starting to crash into the shore because

1282
01:20:26,760 –> 01:20:30,520
people do need to see heroic archetypes

1283
01:20:30,520 –> 01:20:34,160
on film. And we have gone through a season or

1284
01:20:34,800 –> 01:20:38,440
a 25 year crisis period where heroics have been

1285
01:20:38,440 –> 01:20:41,920
tarnished. Sincerity has been tarnished. Like the biggest

1286
01:20:41,920 –> 01:20:45,680
sin that you can have is to be sincere,

1287
01:20:46,310 –> 01:20:49,830
right? To genuinely believe something. And actually it goes along with something that I’ve said

1288
01:20:50,790 –> 01:20:53,590
on this show before when I talk about restoration. Right.

1289
01:20:54,710 –> 01:20:58,430
I do think that if Gen X doesn’t get its act together, we will be

1290
01:20:58,430 –> 01:21:02,270
left behind in a restoration period. I do think we will be as

1291
01:21:02,270 –> 01:21:05,550
a generation. And I think the way you’re going to be able to tell this

1292
01:21:05,550 –> 01:21:09,270
is in the next presidential election, because the people

1293
01:21:09,270 –> 01:21:13,000
who are going to be running for president, at least as of this, you

1294
01:21:13,000 –> 01:21:16,680
know, recording, the obvious candidates to run for president

1295
01:21:16,760 –> 01:21:20,360
right now are Marco Rubio, who’s a Gen Xer, he’s

1296
01:21:20,360 –> 01:21:24,120
57, I think. Or 54. Gavin

1297
01:21:24,120 –> 01:21:27,640
Newsom, who’s 57, he’s a Gen Xer. I know

1298
01:21:27,720 –> 01:21:31,440
we’re weird to think about it. The joker crossed with Patrick

1299
01:21:31,440 –> 01:21:34,040
Bateman is 57, but that’s him.

1300
01:21:34,600 –> 01:21:38,320
Kamala Harris is 60. She’s on the

1301
01:21:38,320 –> 01:21:42,030
cusp of. Of being a Gen Xer. Okay. And then

1302
01:21:42,030 –> 01:21:45,110
the next candidates down from them

1303
01:21:45,590 –> 01:21:48,550
are JD Vance and aoc.

1304
01:21:49,830 –> 01:21:53,350
That’s your top five, folks. And JD Vance and AOC

1305
01:21:53,430 –> 01:21:56,830
are both an older millennial, that’s JD Vance. And a younger

1306
01:21:56,830 –> 01:22:00,590
millennial. That’s aoc. She’s not Gen Z, She’s a millennial. Yeah,

1307
01:22:00,590 –> 01:22:04,150
she’s a millennial. If the Gen Xers don’t get their crap

1308
01:22:04,150 –> 01:22:07,950
together, the presidency will skip us and

1309
01:22:07,950 –> 01:22:11,630
go right to the millennials. That’s okay, though, because what’ll

1310
01:22:11,630 –> 01:22:15,110
happen is the millennials will do something so dumb that the Gen X will have,

1311
01:22:15,110 –> 01:22:18,310
like, you will vote the Gen X in just out of principle at that point.

1312
01:22:20,470 –> 01:22:23,230
Well, this gets to something else that I’ve. That I’ve been thinking for a while,

1313
01:22:23,230 –> 01:22:26,950
which is we will be

1314
01:22:26,950 –> 01:22:28,550
asked, I think as a generation,

1315
01:22:30,560 –> 01:22:34,040
we’ll be pulled out of a hole sometime like 30, 40 years from now when

1316
01:22:34,040 –> 01:22:37,400
we’re all in our 70s and everybody’s forgotten us. We pulled out of a hole

1317
01:22:37,400 –> 01:22:40,800
somewhere to solve a problem that Gen Z can’t solve.

1318
01:22:41,360 –> 01:22:44,720
And Gen Alpha won’t have the education or the ability because, like,

1319
01:22:44,880 –> 01:22:48,720
they’ll be. They’ll be just critical thinking. They like critical thinking. Right.

1320
01:22:48,960 –> 01:22:52,000
Well, and they’re just. And they’re just going to be like, the cusp of, like,

1321
01:22:52,000 –> 01:22:55,600
coming into their adulthood at that point. So they just won’t have the life experience

1322
01:22:55,840 –> 01:22:59,580
right. For it. Right. And the millennials will be, like,

1323
01:22:59,660 –> 01:23:03,140
flummoxed as to how to solve the problem with all their sincerity. They’ll be very

1324
01:23:03,140 –> 01:23:06,180
sincere about what the problem is. They will know what the problem is. They will

1325
01:23:06,180 –> 01:23:09,900
have a meeting about the problem, but they won’t

1326
01:23:09,900 –> 01:23:13,739
actually know how to solve the problem. And I think of the bit in.

1327
01:23:13,740 –> 01:23:17,580
In Armageddon when. And this is a deep cut, but

1328
01:23:17,580 –> 01:23:21,020
I think of the bit in Armageddon where Bruce Willis goes up

1329
01:23:21,180 –> 01:23:24,820
to the. And the crew go up to the Russian cosmonauts and they

1330
01:23:24,820 –> 01:23:28,160
rescue the cosmonauts from the space station and they can’t make the whole thing work.

1331
01:23:28,160 –> 01:23:31,840
And the Russian cosmonaut pulls out a wrench and he starts hitting things and finally

1332
01:23:31,840 –> 01:23:35,560
it works. And he goes, made in Russia,

1333
01:23:35,720 –> 01:23:37,880
made in America, all parts made in China.

1334
01:23:41,400 –> 01:23:45,240
And that’s. That’s Gen X. That’s it. We’re just gonna

1335
01:23:45,240 –> 01:23:49,080
hit it with a wrench when we’re like 80 and then just, peace out. Just.

1336
01:23:49,080 –> 01:23:51,640
Just leave us alone. Put us back in the hole. Like, we’re fine. We’re done.

1337
01:23:53,230 –> 01:23:57,030
Put me back in the retirement home. Let me listen to Metallica in the.

1338
01:23:57,030 –> 01:24:00,710
In the retirement home. Or like, oh, whatever

1339
01:24:00,710 –> 01:24:04,430
your flavor was. Whatever. DMC in the. In the retirement home. Because I’m

1340
01:24:04,430 –> 01:24:07,270
telling that music is not playing in there right now. No, we ain’t playing there

1341
01:24:07,270 –> 01:24:10,750
right now. When we get there, we’re gonna have NWA and Run

1342
01:24:10,750 –> 01:24:14,350
DMC or Bon Jovi and Metallica, whatever your

1343
01:24:14,350 –> 01:24:18,030
flavor is at that time. But I need poison on

1344
01:24:18,030 –> 01:24:21,550
repeat. Pour some sugar on me and I’ll be like 90.

1345
01:24:25,180 –> 01:24:28,940
But my point is that if we don’t get our act together around sincerity, if

1346
01:24:28,940 –> 01:24:32,620
we don’t get our act together as a generation, I. I think

1347
01:24:33,020 –> 01:24:36,460
we’re gonna miss something culturally that’s actually really important.

1348
01:24:37,660 –> 01:24:41,340
And we’ve kind of. We’ve kind of spoken in broad terms, broad

1349
01:24:41,340 –> 01:24:45,060
cultural terms about archetypes and about generations on this

1350
01:24:45,060 –> 01:24:48,220
podcast. And I. This is supposed to be a light hearted. It is. It’s a

1351
01:24:48,220 –> 01:24:52,020
light hearted, you know, episode. Because it’s mid summer. It’s just a

1352
01:24:52,020 –> 01:24:55,210
nice little break for us. So I don’t want anybody to take this as, like,

1353
01:24:56,330 –> 01:25:00,090
what do you call it? Rock? Ribbed, you know, whatever. We’re

1354
01:25:00,090 –> 01:25:03,490
not vilifying America here. We’re not vilifying generations here. We’re making broad stroke

1355
01:25:03,490 –> 01:25:07,130
generalizations and tying them to movies. And I think it’s important

1356
01:25:07,450 –> 01:25:10,890
to recognize patterns when you see them happening in culture.

1357
01:25:11,050 –> 01:25:14,890
And I do think that Hollywood is finally trying

1358
01:25:15,210 –> 01:25:17,770
to figure out how the hell

1359
01:25:19,060 –> 01:25:22,900
to deal with a bifurcated audience. That is bifurcated, quite

1360
01:25:22,900 –> 01:25:26,660
frankly, along generational lines, as it always has been. But it was easier

1361
01:25:27,220 –> 01:25:30,500
when there were only three champs. Divide is bigger now. Yeah, I would agree with

1362
01:25:30,500 –> 01:25:33,980
that. Like, so, like, the difference between the boomers and the

1363
01:25:33,980 –> 01:25:37,820
generation ahead of them, The World War II generation, that gap was

1364
01:25:37,820 –> 01:25:41,460
not wide. And then from the boomers to the Gen X, it widened a bit

1365
01:25:41,460 –> 01:25:44,840
more, but it wasn’t wide enough that we had to develop completely different

1366
01:25:44,840 –> 01:25:48,480
structures because of it. I think the millennials were the first ones that

1367
01:25:48,480 –> 01:25:52,280
made that generational divide wide enough that they wanted to be

1368
01:25:52,280 –> 01:25:55,880
treated different because they were different than we were. Right, right. Like

1369
01:25:55,880 –> 01:25:59,400
now we still felt, I think every generation thinks that they’re different than

1370
01:25:59,400 –> 01:26:02,640
everybody. Like, that’s, that’s not what I’m arguing here. But I think, like

1371
01:26:03,680 –> 01:26:07,240
Gen X, when we first got into the workforce and we were being treated the

1372
01:26:07,240 –> 01:26:10,690
same way the boomers were, when they got into the workforce, we found that normal.

1373
01:26:10,690 –> 01:26:14,450
We’re like, okay, fine, we’ll pay our dues and then we’ll make our changes from

1374
01:26:14,450 –> 01:26:18,170
the inside out. Yeah, Millennials came along, they said, no, we’re not doing

1375
01:26:18,170 –> 01:26:21,290
that. We’re not allowing you to treat us like that. We want to be treated

1376
01:26:21,290 –> 01:26:24,370
the way we want to be treated, and you’re going to like it. So they

1377
01:26:24,370 –> 01:26:27,930
widen that generational gap. And I think Gen Z did it even

1378
01:26:28,090 –> 01:26:31,810
more. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. So that’s, that’s what I think

1379
01:26:31,810 –> 01:26:35,410
is happening. The generations are kind of getting, they’re getting a

1380
01:26:35,410 –> 01:26:39,050
grip on their own, their own selves, and they don’t allow

1381
01:26:39,050 –> 01:26:42,490
other generations to treat them differently.

1382
01:26:43,450 –> 01:26:47,090
They force, they are forcing people to treat them the way they, they think

1383
01:26:47,090 –> 01:26:50,570
they ought to be treated, not the way that the world thinks they should be

1384
01:26:50,570 –> 01:26:53,810
treated now. Well, this is what they’re bad. I, I don’t know if it’s good

1385
01:26:53,810 –> 01:26:57,650
or bad. We can make arguments for both. I would imagine people would say good,

1386
01:26:57,650 –> 01:27:01,410
bad and ugly, whatever. That’s just the fact that’s what’s happening

1387
01:27:01,410 –> 01:27:04,700
is all I’m saying. Yeah, yeah, well, and I think that there has to be

1388
01:27:04,700 –> 01:27:08,420
some kind of representation of that on film. I still think film as a

1389
01:27:08,420 –> 01:27:12,220
medium is. Look, I’m passionate

1390
01:27:12,220 –> 01:27:15,300
about film. I’ll frame it this way. I’m passionate about film. I think film is

1391
01:27:15,300 –> 01:27:18,900
a great medium. I could talk film all day, for

1392
01:27:18,900 –> 01:27:21,700
God’s sakes. I was going to do a show called Leadership Lessons from the Great

1393
01:27:21,700 –> 01:27:25,140
Films. There was going to be like a TCM level plot

1394
01:27:25,140 –> 01:27:28,860
thickens type, you know, show. By the way, I just for the

1395
01:27:28,860 –> 01:27:32,530
record, folks, I voted yes for that. He did vote yes for that. And then

1396
01:27:32,530 –> 01:27:35,770
I, then I found out that, like, you know, the licensing fees were too much.

1397
01:27:35,770 –> 01:27:38,530
And I’m not, you know, freaking Warner Brothers anyway.

1398
01:27:40,690 –> 01:27:44,450
I’m not hbo, I can’t afford, I can’t afford that.

1399
01:27:45,090 –> 01:27:48,890
But, but I, I think that film is one

1400
01:27:48,890 –> 01:27:52,650
of the greatest visual mediums that human beings have ever come up

1401
01:27:52,650 –> 01:27:56,290
with. I still think that. No, I think that even in an

1402
01:27:56,290 –> 01:27:59,100
era of small screens and a hyper

1403
01:27:59,500 –> 01:28:02,380
visually addicted

1404
01:28:03,740 –> 01:28:07,140
society that we live in in the United States of America, I don’t know about

1405
01:28:07,140 –> 01:28:10,460
other places, but here, heavily visually addicted

1406
01:28:11,180 –> 01:28:14,940
society, I still think that film is the best tool we have

1407
01:28:15,820 –> 01:28:19,180
to get across and to

1408
01:28:19,180 –> 01:28:22,900
unite people to dreams. And

1409
01:28:22,900 –> 01:28:26,690
I think that every generation wants to. To your point about generation separating,

1410
01:28:26,770 –> 01:28:30,490
Every generation wants to have its own dreams and they want to have

1411
01:28:30,490 –> 01:28:33,970
those dreams that, that are meaningful and to your point, that work for them.

1412
01:28:34,930 –> 01:28:38,530
And I think the boomers dreams were, walked out very much

1413
01:28:38,610 –> 01:28:42,370
in protesting the Vietnam War and protesting

1414
01:28:42,370 –> 01:28:46,210
for civil rights. I think that was huge for them. For Gen X,

1415
01:28:46,210 –> 01:28:49,970
our dreams were, well, our dream. We were the first

1416
01:28:49,970 –> 01:28:53,400
generation where our dreams were sort of curdled in the,

1417
01:28:54,440 –> 01:28:58,160
curdled in the cradle a little bit because of societal conditions that happened to

1418
01:28:58,160 –> 01:29:01,200
us that we had no control over. And then we just made our, made the

1419
01:29:01,200 –> 01:29:05,040
best possible thing that we could and that. And when the Internet

1420
01:29:05,040 –> 01:29:07,920
came along, we were like, oh my God, we’re gonna go ahead and make money

1421
01:29:07,920 –> 01:29:11,520
off of this thing. Because there was just, no, it was an open territory. There

1422
01:29:11,520 –> 01:29:15,000
was just stopping us. There was no stopping us at that point. And, and by

1423
01:29:15,000 –> 01:29:17,080
the way, even if they wanted to stop us, they couldn’t. They didn’t know what

1424
01:29:17,080 –> 01:29:20,760
the hell was happening. Millennials came along in the backwash of

1425
01:29:20,760 –> 01:29:24,440
that and had to deal with not only the bifurcated

1426
01:29:24,440 –> 01:29:27,880
culture and the results of that, but they also had to deal with the fact

1427
01:29:27,880 –> 01:29:31,280
that this Internet thing had radically shifted how we

1428
01:29:31,280 –> 01:29:35,000
visually communicate and how we communicate heroic archetypes, which is why

1429
01:29:35,000 –> 01:29:38,480
it’s taken so long for them to sort of make that push into,

1430
01:29:39,120 –> 01:29:42,480
into the larger cultural medium of film. And then Gen

1431
01:29:42,480 –> 01:29:45,520
Zers and Gen Alpha, like again, my youngest boy,

1432
01:29:46,280 –> 01:29:50,040
I think they will be predominantly, well, Gen Z first, but

1433
01:29:50,040 –> 01:29:53,720
then afterwards Gen Alpha will be the predominant driver on AI.

1434
01:29:53,960 –> 01:29:57,640
And it’s going to be ridiculous what they’re going to produce,

1435
01:29:59,160 –> 01:30:03,000
but it will be specifically to your point, Tom, for them. And

1436
01:30:03,000 –> 01:30:06,760
I think that that’s, I think they need those archetypes, they need those dreams for

1437
01:30:06,760 –> 01:30:10,280
them. And I think that’s a good thing. Speaking of which, did you see recently,

1438
01:30:10,440 –> 01:30:13,810
I don’t remember if it was Tribeca or Sundance or

1439
01:30:14,770 –> 01:30:17,730
one of the film festivals just allowed a

1440
01:30:18,050 –> 01:30:21,090
100% AI produced

1441
01:30:21,890 –> 01:30:25,650
film. I can’t remember what. I should have looked

1442
01:30:25,650 –> 01:30:28,930
this up before we get on today, but I’m sure you can look it up.

1443
01:30:29,650 –> 01:30:33,250
It’s about something. It’s about something to do. The film

1444
01:30:33,330 –> 01:30:36,690
is about. I think it’s about, like, growing up or

1445
01:30:36,850 –> 01:30:39,870
dealing with or living through something going on in Iran.

1446
01:30:40,740 –> 01:30:44,580
I don’t know. Like, it’s. It’s not necessarily about what’s going on in Iran

1447
01:30:44,580 –> 01:30:47,780
right this minute, but I’m saying, like, a. There’s some sort of

1448
01:30:48,980 –> 01:30:52,580
component to. Of how Iran is.

1449
01:30:52,660 –> 01:30:56,380
Is. Was. How it has evolved into

1450
01:30:56,380 –> 01:31:00,020
what it is. And living through that and trying to get out of that. Out

1451
01:31:00,020 –> 01:31:03,620
from underneath that. That thumb. I haven’t seen it yet because, again,

1452
01:31:03,620 –> 01:31:07,320
I think it’s still at Tribeca or Sundance or one of those film festivals,

1453
01:31:08,270 –> 01:31:10,590
but I’m a little curious about it. I saw a trailer for it.

1454
01:31:13,310 –> 01:31:17,070
I’m interested. I’m. It. It’s. It caught my attention. I’ll put it that

1455
01:31:17,070 –> 01:31:20,590
way. Next summer,

1456
01:31:20,990 –> 01:31:24,590
we will do another one of these special episodes on film, and

1457
01:31:24,590 –> 01:31:28,390
maybe. And we’ll have a year of data. Yeah. I’m

1458
01:31:28,390 –> 01:31:31,390
curious because I had not heard about this, but I’ll go and look this up

1459
01:31:31,790 –> 01:31:35,560
because. So we do

1460
01:31:35,560 –> 01:31:39,320
have an AI actress named Tilly, quote, unquote, that has been,

1461
01:31:39,320 –> 01:31:41,800
you know, signed up to do film or whatever.

1462
01:31:44,200 –> 01:31:47,960
We also have the Hollywood writer strike and the Hollywood

1463
01:31:47,960 –> 01:31:51,720
creative strike that happened a couple years ago, where they were

1464
01:31:51,720 –> 01:31:55,240
screaming about the existential threat of AI to their. To. To

1465
01:31:55,240 –> 01:31:58,720
creativity. But then you had. I think it was

1466
01:31:58,720 –> 01:32:01,630
Jody Foster that sat up at some

1467
01:32:02,350 –> 01:32:05,830
conference recently, some film conference recently, and basically said the movie

1468
01:32:05,830 –> 01:32:09,630
F1 was basically an AI movie. Now, I loved F1.

1469
01:32:09,630 –> 01:32:13,070
I thought it was amazing. I thought Brad Pitt was incredible in that.

1470
01:32:14,990 –> 01:32:17,830
And I’m a huge fan of. Well, not a huge fan, but I’m a fan

1471
01:32:17,830 –> 01:32:20,830
of F1 racing. So for me, it was a fine film,

1472
01:32:21,710 –> 01:32:25,550
but there was no. I mean, there might have been some AI

1473
01:32:25,550 –> 01:32:29,240
used in the editing, for sure. Oh, yeah, yeah. But,

1474
01:32:30,200 –> 01:32:33,560
like, those were real cars driving around a real track. Jody. Like,

1475
01:32:33,880 –> 01:32:37,720
I don’t know what you’re talking about. And by the way, whether it’s AI or

1476
01:32:38,360 –> 01:32:41,720
cgi. Cgi. What’s the difference? Because

1477
01:32:41,720 –> 01:32:45,480
CGI has been used in editing forever. Right. What are we

1478
01:32:45,480 –> 01:32:48,680
objecting to? What exactly? What are you objecting to if you’re using that? By the

1479
01:32:48,680 –> 01:32:52,520
way, the name of the movie is called Dreams of Violets. Okay. And it’s

1480
01:32:52,520 –> 01:32:56,260
at Tribeca. So I was right. It is Tribeca. Okay. Dreams of violets. At

1481
01:32:56,260 –> 01:32:59,540
Tribeca, we will have to. We’re going to watch this all very closely, because I

1482
01:32:59,540 –> 01:33:03,140
do. I mean, I play with AI every day.

1483
01:33:04,500 –> 01:33:08,220
Tom does, too. And much like a typical Gen

1484
01:33:08,220 –> 01:33:10,980
Xer, I can either be afraid of it, or I can go and try to

1485
01:33:10,980 –> 01:33:13,620
hijack it. Yeah, we’re going to run it. What are you talking about?

1486
01:33:15,300 –> 01:33:17,700
You’re either afraid of it or you’re going to try to run it. You’re going

1487
01:33:17,700 –> 01:33:18,420
to try to run it.

1488
01:33:22,000 –> 01:33:25,640
Listen, I’ve been telling people my entire life, you

1489
01:33:25,640 –> 01:33:29,440
should control what you can control and manage the rest. Hey, there you

1490
01:33:29,440 –> 01:33:33,160
go. That’s what Gen X does. We. We control whatever we

1491
01:33:33,160 –> 01:33:35,840
can get our hands on that will allow us to control it. And if we

1492
01:33:35,840 –> 01:33:39,680
can’t, we try to manage the relationship between it, since from that point on.

1493
01:33:39,920 –> 01:33:43,280
That’s right. What we do. Well,

1494
01:33:43,920 –> 01:33:45,200
I think that’s it for today.

1495
01:33:47,690 –> 01:33:51,490
This is a good conversation. We normally don’t talk about film this extensively. I think

1496
01:33:51,490 –> 01:33:54,370
you should go out and watch all through those. Those movies. I don’t know if

1497
01:33:54,370 –> 01:33:57,330
you are. Four of those movies. I don’t know if I would watch Project Hail

1498
01:33:57,330 –> 01:34:00,210
Mary a third or fourth time. I’m not. I. I think I’m good. I think

1499
01:34:00,210 –> 01:34:03,050
I got the message. I think I’m. I got the joke. I think I’m good.

1500
01:34:03,050 –> 01:34:06,250
Rocky’s my spirit animal. Okay.

1501
01:34:07,530 –> 01:34:10,930
I’m kidding. I’m kidding. Damn. I didn’t know we were going that far, but all

1502
01:34:10,930 –> 01:34:11,530
right, fine.

1503
01:34:15,590 –> 01:34:18,630
And with that, folks, well, we’re out.