And we're back. Oh boy. Here it is. If only there's a theme tune. I mean we could get one Oh, yeah, we that's something that we could do maybe that's our theme tune is not having like a tune Wow, that sounds that sounds really creative and really Thrifty thank you.  Like a little I suppose yeah like something else like under ten seconds I actually have never thought about what the definition of a jingle is honestly, that's uh, I'm curious thoughts here any fanbases come up and I'm down to that question I guess Speaking of thrift, uh, well, so definition to which is the relevant one is a short slogan verse or tune designed to be easily remembered, especially is used in advertising. So I've only understood jingle to be musical. Uh, well, it's because jingle also describes like jingling keys, the sound that that makes as a definition. Like if someone was to like, I guess that's the difference between a slogan and a jingle. If you sing it, it's a jingle. If it's just like a phrase or words, it's a slogan. You know, funnily enough, by that definition, there are a lot of things that I don't know that would often be called jingles that are jingles like short themes for, for, um, for like movies or video games that are like, you know, the terminated don't don't don't don't that could be called a jingle, technically. I guess if you cut it off as part of advertising, well, like the battlefield one, they just use that over and over and over, which funnily enough, they sound very similar. Um, yeah, yeah, they use that one over and over and over again. At that point, that could be a jingle potentially, like the fact that it's often used in advertising and it's recognized. Hmm. This is giving me a lot to think about. Like if like the McDonald's, but I'm loving that jingle. That's a quintessential musical. Oh, yeah, jingling. What, what is, um, well, so here's a question. Um, what about like, would you consider like the universal or 20th century Fox or, you know, like the intros for movies with that constituted jingle? Do you reckon? Like, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but is that a, is that a jingle? What about, are you talking about like, um, I'm talking about like the universal or wanna, cause you know how Warner Brothers uses, um, it's his time goes by right from Casablanca. Yeah, that's the Fox one. I'm talking about ones like that though. Yeah. Is that one that's called the Warner Brothers one? It's from Casablanca. I don't remember. But yeah, I guess I'm, do you think those are jingles rags? Considering, um, I don't know. I think a jingle is like self contained. Like it's designed to be short and small. It's not just what if we stopped the song at like the first, you know, six seconds or whatever. Well, I guess this is kind of cause like I said, I'm pretty sure the Warner Brothers one is as time goes by, which is a full song. But then when you condense it down into a jingle that's associated with Warner Brothers, doesn't that just make it? Which is applicable to what you've seen about Terminator. The da-dun-dun-dun is like, that's what a lot of people will sing even though it's a part of a full song. Yeah, I don't know how I feel. Well, let's put it this way. The Avengers theme is part of a broader composition, but like the Avengers theme is a specific section of that broader composition. I would happily call that a jingle if we're going by these definitions. I feel like a, is that, but are we, so what are we saying is the difference between like a motif and a jingle? Well, maybe there isn't a difference. Maybe the difference between a motif and a jingle is just how much people recognize it as like being associated with some kind of brand or story. Maybe there's a lot of, you know, like, um, like, because the da-dun-dun-dun-dun you're in Lord of the Rings. I mean, that's a that's a pretty recurring motif. But like, I don't know that that would be called a jingle because I don't know that that's what people think of straight away when they think of Lord of the Rings music. They're probably thinking of, you know what I mean?  Like there needs to be a commercial element to it to make it a jingle? Is that what the difference is? I don't think it's necessary because that definition said like, especially, especially is used in marketing. But the fact that it says, especially rather than necessarily, you know? What if like a motif is generally something that is used and reapplied in multiple ways? Maybe that doesn't really happen with jingles. Jingles are usually just one and done for the most part. I get what you mean. Maybe that's the difference. Is it they're like incorporated over and over? Yeah, because like a lot of a lot of like motifs in music will not be like a carbon copy one for one of the exact same, you know, the exact same chords with the same instruments necessarily will be with like different instruments or different speeds. Or whereas like the McDonald's jingle is what it is always. It's like consistent with very, very, very, very minor variation. Yeah. But if like for October for spooky ween, if they did like a kind of spookier version of that, I don't know if I'd feel OK saying, well, now it's a motif. It's not a jingle. I'd be like, it's the jingle just a little different now for Halloween. I wonder if this is just a case of the definition. Like it's a very blurry line. There's no clear line delineating a jingle from just a regular song. Well, when you when you hear jingle, when you hear that, what is your mind kind of go to? What do you think of? Because for me, I think about almost exclusively like corporate advertisement. I think of advertisement, too. Yeah. Well, I think I think that's kind of I think it would be like even if I thought that there was a jingle that was derived from like a film or a TV show that had some scenes that it was attached to that I guess you would say is like more fundamentally artistic. I feel like a jingle that would be associated with like a franchise would be something that kind of goes beyond specific beats to like reminding me of a brand or a series of some kind, kind of like the battlefield theme. I don't know that I think of any specific moment in any of the games when I hear it. It's like, oh, that's the battlefield theme. Yeah, it's like we're thinking of it from like a yeah, like that brand perspective. The more I think about it, the more strongly I kind of feel about they're needing to be that element, especially in advertising as part of the definition. It's not that it's necessarily, but that that is like what typically means. That's what it's typically for is for advertising and marketing. Well, these are the kinds of discussions that you don't get most places. No, you don't really. That's the people get to enjoy something while other people are still being like, oh, if that's live, oh, my God, I got to put everything aside. My family in a car, teaching on the edge of a cliff, but I got to see the EFAP episode first. I will sort them out right after, you know, you got to give everyone a chance to come in.  That was that was tough for me to understand. I was pretty straightforward compared to the Secret of Mario's jump, though. I'm glad we learned the Secret of Mario's jump. Did we? Did we ranks? Did we? Yeah. Did we? Yeah, it was in the video. He definitely told us. We have. If that's true, then what was it? I mean, we all know because it says on the video. Well, if that's true, then why did he say he hasn't? Well, that's. Well, that's madness. That couldn't possibly be the case. Brags, I'm so sorry. That the reality where he explained the secret never happened. Isn't that why I think you've had like a side?  You got a psychosis because you couldn't deal with the idea that he hadn't explained it. So you you create a world where he had where the secret was clear. I'm creating a false reality, a multi, a different universe. And we'll get into multiverses during the CFAP, I'm sure. Oh, probably an alternate universe where what's his name? Mark Brown answers the questions. I haven't watched it in a while. But there is still makes the same videos or not. I'm not itching to watch another Mark Brown video. Of course, because what little he says I'll already know. What little he says we all already know. And then I don't think I've learned anything from. That video and it could have been the secret of Mario's jump. Well, that's like your opinion, man. So anyway, there's there's a couple of sources of information, couple of revelations and a signaling, I think, of a new era. We've crossed over some kind of line culturally when it comes to Disney, specifically, obviously, the two big pillars being Marvel and MCU, and so Marvel and MCU, two big pillars. Yeah, the two big Marvel and the MCU. Yeah. What else is there after that? Yeah, even one other thing. Yeah, Star Wars. What? That's part of that. That's part of the MCU. Yeah, part of the MCU. I know and appreciate it. And then, of course, I'm looking forward to Indiana Jones. When he apparently there's going to be a payoff. And I think it's a pretty cool one. Iron Man's going to run out of energy on and then Indiana Jones is going to whip whip like his wheels and it's going to spin the gears. And then it'll it'll come back up. And I was like, yeah. Oh, Energon's from Transformers, isn't it? Right. So well, obviously, Transformers is the MCU, so it makes sense. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, as many may have heard, an article came out and I'm interested in reading it, not like like with with you guys and and chat, not necessarily because it's all true. I'll skip to that part where it's been contested in many ways, shapes and forms. But just more so to speculate on what it means and the fact that it came out, wasn't it like a day or the same day or a few days after the South Park episode? Oh, I think so. Yeah. People consider that quite the coincidence. I'm not sure what to think of that. I don't know. Actually, I don't know the article. It's the cover story for the month. So I presume that it was. Like that that would be a coincidence, probably. But I guess it would be more so maybe it's not a coincidence because, again, the fact that the article even exists is indicative of a change in the in the state of affairs. This article was where was it posted? Because I'm not familiar with this article. Oh, I'll link you in a second, but to give a trajectory and itinerary, we're going to go through that. And then we're going to look at statements made trajectory distant forums about a lot of behind the scenes stuff that happened. We're going to talk about that. Then we got three videos to see. They're short one or shortish, at least, OK, you know, it works at EFAP and some images that are there of amusing and we're just going to be got it could be a long one tonight. Don't know. We'll find out. Yes, I'm still wearing my Halloween outfit. I'm pretty sure I put it on before both of you are. Anyway, that's just I guess I don't know about that. Fringy could just be that could is that what is that what lurks under the mask? I left it on because we still had Halloween stuff to record. But I guess I mean, it's it's actually that's true. Yeah, well, that's what I do tonight. Oh, do we? Yes.  I think I know what you mean. It's complicated. Chad, it'll all make sense one day. Don't you worry? I went back to regular mode. That's why I figured I was going to leave it on. Yeah, but I'm OK. Yeah. I'll just you got to get a Thanksgiving themed one. That's or this like general theme. I mean, I guess Thanksgiving doesn't seem very applicable because we don't celebrate Thanksgiving. It's not a holiday here. Well, you can celebrate it if you'd like. Yeah, because like the universal nature of being thankful for what you have. So what I draw myself as a turkey or something. You could you could draw yourself as a turkey or you could just be surrounded by pumpkins, maybe pumpkin pie. You could have leaves. Leaves are great. All those the yellow and red and all that sort of thing. And I find it funny because now it's starting to get to summer. So really, the appropriate one would be me very upset. When are you moving to the northern hemisphere? I don't know. Because, boy, it's so great up here. Man, I'm telling you.  You want to when you go upstairs to the northern hemisphere. You get out of the basement for you. It's all there is no up and down in the universe. All right, it's all it's all. OK, he's free with the final order, apparently. Here's where you're wrong, because one of them is called the northern hemisphere and one of them is called the southern hemisphere. That's true, but that's that's a matter of obviously we're above you. Marley. I mean, where is where is where? Towards the northern hemisphere. OK, well, what are you of justice is long, but it bends towards the northern hemisphere. Look, it's unique. The southern hemisphere is mostly ocean, which makes it a real interesting kind of place. There's not many. There's not many big old land masses down here. I think like seventy something percent of all humans live in the northern hemisphere. I think I think it's actually sorry. No, I got it wrong. It's that 30 percent, 30 percent of the land is in the southern hemisphere. 10 percent of the population is here. Ninety percent of the world lives in really that much. Damn. Well, yeah. Because, remember, the equities drawn at like Indonesia. Like a good portion of South America is actually above the northern hemisphere, like the most of most of the southern hemisphere is ocean. The only land masses are Australia. The majority of South America and Antarctica, where nobody lives except for a few scientists. Penguins, right? Or is that the northern hemisphere? Which one is the penguin? Only penguins in the southern hemisphere. There are no penguins in the north pole. So where are the polar bears? All of us are in the northern hemisphere. OK, so they never like meet most of the. No, that no, that's no fun. It's probably good for the penguins, though, that they don't eat. Yeah, it's pretty chill for them. That's they only got to worry about seals. But you know, you may hear fireworks randomly. I know that like special occasion. Well, almost sort of. But like, I don't know. Just you know, in the background. What's the occasion? Well, I mean, I want to get going. OK, we keep going off on tangents, which is something we never, ever, ever do. But we've got a lot to get through today. OK, yeah, let's do it. Let's talk about. And I got to do reading. How disgusting is that? Then again, we could just go in a paragraph between each other, right? Ha, ha, offloading. Yeah, cool. Well, what would you say that the topic for this EFAP is? The dead reckoning of Disney, I think is what I've called it. Oh, my God. And it's hard to do with, like, tangible, statistical results, stuff that we'll talk about. And also just to do with cultural changes, which you're probably more than aware of. But we can sort of put them together a little bit. I mean, one of the things that's worth mentioning is we have been watching Loki, not planning to do an episode four. It will be having EFAP TV episodes. It's terrible on their way. Absolutely awful. As of episode five, that's the recent one. It's just it's right. There was season one that shoulder to shoulder just like, yeah, we're awful. The giants of being the absolute worst stories in the air. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's I think, Frangie, you had mentioned that viewership was down 40 percent. That is season two, as I understand it. The premiere was down 40 percent from season one. So I don't remember. Loki was there like, OK, we got this working, at least. That was like, oh, no. But it's and it's weird thinking about it, considering it was one of the earliest ones. It was there like second show or something like that, that show. That third show. What were what were the ones before Loki? Well, one division, Falcon and Winter Soldier for the first. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. OK. Yeah. So all the Goodwill started to drain hardcore. Yes. Well, even we were kind of like the first couple of episodes of One Division. We were like, hey, all right, this is something.  Oh, yeah. At least it took a couple of episodes. Oh, yeah. And that's that's where I mean, everything's everything's falling apart, kind of. So we're going to talk about those different ways that it's happening. And then look at how it may have happened. And, you know, it's kind of stuff we've talked about over the years, but now it's like an all episode focusing on it. So we'll get started with this article. The context is what did you say it was described as like the monthly cover? I think it's that kind of story. Right. Variety is a big deal story. All right. Yeah, I mean, everyone knows variety. Variety is a big deal. And so I guess we'll just we'll just read it like so we'll go paragraph by paragraph, I suppose. This past September, a group of Marvel creatives, including Studio Chief Kevin Feige, assembled in Palm Springs for the studio's annual retreat. Most years, the vibe would have been confident, even cocky, given how the premiere superhero brand owned by Disney since 2009 has remade the entertainment business in its image. That's all fair and true. They would be pretty damn cocky, especially when they were fledgling when they started on the with Iron Man, right? It's like it's in danger of all of it collapsing. They built it all up only to now be at a different position, relatively speaking. I guess to make it easier to remember if rags goes next, we just go in left to right, left to right. Repeat. Oh, right. Let's see. Let me. All right, I was represent them up, but this occasion. I'm starting there, right? Yeah, that's correct. All right, I just make sure, just make sure, you know, want to make sure my ducks are in a row. But this occasion was angst ridden. I like that angst ridden. Everyone at Marvel was reeling from a series of disappointments on screen, a legal scandal involving one of its biggest stars in questions about the viability of the studio's ambitious strategy to extend the brand beyond movies into streaming. I can see legal scandal involving one of his biggest stars. Are they talking about Jonathan Majors? I thought for a second they might have been talking about the scandal with Scarlett Johansson back with Black Widow. Possibly, but I feel like because she wasn't poised to be like the new big villain of the next arc. And they were kind of done with it. Oh, you know, yeah, that's true. It's just because they said really from a series of disappointments on screen, just like, yeah, that's probably going all the way past end game, right? Anything past then really not including stuff like No Way Home. I guess Guardians 3. No, the thing you've got to remember is No Way Home, like Spider-Man is Sony. It is like a Marvel Studios thing kind of, but it is majority Sony. Well, it's worth mentioning every time almost because when I say Phase 4 and 5, it will be like, well, No Way Home's in there. And it's like, no, yeah, I know, but. Yeah, but No Way Home's not part of the because it's not No Way Home. Obviously, Across the Spider-Verse isn't part of the conversation because I was actually successful. Yeah. So when we talk about like money, profit regarding that movie, who makes the most? Columbia pays most of the bills and gets most of the money. That's kind of like the nature of the agreement. Remember, there was a time when it was kind of like on ice and they weren't sure what to do because I think Marvel wanted to negotiate to spend more money, but obviously make more money. But Sony didn't want to. The thing you've got to remember is Sony owns the rights to like Spider-Man films and that anything that happens between them and Marvel is like cooperation, but ultimately it's still theirs. They still have it. OK. So yeah. You may continue, Rags. All right. Where did that tab go? Oh, here it is. Sorry, I sometimes forget. The most pressing issue to be discussed at the retreat was what to do about Jonathan Majors, the actor who had been poised to carry the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but instead is headed to a high profile trial in New York later this month on domestic violence charges. The actor insists he is the victim, but the damage to his reputation and the chance he could lose the case has forced Marvel to reconsider its plans to center the next phase of its interlocking slate of sequels, spin-offs and series around major's villainous character, Hang the Conqueror. One of the things I was thinking about this is if you split it all up into individual characters, events, locations and maybe even let's say movies, what is like the hardest thing to change in terms of a single elemental item of the MCU? And it might actually have been Jonathan Majors as Kang because take anyone else.  But yeah, what are the other heroes? They can pick up the slack. It gets a little bit awkward when your film is called the Kang dynasty, you know, doesn't mean like they've done. They did it. Well, brother, this event happened right when they had like been like, here he is.  It's like the main thrust for Quantum Mania was Kang. Yeah, look at Kang. Look at Kang. Look at Jonathan Majors as Kang, specifically. Yeah, he agreed. Act as Kang and then this happens. And it's like they're right in the middle, right? If it happened a couple of years earlier, they could have changed their mind. If it happened a couple of years later or be over, it's like the worst possible timing. And yeah, to make what we're saying a little bit more understandable, right? The idea of they wouldn't just drop in anyone is not easy. Like, and there's levels of difficulty, but it just feels like he's one of the hardest ones to detach from the MCU. They just injected him everywhere. Yeah, they played him up really big. And he's supposed to be this overarching kind of thread between multiple films as the villain. He's the new Thanos. I suppose the thing is, is that because of the multiverse, if they played it more like Spider-Man had it, where the Spider-Man were played by different people, it's you could just easily be like, yeah, it's a different Kang. And that's why he's played by a different person. But like, for whatever reason, all of the Kang's that have been presented on screen have been played by him. I hear a lot of people say this is fine and easy because you can easily recast Kang.  But I mean, it's not, I feel like it's in stone that there's not multiple versions of Kang that look completely different. They all look like Jonathan Majors. And then of course, as the fact that everybody would act, everybody would know the real reason. It's like everybody's kind of aware of the reason why that's happening. And so in a sense, it's easy to do for anything because they can just do it like in a corporate sense. They can just be like, well, we're switching you out by. But I don't know, to me, I'm thinking of all the different elements and, you know, compare it like if Tom Holland, I don't know, went nuts and killed everybody. And just be like, well, new cast, new new new Spider-Man, and especially now is probably not too different. I mean, you know, it's not good to lose Tom Holland as a draw. But at the same time, they can cast someone else for the college years of Spider-Man in the MCU, right? Or if they move it wherever they could. They could. Oh, man. I mean, it would be tough. But maybe I don't know about that. I don't know. I'm more confident about it. I feel like there's plenty of good actors.  But I think it's the connection that people have with really liking Tom Holland as that particular Spider-Man. It would be like replacing Tobey Maguire after Spider-Man 2. I think there's a lot of. Yeah, I think. No, yeah, that's the thing, though. There's this difficulty with all of them. I just don't know that any of them represent any kind of impossibility, but this one was incredibly awkward. Yeah, yeah. The reason I chose Captain Marvel and Spider-Man as counter examples is because they're like probably the equivalents, if there were. Maybe not Captain Marvel compared to Spider-Man, but it's like, what about Chris Hemsworth as Thor? It's like, is that easily replaceable?  I don't know what the hell's going on there. It's like, I wonder how difficult that would be. I don't know. I think we'd all be. I feel like that would be one of the more difficult ones.  I feel sorry for him right now. There's a lot of people who are very sympathetic towards him. I would say so.  And a legitimately talented actor, too. He's quite talented. Oh, yeah. But then we, you know, passed that. Benedict Cumberbatch is Dr. Strange is one of the ones, I guess, that would be one of the few ones to lose him.   Oh, geez. How could you do that? So, you know, of their like 50 million new superheroes they've introduced, we could probably recast all of them. But the one that they've introduced recently ish, at least phase four and five being Jonathan Majors, it was awkward because he's been he's like a fully integrated right when they now don't even know if they want him fully integrated, which is just, you know, unfortunate for them. All righty, free. At the Gathering and Palm Springs, executives discuss backup plans, including pivoting to another comic book adversary like Dr. Doom, but making any shift would carry its own. Headaches. Majors was already a big presence in the MCU, including as the scene stealing antagonist in February. What's the media? Are you done? He stole all those scenes from you. He stole them. That's why they didn't make any money, because Kang stole the scene. And he has been positioned as the franchise's next big thing in this season of Loki, particularly in the finale, which airs on October 9th and sets up Kang as the star of the fifth Avengers film in 2026. Well, that's interesting because it means we've got a week to see if at least that portion of the article is just like ironclad. Yeah. I will say, again, bearing in mind, it's like, well, you know, this could not be true. But like if they actually were sitting there like, oh, but we could pivot to Dr. Doom, it's like this just speaks to how I feel like Marvel's doing. I don't think they know. It's like, I don't think that they I I really don't know that Marvel actually knows what's wrong with their films. I don't think they do either. No, I don't think that Marvel has the capability of like, OK, let's do let's get our checklist of things that we need to do to make a good movie. That checklist doesn't exist. That checklist for something else, it's it's gone. I think it's it never just comes down to maybe like the writing sucks. It's always like a variety of other things. Like there are too many of these films. Oh, yeah, the visual effects are pretty bad or they've got to connect better. It's the references. It's like the diversity with the the it seems like the stick because the trailer for Echo came out yesterday or the day before that. And it seems like, yeah, the stick for that seems to be ah, see, it's mature, it's violent. And it's just to me that feels like, yeah, right. But like, that doesn't mean anything to me.  Like, I don't like, I would actually as part of our duty today, we won't be watching that trailer already. Oh, yeah, I haven't seen it. I haven't seen it either. I guess what I'm getting at is that because it felt like it was the same thing that happened with Secret Invasion, where they tried to pretend it was serious. And now you can see with the marvels that the attitude. And I imagine it's partly because of the response to Captain Marvel being dull and boring is this is a fun movie. It's a fun, wacky movie. It's a fun movie. It's fun, guys. Like there's always these kinds of strategies that seem to be employed with each of the films that speak to some like meta criticisms. But all of it is like, none of it addresses the fundamental, which is that the writing is just piss. It's bad. When was really bad? When was Marvel's last fun movie? What would you say the last fun movie was like that was actually fun? Yeah, this is complicated, though, because I think a lot of people say Guardians 3 and I'd be like. Guardians 3 was fun at times. But yeah, but it was. But there wasn't enough strong writing in there to make me walk out with a smile. I see a few people in chat saying Ragnarok. Which I think is a fair choice. But Infinity War was just like six years old at this point. Infinity War was really funny, but it was also one of the darkest, if not the darkest, entry in the whole MCU. Yeah, I wouldn't call Infinity War fun. So it probably is Ragnarok, audience to that kind of like, which again, yeah, six years ago. I guess I guess the title back when I see in the article, oh, yeah, what if we pivot to Doctor Doom? That'll fix things. It's just like you you you know, you know, they need to understand that that wouldn't solve anything is a multiverse, but an actual one where we could show them like, here's the inflection point. You chose Galactus in universe one. You chose Doctor Doom in universe two, Mephisto in universe three, Kang in four. And you show them all of them and they all fail. And it's like, wait a minute. How did that happen? How is that possible? Right, that should have worked. That they're like, were we supposed to bring back Obadiah Stain? You're like, no, what do you need to do?  It's so simple. And of course, you know, the problem of the writing can be tied into other criticisms. I imagine that they're aware of, which is that the production, the way that these things are made is insane. They're made very quickly with incomplete scripts, with the writers having no idea how their stories connect to other things and seemingly just not being very good at their chops anyway. Like, yes, I don't know. So like, I imagine that if they made less stuff, that would probably just invariably help, but it wouldn't like fix the problem necessarily if there's no recognition of the thought in the writing based on like them having real talent and having produced real real movies. But I guess that's how it works. Well, we've talked about it before, but there's no world where like Steven Spielberg would make a Marvel movie because he'd want to make it his way. And like you kind of can't do that. Like when you make Marvel movies at the end of the day, it's it's got to slot into their universe, which seems like a small it legitimately seems like a small thing to ask considering how broad it is and how much stuff you can do with that. Just be like, hey, it's just it's part of a cinematic universe. It needs to slot in with the rest of the films in the series. But other than that, you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't contradict anything else, especially if you gave him like the first entry of a new introduced hero that they're doing. Yeah, no, that's like that's I think it might be what ends up helping DC is that it seems like they might try to be more director oriented. But again, you still need them good scripts, you know, like have good scripts. Yeah, because at this point, the MCU feels like an anchor that every movie is going to have to either drag around with it or just forget about. And well, they usually opt to forget. Normally, they just forget it's it's definitely the buffet where they just pick out the sort of things that they want. And the rest they just ignore, which ultimately doesn't create, you know, a plausible cinematic universe.  And they haven't quote and they haven't had an opportunity to rewrite until very recently because of the WGA strike, which but I don't see a path to how they move forward with him. Yeah, that's very, I mean, they want to know that it's funny because we talk about all these potential decisions. But like the big thing is just they need to know the conclusion of the case itself, right?  And that's hard enough. We have to wait, which is also very difficult when they're possibly in their most tumultuous era ever. And every decision now matters incredibly. Especially when you got to remember the broader consequences of the writers and actors strike is it's not just like Marvel stuff. It's a bunch of productions for all of the studios. They like that's that's delays.  It's yeah, it's it's a tumultuous time for the industry in general. Yeah, you know, all the covid stuff that happened, obviously the strikes, there's all kinds of let's call them third party events and elements that are crushing down on this thing that was already destroying itself. Yeah. Well, rags are up. Alrighty, beyond the bad press for majors, the Brain Trust at Marvel is also grappling with the November release of the Marvel's a sequel to 2019's blockbuster Captain Marvel that it has been plagued with lengthy reshoots and now appears likely to underwhelm at the box office. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You could say that you could say that that it looks like it's going to underwhelm with the box office. I was about to say that's that's a nice way to put it. I was like, no, no, no, actually, wait, because underwhelm is probably what it will do because it's not. We don't expect it to well at all. Nobody's expecting any whelming, so it will under that probably. Well, so if the projections are accurate, you know, long term, this actually end up being the first because like there isn't that doesn't that doesn't seem to be like a full acknowledgement of Ant-Man being like a flat out failure. It's definitely a disappointment, but like whether or not it is a failure is kind of like wishy-washy for whatever reason, even though. Which is already bad news. That's already bad. When we say failure, we don't mean in terms of meeting the expectations, which is really important, but just flat. Did it make in the way? Yeah. Yeah. Whereas the Marvel might actually be like the first true like bomb. It might actually be like a clean like bomb instead of, you know, oh, well, you can sit at this, can sit at this, it's like, no, no, no. There seems to be obvious. Yeah, like we spent a lot of money to lose a lot of money. Yeah, that it could lose money and that there's really you can't point to big like COVID. That's not that you can't use that blaming COVID. It's not an excuse for like a year plus now. You know, he cut. Yeah, though. No, no, there's so many movies that are based so much, buddy. Oppenheimer showed along. Well, surely the comparison would be no way home. That's the easiest one to be like in your own franchise with the superheroes. Like it's and as much as it's like, yeah, but it's Spider-Man. It's like, OK, it's still. Oppenheimer was 947. There was no Spider-Man in Oppenheimer. Was there the reason why it's relevant, though? The Spider-Man one is because Captain Marvel nearly made as much money as far from home, because that was back when Marvel movies were guaranteed to make a billion dollars to go from and it's interesting because Aquaman's probably in the same position. I still can't figure out how to make a billion dollars, but like it's probably in the same position where it's going to come out and it may well make less than half of the money that it made first time around. What's the devs in chat? Hello. I wouldn't be surprised at all. Hi, Dev. Hello. We're talking about the destruction of Disney. Yep. Wait, who's next? So how are how are we sitting on our week? Because we've kind of had a very soft running prediction for the Marvel's box office. I think fairly early on, I was a bit more pessimistic than most. And I was floating around as a as an estimate about a three hundred fifty million dollar number, which was low. I admit I I think, yeah, I think that at the time I was like the lowest in terms of the guesses amongst who we were with.  Like that's not unreasonable. Um, I think I was at like five hundred million. That seems like that seems like it was too high. It's almost certainly going to make less money than that at this point. Yeah. For it, it has that might actually be a hyperbolic, but I'm pretty sure it has basically everything working against it.  And this is and this is after Dune moved out of the way. Dune was meant to come out. True. It's supposed to come out like last week. And it's going to all the IMAX screens. But the problem is that it's still competitive because it's November. Movies, movies are coming out right now. Like it's only going to have, I think that new. I think that new Hunger Games movies coming out the week after. But I don't think that film. No, I don't think people care about it. We'll see, though. But all those all the kids who watched Hunger Games, they're grown up now. They don't care. I feel like we're well past the era of the young adult action. The European Science Fiction Act. Yeah, let me let me actually double check the. So the numbers for this is the projection from the Hollywood Reporter for the Marvels was that it would earn 70 to 80 million in its opening week and in North America. We can thunder just said at least you have the dudes and call it duty. Did they release that as part of a promotion that couldn't stop it? Maybe they couldn't. Yeah, some of these some of these some of these things like the promotions for games are really they just they baffle me. I guess some doon makes a lot more sense because of the movie. And it was pretty big. Made a lot of money. And there's one going on because I play Apex Legends sometimes. They have a post Malone like skin sale that they're going to be doing.  What is post Malone have to do? What? Whatever. Whatever. It's I don't this is whatever your supreme skins might be worthwhile to just for reference because I guess this is tangential to the article. So Hollywood Reporter, the this is so the tracking for the marvels was basically around about 75 to 80 million dollars domestic debut, which I believe is half of what Captain Marvel made in its opening weekend. Let me see a million is still a lot. It's a lot of money. But the problem is when you're spending over two hundred million dollars on production alone and you know, and you make most of your money in that opening weekend, especially for the for these types of like superhero movies, they make the ones that are not going to get a lot of people out there saying, yeah, you really got to go see the marvels. That keeps it like, again, Oppenheimer started kind of slow, but it got to nine hundred forty seven million because it just kept going. Oppenheimer was definitely like Oppenheimer had a really good opening, but it was definitely long term. Like that that was what carried it through was like talking about. I guess I guess this is the relevant information in terms of. Yeah, the last the last Marvel movie that didn't open a 70 million or more was Ant-Man one in 2015. The majority open to 100 million or more domestically. Eight movies made one hundred and fifty million dollars domestically in their opening weekend and compared to Guardians Three, which you saw that ended up opened to one hundred and six million domestic. So it's below that, obviously, which you go. Considering the capital of that is interesting. The marvels message me and said the Final Fantasy 14 had a fall guys crossover and have had multiple KFC cross. He plays the channel. I don't know. I hope so. Maybe he fries chocobos or something. Oh, my God. Yeah, either of you aware of what Marvel Entertainment, the YouTube channel did as promotion for the marvels, like I think two days ago. I saw the tweet. No, I'm not talking just about cats in general. This was a stream where there was clearly like three-ish people, maybe that would probably given a lot of money to set up a room and to paint or to put up things that made all of the windows and open doors, green screens so that they could put a space graphic in background that looked awful. And there was cats running around the room and they had a camera that just either auto followed or they had someone just looking at cats, just doing cat things. And then every like half an hour, they would have an unboxing where a person who comes on screen, you can't see their face. It's like cut to their neck. I wouldn't want my face in that either, to be like, fiddle with the boxes. They're like doing really weird hand gestures on all of the boxes, but to delay opening them as like long as possible and then eventually reveal like Captain Marvel Funko Pop. And then they just put cats on the table and make the cats walk around the Funko Pop.  Yeah, just like for lack of a better description, it's like a ethereal, almost like space-ish music.  OK, I think I know what you mean. And I caught like, I want to say 20 minutes of it.  And they went down to 300 viewers at one point. And I was like, and there were people in chat.  It was some some account that just said, hooray, can't wait for the release of the Marvels. We're all very excited. Hooray. I was like, is that a human? Someone's check cleared. It just doesn't sound at all real.  Like what is going on? I was like, did they is that part of the marketing budget? You paid for this? Like, how much did you pay for this? Really concerning part is that it probably wasn't even cheap. That's what I was thinking.  They got to pay people to do it, to actually be the ones to do it. Then you have to pay all the people to set it up. Then you have to get the set. Then you have to handle all the cats and then you have to arrange the Funko this and that and all the deals with Funko Pop to do that. So I yeah, I don't know. It's strange, but it probably costs more than you think because there's always going to be a legal this. There's always going to be a advisory board and a supervision team. They often only comes up here and there, but like it's not just whether you have marketing. It's how good the marketing is. Exactly. You can have really bad marketing. We've talked before in the past they've been trailers for movies that have sold movies the complete wrong way. I think one of the more recent ones is the Dungeons and Dragons trailer. Made everyone think the movie was going to be absolutely terrible, but the movie itself is still getting praised to this day. Yeah, I've heard the movies are right, but the trailer was trash. The misrepresented it.  And you get you usually get that in the opposite where the trailer is really good.  You're like, oh, I'm next on it. Sure, this is an this is all an unprecedented turn of fortune for a company that has enjoyed a nearly uninterrupted string of hits ever since it started independently producing movies with 2008's Iron Man. That wildly profitable run culminated in the 2.8 billion dollar success of 2019 Avengers Endgame, a high watermark for the studio that has earned nearly 30 billion dollars over 32 films. I just like that there's multiple ways that we can analyze it that it goes from Iron Man to Endgame and then something else happens is like that, even though it's not true. Like the loads, people would say that's what the story ends. Like, no, it ends at Infinity War, right? That's what everybody should probably choose. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, OK, but that's the last time they had like a huge profit. And it's like, I don't know. A home is still kind of not like it doesn't go to them, but it's still in terms of a movie making loads of money and having a cultural impact. It's like, it's not just stops at Endgame. And also, you know, Multiversive Madness was successful. Yeah, it was quite successful. Maybe not as successful as they were. Maybe they were hoping it was going to be just over a billion, but it was certainly successful. I mean, Thor, Love and Thunder was technically successful. Technically, Black Panther were kind of forever was technically successful, though, again, that one also made considerably less than the first one. Yeah. And no one talks about it. No one talks about any of these movies.  They just pass away. What would be really cool is to take your average sort of huge Marvel fan and just be like, name me all the projects of Phase Four and see there's going to be the types that could name it all instantly. But there's also people who are like, oh, wow. It was is what kind of forever. My people that I forget to say, just because it's so. Well, I think some people would say quantum mania and you'd be like, no, that's fine. You'd be like, oh, all right, right, right. And it's right. Wait, Wakanda forever was the last to Phase Four? Yes. Oh, that was a lot. Well, obviously, because the the line between Black Panther 2 and quantum mania was so clear. It was such a like a great handoff between phases. Yeah, it's like, I don't know something happened at the end of that. I don't know. I don't know. There's no no sense that we've moved from one phase to another. Seen a bunch of people in chapter like, hooray, I'm watching EFAP today. Hooray. Yeah, they should say that. Good on you.  Yeah, you know, right, guys? Yeah, OK, so replicating that kind of phenomenon is never easy. However, the source of Marvel's current troubles can be traced back to 2020. Arguably, you could trace back way further. But that's OK. That's when COVID pandemic issued in a mandate to help boost Disney's stock price with an endless torrent of interconnected Marvel content for the studio's fledgling streaming platform Disney Plus. According to the plan, they would never be elapsed in superhero fair with either a film in theaters or a new television series streaming at any given moment. You can tell that there's loads of these weird handoffs like Loki to the Marvels is the newest one, obviously. And it's just like, what are you doing? Like the one was it the same day that the penultimate episode of Mando came out with Rise of Skywalker? They were going to do this with Star Wars as well. Yeah, the penultimate episode of Mando introduced Force Healing, which helps justify it in Rise of Skywalker, according to their insane brains. That's how that works. And it's interesting because the the talk of lots and lots of because I remember I read another article down my camera, but what it was from is one of these trades that was talking about how following the radish strike, there is absolutely going to be less scripted television shows that like the era of the last, you know, five, six years where there's been an absolute like torrent of scripted, high budget television shows for like streaming platforms and cable that that is definitely going to be winding down partially because I guess the broader thing is that not all of these streaming services are going to survive. A lot of them, I mean, Disney's already looking to buy Hulu, right? Oh, they have Disney Plus itself isn't doing hot at all. Disney had partial ownership of Hulu, but now they're going to get full ownership. I guess it's it's like is there space for Paramount Plus or Peacock or I think Peacock's in huge trouble.  I don't know.  Well, that's like the people with like DoorDash and all of that. It's the same thing. They got a huge boost from that kind of that entire sector of the market from, you know, the people not going out and ordering in. And now here we are. And it's like good luck turning a profit if it's even possible to turn a profit with that kind of a business now. Because we're seeing as well that the tech sector is starting to contract lots of layoffs are happening as well because there was a tremendous amount of growth in the tech sector. And people are going back outside. Also, yeah. And as some people were saying in chance, like, I'm aware that that's what you want for a company, but you have to recognize the like the streaming numbers didn't there's no there's no like, oh, we earned X in this year, the pandemic year next year is going to be X times two and times three. And it's like, no, no, you need to account for the fact that this is going down. Should have treated it like a gift. Yeah, something that I've been thinking about a lot, which I guess, you know, we could talk about more later on is the I don't I when I when I wonder if Marvel is doomed. What I wonder is if they're at like a point where they can't really fix these problems, it's kind of like they feed into each other. So it's like a negative feedback loop. So like, for instance, one of the criticisms is that Marvel productions look cheap and bad when they're not cheap. They're not cheap. The only way and so the only way you can fix that problem is where you've got to spend more money. Surely you've got to spend. You either got to spend more money or cut back on the scope. But like, where are you going to get that money from? Are you going to pay the actors less? Because if you pay the actors less, I would imagine that some of them would be like, well, I'm not very interested in being part of this series. I'm not going to get paid a lot of money. Like what is the kind of thing that would motivate someone to be part of Marvel rather than essentially do something that they would consider like more valid? I guess is like as a means of expression. You know what I mean? Like, like it I imagine that a big incentive to do Marvel films is you get paid a lot of money, but that there would be other things that a lot of these actors would rather be doing in terms of creativity. And so it's like you're going to pay them less. That's probably not like viable, but you're making less money. So where are you going to get the money from? Anyway, do you know what I mean? Like, I wonder if it's even like the kind of thing that you can actually reverse actor in strikes as well. And that's right.  He's doing his own thing. It's like, I'm going to go make Extraction 3 or any other movie that I'm going to do. Extraction 4, which by the way, it's like I'm unironically, I was like, hey, Extraction 3, I'm all for it. Yeah, you keep doing it, man. Something that I wonder in terms of exacerbating because I'm seeing people say one more time, it's like, yeah, but part of the problem is I'm pretty sure that they still Disney wants Deadpool 3 to come out in May. That film is half finished. Absolutely. They haven't finished shooting that film and they still want it in man.  But like, like, I don't know if they're going to actually want to take time when they've just spent three months not making anything. Like, you know what I mean? I wonder if that's going to further exacerbate the problems as well. I have to use the loo. I'll be right back, so just let you know. No problem, though. He was next. So I guess it goes to you again, Fringy. I would just loop back around. Deadpool 3 got delayed. Is it delayed? Am I going to look it up on Wikipedia right now? I assume part of your point, Fringy, was that it's inevitably going to be delayed. Like it was it's inevitably going to be delayed. But the fact that they don't want to delay it and they'll probably only delay it by a few months because they want it out. They want to get it out. Yeah, it's still it's still scheduled for the third of May. So yeah, I don't know. Anyway, but the ensuing tsunami of Spandex proved to be too much of a good thing. So we talk about and the demands of churning out so much programming tax the Marvel apparatus. Well, that's true. Moreover, the need to tease out an interwoven storyline over so many disparate shows, movies and platforms created a muddled narrative that baffled viewers. Yeah. So this is like the kind of point that I would point to is, yeah. So if this is what they actually believe, then I don't know that they'll probably fix the problem because it's not the fact that they're trying to tease out an interwoven story over many disparate shows. It's actually that none of them are even talking to each other. Yeah, no, no. Everything shows are aware of each other. They contradict each other. Like it's it's not it's not overly complicated because it's so intricate and so well formed and you need to be paying attention to every you pay attention to every detail. It breaks. It just keeps breaking. The way you build something like this, they've made it seem almost impossible. And a lot of people talk about it that way. It's like, oh, it's an inevitability that would fall apart so big. And so you control for the big and created scary variables. But the rest is mostly straightforward. When you have like you just need to keep creating scenarios where in a bubble, your character can do and say anything. And it wouldn't affect anything anywhere else. It's it all lines up in continuity. When it's like, you know, I want to say Loki, because it's too difficult to fix and shouldn't exist. But WandaVision, that was probably going to be fine. You don't that doesn't need to affect any when you have a big magical event happening in this small town. It's like, OK, so you have I don't know how much time before the police should be notified. It's probably going to be, you know, anywhere between days and two weeks or something. That's like the timeline we'd be allowing for because there's people in that town that will now not be able to contact loved ones. And then the police will be made away. So like I said, probably days. And then when the police are there, that means the more and more people around the world will get to know it. And that's when Doctor Strange has to be called in. He's the magic supreme man and it's a magic event.  It's like, well, probably those things. That's that's the thing you have to stick to. And then you're fine. You can make anything happen in that dome, anything really, as long as it's not like, you know, breaks the universe. And that's kind of what I'm getting at. They treated as though if they collect all of the discontinuity that would exist at this point and lay it out in the sheet, they'd be like, look at this impossible.  That's all. Well, yeah, because I would say that again, I still don't think this speaks to the core of the problem. But I think a more apt argument would be that there is actually a lack of forward momentum that it's unclear where things are heading. Not that it's getting too complicated to follow, but rather that very little has been achieved over the course of several films because they have their story that contradicts other stories, but doesn't really connect to them either. Like it doesn't build anything for them. It only builds its own stuff while breaking other things. And now how many a dozen projects later is anything really any closer to culminating in big, relevant crossover stories? I don't know about that. I just I don't like the idea that it's confusing because there's a lot of it. It's confusing because it doesn't make any sense. It's fucked. It's it's bad. It's just badly written. But I can definitely. But I mean, the idea that having to make this much stuff tax the Marvel apparatus, I mean, obviously. Yeah, like it's stretched in and it holds true always. Well, even even the current state of either Star Wars or Doctor Who or the MCU, you could still repair it back. You always can. Yeah, you can. But I don't think they will. I don't think you might be able to say I don't think they can. Like it's possible for the for Marvel, too. But again, for as long as they think, oh, it's the bad CGI. That's a problem. It's that there's too many that there's too many, not how they're made, but that there's too many of them and it's confusing people. As long as this is like the the attitude that they have, I don't think that they're going to fix the problem. There's a lot of crushing forces that will prevent them from doing so. But if there was like a 0.01 percent chance of them doing it, it would just be like knuckling down and making a really solid movie and then slapping it into the MCU. And it doesn't even might even contradict some stuff. But as long as it's really good, you'll be like, wow, that was good. And then you're like, all right, all right, we've we've got a spark there. There's some people who are like, that one was good, that one. And then if you make another one, you'll be like, OK, I like. And then if it's a character that was in both of those movies, that's new, but I like that character. I got getting there. Got a got a cheap chipping at it. I was thinking as well, like enough with the goof, we've got to start going serious again. Yes, but not not what I did with Secret Invasion, where they pretend to be serious, but it's still a clown show. Like, you know, close to something like Iron Man One, where it takes itself serious, it's still got, you know, the the comedy and it's still got the laughs and it's it's still got like just the cool factor. But it is trying to tell a story about a character going on an arc. Because, you know, like if it was really well written, but also a comedic romp, I'd be like, OK, that's fine. But like, we should probably start making this have some serious entries against that people can maybe think about this on a more significant level, then, la, la, la, la, la, it's just a clown show, even if it is well written comedy.  Fringy, who would you be bringing in to fix this villain wise? I assume we'd be getting rid of Kang anyway, because he's so sad. So like if the wizard told me, you've got to get rid of Kang, you need to find someone else as a. But the he gets to be, I say he, she, I guess, if so, was preferred. I can't think of any. Yeah, but who would you want to bring in yourself? Who would I personally want? And I guess baked into it is that they're actually going to be like a great villain, well written and everything. Yeah. It's a good question. I'd want I'd want doom or I think I'd want Magneto. I'd want to I'd want to go in one of those two directions. Beginning of X. I would almost want to earn the X men. And what I mean by that is like, I'm going to try and repair everything. I'll cut a few things out. But yes, I'd want to go with doom as well. And I'd want the first time we meet him, he's going to have to kill one of the main adventures. You've got to do the same thing that they did with Thanos before they undid everything.   You got I think that's the yeah, you've got to make him threatening. You've got to have him because it's as been pointed out. The fact that Kang got defeated by Ant-Man, pretty easily, honestly, is not great in terms of making him intimidating. But imagine if imagine if he just showed up and he killed like one of the Avengers and it was easy. It wasn't even that difficult for him. Or he has a really, really effective and scary army that can do that sort of thing that he commands and controls.  Like this is actually a terrible thing to have. I'm I'm chill with armies, but I'd always prefer it when they have like lieutenants and they kind of did that with Infinity War and then waste them an end game, right? Like the I agree. Yeah, the I forget their names, but I remember them like as, you know. Yeah, many bosses, you know. Love any of us kind of the this was one of the reasons why Worf in Star Trek kind of gets an unfair shake with a lot of people who think that he's kind of a pushover because so often in episodes Worf would be the one who gets tossed around by the big evil villain of the episode. But it was to establish that well, if this this bad guy, this force can take on Worf and beat him up, then, you know, he means business. Worf was just the unfortunate recipient of that kind of an establishment of stakes. Did you know that Worf is the most he has the most occurrences in all Star Trek? What does that mean? He's in more Star Trek episodes and shows. I think he has there's more Worf than anyone else. And so I think it's like occurrences, some kind of Star Trek thing, like incursions or something.  I would I think if I was if I got to do it over again, there'd be a lot of villains I would keep around. But moreover, if we were going with the angle of doom, I'd want the lieutenants, you know, enforcers or whatever to be like other villains so that it all kind of like that you can get them and have them as elements that is kind of manipulating behind the scenes that all lead up to him. And it shows progress towards working towards the main villain where killing one of his lieutenants is like we've we've beat a miniboss. We have made progress, you know, forwards, you know, like that's a big. Because like you imagine it would just be like, I don't know, like doom, highest taskmaster, but actual taskmaster to get something for him. And then he encounters one of the heroes and then that's like how you set up a bit of a thread of is there something that's being worked towards here, but keep taskmaster around, you know, so that you have to go later. You know, I'm thinking about with the lieutenants thing, building up to the main boss is Arby and the Chief. I forget which season is. Yeah, I love that sense of progression, taking them all out one by one and then going for the king sort of thing. Yeah, no, it's great. And I mean, one of the cool things that you did was that when they actually go for the big bad, they take him out like pretty easily. Yeah, it's nice. Subversive. The point being that it's like it's just a good narrative structure to employ of working up towards something grander, but getting all of those other people to be characters themselves that represent different, you know, different, different angles that you can go with. But it's like beating Saruman, like it's a big deal to win at Helm's Deep to defeat Saruman and his army and everyone's like, oh, we get a bit of a we get a little bit of a break here. We get a little bit of breath. We did a good job. We've made progress and that's still the big evil guy to go. But like we're clearly we've made some progress here. That's why I'm chill with with armies as well. Because you remember a resident evil village. I like the lieutenants aspect in that. It's just we also felt they were wasted in a lot of ways. But, you know, if you have one that's like a big brawler than another one that's not really powerful, kind of really intelligent and has a bunch of puppeted like creatures that it'll send at you. And it's like, oh, that's a way to implement armies in some ways. Because remember, we got that in Infinity War.   That's right. They got edgy names. Those are those are pretty. I would call obsidian. Proxima, Squidward was the best one now. Name wise, even though it's not his name, but it is now. What about what was the what was the what's Darth Maul's brother, Savage, a press? Always come back to him. He's always waited there. He's chef's kiss. What a beautiful name. I think his parents set him up to be a villain. I don't even blame him. Somehow out of the four, I think I do like Ebony more the most. Yeah, I think I like that one the most. All right, anyway, I guess it's back to me. Well, yeah. Well, the Marvel machine was pumping out a lot of content. Did it get to the point where there was just too much and they were burning people out on superheroes? It's possible, says Wall Street analyst Eric Handler, who covers Disney. Well, the more you do, the tougher it is to maintain quality. They tried experimenting with breaking in some new characters like Shang-Chi and the Eternals with mixed results with budgets as big as these, you need home runs. Kind of we've certainly discussed the Marvel, the superhero fatigue. That's that's popped up more than a few times over the years. And I think it really does come down to the fact that if they were good, there would be no fatigue. I don't think so. When you know, like the more you do, the tougher it means to me. It's like I do agree, but like I don't I feel like they fumbled hard. Like this was ridiculous. I mean, to go, I mean, I don't know that I've seen a streak this bad in terms of quality ever of just releasing like 12 projects that with one outlier, like we're like twos, threes and some of them ones out of 10. That's unbelievable by Aston and other sleeper. It's their entire process of picking who makes these things. That's just totally fucked.  It was super, at least in the United States, Westerns were everywhere. Always Westerns, Western movies, Western shows. It was the age of the Westerns and slowly, but surely they started to kind of die out. They turned into like cop procedurals and things of that nature. But I don't think that that shift happened because people started getting. I don't think that all the Westerns were just like shit all of a sudden and people started hating them. I think it's just, oh, this is a thing that's also happening. And then it's just more of a like a more organic kind of healthy shift to a different sort of thing. Yeah, it's a lot of collapse in three years. Like, yeah, yeah, it's not like, yeah, you didn't just get three years of horrifically bad, uninteresting characters and stories that make people just yearn for anything else. Marvel's reign could have been longer. I think it would have ended no matter what.  I, oh, yeah, I totally think so, absolutely. If they would, like I said, if it was just if it was just banger after banger, if like half of their movies were good, not even great, good. If we're talking six, seven out of tens and that was half their movies, they could keep trucking along and we'd keep watching them and probably enjoying them. Yeah, yeah, let me on the six and seven say fun. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, what was our like underwater, right? Like the quintessential like six out of ten or whatever. We're just like, oh, this is neat. I really enjoyed that. I'm glad I watched it.  True. True. Luckily, I got these two guys to carry me through to victory. Unfortunately, I have seen that. It is now your turn to talk rags. All right, let me see. The Marvels, which opened in theaters on November the 10th, will struggle to get the ball past the infield, at least by Marvel's outside standards. For those of you in the chat, that is a baseball analogy. Do you have heard about baseball? Baseball is what's an analogy. Oh, an analogy is like a thing that's like a thing, but not quite that thing. Oh, it's great. That means they didn't hit the ball very far. They didn't even get the ball to the outfield, which is further away from the batter than the infield. All right, just want to make sure everyone's up to speed on the base. There's some insight for you. There you go. The movie, which cost two hundred and fifty million dollars and sees Brie Larson reprising her role as Captain Marvel is tracking to open to seventy five to eighty million dollars far below the one hundred eighty five million Doctor Strange in the multiverse of madness took in domestically in its debut weekend last year.  That is cope. There's no getting around that. That's also dramatic. There's got to be some kind of profound depressing experience to be an actor or actress is going through all of these different films in your career. There's some indie, some of this, some of that.  So I was like, oh, wow.  You don't know what the fuck's going on. You don't even know if you have a career with with Marvel after this. And then someone says, like, you're on track to make eighty million on the first day. That's terrible. Like, OK, it is all right to where seventy five to eighty million dollars isn't good enough. Like, that's still a good amount of money. But yeah, when you're spending two hundred and fifty million dollars on production alone, not including marketing. That's not good enough. It's just the the the super mega bloat of a lot of this stuff is. Well, let's take a move. What was the we saw? Saw X recently, allegedly. What was the budget of saw X? Was that like a million bucks? Yeah. And it it never felt cheap. I mean, remember, right? Like, it's because it's interesting to think about because saw cost a million dollars to make and made over a hundred million.  Rocky, like, I didn't Rocky make like ten thousand times his budget. I can double check and I think so. Like, Rocky was really. Yeah, because Rocky had a production budget of nine hundred and sixty thousand dollars and made two hundred and twenty five million dollars. It did. Geez. Rocky, two made two hundred million. Rocky, three made two hundred seventy million. Rocky, four made three hundred million. Rocky, five made one hundred twenty million. Rocky, Balboa one fifty six million. And then Creed, Creed, two and Creed, three made one seventy four million to fourteen million. Oh, Creed, three made two hundred and seventy five million. It's three. The one where he fights Jonathan Mages. I think so. Yeah. But I guess it's interesting to look at the kind of money that these projects make, because it's not. It's not about how high the box office number is. The return on the investment is the is the most important metric. And on the other side, it's not about being expensive. It's about not looking cheap. Oh, yeah, dude, I watched the movies that made us for Halloween. And apparently, like, of their very limited budget they spent, I think they spent something like 40 percent of it on a camera. And they said, like this camera, I forget the name of it, is going to make the movie not look cheap. That's like the whole point. One hundred percent Halloween doesn't look cheap because all of us know children of the nineties that we are. And in the 2000s, this kind of holds true. That cheapy like there's just that camera.  I don't even say like a nineties sitcom. But like this looks like a cheap movie. It opens up. You get your first scene and you're like, oh, this is not. This is a movie that's going to look like this the whole time. It just it has this cheap look to it. That's kind of the funny thing, though, isn't it? Because like cheapness or lack thereof, Joker had a budget to fit. You know, we're keeping in the realm of comic book movies. Joker had a budget of 50 million dollars. That film doesn't look. It looks better than Ant-Man and the Lost Quantum Mania, which costs four times as much money. The well, we can keep we can keep it to our rated superhero movies. Right. Oppenheimer. That movie is a hundred million dollar budget. And it looks fantastic. And think about how good it looks and the fact that it's all period appropriate, thirties to like fifties stuff, all the sets, all of the costumes, outfits, ever. It looks totally you totally. Oh, you know what? No. And it's a million. I'm so glad. I'm so glad you brought up Oppenheimer because any time I think it's a relatively well-known factoid that a lot of the cost took less money than they would typically take for a film because of the desire to, you know, have a certain budget for Oppenheimer and because they were really passionate about making the film. How many how many Marvel actors would happily take a dramatic pay cut in order to be a part of these films? That's kind of like what I was talking about before in terms of them being doomed. I don't know how many actors would be willing to be like, you know, I believe in this story so much that I'm willing to take less than half of what I would typically ask for because I like this movie. I don't think that would ever happen. I mean, the ones that might, I mean, for instance, let me ask you this. Do you think that because we've mentioned him before, do you think Chris Hemsworth would take half the money if he was assured and confident that the next Thor movie would be very respectful to Thor as a character and treat him well? Oh, if he got a short of that, probably. But because I think he will guarantees. Yeah, but if if he believed it to be the case, you know, I feel like he would. But maybe it's just because we're so we just live in a world where actors get paid these just insane sums of money. What I'm saying, they do or don't deserve her. That's a good or bad thing. That's just the way that, you know, it often is on the sort of low budget scrappy stuff. Another thing about Halloween, the shot in, you know, sort of iconic, I guess we call it iconic when the kid is moving through the house, gets the mask and then does the does the stuff that that was done with a camera that had a I believe something like for each take they could only they had a maximum of three minutes because it was like a camera. I forget that I don't want to get the name wrong of it, but, you know, like you walk with it and it's one of the it was a lower budget one. It was the best they could get. And so basically they wanted to one take where they were following the kid or cord cord less, I think. Point is that like the they were limited to the point of having a steady cam would be it. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it could only hold so much like actual like film. Yeah, like it was limited to that point. It was just out of film and they had to come up with a way to have a cut and they did it with the the kids, so to speak, in that scene, picking up a mask and putting it on. And so the swipe down with the the mask was they were able to chop together the two full takes of the one and then I was like fucking stuff like that's so cool when there's so hyper limited extreme ways by technology and then they come through and make something that like people remember forever and to read a super chat ahead of time. You just said you just accidentally revealed the next Halloween arc, which is the Halloween films. I revealed nothing, nothing at all. You know what? Speculate all you want. Definitely. That's that's totally our next arc is how you got us. You sure did get us. Good. Good job. You figured it out. All right. Yeah, you did it. Yeah, the funny thing is like we keep it secret. There's no real reason we do. We have mentioned we've mentioned a plenty of Halloween movie. We've talked about we've seen spooky movies before. Like we see them. Yeah. Anyway, who's next? What's happening? I am like bringing something. Yeah, directed by Ned Dacosta, the Marvels, Unites, Larson's heroine with two super powered allies, Teyona is a Teyona Paris, Monica Rambo, introduced in twenty twenty one Disney Plus series WandaVision and Iman Valani's Kamala Khan first scene in the twenty twenty two series Miss Marvel. But instead of seamlessly building on the success of Captain Marvel, this movie resulted in four weeks of reshoots to bring our coherence to a tangled storyline. It's kind of weird now that I think about it, of the three heroines one is Captain Marvel, the other is Miss Marvel and the other is Monica Rambo and it's called The Marvels. Is she going to be called? Photon in this? Well, because it's I have no idea. No idea. But that's the name of the character right now. Yeah, like again, that's kind of part of the problem, right? As people don't really know who these characters are. And this one really was this is part of the list of things working against them. Just like this is not good, guys. So we don't know what the fuck's going on. Well, I mean, I find the premise bizarre. You'll it is a very strong which places. That's a weird premise for a movie. But like, you know, and if every no heroes are died and we were really healthily going along in the middle of the MCU's phase three, we had a movie where Doctor Strange, Iron Man and Daredevil were going to team up. You could easily come up with a name that sort of recognizes that trinity of, you know, street level, low tech combat with super high tech billionaire man and then magic man. It's like, oh, that's interesting. And they all have their hero names.  And the combination is so cool. None of that is working for this. People don't even know what these people are. Especially if the idea is that they're meant to be essentially. It's kind of interesting that you point that out. Having characters who have very disparate sort of power sets and putting them together is kind of interesting compared to putting together characters with similar power sets. And the quintessential fantastic four. They're all totally different. Oh, yeah, of course, man. And X-Men, they've all got X-Men. Yeah. And again, X-Men has because it's something that I really like. I think it's one of the things that X-Men's always had working in favor of it is that it's not like strictly beneficial necessarily. A lot of these powers, there's usually unless you storm. Storm basically has like the best power. You can just control the weather. It's kind of incredible. Yes.  But he also can never not shoot. Did you know, you know, Wolverine has like Adamantium claws, super fast regeneration, but he's Canadian. Yeah, you have to have drawbacks. It hurts, but you know, there's that. But also that he outlived and outlasts everybody that he cares about. I forget where I read this now. And that's why I want to be like careful saying it because it's very mean, if not true. But I'm pretty sure it's true. And I wonder if you've ever heard of it for me. But Halle Berry getting convinced to. Oh, yeah, I heard about this. Be a part of just be a part of X-Men 3 or is it something else? I think so again, I think it was that she there were stipulations that she wanted in the story to be a part of X-Men 3. And they said, yeah, we'll do that and then didn't. But that's I don't know if that's true. I've heard about this though. Yeah.  So like, which sounds awkward and clunky as a scene in terms of trying to that might be kind of something you don't want to go near with storm because it'll make you ask a lot of questions about her, right? Like, should she be heading to every bad weather event and undoing it and then moving things to other things? But as far as I'm aware that something like that was promised and then it wasn't at all done. Yeah, that seems like the kind of thing that could get them in legal trouble if they had signed off on it and she didn't get it. That's what loopholes are for. I think the idea would be that you can always say, yeah, but I mean, there's changes in the script. That's always a part of the process of filmmaking. So, you know, but like I said, I don't know how true that is. But I did hear about that. Yeah. But yeah. But she didn't get to be Catwoman. So, you know, this really is like a weird team up movie, isn't it? Compared to like other team ups that would be more interesting to say. Two people I don't know anything about. And one person that I just like it's a crazy thing to think about. That this is kind of the first movie of this kind. The others will have guest stars. This feels like a team. You know how there's loads of teams in across Marvel Comics's history, right? Where different characters got together. Yeah. And it was a cool thing in the in Ultimate Alliance and probably other games where if you made your squad comprised of a particular team from the comic books, you get a bonus, it would be like a plus something toward and it's whatever that team did. And it's just like, oh, sweet reference and tangible benefit. And yeah, this is just like this is the first one. It's like, this is the team, the Marvels. It's like, what do you? Oh, and then, of course, bearing in mind that the second one is the Thunderbolts comprised primarily of just people who are like super soldiers or normal people. Does it not feel like the Thunderbolts in the MCU listings are basically comprised of what's the word for this? When you are creating a product like byproducts. Yeah, the byproducts of other films. And they're like, they should be called the byproducts. Like it's a team name. It's all they have left because I killed off a lot of the other villains that they could have as a team. They should have called them the expendables. The thing is, like, why aren't they just more like if it's really hard and expensive to get team up movies for whatever reason, why not just do what Deadpool, even though, you know, we'll see how I feel about it when it comes out. The leftovers would be a great team name for the leftovers. But, you know, why isn't there just like your buddy team up movies like Deadpool and Wolverine going on an adventure? But, you know, like you do it with other characters. I mean, an obvious pairing is Daredevil and Punisher, which I mean, they they did. The problem is, I don't even know how much of that's going to be canon, whatever they bring forward, whatever the hell they got to do with that show anyway. But like, why aren't there more of those sort of pairings? When you want to, I know it's so much to ask because we had we had a lot of Iron Man anyway.  Yeah, technology once magic. They both have clashing personalities, but they're both good people at heart. And so we get to see them, you know, develop. That's like something interesting and the actual Mandarin not whatever the fuck. No, not not goober, Mandarin, Mandarin, Man 3. OK, anyway, then eyebrows were raised again when DeCosta began working on another film while the marbles were still in post-production. The filmmaker moved to London earlier this year to begin prepping for her Tessa Thompson drama, Heather or Heather, maybe a representative for DeCosta declined to comment. I've seen a few people say this is normal. I don't know if I buy them. Maybe it is. Maybe it is. It's complicated, right? It is normal. Is that part of the problem? Something we know as a it's I'm not to say fun fact. It's complicated. While working on Schindler's List, Spielberg was editing Jurassic Park, right? That's true. Yes.  Well, that's the thing. Well, I guess the thing would be, do you because you could think about it was Quentin Tarantino in any way, shape or form an active pre-production. One of his films while he was like editing one of his other films.  It's I guess all I want to say is just that like we don't know the context exactly of this, but it's not. I don't think it could ever be seen as a plus, you know. Yeah.  And he's Steven Spielberg. He is Steven Spielberg. He's kind of the person most associated with film. Yeah, I don't know. There's there's just a certain vibe there where it's like, hmm, just doesn't seem like that's the way to do it. But, you know, let's see. I was finished because this first one short. If you're directing a 250 million dollar movie, it's kind of weird for the director to leave with a few months to go, says a source familiar with the production. And that there's a lot of weight on the word leave. It depends on what that means. Exactly. Because like how involved is she or she just gone? I mean, I got to imagine that she's still someone involved. Right. But I was not. I was actually going to go both directions with that on that. That on one hand, on the other hand, it's Marvel. Maybe she is just out, you know, like, because they don't need her. They're like, you're done. You're casting job. We're good. We you've shot the movie sort of. We'll take it from here, which is weird. But well, and she recently said in an interview that that is damn, I'm pretty sure that I saw something where she basically said, even as the director, you're not like fully in charge on a Marvel production. Yeah. Oh, damn, let me see what. Well, some people say she left before shooting was completed as well. Really? Oh, oh, if that's true, of course, yeah, there's more. But again, this to be fair, this is probably not any would any different than how they've made most of their phase four and five stuff. Probably. Yeah, this might just be the first time we hear about it. Well, it's not even really, is it? Like the directors have not felt very directory with a lot of their films from what we get. The piece of information. Well, yeah, that's OK. So, damn, let me see if I can find it. Oh, so she's the quote was it's a Kevin Feige production. It's his movie. I think you live in that reality, but I tried to go in with the knowledge that some of you is going to take a back seat. It's just an interesting. I mean, not a great attitude to have if you're the director.  There was a there was a comment of, like, you know, like viral tweets about how we need to start letting the artists, you know, take full control and all that stuff. And it's just like, I'm pretty sure, if not full control, close to it, got us love and thunder and it got us a soca, right? These are projects created by creators that basically got everything they wanted. Maybe they didn't care, or maybe they have something that we don't tend to agree with in terms of what they want. It's just like, are we ever going to? Is it almost impossible, I guess, to get to the point of just simply saying we need to hire people who know how to write? It's like because that seems like we need good stuff to make things good.  They can't can't really do anything with that. It's like, well, yeah, we're always we're hiring people who we do think can write like, oh. Well, you have to be able to. Yeah, you have to be able to recognize what the quality is before you can.   And you just sort of hope for the best. Anyway, the marbles has. Yeah. Oh, OK. Yeah, go for it. The marbles has seen its release date move back twice to wants to swap places with Quantamania, which was deemed further along. And again, when its debut shifted from July to November to give the filmmakers more time to tinker. We're the alternate world where the marbles is already out, you know, and by many, many months time. But that extra time didn't necessarily help. In June, Marvel, which traditionally only solicits feedback from Disney employees and their friends and family, took the uncharacteristic step of holding a public test screening in Texas. The audience gave the film middling reviews. And it doesn't surprise me. I think it was ever going to get more than middling. And it's not due to the fact that I despise Captain Marvel so much that it couldn't possibly be good. It's like, no, it's just the way that they create films. We've seen it in Phase four and five. That formula you'll be lucky to ever produce a great film out of that. You know, that awful, awful pattern that we see just keeps on going. They haven't made anything good. And I mean, Andor was the one shining example of that. And it's definitely just it's like its own thing. It doesn't even belong. But we also have the information on why Andal was so different. When Gilroy was like sent off to make it with money.  And then they had a break and he redrafted the scripts. I still can't get over that. It blows my mind that he's like, I have free time. I shall redraft. I will work on my movie like I care. That's crazy, isn't it? And is it? But Marvel has never been in the business of being average. Kevin's real. It's true. They're not that good. No, yeah, yeah. Quote, Kevin's real superpower. His genius has always been in post production and getting his hands on movies and making sure they finish strongly. The source adds these days he spread thin. Buggy declined to comment for this story. So I think that's the difference in the mainstream circles. It's yeah, Marvel was pretty consistently OK, whereas our perspective is not really like, I mean, it's just that they used to occasionally make good films. When a lot of the times when their films were bad, they like they didn't make anyone angry or bored. Well, Iron Man 3 made a lot of people angry to be fair. Yeah, I guess so. But I would say that's controversial, of course. Ultron, yeah. But like when I watch Age of Ultron, I'm like, oh, there's like things in here to like and there's some neat stuff.  No, yeah, we definitely can see it's a different kind of bad at this point. Yeah, that's what it was. Yes. And I guess the more relevant part would be that Marvel used to have the capacity to make good films and even great films. Now it's like that seems like an impossibility. I find it interesting, too, about the whole formula that we get running with Kevin and everything else. It's like Phase Four was also just happened to be the first in-universe recognition and celebration of said formula. Look at it. Yeah. It's like it's like when it was fully refined, understood and sort of kind of made fun of is when we're like, yeah, the formula and then it's just a crashing down around you as well.  We're not unless you want Marvel to be like a soap opera, but they don't make Marvel money. OK, that's because they're not supposed to. If I isn't the only person showing signs of strain, Marvel's entire VFX battalion, including staffers and vendors, is struggling to keep pace with a never ending stream of productions. Yeah, that's that's one of the things that would have been like highlighted for criticism almost immediately by the public or released by us, right?    This past February, when the credits rolled at the world premiere of Quantamania, shock rippled through the Regency Village Theatre in Westwood as over some shoddy CGI, there were at least 10 scenes with the visual effects have been added at the last minute and we're out of focus, says one veteran power broker who was there. Well, it was insane. I've never seen something like that in my entire career. Everyone was talking about it, even the kids of executives were talking about it. We know exactly what they're talking about, too. Yeah. Yeah. That would be if that movie had great CGI, like it wouldn't have no one that people wouldn't have been like, oh, I care now. What a great movie. Exactly. Exactly. We told us before the great things with bad CG. People usually go, yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, it's fine. And they released Cassie's run as a separate thing on YouTube. Well, like, look at that. Great, isn't it? And I thought that was good enough. But I mean, really, it is incredible, the idea that you're handing in shots like that close to the film to the fact that there are now like post launch patches for films to like fix them up. That's wild. Yeah, nowadays, it used to be like, oh, there's a car in the shire, we'd better fix that up really quick. And now it's just like, oh, God, our CGI is horrific.  Yeah, the day one patch thing is so funny. Yeah, don't go see a movie on day one. Wait for the patch.  When I was crazy. And the fact that on the Blu-ray, apparently some scenes aren't on there that were in theaters, they're just gone. That baffles me. But then when you combine it with the story of intense crunch and everything like that and all the behind the scenes production troubles there and the fact that the next one, I think it's now indefinitely delayed because it's like, as far as I know, not anywhere near done that some lines were finished like a couple of weeks before it came out. Like that seems like that one was rice to the finish line as well. Yeah. Oh, right. All right, let me see. The is it schedule or schedule? Oh, I said, I say, I say, I say, I think you're allowed to say both or open minded people here. That's right. The schedule swap with the marbles had left the Ant-Man sequel in a squeeze, pushing up its post-production schedule by four and a half months. Oh. They're trying to get out so great. Yeah. And that, yeah, being told, yeah, you've got four and a half months less to work on, which they're already screwed for time. So, yeah. Marvel films are known for coming down to the wire, given Feige's ability to foam the runaway and land in a land of plane that way, says one executive familiar with how the company operates. But this level of unfinished was unprecedented and would be noted in scathing reviews when the tent pole with the $200 million budget opened 11 days after the premiere. Critics weren't the only ones dismayed, fed up with 14 hour days and no overtime, which seems literally illegal to me. Marvel VFX workers voted unanimously to unionize in September, sparking an industry-wide trend. Yeah, they're not the only ones.  I mean, that they probably wouldn't have, at least not for as fast.  But like, man, the 14 hour days and no overtime pay, which is, I don't know how they got away with that. It stays awake for like months at a time.  Like at the end. So it's not even like, well, we worked our asses off to make something amazing. It's like, no, it's just, I don't know how you could be in that industry and be like, yeah, it's just another job. I mean, isn't it just like a documented, established, accepted fact that like when human beings start working like a certain amount, their productivity decreases to the point that if they actually just work normal hours, they'd be more productive. Yeah, I think so. I think there's only so much you could put someone to work before they get bored or they want to do something else or they get tired or fed up with it. And yeah, it becomes harder for them to work because they're tired. Like they're just really, really, really tired. But like, yeah, I mean, people work in 14 hours a day, like six, seven days a week for several months on end. It's insane. It's absurd. It's ridiculous. It's definitely weird when you spend this kind of money on a movie and it doesn't look good. Like that should be like, isn't that what the money pays for, for it to look good? You would think that there's a direct correlation between spending money and how it looks. The problem is that there are only so many VFX workers. There's only so much time in the day and there are many, many, many, many, many projects. It's it's like a matter of just being like stretched completely thin.  It's practically exponential, isn't it, with moviemaking because it can solve basically any problem visually. Yeah, like if you if you're shooting on a day and it's cloudy, you can just make it look sunny. Like that's something you can do. But I mean, that's all work and it's not it's not easy work. It's time consuming work, even simple things like that. That's not, you know, like the problem is that there is too much work and there's not enough people and time in the day. And it seems like basically it gradually got to the point where it got this insane and it's kind of like the dam is bursting. It's now gotten to the point where it's like, all right, this is like absurd and unacceptable. And yeah, now that, you know, because it's not just the Marvel guys, isn't it like Disney in houses, VFX is brought to union eyes. That like it's starting to hit. So things are changing and things be changing in the in that world. Yes, seemingly we will. Yeah, we'll see what happens with it. Who knows?  And the other thing that was talked about as well is constantly changing their minds. Like it's one thing if you keep telling them, no, change it. No, you don't like that. Do it. Do it again. You know, there's a difference between very deliberate planned. I mean, you know, Avatar 2, not a very good movie at all. It looks incredible. And it's like why with with, you know, the VFX artists, some of whom would have ended up working on some of these projects are probably that don't look very good at all. It's like it's not a lack of talent on their part, is it? It's a matter of an understanding and consideration of respect for the tools and the time needed to get the results that that they got for that movie. But yeah, OK, so the year 2023 was the straw that broke the camel's back, says former Marvel Studios VFX assistant coordinator Anna George, who appeared before the Congressional Labor Caucus on October 19th to testify about the studio's untenable deadlines and working conditions. Quote, the pay and long hours at Marvel were the reason we had to start our unionization process there. The conditions were completely unsustainable. I mean, yeah, probably. I mean, by the sounds of it, almost certainly. Yeah, you know, I don't know what you'd have to do to get me to want to work in that industry. There's just I there's no way. What amount of money could you pay me that's like within the realm of even like normalcy that would get me to work 14 hours a day of seven days a week on these types of projects?  I just don't know if there's a number or just to completely sacrifice your life for these projects. Which is also kind of nuts because it's there's such an enormous amount of people who are looking to start up, you know, working in places like that. They're like, let's go, let's do it. And it's like, oh, it's it's been spoken about in the gaming industry, right, that the industry is kind of running on plucky. There's a meat grinder industry excited about video games and a lot of them get destroyed by it.  And then they find or make little little groups, you know, that kind of thing. Well, yeah, it's interesting. It's interesting how many. People who were like creative directors who presumably get what you would imagine is the dream job of being the person in charge of the creative aspects of a massive video game who then decide, nah, you know, I want to I want to make it with a with a team of like 20 of me and six of my blokes. We're going to go make an indie game. That's happened a surprising number of times happens all the time. You hear about it all the time.  You're losing a lot of potential in these people.  And not to sound callous, but like it's not even like worth it in terms of it's not even producing good stuff. No, I mean, this. Yeah, exactly.  It's like, well, then. Yeah, we didn't even we didn't even like make something amazing and legendary that will stand the test of time that we can be proud of. It's not it's not one of those uplifting stories where you can at least look back and go, I create we created something great, though, like what, you know, because what? Yeah, that's a thought. The only I was, you know, I was telling about the Friday the 13th filming story where a guy almost went blind for like six months.  Like that is like a tone description of that experience on one hand.  I was taken advantage of. I would never work with those people again. You know what I mean? Like, I wonder if the line is down to almost how successful the film is sometimes. Yeah, or something that you could be like proud of even. There's never that well, at least at the end is like, well, at least we can say that we made something incredible and amazing. And like, I mean, Vigo is I'm sure Vigo is totally fine. He broke his toe for the two towers.  Right. Well, yeah. And so couldn't people ask me what I'm talking about? The there was a character that gets stabbed in the eye in the first part of the 15th movie and the prosthetic they had for import liquid that had a Kodak fluid in it to make the right viscosity that went into his eye. And he went blind in that eye for a while. He said it took six months for his full vision to come back in that eye. So it was like, shit, man. Well, I think I think one of the more famous examples is Jack Haley, who some of you might know as the actor for Tin Man. In the Wizard of Oz. And I think he died from complications of no, it was it was someone else. I think it was the original. They had like a there was something about the tin man's makeup, the silvery makeup on him that was like toxic and I got through his skin and stuff. And something like that.  Garland was like on crack and the the sets were insanely hot. Yeah, that's famous. Yeah, it's famously miserable production to make, but at least it made the Wizard of Oz the most famous movie of all time. So. Where are we? Is it me on Disney's top brass? Yeah. Disney's top brass, including newly returned CEO, Bob Iger. I think it's funny that it would even be worth mentioning as if that wasn't all a part of some plan like him to pop out and pop back in. It was so brief and like I imagine there were several legal things that happened as a result of it that were useful. But yeah, I just find it funny behind the scenes are the newly returned CEO, Bob Iger was said to be apoplectic apoplectic. Right. And I've heard that way before. I feel like Simpsons used that before. Or maybe black out about Marvel's VFX troubles. One month after the Quantamania premiere debacle, the guillotine fell on Victoria Lonzo, who oversaw. I know oversaw. What do you say that? Who's oversold the studio's physical production, post production, VFX and animation. While the reason cited for her abrupt firing was her unauthorized role as an executive producer on the Oscar nominated film, Argentina, 1985. Insider say Disney was incensed that quality control in its model productions was plummeting. I find that so funny. Yes, obviously, like we can tell. Don't worry, insiders have given us this knowledge. Thank you. Thank you, insiders, for letting us know that their films are yet particularly on the ever expanding TV front. That's also funny. I don't know that I think the TV shows were like significantly worse than the movies. No, I don't think so. I found it annoying when it was coming out of like, oh, yeah. You know, Marvel realizes they've screwed up on the TV front. It's like, I see you're doomed. You don't know. You don't understand. You're a if a doctor can't diagnose the condition. How do you expect to treat it? Exactly. And when you're there, like, yes, it's the TV side where we screwed up movies are great. And it's like, guys, you're fucked. What's funny to me, too, is that you can get away with shittiest VFX. I think on TV shows and movies is I think so, too. People will be like TV show. Come on. We know and go into a theater to see like the TV shows and that all automatically helps like I'm definitely an aspect. There's just this attitude that's sort of different, you know? I mean, you still expect a certain amount of quality. But yeah, I think you're right. I think TV shows can sort of get away with it a bit more. Unless it's She-Hulk. Well, that's it's not even that. It's just that it was going to say unless it was a soca. With She-Hulk is that if she's the main character and she's just weird to look at. Yeah, that was I I said before I had to it. They should have found a big lady and painted her green. That was that was almost certainly never even entertain. I don't even think they would ever have done that. No, this is no. But I suppose the funny thing is you imagine the budget comparison of the cost of those two things. Well, yeah, I mean, that gave off a good hundred million dollars. Imagine wouldn't it have been fun if the transformation was a shot of Tatiana Maslani going and then a quick like zoom and she's just here with green going and then the clothes start to rip and then it just cuts to the or poof of smoke and it's that other actress who's really big. Basically what they did in the 70s show. But like, I feel like there would be a sense from a lot of what he's supposed to be like, ah, I kind of like it. It's throwback and it's funny and yeah. And I think people will be OK with that to some extent. I mean, obviously, some to it, yeah, it would probably be scrutinized and made fun of if it were a part of a show that's just plain awful. But if it was part of a show that was well written and fourth wall breaky and fun, like, yeah, what? But not, but not that what will breaky, but terrible. Yes, the VFX log jam had been evident for some time with some final effects for such Disney Plus series as WandaVision and She-Hulk attorney at law inserted after their streaming debuts that Alonzo was busy promoting her art house project while Rome Boone certainly didn't sit well with Disney leadership. Alonzo attorney says her client is unable to comment. Oh, my God, nobody can comment on this story. But they wouldn't want to. I guess it's just not worth it, is it? Probably not a good idea. She-Hulk will be dispatched to their house and she will step on them. All right. Let's see. Scroll down. But some internal sources suggest Alonzo was a scapegoat and point to the She-Hulk VFX issues as a symptom of a deeper rot, namely a lack of oversight on script development. Oh, my God, good Lord. Could it be? Yeah, could it be? Could it be? In the original arc of She-Hulk, a flashback of star Tatiana Maslani's transformation into her whole character didn't take place until episode eight, the penultimate episode. That makes a lot more sense when you think about it because that had here a more general structure of these Marvel TV shows. I remember talking about it at the time. And yeah, if you look back on the episode, the clunkiness of the almost the pacing of it, it's like interesting to see the cuts and pastes where they likely were. Yeah. Um, but after Marvel's brain trust, watched footage, it realized the scene needed to happen. But after Marvel's brain trust, watched footage, it realized the scene needed to happen in the pilot episode so that audiences could see more of the character's backstory early. Could you know, you imagine story without the transformation? Do you imagine being among, let's just say, it's 20 people in a special viewing of the, you have to watch, let's say, episodes one through four or so.  The whole thing you just do is your job, whatever. And it's like, what do you think?  Like, you've got a list of just all the most horrible writing choices. All this. And then most of the people in the room just agree. I don't understand how She-Hulk was She-Hulk, though. Don't you think you should put her origin first? I would just be sitting there like, that is not the problem. That's not even close to the problem. But you guys, if you can gear me to the character and then later we learn the backstory, some might say that there's a lot more merit to that concept because I don't really care necessarily about the backstory to some random stranger. More than I do the backstory about someone I kind of have been, you know, enamored with or that I care about or I'm interested in. Well, it's interesting that this theory didn't apply. We didn't see how Moon Knight got his powers until like the penultimate episode and nobody cared. That didn't really matter. Remember, we didn't see how he got the Moon Knight. It's kind of what I'm getting at. Like, it just feels like sometimes they're brain trust.  Like, it's like I said, I think they're doomed. The fact that they were watching that and they were like, you know, the problem with the script, the problem with the writing here is we didn't see how she got her powers. And we need to move that forward. The fact that that's like the mode of their thinking means, oh, yeah, you guys have no idea. You know why it's taken well to is probably like it actually changes that it's actionable, like, oh, that is a problem I can solve. You guys are highlighted as a problem. I can solve it. Great. This is like it's like hiring a painter to look at a house that's about to fall down and they're like, well, you see the which color shutters the color of the shutters kind of clashes with the the the the paneling on the side.   Oh, my good. You can't have a rug that color with a beige. That's the rug. Unbelievable. And the house is just collapsed. Um, that meant that the VX team was tasked with fixing the mess and post production. I'm sure they were. Yeah, that's why it looks so great. Yeah, you know, it's funny, too, is the catching up of it being like, oh, let's keep let's keep fixing it. We'll keep day two patch day three. But eventually it's like, just leave it. You've got to fix the next thing we can't the new fucker is coming out. We've got to get on that. Like, OK. OK. The so-called bad VFX we see was because of half baked scripts. I mean, that was probably part of it, but there was also just the fact that trying to achieve a hulk on a television show budget as well as television show timescale was probably just a bad idea from the start. Well, didn't you have a massive budget, though? Yeah, but again, it's comparable to the budget of a film stretched across more than two hours of story. You know what I mean? Like, even though it is a big budget for a television show, it's still a greater quantity of screen time that you need to create content for. As much as I agree with you, I still think there's what you said in addition is the main problem is just the time frame. Yes, absolutely. Like, more time, you could probably get a better result than that. Because there are films that are half the length of she-hulk that likely wouldn't have anyone near its budget that look way. You know what I mean? Like, it's just. Well, I mean, I mean, you know, I don't think it's a very good film, but the creator was on a budget of like 80 million dollars. And that film looks way better than anything Marvel's put out in the last few years. And it's just knowing how to use the tools for sure. Someone gave a super chat. I just wanted to read. They mentioned, I don't think we have seen how Tom Holland, Spider-Man, got his powers. That's true. It's true. We never we never saw as far as I remember was going to happen, or at least closer to it with a prequel animated TV show or something. Right. But that got scrapped. I don't know if that's happening. Yeah, that's right. They had a little like graphic for it. And I'm pretty sure that you know, probably not. The so-called bad effects we see was because of half baked scripts, says one person involved with she-hulk, quote, that is not Victoria. That's Kevin and even a Bob Kevin. Those issues should be addressed in pre-production. The timeline is not allowing the Marvel executives to sit with the material. Yeah, sure. Is some it's kind of crazy, isn't it? Because they're just permanently behind schedule. And what's funny, I guess, if you knocked out a couple of projects and took that time and added it to the rest, you might be able to at least level out. And yeah, because we talk about the VFX being awful is a big indicator of things going wrong. It's just like, well, ultimately, as we've said, wouldn't matter at all if the scripts were top notch. Nobody would really care that much. We would be talking about it.  It's like, I don't know, I guess they're rushed. But it just wouldn't have as much of an impact. But when there's nothing when it's just really bad. Yeah. Then, yeah, what do you have left other than, wow, it looks awful, too. Well, the key jangling and spectacleness of the films, a lot of it is dependent on the quality of the CG at that point. You can't blow people away.  It's like, what is that? It's a surprise to see me. Yes. Yes. I'm surprised to see whatever this is and I'm looking at. Yes.  And recall that the entire budget for the first season of House of the Dragon 10 episodes, that was 200 million. So that was 20 million an episode for they spent that money.  It looks incredible. Those are incredible episodes, except for one of them. The last of us, season one, I think had 100 million for the budget for the whole season. That was nine episodes. Damn good. The sets are so wonderful to look at. So you're like, oh, my God, it's real great.  And a lot of sets. Yeah, like it's all just looks so real, so good. Twenty five million dollars an episode. You could make one five nights a Friday and make. Yes. Oh, you must be.  They're like, well, that could have been us. Damn it. Friday was 25 million. Twenty million. Yeah.  It already has. Well, it's it's again.  He's the guy who figured out. He figured out how to make money off of, like, everything. Well, I'm just waiting on this. Like, I'm perfect for you. You're perfect for me. Let's go. We'll make a billion. As it and bear in mind that this film was simultaneously released on streaming as well. And it's sort of made one hundred and sixty million dollars. It's only been a week. Tony, man, we get those those video game movies. I mean, yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, Mario, remember, Mario movie cost a hundred million dollars and it made one point three billion. You know, meanwhile, the Marvels cost, like, one hundred and fifty percent. That like two and a half. That, yeah. What was it? They'll lose it all on the sequel. I would assume this will stay pretty profitable for at least three films. Oh, five nights of Freddy, they'll make. They're not going to lose all that. Yeah, it'll be like three or ten of them. And they will make money. And I'll come out every year. It'll be the new sore. Yeah, it'll be the new saw. While I was desperately trying to crawl, let's play back into being the sore films. It's like, look, we're here, too. But without a similar zeitgeist bang, the August 2022 series premiere at the El Capitan Theater foreshadowed. What was to come six months later at the Quantamania? Bow, the She-Hulk special effects were out of focus in multiple scenes. That's imagine that. Yeah, we're going to the premiere for our new show and then you're sitting there watching it. Yeah, we need. What are you supposed to make of that? I guess you'd be told, like, there'd be some announcement being like some things are not completely fit. And it's just like, but that's OK. But that's what you. But that's your job. It's the premiere. Like it should be done, right? Yeah, like this is it. Coming out is what we're here. We're here to see the movie. Where's the movie? Um, let's see. There are signs that the flood of market. That the flood of product. Why don't I say market? I don't know. There are signs that the flood of product is leading people to tune out. I'm not prepared to call it a permanent fall, but based on the numbers that go with Marvel podcasts, Marvel based articles, friends who do Marvel based video coverage. All of these numbers are significantly down. Says Joanna Robinson, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller, MCU, the reign of Marvel Studios. And you know what numbers are up? The ones for coverage that's not positive. Oh, my God. Why? Why is that happening? Well, typically you point to a fundamental sense of what you are indeed by connected to, you know, engaged with. And it's like, yeah, there was a time where it would have been hyperproportable to just be like every Marvel thing is amazing. Woo. Do you remember the I was telling you about that cover? If we watched it on EFAP at all. But there was there was React streamers who were saying after their first reaction to one of them from Ahsoka or Loki or whatever was like, hey, can you guys, you know, not as many people watching our stuff as we're like, what's good? Oh, it's like, well, yeah, you have done that yourself. Yeah, it makes me better. Instead of just going, woo, every time anything happens. Joana Robinson's a writer and podcaster at the ringer. The quality is suffering in 2019 at the peak.  That association is no longer the case because there have been so many projects that felt half baked and undercooked. That's half baked is undercooked. Right. Yeah, that's redundant. Yeah. And they're both food related.   They're it's redundant and they're food related. Because I think you're correct, but you could look at they could be two different things that don't necessarily. There's like a it's like a Venn diagram between those two. Right. Because what if I had perfectly baked half of a thing and the other half wasn't versus undercooked the whole thing? It's it doesn't. Well, that it's it's the same thing both ways. If something is undercooked, then the middle will be raw. And same thing. If you half bake something, the middle will be raw with the dough and everything. So it's pretty much the same thing, almost exactly. Because one is with typically with, you know, different thing. I guess you could undercook like a soup. Yeah. But that's that's not really what people think about undercooking a soup.  Yeah, you think about raw meat. Yeah, but since it's metaphorical, right? Like it's it's like if a if a line of dialogue was half baked, maybe you'll be arguing that half of it was pretty strong. The other half wasn't well undercooked. The whole thing is sort of lackluster. Um, may maybe because like if you half bake something, the outside will probably be fine. And if you undercook something, well, the outside will probably be fine. But that'll be the outside and the outside inside difference. And the process would be kind of the same for both, where, you know, the heat from the outside and maybe it's just right. And it just struck me as odd, though. Do we have our pictures of Jonathan Major's here? And then we have our Marvel's squad.  Is that what you're going to say? That looks awful. I think the other one is better. The other one that she's wearing and part of the film, evidently, like that one looks that one looks way better. Original doesn't matter. This looks it looks like Zack Snyder made it. And then, of course, there is the big problem of why is the logo on Captain Marvel's suit that of like the empire that took her in and then manipulated her and never going to address that. Leave her alone. Yeah, I don't know why. In fact, all of these costumes look pretty pretty bad. Yeah, they all look pretty. Yeah, not a fan of not a fan of any of them. They just don't look they just don't look good. They just look like something you buy at a Halloween store for 30 bucks. Monika looks super generic to me. And the black and white is not. I don't know if I'm feeling that black and white. It's it's I don't know. It just doesn't look good. None of them look good. They look pretty bad. Yeah, they look pretty bad. And you got to nail the costumes, guys. Come on, I mean, Kings looks all right, you know. But I just don't understand why Captain Marvel's is so desaturated. I don't that's the big problem. Yeah, it's so dull. Why isn't it more colorful? Why isn't like a bright and bold blue and red?  Like you could imagine that if she had to have a super outfit to a funeral. And then there's yeah, that's she hawks. And then there's Jonathan Mages where the creators of it said it's the best suit in the MCU. It's fine. It looks fine. Well, the problem is like, I'm sorry, but Spider-Man's like, design is pretty top tier, like just fundamentally like Spider-Man in general. That's like, you don't even need to name the top hitters. I feel like he doesn't beat out even Doctor Strange. I really like his. I don't think he beats out. Yeah, Doctor Strange is cool. I'd say he doesn't beat out Cap suit in the first Captain America movie. Probably not. No, I'm one and obviously I don't hate it. It's just someone showed me this and I'm like, I think that there's this minimal kind of quality to a lot of them. Like, I don't think that's great or anything, but it looks fine. You know, the problem is like, it's for whatever reason, like Marvel doesn't like to do them like that. They always they always have a certain like it's it's it's what you see in this in this picture, right? That's like generic workable Marvel suit, I guess. But yeah, they try to make them overly complex and detailed. They will times and the material and the way that it fits on the body. Just lines. There's always just lines going in different directions. Go to all the place. The front of Monica's suit there is like you have the there's so many lines and so much stuff going on is like, just stop. Don't don't do it. Don't do it. But it's like they're trying to make it look like faux armor, but it doesn't look like armor. No, yeah, but you can make it armor. You're Disney. Just what you want to make it armor. Just do it where she's got little bits or it's like an actual suit or it has something related to her power.  Oh, yeah, we don't do head stuff. No, they don't do that. Yeah, that's the thing is, is I at this point, I just prefer it if you just don't even have the loot. I saw someone in chat say, oh, yeah, but Dr. Doom will be taken to someone off all the time. And the answer is in my ideal world, he never takes that thing off. It's all he's got a metal face. It's it's it's there forever, but it'll be nanotech when he shows up, he'll have a nanotech helmet as well. It's just like it. So, you know, I prefer that they're not even pretending that these guys are going to wear helmets that it was funny. I saw what we were talking about, the nature of bringing in Dr. Doom, some people were like, no, don't bring the route. And I was like, that was under the specific presence of it being amazing. Yeah, that's right. Wait, it's rags. It's up next. Oh, wait, you just read the last one, didn't you? Let's see. I think I had just meant I had just I did something happened. You mentioned the half baked and undercooked. Yes, yeah, I think that I yes, I think it was me that just did it. OK, well, as a public criticism mounts, five years pulling the plug on scripts and projects that aren't working. Case in point, the blade free boot. Here we go. Mahersh Ralees, I'm not tied on for the eponymous role of a vampire. Things look promising for a twenty twenty three release, but the project has gone through at least five writers, two directors and one shut down six weeks before production. What one person familiar with the script? Permutation says the story at one point morphed into a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. Blade was relegated to the fourth lead. A bizarre idea. What? Very plain narrative led by women and filled with life lessons. A true type of Oscar winner, Ali on board. Now, this is one of the things that's been contested publicly. You're most contentious one. Yes, this is the most contentious claim. I think it was somebody who worked on the script saying that this was outright false. Well, we already know that Mahersh Lalee specifically hated the script to the point where he left the project, right, whatever it was. I think that's what I mean. The thing that cannot be denied is that the project is clearly not in a good way that they've lost to the actors. Let's put it this way, it's not important whether or not the script itself had him a fourth lead with a bunch of women talking about life lessons. The more important thing is that Blade isn't being taken seriously whatsoever, that they've had like several different versions that are all horrible, that they have no idea what they're doing. When? How do I put this? Having Mahersh Lalee and Blade, it's like you've got it. That's it. Like, how do you screw that up? Just make him kill vampires. That's what you're going to do. How do you screw it up is the same way they screw a lot of them up, where it's like there's really no problem with the casting, the vast majority. It's part of the reason why like Cassie and Ant-Man stands out. It's like, wow, that's like distinctly bad casting. Marvel, like DC, where they like repeatedly made mistakes in terms of casting people. Like Marvel tends to get the right people for the job.   But, you know, it's just that these are symptoms of the fact that they just don't they're not taking this seriously, not doing this properly whatsoever. And I'm sure none of the suggested scripts have been very good so far. I bet you that they were sitting there for a long time, like, well, is it even going to be our rating? It's like, well, of course, right? Right? I can even ask. Yes.  I mean, they've had to repeatedly assure people right of Deadpool 3. And I still wonder if they might be while they're cutting that film together going like, you know, you know, Ryan, can you redub some of these lines to not swear please and thank you? I can easily see them out of that conversation. But yeah. Right. Amid reports that Ali was ready to exit over script issues, Feige went back to the drawing board and hired Michael Green, the Oscar nominated writer of Logan to start a new speculation around town is that the studio is looking to make the film now slated for 2025 on a budget of less than 100 million, a deviation from Marvel's big spending strategy. Wow. I wouldn't expect Blade to need that high of a budget. It's probably going to be contemporary. A lot of stuff will be practical.  Like why? So this this is surprising because it's like, well, they usually overspend. But the thing is 100 million can have more of an effect than 200 million if it's given to the right people and they give them the right time, right? Well, yeah, I mean, remember, Deadpool one and two, I think Deadpool one had a budget of like 50 million and Deadpool two was something like 100 million. So, you know, it can be. And those aren't like those have a lot of big like explosive action setpaces. So, you know, it can be done. And as for hiring Michael Green is the writer of Logan. It's like, yeah, whoever whatever creative team creates something like Logan, I can understand why that creative team could give you something strong with a blade, but at the same time, you just wonder, like, are you are you casting them as Gary's always put it? Or are you hiring them? Like, are they because of who they are and what they've done? Or are they because you're actually going to let them create something? All right, who is who is next, actually? Let's see. Mola's next. That'll be weird, because I just read that. Oh, right. I just read the didn't I just read the blade pot? Yeah, sorry. There's two. No, you're next rags. My bad. Yeah. But with a publicly acknowledging the downside of a Marvel TV glut that diluted focus and attention, the keepers of the comic book empire are considering some dramatic moves. Sources say there have been talks to bring back the original gang for end of a movie. Because, of course, it's so over.   You know that they're like, 2012. That was that was a good time. That was when we were going up instead of crashing down. Jeez, this would include reviving Robert Downey, Jr.'s Iron Man and Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow, both of whom were killed off an end game. That shouldn't be a stumbling block in comic books. Beloved characters are often killed off only to be resurrected. Thanks to the power of thing like the multiverse. Yeah, it's no. Yes, but the studio hasn't shouldn't be a shock. I mean, come on, guys.   Oh, Robert Downey, Jesus. What do you have to pay him to come? He just seems he's done. He's moving on. Well, yeah, he was an Oppenheimer. So you got Downey, Jr., who has publicly stated that he thought his time in the MCU may have like killed his ability to act and that he has no intention of coming back or putting the jersey back on, as he said on Joe Rogan.  That's right. These are the two people that you want to bring back. Can you imagine how much they'll cost and what their contracts would say? Sources say Downey, Jr.'s upfront salary for Iron Man 3 was around 25 million. That's not true, because he caught a really good deal in terms of getting a percentage of the box office gross that ran throughout the whole thing. Yeah, man. Sometimes you got to play that. Well, what was that thing we were talking about once that it was? Oh, it was Batman. Oh, who was it? Oh, it was Michael Keaton, wasn't it? Who went for a percentage of the take instead of just. Oh, no, no, no. It would. Jack Nicholson went for it. Jack Nicholson. That's it. Yeah, yeah. And the merchandise and the merchandise made so much money. It's unbelievable. He made so much money. That was a smart move. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So there we go. It's that. That's that paragraph done. I'll be right back, though. OK, but yeah, I could believe that they actually had that conversation. I could totally believe it. Oh, yeah, he's like the original gag. Well, that solved Marvel's major's problem with when the Quantum Mania actor was arrested in March, Disney executives insisted that they could afford to wait to play a wait and see game, given that Avengers the Kang Dynasty wasn't expected to begin shooting until early 2024. But that major's was dropped in quick succession by his public assistant managers. He remained a client at WME, the agency he landed where he landed after CIA parted ways with him, pre-arrest for his brutal conduct towards staff, says one source. CIA declined to comment. In April, other alleged domestic violence victims of majors began cooperating with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. Then, ahead of a key hearing in October, media outlets, including Variety, obtained a court filing that referenced a police incident in London involving majors that led his ex-girlfriend to seek medic