Von Doom Fest - Thor

Cross the rainbow bridge of Asgard, where the booming heavens roar. You'll behold in breathless wonder, the God of wonder, mighty Lord. Thank you. Welcome back, Midnight Viewers, to Von Doomfest. It's been a while for us.

It's been a while recording these, but... HP! Yes, sir? Welcome back to Von Doomfest, sir. Great to be back.

I'm looking forward to talking some Nordic gods with you, sir. Some Asgardian princes. It's HP's favorite character of all time. Thor! Only because of that Incredible Hulk TV movie with Eric Kramer.

He's my favorite Thor. Glorious. Gorgiosity. Okay, we're talking about Thor. Absolutely Thor as character. first appeared back in Journey into Mystery number 83.

That was in August of 1962. Instantly a big smash, because right around the corner the very next year is Avengers number one, and Thor leaps right into the initial roster of heroes there. The character, of course, is created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and scripter Larry Lieber. So he's... So in a situation like this, if there's a third party involved, I think it's the third party is probably the most influential on the character.

But not according to Jack Kirby, once again, it's all his. Do you think when he made a mistake, they would turn to him and say, Ach, du lieber! I guarantee you that joke was used over and over again. I'm sure there were signs hanging in his office on certain days. Yeah.

I crack myself up. I'm sorry, listeners. Hey, who's on the line? Ach du Liebe. That's like the Arc de Triomphe.

Ach du Liebe. Indeed. Okay, Thor, he marks kind of a change from your typical superhero fare in that he's not a guy dressed up and calling himself Thor, the Nordic god. He is Thor, the Nordic god. In fact, all of the The pantheon of Nordic gods are represented in the comic book, and it's just now that they're on another planet.

Get it? We've been worshipping aliens, or at least our friends in Norway. Smart. When did you start reading Thor? When did I start reading Thor?

Five until now? No, I probably mainly got my Thor fix initially through things like the Avengers or. What have you, but I did... I remember there was a storyline.... Somewhere around high school that I got into that I thought was a really fascinating one where Thor was cursed with eternal life.

He could not die, but he could be injured. So like if he broke his arm in a battle, it. Would never heal. It would just stay broken. So that's when somebody forged him this crazy suit of armor to protect him.

And this all culminated in an issue that was nothing but splash pages, where he went toe-to-toe against, what's the world serpent that circles the earth? What's the name of it? I don't know. We all call him Jimmy, though. No, we'll call him.

So he has a big fight with Jimmy. And it was all because of the grandness of this fight. I think it was Walt Simonson did the artwork. And it was all splash panels, like I said, and it was all very epic. And the outcome of this was he beat Jimmy the Serpent, but he was basically reduced to this pile of goo inside of this suit of armor, an undying.

Puddle of goo. And that stuck with me because that just seemed like an awful, awful curse to put on somebody like Thor. Yeah, well, it's like a Tales from the Crypt episode. In fact, I remember that Tales from the Crypt movie, the very first anthology from London, from England, where it's a monkey's paw episode where a woman, a man wishes for money and he gets it because, or a woman wishes for money and she gets it because her husband is killed in a car accident. And so she wants to wish him back.

And somebody says, have you read the monkey's paw? Don't do that. If you wish him back now, he was mangled in the accident. He'll come back and it'll be mangled. And she says, okay, I want him back.

I want him back like he was before the accident. I remember this now. They bring in a dead body, and it's because he died of a heart attack. The accident was an afterthought, right? And then she has one final wish, and she says, I wish him back now as he is, and he'll live that way forever.

And then he wakes up screaming because he's a dead body that's been embalmed. And then they chop him up, and all the pieces are still wriggling because he can't ever die. That's exact. I was unfamiliar with that. At the time I read this book, but there are some striking similarities.

And eventually I think he goes to hell and he, you know, he obviously, nothing is ever permanent in any comic book universe. So he came back better than ever eventually. But the suit of armor was really cool. It was a nice look for him. What about you, Father Malone?

When did you start reading? Never. I've never read a Thor comic. I've always hated Thor as a character. Never?

Yeah, I never, I could never, my mind could not reconcile Thor. the Asgardian gods on a different planet and being superheroes. I get it now. Trust me, I understand. But when I was first dealing with that character, I felt very off-put by him and what he represented in the comic book world. I could see that there being a bit of a disconnect.

It might be that they were actually co-opting real gods. And something about that felt weird to me. Maybe I was too Catholic at the time because I was a Catholic in grade school. You know what I mean? It's like if somebody came out with a Jesus Unlimited, you know, like where he's kicking ass.

I mean, it would be a good comic, you know, obviously. I could see that. Maybe I was just, my mind wasn't, it was so flexible at the time. It just never occurred to me how weird it might be. And in fact, I probably wasn't even really that aware of the original comic. you know, legend of Thor and all of the, all of the, the gods and everything that, you know, that wasn't part of my, you know, upbringing or reading or anything at that time.

So I just, I guess I just accepted it. And now I kind of appreciate that it was kind of an interesting way to bring up a bunch of interesting characters in a whole universe to the, the, the Marvel universe at the time that just gave a different flavor entirely from your, your fantastic fours or Spider-Man or any of that kind of stuff. Oh, that jazz. Yeah. All that jazz.

Let's get on to a higher level. All that falderol. Oh, yes. Your favorite. My favorite word.

Now, obviously, Thor kicked around. He showed up in cartoons. He was part of that initial block of Marvel animation in the 1960s. And he would make guest appearances also at 70s and 80s and whatever animated fare that would come along. But he made his big screen debut or small screen debut, if you will.

You remember what it was, right, HB? You remember the very first iteration of Thor in the living flesh? And can you remember the actor's name? The very first, this is clearly predating the Incredible Hulk television movie, right? Is that what you're baiting me with here?

I am. The first iteration of Thor, was it in conjunction with another character's TV show? No. Thor. The actor who played.

Him Is currently in the MCU. Currently in the MCU. It's not, hmm, in the MCU who played him. Yeah. Is he a prominent figure in the MCU?

Yes. However, I will now give you a second clue. Yes. Television only. Television only.

Clark Gregg? No. Is he involved? No. He's too young.

Or was too young. You know, I'm drawing a blank, but you're going to tell me and I'm going to go, oh, now I remember. Who was it? Vincent D'Onofrio. Yes!

Adventures in Babysitting. That wasn't small screen, no? No. I'm saying he is currently only in the MCU on the small screen as a major figure in the MCU. I got you.

I thought you meant that his first appearance was on the small screen. Of course I remember Adventures in Babysitting. I was baiting you with the Incredible Hulk telemovie. That's great. It's funny because obviously he wasn't Vincent D'Onofrio in that movie yet.

I saw that movie in the theater, actually. and I really dug it. I went to, I was on a first date when I went to see that movie. To Adventures in, that's a good date movie. It's harmless. Yeah, that was, it's, he was so, he was, I don't know, they made him look tall and he was like kind of, you know, muscular.

He was, he was a good looking Thor, I thought. Yeah, no, that was him, man. He was all buff and shit. This was after Full Metal Jacket, so I'm sure he wanted to get into some shape, you know? Or was it?

This is right before Full Metal Jacket, wasn't it? I was going to say, it may have been filmed before it, but. Must have, which means he went from a big, buff-looking dude to fat Gomer Pyle. That's kind of an achievement in one year. There, man.

Everybody gives De Niro, like he gets the props for Jake LaMotta and Al Capone. And those are all great. But boy, going from essentially the ideal version of Thor in a little child's eyes to dumpy, fat, creepy, private pile. And that's very impressive. And now, I mean, look at him as Kingpin.

And he was Orson Welles. Oh, that's right, in Ed Wood, voiced by Maurice LaMarche, voice of the brain, of Pinky and the Brain. Maurice LaMarche was also, if I'm not mistaken, he was the voice of the Stormtrooper in Star Wars that says, look, sir, droids. Was he really? Yeah, I think that's Maurice LaMarche.

Wow. I could be wrong. I'm pretty sure it was. Double check us, nerds. There you go.

That's all of you. You're listening to a Thor podcast, for fuck's sake. That's right, we're talking Star Wars and a Thor podcast. No, Thor would make. His.

Look, that was... He wasn't actually Thor in that movie. He just looked like Thor. He was a mechanic. Yeah, he was a mechanic, but he got a giant hammer and he was all buff and shit.

Yeah, and the little girl was inexplicably obsessed with Thor. She had the helmet with the wings. Which leads me to believe that Adventures in Babysitting was a Warner Brothers film. No, no, no, because that was DC. That was DC.

So, yeah, no, actually, I take that back. It doesn't make sense. Like, anyone could have just licensed the character. I think it was a New Line Cinema movie. They were kind of riding high at that point.

Remember Albert Collins? Nobody leaves this place without singing the blues. I do. I like that movie. Babysitting Blues.

I liked it a lot. I haven't seen it in years. I'm going to re-watch it now, and I'm going to feel like it's all just sort of like White Panic. No, there's certainly, and I'm. Sure there's...

That urban, you know, the urban terror, you know, like Judgment Night, like, oh my God, don't go down the wrong street, you'll be murdered down there. But I think, you know, it's one of those movies that I, we're getting on a tangent, but I like movies that have kind of a self-contained, like, this is what happens, it transpires over the course of one evening, and they come out the other end, and they're all, you know, they're wiser for the experience, but it's You know, it's like 12 Angry Men. It takes place in a very compressed time frame. I like movies like that. But that's also Judgment Night.

Don't have any great love for Judgment Night, but I guess there are exceptions to the rule, I suppose. Do you like Night of the Living Dead? That takes place in one night. Of course. Who doesn't love Night of the Living Dead?

The dead. The Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead, I mean. I was going to. Say, after a fashion, maybe George Romero, because that became public domain and he lost out on all that money.

No, he hates himself for that. In the grave. Anyway, where were we? Thor. Thor.

Look, he showed up on a television movie. It was pathetic. He's basically wearing kitchen appliances for armor. Are you talking about the Hulk now? Yes, the Hulk television movie where they bring back Bill Bixby.

They were basically two backdoor pilots. They did one for Daredevil and they did one for Thor, neither of which took. And the one with Thor, they followed the Dr. Edward Blake... Version of Thor.

Donald Blake. Donald Blake, sorry, yeah. Edward Blake is the comedian. Literally. For those of you who only know Thor from the movies, he has like an alter ego that they completely jettison for the film.

There's this man who can turn into Thor. Well, the legend was. Like an avatar. It's kind of like Moon Knight does now. In the comic.

Thor, I believe, was too prideful, and Odin wanted to teach him humility. So he cursed him to walk the earth as this, you know, basically a lame doctor named Donald Blake who had a cane. Literally lame, not like, you know, like Nickelback. He had a limp. And that he had to overcome, you know, he had to learn humility before he could become Thor again.

But he would crack the cane against the hard surface and boom, he would all of a sudden become Thor. He would transform. To the best of my knowledge, as you said, they jettisoned that in the comic before long. I don't think he ever goes back to Donald Blake after like 1970-something. But in that Hulk TV movie, they gave us a version of that, except they made him like a grad student.

And he would instead hold up Thor's hammer and yell, Odin! Odin! But my favorite part of that entire movie was at one point he's hiding from some threat. And he lifts the hammer up and he wants to turn into Thor, but he doesn't want to give his position away. So he goes, Odin!

He whispers it. Like, who cares at that point? In a second, you're going to be Thor. Just yell it. Look, it's silly, it's low budget, and we've covered it in much more detail on a previous podcast.

But there is charm to be had with Eric Kramer's portrayal of Thor. There's a shaggy appeal to it that I still think is charming in its own way. Yeah, he got to the... the sillier side of Thor a lot faster than Chris Helmsworth would. He did. Yeah, that's a good point.

Which you kind of have to do with that character. Because once he hit the MCU, I had the same reaction, not the exact same reaction, but very similar one to one I had as a kid, which is, oh no, this is going to ruin everything. Well, really, it took them two and a half, two, three quarters of a movie, of movies, to reach that conclusion. Because, well, I guess. Let's get to Thor.

We'll get to the, yeah. Yeah, they kept trying to make, Kevin Feige kept trying to get that movie made through the 90s and into the 2000s, trying to get a Thor movie off the ground, but nobody was biting until, you know, Marvel decided, hey, we could actually make our own studio. People do that. So, obviously, we got Iron Man, and then we got Iron Man 2, and then we got Incredible Hulk, and then we got Thor. Or did we get Hulk first?

It doesn't matter. Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh, How out of the fucking blue was that choice? Not really, in my opinion. Oh? Because.

Because he did that grand Frankenstein flick at this point? Or he did that... Did he do Hamlet? I bet he did Hamlet by then. Well, I mean, not specifically, but I don't have anything really to back this theory up, but my guess is they wanted him for his Shakespearean theatrical cred, because. that first movie, you know, a.

Good portion of it, especially the stuff that takes place on Asgard is, is very sort of, uh, stayed and Shakespearean and it's, and it's, you know, it's royalty we're talking about here. It's the Kings and Queens and intrigue and. You have Loki. So I think that's, I'm not going to say it was an obvious choice, but the choice always made sense to me. Oh yeah.

I mean, it, it ultimately paid off too. I think Bron is a better director than he's given credit for, honestly. Um, I agree. His material isn't the best sometimes. Frankenstein is a terrible film.

However, you know, Edward V is fine. That's a good one. Look, I like Much Ado About Nothing. I like Much Ado About Nothing. That's a good one.

That one, because it was so sumptuous. Setting it kind of in, well, maybe the original was set in Italy. I don't know that much about Shakespeare. But it had such a great look to it and the actors, except for possibly Keanu Reeves. They were all game for it and did wonderful work.

I Like Dead Again, I think, is a great movie. It's so rewatchable. Do your impression. No, you do it better. You do him as like Jack Benny.

I'm not a Roman. I'm not Roman. Kenneth Branagh in Dead Again does the worst American accent I've ever heard. It's all R's. It's all hard R's, everybody.

He sounds like David Lynch a bit. Hey there, everybody. Do you think he, who's worse, portraying an American, him or Ewan McGregor in that, was it Night Watch or what was the name of that movie he did? I'm testing myself. Yes, that was Night Watch.

Night Watch. With Josh Brolin. I'm going with Branagh. Really? Yeah.

Yeah, I guess so, because not only is he doing an American accent, you know, sort of poorly, but he's trying to do like a gumshoe thing at the same time, which a rumpled detective, which compounds the issue. Well, I don't know. It's like that. It's like, you know, I've got to do my American accent. Hey, What do you want?

What am I doing here? I'm doing a Travolta now. I just want to get up these stairs and get to my home. All kidding aside, it's a great movie, which supports your theory that he's a much better director than he gets credit for. I would agree.

What's a great movie? Thor? Well, Thor is, in retrospect, it's real. I mean, certainly compared to the second one, it's a pretty good movie. It accomplishes what it needs to, and it's funny in parts.

It's in no way the best Thor movie, because I think we all can agree what that one is, but it's far from the worst. That's faint praise. It's decent. I would give it a solid B-. I.

Like Thor a lot. That's a pretty good writing, actually. I give it a B. I think it's good. I enjoyed it when I saw it, and then I re-watched it again, you know, just to just a little while ago and found it to be just as good.

As an introductory story for a character, it's absolutely fine. The action's pretty good. They sneak in a Hawkeye first appearance. And we get introduced to Loki. And more than anything, I really loved the Frost Giants.

I wish we had more Frost Giants. I'm going to say that at the end of every mini-review of the movies. Where were the Frost Giants? Where were the Frost Giants? Loki is a Frost Giant.

Somehow we forgot that along the way. But this introduces us to Natalie Portman's character. Jane Foster. Jane Foster. And what's his name?

Skarsgård. Yeah, it's Dr. Who's What's It's. Hold on. Live.

Eric Selvig, who would be really important, it felt, at the beginning of the MCU, and then completely disappeared. Completely disappeared. What's her name from Two Broke Girls? Yeah, Kat Dennings. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We are given the Warriors Three. Ray Stevenson as Volstagg. What's her name? As Sif. Oh, from...

Oh, what? Is it Adrienne Palicki? No, no, no, no. Oh, it's Jamie Alexander as Sif. And then, what's his name?

The guy who played Shazam. Yes, Levi fucking Stubbs. Levi Stubbs. From the Four Tops. Zachary Levi.

Zachary Levi. And it's very easy to forget that he was... part of Thor's entourage because, you know, he arguably was more famous as Shazam, I think, for a time. Yeah, now he's more famous for being a dickhead. Yeah, pretty much. Fuck you, Shazam.

Shazlam! That's what I have to say to that character at this point. Thor Falls to Earth, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The movie's pretty good. It's not the scale that we were going to get from Thor movies.

I think they did all the scale at the beginning of the movie and then wanted to tell some down-to-earth tale at the end with a 20-foot metal monster blowing up an entire town. Which was that monster? Was it the Destroyer? The Destroyer. That was very comic accurate.

That doesn't get a lot of play, but that was straight out of the comic book. And I don't think they get enough credit for setting the tone and the look for Asgard, which they would carry through to every future movie. And I thought it was spot on. I still do. Yeah, the look of Asgard is really fantastic.

We spent a lot of time on Asgard in future movies, which I think to be a detriment. Let's talk about Thor The Dark World. Do we need to? Yeah, we have to, actually. Because I don't think it's as bad as everyone says.

It's just kind of limp. First of all, what's his name? Fucking can't catch a break. Christopher Eccleston cannot catch a break. He signs on for Doctor Who.

Right. Massive creative battles with Russell T. Davies, the showrunner on that. So... fires himself off of that show, and then his next big thing is going to be in a Marvel movie, as a villain in a Marvel movie. He gets Malekith, who speaks no English at all in this film.

He's buried under all this makeup. He has contact lenses in, and somehow still manages to be perhaps the weakest villain in all of the MCU, which is crazy... Because his minions, the Dark Elves, are some of the coolest looking characters in the entire MCU. And they've not come back at all. Yeah.

I mean, if I thought about it, I could probably think of one or two lamer villains in the MCU. But he's certainly, Malekith is certainly in the running. But it's just such a forgettable movie. They spend too much time on Asgard, man. It's like, do we really care about the court? you know, the Royal court intrigue of what's going on in Asgard and, you know, what's Loki up to and fucking, uh, yeah.

And a new one with the, with the ether and it, it, it gets into Jane Foster's body and they have to take her back. So it can be, that was, they were still the Tesseract that we were still on the countdown to, um, to, you know, not Doomsday, to Endgame and to Thanos and all that stuff. Right. They figured out we need to start putting the Infinity Stones back on the board, you know, or on the board. I guess they, yeah, because the Tesseract showed up in Captain America.

Right, right. But it was, that was still the phase that we were in. Right. And I'm just kind of half reminding myself about that movie because it was, again, it was just a very forgettable movie. It is at the end of this movie during the mid-credits scene where Ray Stevenson and Jamie Alexander bring the ether to the collector, played by Benicio Del Toro.

Good performance, by the way. They bring it to him, and this is where Ray Stevenson says, it's not good to have two infinity stones next to each other, so they put a name on it in this movie. By the way, these things we've been collecting, those are infinity stones. Remember that. Yeah, it was feeling like...

I don't know. In my mind, it was debatable whether we were going to get another Thor movie from this, because it just felt like. Look, they've tried. They've given it a good crack with two movies, and this really didn't stack up. So imagine my surprise when Ragnarok.

Well, first of all, he showed up... Okay, there's some shoe leather, because he shows up on Avengers, and that's his first sort of sortie with all those guys. And then. Yeah, and then Thor Dark World. Yeah.

No, Thor Dark World comes before Avengers, because... No, no, I'm so confused. No, Dark World is 2013, Avengers is 2012. Right, okay, yeah, because Loki is a prisoner on Asgard at that point, having, you know, tried to enslave all of Earth. Those little things were like, let's redeem him immediately.

Yeah. And then Age of Ultron came, and then that's supposed to be Thor was living on Earth for a while, like, with Jane Foster and such. even though she doesn't appear again for a while. And then comes the revelation. I'm with you. Nobody could have expected this one.

Thor 2 was, at that point, pretty universally considered the worst film in the MCU. So why he would get another feature is beyond me. Except I think they finally figured out, let's start pairing our characters together. Brilliant. And plus, I mean.

Again, I have no evidence to back this up, but it felt, well, at the time, at least, I think that they were more willing, Feige was more willing to give interesting filmmakers a chance to kind of put their mark on these. Like, I would never have guessed. That Taika Waititi would be the one to usher in this brilliant new direction for Thor. But in retrospect, it makes so much sense because they were able to, you know, the self-seriousness was gone. And they leaned into the idea that he's actually a pretty silly character, especially when he's in this situation where he's on Sakaar and he's no longer the strongest Avenger and he's got to kind of fight for his life.

He's made to look ridiculous. Chris Hemsworth leans into it. Watiti leans into it. And it was absolute magic. I have no other way to describe it, but it was such a revelation for me seeing that movie.

It was immediately my favorite up to that point. Yeah, well, it continues to be as far as Thor movie goes. Without a doubt. With a ridiculous... Well, they have two villains at play.

The collector's brother. Yeah, Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster. Sort of effortlessly hilarious from beginning to end. Still threatening, though. Yeah, I mean, he's not afraid to vaporize somebody in the main court to make a point.

Well, that was a mistake. Do you know it was going to do this when you handed it to me? Well, and the funny thing is, it's really just Jeff Goldblum. He kind of has hit that point in his career where it's no longer about the character and it's more about just what does Jeff Goldblum bring to the table? So that's what you're getting.

But the movie's filled with great. Actors and great portrayals. Carl Urban is Scourge. I would never have made him an object of ridicule the way they do, but he's. Wonderful in everything.

We've already talked about him at length on Trek Fest, but I mean, he's endearing. He's funny. He has a redemption arc in it. I was going to say, yeah, I re-watched Thor Ragnarok today, actually, for this. And that's what really stood out to me this time, was watching this guy who's just a schlepping, you know...

Work-a-day guy, and he gets elevated to ridiculous status by a villain, and then does the right thing at the end, sacrifices himself at the end, goes after her. It's as perfect as I could imagine any Thor movie, certainly. But really, any MCU movie, the action is great. I've lost count of the number of times I've watched the gladiator battle between Hulk and Thor. It's so well done.

It's got great action. It's funny. And obviously, it becomes a buddy comedy between Hulk and Thor, and it's so inspired. And sometimes Hulk and Banner, which is, to me, the funniest part of the movie. How frantic Bruce Banner is, just knowing he's on another planet.

He's just like, he can't even handle it. Yeah, when they're like running through the bazaar and he's just freaking out, yeah. Why did you dress me like Tony Stark? He has a Duran Duran shirt on. He does.

It's, I don't know, and I wonder, I'm sure a great deal of it is sort of loosey-goosey, born out of improvisation and things like that, and at this point it was all fresh, and they kept the the framework of a great story there, but you could, I mean, sometimes you watch a movie and you can tell they're having fun and it adds up to nothing because it's just like wanking off. Cannonball run. Right. But in this case, there was just enough structure and enough like, you know, underpinnings of a framework that it all just worked for me. Here's what I noticed rewatching the movie.

And I kind of felt this from the beginning, honestly. I think the movie works as well as it does because the story of Hela is massively compelling. Her character coming back to, you know, wreak havoc really works so much so that I kept thinking, I wish this wasn't a comedy. Like, I wish we had gotten just that story. The story of Hela returning to Asgard and wreaking havoc and them trying to fight her off the entire time.

Because it just felt it felt epic enough and worthy of, of like further exploration. You know, uh, what we got is two movies kind of in one and they're both fun and they both hang together. I'm not saying they don't. I really enjoy the movie as is and as it's paced and whatever. They, even the hell of stuff is played for laughs.

Um, but, uh, I do wish we had gotten that story a little, a little more serious, uh, Or at least they could have brought Hela back at some point. It's fair. And she is a really badass villain in that. She gives Thor all that he can handle and then everybody, the Hulk. She's an incredibly strong villain, but you're right.

She is played by virtue of the fact that the tone of the movie, she's played for laughs. She has an army of undead soldiers, Matt. It could have been fucking awesome. I mean, it is awesome, but it's awesome in a this is kind of going to be a joke when we finally engage in battle. I just don't know if, personally, if I would have wanted to sit through another very serious, you know, for lack of a better word, Shakespearean kind of a thing with, you know, intrigue and palace, you know, goings on and all of this stuff.

I, I just, I can't imagine they would have gone in that direction again. They didn't obviously. No. Had they done that for the second film, which would have been appropriate because it's about taking down Asgard, you know, that you're not so benevolent, benevolent there, Odin, you know, we killed a lot of people together, you and I, and now you buried me and buried our past. Like that as that, that should have been the sequel.

Yeah. And then we wouldn't be talking about Thor the Dark World in such ridicule. You're not wrong. But what we also glossed over, not glossed over, we didn't discuss, is how wonderful Loki is in this. Because this is kind of a bit of the start of his redemption arc.

Because this is a guy, let's not forget, in the Avengers, in the first Avengers movie, he is a villain with. A capital V. If he had a mustache, he would have twirled it. He would have twirled it. But just by virtue of the fact that, again, they have somebody at the helm of this movie who's not afraid to take chances and not afraid to flip the script a little bit.

We wouldn't have the Loki, sort of a beloved character at this point because of his sacrifice at the end of the Loki TV series. We wouldn't have that if it didn't start here. Agreed. Look, I do think it's the superior Thor film, sort of top to bottom. Yeah.

And the action is really, really good, too. And it has Clancy Brown, and you can't go wrong if you've got Clancy Brown in your movie. It has Surtur, who eventually will destroy Asgard. That's right. That's a crown.

That's kind of what I knew just watching the movie at the very beginning. When he's fighting Surtur and everything. At that point, I felt relief in the theater. You mean when Led Zeppelin came on the soundtrack? You're like, oh, wait a minute.

Oh, we can do that. Not only is this going to kick ass action-wise, but it's going to thrill me in a way that a Thor movie really hasn't. The fight at the end of the movie on the bridge is actually really spectacular. Oh, it is. Absolutely.

Hulk fighting the wolf. And, you know, fucking Thor fighting with Hela and fucking Valkyrie just taking on everything. Scourge with the machine guns. Totally, man. Great shit.

What did he call them? He had a name for the two of them. Oh, I've forgotten already. What is it? It's like the Captain and Tennille.

One of those kind of jokes. Hold on. I'm going to look it up. It's not going to be listed in Wikipedia, though. He's so good.

Carl Urban. Brings so much to that character. But also, like, Idris Elba is in this. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

His reveal is awesome when he, like, comes to the rescue. See, that's what I'm saying. Like, all the stuff on Asgard. Everything they did on Asgard in this movie made me want more of it. And everything they did in Dark World made me want to run screaming from Asgard just to get to any other distant planet.

Yeah. This might be as close as we'll ever get to Terry Gilliam directing an MCU movie. With that sense of anything goes. Yeah, and, well, it doesn't hurt that the planet of Sakaar basically looks like it fell out of Terry Gilliam's head. It's just all, like, broken machinery and trash and, you know.

Scavenged materials. Yeah, you know, Robin Williams wouldn't be able to play scurrying around, you know, trying to find a knight. But it was such a. Central Park. This was really such a high point for the MCU.

A peak point. It was, and it was 10 years ago, or 11, or 9 years ago. It was 2017. Yeah, we all felt like, well, I don't think we had felt that there was any flagging of the material in general after Avengers. I mean, we had highs and lows.

Like, not everyone was on board with Ultron, but it wasn't like we all hated Ultron. Like, the movies just kind of kept delivering up until this. So it was like, this might have been the high point of the standalone movies, I mean. No, I think it's definitely a high point. So that brings us to...

Instead of taking a script that has been worked out by a team of writers who we all know and trust, who write good dramatic things, let's let Taika Waititi write it from the beginning. Not come in and pepper in jokes and then work with the cast to make it even funnier. No, let's let him come up with the story... come up with all the beats and all the characters and all the dialogue good idea. Such high hopes for love and thunder from the very first trailer that i saw. Just from the announcement of the name oh love and thunder oh this is going to be cool could not have been more wrong yeah like i i don't know i guess i would watch this over the dark world just because the action is cuckoo actually yeah no i would definitely watch it because here's the thing i would Here's the thing.

Speaking of plots that needed to be done seriously, Gore the God Butcher is a story that needed to happen in the MCU, completely separate from Thor, perhaps. There are things in this movie that I really like. I like that we got now, I'm sort of the opposite from childhood now, I like that we got the pantheon of gods, where we now meet Zeus, and we meet all the mythic characters, and they're all there. And you see now Thor's place in this hierarchy, like, oh, yeah, like, we've only ever really dealt with the Asgardians in the Norse mythology. But what about Greek mythology?

Well, yeah, they're there, too. In fact, yeah, I mean, Hercules is a fucking major character in the MCU, or rather, in Marvel Comics. And we meet him at the end. Probably never see him again. Never see him again, yep, for two seconds.

Yep. two seconds. Brent Goldstein from Ted Lasso, everybody, was Hercules for two seconds at the end of the movie. I'll do it, father, or something like that. I don't know. He's doing some Greek accent.

They said there was so much... I had so many expectations for this movie. I think we all did, because. It was ostensibly the same group of actors. It was the same team.

You had Christian Bale was playing the god butcher. I thought, boy, they can't miss. Oh, boy, could they miss. The entire fucking prologue or the opening act of this movie with Thor adventuring with the Guardians, a giant, pointless, not thrilling, not fun scene All to get to a joke I've seen a dozen times, which is, I was supposed to protect this thing for you. Oops, I destroyed it.

The thing that I always return to on this is, so my son, Ragnarok, it's not a stretch to say Ragnarok was his favorite MCU movie. We saw it together. Could not have loved it anymore. We still quote it to this day, Father Malone. We still make reference to Ragnarok.

Took... him to see Love and Thunder and we just sat there kind of mouths agape through the whole movie and now he was 15 or so at the time and that's still an age where every movie is the best movie you ever saw if it's got a lot of spectacle and glamour and whatever. The movie ended and I looked at him and he said, let's. Just get out of here. He was so crushed by how. Just slapdash it was.

It just felt like you said, it felt like There wasn't really a solid script. They just kind of figured, well, hey, the semi-improv thing really worked in the last movie. Let's do it again, but let's amp it up to 10. It just made it feel shaggy, not in a good way. Just sort of hang, you know, like it didn't really hang together and it just felt lazy.

That's what we were left with, this impression that it was lazy. And there was so much that they could have, like there's cool stuff in it, like the whole Jane Foster thing. has Mjolnir, the reconstructed Mjolnir from Ragnarok. Now she's Mighty Thor. She's Mighty Thor, but yet she's dealing with this cancer that she's got to deal with. There's some really interesting ideas in it.

But, whew, man. Yeah, listen. The movie about the character who decides to hunt down all the gods and punish them because he believed in one and brought his dying daughter to that god, and that god laughed and let that kid die, is not the same movie with the screaming goats. It shouldn't be anyway. And yet, here we are.

Because that story, Gore the God Butch, as I was saying earlier, him hunting down all of those characters, it's a great idea for a Thor movie. Yes. He's now hunted like all the other gods are going to be hunted for this thing, you know? And so you've got that plot going on, and then parallel that with Jane Foster dying of cancer, but using Mjolnir and doing good, but Mjolnir is kind of accelerating the cancer. Like, that's...

Do you think he came up with that storyline? No. Right, that was handed to him, right? It must have been because it's so out of, for lack of a better phrase, it's not a character for Taika Waititi. Which is not actually, I take that back.

I know that World War II movie that he made with Scarlett Johansson, I know there's a lot of heavy stuff that happens in that. So I don't want to, I walk that back. I don't think he's one to shy away from this kind of plot, but at the same time, it's so, tonally, it doesn't really fit with what's happening. He tries to get there, but he is just miles away. Yeah, you know, I get it.

Like, there's no reason you can't treat things in a more jovial way, you know? Like, there's a taboo of even talking about cancer, right? And there's a taboo about a dead child, right? And It deserves to be dealt with in a lighter tone as well, just to even get the conversation going. It's just that those two subjects in fucking slapstick are not exactly ever going to be bedfellows, you know?

Right. And the whole movie feels squandered, honestly. Like, they should have taken those stories, those two plot lines, Jane and Gore, and handed it to, like, literally anyone else to make the movie. Hand it to fucking... I'm trying to think of a lame director.

I don't want to call anybody out. But you get what I'm saying. I know exactly what you're saying. The word you just used is absolutely apt. It was so squandered.

The whole enterprise was squandered. They had built up so much goodwill and anticipation for Ragnarok because it was pretty universally loved as being... a fresh and unique spin on, on, on this character. Boy, it just felt like what a wasted opportunity. They, they, they took this and they just, just gave us crap. Yeah.

They wasted the villain. They wasted Jane Foster yet again. And, uh, you know, wasted an opportunity to, I don't know, even just to even break in another filmmaker, you know, like grab some up and comer and go turn this, turn this into a tragedy because Jane, That's the thing, like, Ragnarok works because it is still an aliens film, you know? It's other planets and spaceships and shit. And now we get the chance to move into the more mythological stuff with, we've only ever really dabbled with.

Doctor Strange does magic, and we've seen other realms through him, and we're told that, you know, Thor and all those others, like, it's not magic, it's whatever, you know, scientific principle works and blah, blah, blah, but, like, we're pushing the MCU into the realm of myth, and they fucking squander that, too, because nobody wants to think about this movie ever again. It's like, you know, we're joking that, like, Brett Goldstein shows up in a post-credits scene as, like, Zeus wants revenge against Thor, so he's going to send Hercules to go kick his ass, but we're never going to see that because nobody wants to think about this movie ever again. Or maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. There might be fans of the movie.

Maybe I'm just preaching to myself. What I'm reminded of, and this is a bit of a sidetrack, but there was a Marvel graphic novel from the 80s, the early 80s, called The Death of Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel is not... Captain Marvel is kind of shorthand. That's what they sometimes call Shazam.

But Captain Marvel in the MCU, or in the Marvel universe, not MCU, but in comics, was a very different character. And he was a really super powerful cosmic type of character. And Basically, what you get in this book is he's dying, and he's dying of cancer. And all of the world's foremost scientists, like Reed Richards is there, Dr. Strange is there, everybody tries to get together and figure out how to cure him.

And in the end, Father Malone, they can't cure him. And at the end of the book, he dies. But it's treated beautifully because he actually meets Lady Death, and basically she dies. ushers him away from this mortal coil. So there is a very sensitive and interesting and powerful way to deal with something like cancer in a comic book. I guess that's my point, is they did it brilliantly, and this was some 40 years before Love and Thunder.

I just don't know what the thought process was there. Maybe the thought process was, hey, it worked once, it'll work again. And it just did not. Mistress death. Mistress Death.

Did I say Lady Death? I meant Mistress Death. Yeah, you got to watch it there, pal. Sorry, man. No, no, no.

Lady Death is appropriate. Lady Death is an appropriate appellation. I take that back. Lady Death, the white hair with the big tits, was the one who came to Captain Marvel and not Mistress Death who inspired Thanos. The skeleton, Lady Death.

Yeah, no, her name is Mistress Death, or just Death. Lady Death is a whole other character in the MCU, and you should know this because we fought her. Okay, I'm looking at a Wikipedia article right now with a synopsis of the death of Captain Marvel because I wanted to. Know who that was. Then whoever wrote their Wikipedia article is also as confused as everyone who cannot tell the difference between Lady Death and Mistress Death, or just Death is her name.

Type in mistress death and type in lady death. Anyhow, I'm just saying. I can't believe you. I made a joke about this specifically with your character in that fucking cartoon. Anyhow, we're off topic here.

No, we're right on topic, brother. We are not on topic. Nevertheless, my point stands that they could have done something so much more powerful. And you don't have to forego the humor. There could have still been humor.

But the imbalance in Love and Thunder was just off. Too much humor, not enough. Of the other stuff. My God, Christian Bale is such an intense actor. When I heard that he was going to be the God Butcher, I said, wow, this is going to be so crazy.

Another squandered opportunity. Too much Korg, I'll say that. He was one of my favorite parts of Ragnarok, and I agree with you. There was too much Korg, too much Meek, all of that. Hey, it worked in the first movie, let's bring it back for the second, but.

Amp it up. A little goes a long way with Korg, Taika Waititi did not realize. Mm-hmm. I mean, he's really funny in Ragnarok. He's just a little sprinkling of Korg, and it went.

A long way. Yeah. We don't need him telling the tale, for Christ's sake, making it even more ridiculous. I don't know, like... I think it probably still could have worked had the opening scene been the fucking guardians just dropping them off and we didn't have to watch any of the wacky adventures, you know, and had they, somebody stepped in and go, you don't, you don't get the goats, you know, we're not, we're not giving.

You, you hated those goats. I did because it felt like, it felt like that fucking meme, but that meme was from like four years ago. Let me ask you a question. We, I think we, we beat love and thunder into the ground. No, let's do it some more.

I really didn't like it. I. I hated it. If it's not already clear, I hated it. But let me ask you a question, just out of curiosity here.

Yeah. Putting aside the Thor solo movies, let's say. Yeah. What is your favorite. Portrayal of Thor in the other wider Marvel universe?

You go Avengers? No. You go... I go Avengers... Hold on.

It's an Avengers movie. Mm-hmm. My favorite portrayal of him is it's an infinity war. Okay. Um, yeah.

Cause he, that infinity war is the direct followup to Ragnarok. And so when you put those movies together, Ragnarok felt like a necessary aperitif or, you know, a moose boosh given what was about to happen, which is Loki was about to die. And, uh, Thor was going to have to, you know, do everything he can to fucking kill Thanos. And I liked, as much as I love jokey Chris Hemsworth as Thor, and it always works, the comedy always works with him, I also like really serious Thor. And that was the most serious he was going to get, was in Infinity War.

And he has the most rousing moment in the entire film. which is when he shows up in the middle of the Battle of Wakanda. It's, you know, everyone stood on their feet at that moment. That's fair. And I love that rationale. That's up there for me.

I'm going to maybe go in. A different direction. Ultron. No, no, no, no. I mean, I guess it's a very shallow set of choices when I really think about it.

But I think for me, it's Endgame. And not because of the silliness of Ultron, Thor is Big Lebowski with the big beer gut. I loved that he was dealing with all of that trauma from Infinity War in a real way. The fact that he's been blaming himself for five years about not killing Thanos when he had the chance and he's such a mess and I really love that, again, I'm all about redemption arcs and things like that and I think For me, it was almost as rousing when he squares off against Thanos at the end of Endgame again. It's the first time that he's going up against him since he made that fatal error in Infinity War.

I love that moment. I love the moment when he sees Mjolnir go to Captain America and he. Goes, I knew it! It's full of little moments like that and I think it really, really works. And you get to see him say goodbye to his mother, who he knows is going to die when he goes back in the time theft.

It almost justifies Dark World. Dark World, exactly. Kind of, in retrospect, makes it just a little bit better. So that's, to me, that's my favorite. Because he is played with a great deal of silliness, and I'm not going to deny that.

But I think there's enough other moments. Hemsworth does a lot. With him in that. Well, I, you know, I, I'm not agreeing with you, but I do think if you want to see the, the range of what Thor can be as a character, you're definitely getting an Endgame because what I liked about him in Infinity War, the seriousness, the sort of bloodthirstiness you get in the opening moments of Endgame when they go to Thanos's planet and he just walks in and immediately chops his fucking head off, you know, like, Yeah, yeah. But it is.

But Infinity War starts out on such a heavy note because he sees Loki murdered right in front of him, and he's helpless to do anything about it. And that's really, you're right, he doesn't get any more serious when he's got to create a new weapon for himself. There's that whole sort of side quest that he goes on. Some say his creating Stormbreaker... undoes the entire purpose of Ragnarok, which is you didn't need the hammer. You're the god of thunder.

I guess that's fair. I mean, but you can rationalize it in a Marvel way and just say, yes, he has a certain amount of power, but this focuses it and makes it even stronger and, you know, turns it into an actual weapon instead of random lightning bolts, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, look, I guess at the end of the day, we're talking about magical beings doing incredible things. I mean, if we dig deep enough, it's all absurd. I've started watching this channel where it's a structural engineer reviews movies.

It just sounds so bizarre the way you just described it. Well, I think that's what it's called, a structural engineer reviews movies. And so he's gotten to Marvel movies, and he was watching a clip from Iron Man, the first Iron Man movie, and it starts with Tony Stark landing in the desert using the Mark I, and the engineer's like, and now Tony Stark is dead. And that's it. He just keeps enumerating all the ways Tony Stark has died in the movie, or, you know, like, wait, he wants to speed up here, but he opens the baffles on his suit, which would slow him down.

It's really granular stuff like that. But see, that to me is, it's just like people who who say like, oh, Rocky Balboa, after Rocky IV, like he would have been brain dead. Like there's no way he could have taken that kind of punishment. He would have died. Yeah, it is a bit like that.

But this is a little more focused and like, you know, Dr. Octopus picks up a car and he says, okay, you need at least 70,000 blah, blah, blah to do that. And he's got this thing on his back, which means he would actually need to be bolted to the ground in order for that to lift. It's more funny than anything. What's funny is like when he was reviewing that first Iron Man movie, They showed the scene where he comes out of the cave and uses the flamethrowers, and he goes, well, he was in a cave environment.

That's actually a really good idea. One for you, Tony. One out of an absurd number of inaccuracies. Because everything else is, he's dead. Like when he's flying into the stratosphere, the whole icing issue and whatever, he's like, why would you want to go that high anyway?

See, something like that, I mean, it sounds like it would be amusing enough, but I think after about 10 minutes, I would say, yeah, I get the point. Like, these guys would be dead hundreds of times over. It's ridiculous. Well, I want you in 30-second bites. Is that okay with you, HP?

That's, you know what, you do you. I am doing me. I'm doing me all day long, baby. All day long, baby. So where do we go from here with Thor?

Well, we're going straight to Doomsday. That's what this whole show is about, Von Doomsday, if you will. That's right. I mean, he's prominent in the trailer. He seems to be running the Avengers these days, honestly.

Yeah. So, yeah, everyone's gone, so he's got to take the lead. He's got to rally the troops. He's got to have the big moment where his magic is irrelevant to Victor Von Doom's magic. HP, I guess that's going to be the end.

Do you have more on Thor? There's a bunch of what-if cartoons. Who cares? Yeah, I'm not, you know, the what-if stuff was interesting. I was much more of a fan of the original.

I mean, I really like the original comics, in fact. No, I, you know, I think we've said, look, at the end of, for another... bad turn of a phrase. At the end of the day, you would be hard-pressed to find a better actor to play Thor than Chris Hemsworth. I guess we haven't really talked about him. You have to say, he's pretty much iconic in the role now.

I don't know who else you would get to play Thor with that same mix of absurdity and regalness and power. I don't know. Who else would you cast as Thor? You know, it's funny. We tend not to mention the lead actors on these things.

And it's funny because they're just so perfectly cast for it. It's like we don't even really need to mention. Yeah, of course it's Chris Evans as Captain America. Of course it's fucking Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. And that's the same here.

To be honest with you, I think it's really hilarious when you can go back and watch some of the the screen tests for Thor. You can see Tom Hiddleston attempts to be Thor. like there's uh him like with the hammer and shit um and i can't imagine anyone other than him then and now god man i don't know you'd need to find somebody you know what i mean like. Yeah there's there's no no a-lister that would slot in as easily as he. Did Yeah, you know, when we were talking on the Roundup about D23, they announced this new cast of the X-Men. And, like, other than Samara Weaving and Indy Navarette and Sadie Sink, like, the other main players, I have no fucking idea who any of those actors are.

I mean, I might have seen them in something, but I certainly don't know them. Yeah, and that gives me hope as another diversion from Thor that, That's what gives me hope about the future of the Marvel movies is that you really almost have to go with unknowns if this thing is going to continue to survive. Because you can't just keep getting the Tom Cruises of the world and put them into your picture. It just won't work. Not to say that when this all began that Chris Evans was the household name that he is now.

So it's kind of what they should hope for. started doing to a degree and what they always should be doing. Here's another question. Do you think in Doomsday, when we're getting variants upon variants, and this might be a question for Secret Wars instead, do you think we will get Tom Cruise as Tony Stark? Probably, because that's something that's, it's such a, it's been brought up again and again and again and again. And I've seen people who do like deep fakes. of footage from Iron Man and they put Tom Cruise into it.

It would, it may not amount to much. It may just be a, uh, a quickie little bit in a, in the context of a scene. And it probably should be. Yeah. It'll be better than anything in the flash.

You know, like if it, if, if a guy like they bump into somebody and go, well, watch where you're going, Tony Stark. And then it turns around and it's fucking Tom Cruise for two seconds. I'm cool with that. That would be cool. One of the funniest things about the flash, by the way, is, uh, They were interviewing Nick Cage about him appearing as Superman, and the funniest part of it was he said, I didn't do any of that.

I was supposed to be looking on as these universes were colliding and watching the destruction of my universe. I didn't fight any giant spider. That's all just, he's like, I can't call it, I don't know if it's called deepfake or what. That wasn't me, which I think is quite chilling. When you think about it, this is an actor who just kind of lends their likeness to something.

And I guess the filmmakers have free reign to do whatever they want with that footage or whatever, with that likeness. It wouldn't sit well if I were an actor. It wouldn't sit well with me. Definitely not, because he doesn't deserve a phone call. Hey, we had this idea.

You know how there's that thing where John Peters wanted a fucking giant spider in all of his movies. Wouldn't it be funny if Superman was fighting the giant spider? At least get his opinion on it. He would have been so up for it. Right.

Oh, let me come back in and you can capture me grunting and fighting with a fucking spider. Talk about... missed opportunities and fumbling the ball. Just the way he would, like, you know, pose while shooting heat vision would be very Nick Cage. Like, they decided all of that for him. All of that.

This isn't a Batman or Flash podcast, but boy, talk about wasting Michael Keaton coming, assuming the mantle of Batman. Let's save it for another podcast. Yeah, exactly. Well, they squandered him, and they squandered everything with their attempts at their cameos, which is just basically just showing footage of anything black and white. It just seemed like they cut to a scene from Batman or the old Superman serial or something before giving us those strobing fucking facsimiles of Christopher Reeve and Helen Slater.

Yeah, and by the way, Helen Slater's still alive. She could have done that. She could have come in. She could have done it. idiots, man. Anyway, yeah, so, anyway, I'm curious which variants are going to show up, which fan casting things that have been in the air will, like, get paid off.

That's a great, I mean, do you think we'll get Ed Norton as the Hulk? Oh, man, yes, I do. Yes, I do. Or Bruce Banner, I guess, technically. That Oh, my God, yes.

I mean, here's the thing. We're going to come up with this list, and then we're going to be very disappointed when none of these happen. You know what? Mark, write this down somewhere. When we get even closer to Doomsday, let's compile a list of all the fan cast cameos, like a bingo card.

We'll see what. Comes up and what doesn't. Absolutely. Because I guarantee, like, the Tom Cruise thing is way at the top of the list. I could definitely see that happening.

It has to happen. I mean, it's got to happen, right? And he's so game for fucking everything, you know what I mean? Like, if he's not going to do it now, when is he going to do it? Yeah, totally.

And it's such an interesting game to play, to think, like, who, I mean, they could get Eric Kramer to be, like, an alternate reality Thor. They could get Bill Bixby. they could get the likeness rights to Bill Bixby and have him come back. Or Lou Ferrigno, sorry. Better yet, Lou Ferrigno. Yeah, do you think we're going to get Lou Ferrigno Hulk?

CGI'd into it? If we got, I will say this, if we get Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk, I may just stop watching the movies entirely. I might say, it's never going to get any better than this. Because that to me was always, we talked about the Hulk already, but that was always, that was my Hulk growing up. So if they brought him in Given the fact that Ferrigno already appeared in the Avengers, the first Avengers, as a security guard or something, I just think it would be a wonderful bit of, as you said, fan casting.

Not to jump back to DC, but here's what I always thought about DC. Once they realized that they were so far behind Marvel, which is when they handed Superman to Zack Snyder for the first time, their plan was, we're going to knock out superman we'll get out a batman movie and then we'll put those two together and then that will lead to justice league and then along the line they they decided they weren't going to do that they were going to skip the batman movie entirely and get right to fucking justice league right when the fucking answer was there from the beginning have the superman fucking movie and then just do crisis on infinite earths dummies and then they could have introduced everything from everywhere right there i i i How you can make a fucking DC movie with variants and not have every Joker on the screen.

Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, you know, cartoon version, comic book version. Mark Hamill, everybody. Someday, I look forward to reading the book, the definitive recounting of the Zack Snyder cut at the DCU. Because some of the decisions just seemed so self-evident, not as a fan, not as somebody who wants their version of something to be depicted, but just logically speaking. They were always in the wake of the MCU and the answers were always so obvious.

I don't know why they didn't... The characters are there. There's such a rich history there. You know why? They never had a Kevin Feige over at DC.

No, they didn't. Who was the Kevin Feige of Of DC. There was none. I mean, they had people running their TV division, people like Jeff Loeb, but there was nobody at the feature film level that was coordinating and saying, we're going to do this and this and this. It was just like, we'll wait for a filmmaker to come along, or we'll reach out to a filmmaker and say, hey, do you want any of these properties?

And that's what they were doing at That's James Gunn now, ostensibly, right? Right, exactly. James Gunn is the Kevin Feige of DC. They finally figured out that that's what they needed all along. And yet, you know, Superman, great.

Supergirl, not so great. I like Supergirl. It was okay. I don't think it, I mean, it's no one's idea of like capturing the momentum of Superman. And consolidating that.

No, I think they just had a villain problem. That was my main problem with that movie. Well, it's just, it felt like, again, like some of the best parts maybe were on the cutting room floor. Like it was, It was, you know, all over the place. You said yourself in your review, Lobo shouldn't have been.

In that movie. Oh, no, not at all. But I liked him. I did, too. I think Momoa is, he's a much better Lobo than he was in Aquaman.

Oh, my God. Like, he's made to be Lobo. It's sort of insane. But, you know, he's playing Blanca in the Street Fighter movie coming up. Have you heard about that?

Or at least his head is like this is Blanca. Oh, my God. I love it. But I will say, I mean, I haven't seen the Mortal Kombat, the newest Mortal Kombat movies, and I hear the second one was not very good. Garbage.

But the trailer I saw for Street Fighter looks like a fun time. Okay. Again, a sidetrack, but. Well, we'll review it here. Sure.

But I guess that's the end of Undoomfest. We're just going to continue on about variants and shit. We're just going to talk about DC, and we're going to talk about, you know, what could have been it, you know, whatever. No, no, no. I guess to put a bow on it...

You know, I'm hoping that we'll see a lot more of Thor in Doomsday. I think they're positioning him, like you said, as a leader. And I'm definitely here for it. I think Hemsworth's fantastic. I think they're going to kill him in Secret Wars.

You're going to kill a god? Yep, I think so. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us here for the latest of our Von Doomfest ramblings. And join us for our next Von Doomfest where we're going to get real small with Steve Martin. No, we're going to be reviewing Ant-Man, the Ant-Man films.

The anti-universe and the big universe, because he gets big sometimes. You know there's a lyric, by the way, you know there's a lyric in a Jimmy Buffett song that directly references Let's Get Small by Steve Martin? Did you know that? Why would I know that? Well, because you're a Steve Martin fan.

I am a Steve Martin fan. And you're the world's biggest... Jimmy Buffett fan. People don't know that about Father Malone, but he, look, he may come off. As being all the pogues and the sex pistols.

No, no, no, no, no. This guy is the biggest parrot head you've ever met. That's right. I'm wearing my sandals right now. All right.

Until then, until Ant-Man, HP, where can people find you? I'll tell you where they can find you. Hell. That's right. I'll see you in hell.

No, I co-host the Night Mr. Walters Taxi Podcast with Father Malone, as it turns out. And I have a band camp site, hpmusicplace.bandcamp.com. I also host occasionally. Very, very rarely. the Noise Junkies music podcast.

As for me, you're listening to it at midnight viewing. We're on twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, and we've got a Patreon channel where we're doing Vault 702, the Fallout podcast. Got a new episode up going up over there. And, oh, it's, of course, Step Off, the white rapper show. Check that out over there.

Oh, by now, we've got a new segment. It's called Buttons, Consoles, and Switches. Buttons, Switches, and Consoles. You've got to check that one out, too. It's a series about films about old technology when it was even old then and they didn't know what they were doing.

Movies like The Net with Sandra Bullock. I was going to say The Net or Hackers. And Hackers. Oh, yes. That's on the list.

So keep an eye out for that or an ear out for that if you would. And until then, everyone, try to enjoy the daylight. Thank you. Thank you.