Based on some of the quotes I’ve read from studio executives regarding the strikes and union members, I would say “Listen to the wise billionaire and don’t try to change things for the better yourself because it will only get worse.” is absolutely a theme the major studios want to promote. Go Union!
Just more of the same from the studios that still glorify the military and insist that every ground-up political movement be written to be terrorists, so the heroes can defend the status quo.
Better for you but worse for everyone else. After all Flashpoint was all about whether Barry had the right to make everyone else miserable to make himself happy.
5:50 ok yeah wow watching this a second time once it's been more than an hour after the movie and I'm not dead tired, if Miguel's intel is right then how does Earth 42 still even exist? Hypo: him finding Miles in 42 and getting clocked hard enough to see sense for a few seconds is gonna be what turns it all around on her
@@uanime1 Yeah, not sure if you were missing or making this point..... "but worse for everyone else." is indeed "a theme the major studios want to promote." (or any other large-scale corporation for that matter) Go Union!
OH MY GOD, thank you so much for the PSA at 13:10. It is so refreshing to hear a well-spoken reaffirmation of the truth we all went through and continue to go through, and not the BS society is trying to collectively gaslight us on to get us to be oblivious little workers.
@@tom9841 Yes, they ended the emergency, but that doesn't mean the virus has disappeared or doesn't still remain a very dangerous threat, especially to high risk populations. This ISN'T a black or white matter. The WHO chief also said the following in the same speech ending the emergency: “The worst thing any country could do now is to use this news as a reason to let down its guard, to dismantle the systems it has built, or to send the message to its people that COVID-19 is nothing to worry about.” “Last week, COVID-19 claimed a life every 3 minutes and that’s just the deaths we know about.” “This virus is here to stay. It’s still killing and it’s still changing. The risk remains of new variants emerging that cause new surges in cases.”
The best thing DC's done recently apart from Gunn's Suicide Squad is prolly this new Superman cartoon-- it calms the hell down and just does a fun Superman show for kids, and the fact that that's honestly refreshing just says so much about where we've been for so many years
The fact that the entire DCU looks like it was filmed with a tragic family housefire happening just offscreen is a massive part of why it failed. Marvel could do gritty, because its a more grounded setting than DC for the most part, but they still wisely chose to make it fun. DC is not suitable for gritty. Batman *can* be gritty, but is still better when its dark but campy. Arkham games batman is peak batman for that reason. So right from the very beginning with Man of Steel they set off on the worst possible foot. Compounded by the fact that the entire time the DCEU had the energy of "Marvel is doing it, so we can too" where they would try and do big Avengers moments without earning it. The thing that baffles me even more than their decision to pick the worst possible aesthetic and stick to it despite its lack of success, was that there are still to this day people that are fans of the DCEU. People that like them. That take them seriously. That genuinely consider that dumpster fire a rival to the Marvel films.
@@ASpaceOstrich Yep, ALL of this. Warner execs must wish they could "Deadpool 2" their decision to hire Zack Snyder something fierce (tho, hopefully, not to the point of actual time travel murder); that one choice took what should have been a surefire slam dunk and turned it into...well, what we got. As to its fans, ya got me, I've questioned some about just what they LIKE about the DCEU and those who actually answered instead of going silent, basically just say, "It's different from Marvel". That's it, that's all they got...smh
The thing is, I can see a version of this moral working. “You can’t change the past, so the best you can do is move forward” is a pertinent message, and you could portray this by having Barry unable to change the events of the past no matter how many times he goes back. The problem is, this moral doesn’t work because we Barry LITERALLY DOES CHANGE THE PAST. So why can’t he just go back and make things better?
Flashpoint’s message of “you have to have bad things happen to you to be the right kind of person” really reminds my of the discworld book “lords and ladies” by Terry Pratchett and how much better it did the message Minor spoilers After saving the world from the elves the witch Esmerelda Weatherwax and wizard Mustrum Ridcully take a walk alone together, Ridcully reminisces about the live they had together before they took the path of magic and what could have been between them. Weatherwax, who has been having visions of the other lives she could have had, tells him “You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘If only I’d…’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it.” He asks if she thinks theres a possible future where everything went right and she tells him yes this one
Okay, now I seriously got to start reading the Discworld stories because this is the latest kickass point from one of them that I had heard. It certainly sounds similar to (and going off of your spoiler here, better that) a little sort-of throwaway discussion between characters in a story I wrote to keep myself occupied during the first wave of the pandemic. Basically, the main character, Nathan Williams (sorry for the largely unimaginative names), finds himself looking back over his life, which at this point in the story has spanned about 50 years (though the initial setting puts him at about 30, so 20 years pass over the story), and he focuses on five big points, not so much historical ones but what he took away from them: 1) His motivation about trying to help his high school beat his stomach cancer (and to him, failed because the friend died) 2) His war experience as a US Marine F/A-18 pilot (think the story of the game Ace Combat 5, but set in an alternate timeline Earth) 3), How he met his first wife, Alice von Wächter der Hölle, and the events that ultimately led to them entering their relationship (the bulk of the first third of the story) 4) How he met his second wife Lucifer (yes, Lucifer - like I said, I wrote this just to keep myself occupied, so it is probably at least as bonkers as your think) and third wife Neftet Nasser, and the impact they all have had on him and the family he built with them. Oh, and none of them died or divorced him, so they are all married in a polygamous arrangement of which he is absolutely NOT the head of (roughly the second third of the story) 5) How he let go of or embraced so much of his past up to that point since the kids he had between his wives were born (part of the second third of the story) During a longer talk he has with Lucifer, he brings up how it is very likely that even if he somehow was able to change his past and maybe save those he deeply cared about then, he would not have the life he now has. He acknowledges that even if there are other universes and/or timelines that exist with the hypothetical changes made, while they would be interesting to ponder on, reflect over, and maybe even watch if possible, it does not change the fact that they are not the universe and/or timeline that he is in. He concludes that it is therefore ultimately pointless to think about them and that all he can reasonably do is focus on when and where he is now, do his best to not screw up big time, and just hope that he can look back on his life at the end with more happy than sad memories. Just from your minor spoiler, it feels like Terry Pratchett did a much better job of writing a story around this kind of point than me. Still, I would like to think that my story is not my equivalent of The Flash to (for the purpose of this comparison) what feels like his equivalent to Across the Spider-verse.
@@DavidRichardson153 This will be way more helpful in explaining discworld then i could ever be th-cam.com/video/ZzmHrHs4emc/w-d-xo.html The quote i used was from lords and ladies, part of the witches series for context
@@DavidRichardson153 Btw For starting books i recommend mort, guards guards or wyrd sisters. Their all wonderful and written early enough to need minimal context
Thanks Bob. I'm immune compromised and it can be exhausting listening to people pretend Covid never happened. I still can't leave the house, but it's nice to hear someone acknowledge that I exist and count as a human being.
My father, who nearly died of covid, likes to bring up how there are not enough Americans working anymore. Yea, there are over 100 million less than 3 years ago.
I doubt Miguel's AI is the Beyonder - but I think you hit the nail on the head that it is eeeeevil (or at least, that it is trying to maintain a status quo because algorithms feed on predictability, not unforeseen changes). Definitely something Lord and Miller and all the other writers would build up to.
Something I especially appreciated about Spiderverse was that the 'Canon' narrative Miles is fighting against is one that has DOMINATED the editorial direction of Spider-Man for the last 20 years- (e.g.)the ending of the Spider-Marriage, the deletion of May-Day Parker Spidergirl's comic despite its continuous, strong sales, and the general insistence that Peter and MJ MUST be tortured and unhappy in order for Spider-Man comics to work (not to mention several things that happened in the Ultimate universe, like the death of that universe's Gwen Stacy). All of those things can directly be traced back to an editorial insistence that only this way can good Spider-Man stories be told, an insistence on continuous, 'canon' tragedy as the vehicle for storytelling. It is notable that this movie, indeed, features an MJ and Peter who are happy together, and a baby May-Day Parker who serves as the cheerleader for the audience, while telling a Spider-Man story that pretty much directly challenges that central premise. (Another example is that it features a Gwen Stacy who resolves to directly challenge the forces which forbid her from loving, and having a successful relationship with, a Spider-Man.) Oh boy, did I love this movie.
Why would anyone care about a comic if the canon can be changed at any time? Is Spider-Man going to have to learn to deal with the death of Gwen Stacy and the consequences of this? Nope because she came back to life.
@@uanime1 If you're talking about Spider-Gwen, she's not a resurrected Gwen Stacy. She's a Gwen from an alternate universe. 616-Gwen is still dead. Has been for about fifty years now.
@@L1701 "616-Gwen is still dead. Has been for about fifty years now." And the fact she and Uncle Ben have remained dead is good for the canon because it means that their deaths had consequences that affected how Spider-Man acts. Something that wouldn't happen if they suddenly came back to life.
The messaging in The Flash goes all the way back to Man of Steel, in which young Clark Kent got the answer "maybe, if you could get in trouble for it?" when he asked his dad if he should just have let a schoolbus full of kids die.
Yeah still can't figure out how "You have to accept loss because its an inescapable part of life" wasn't the basic story they went with for Flash and they went with "Change is bad, suffering is good"
What are you talking about? That's literally what the movie was about. Barry's inability to accept loss caused the world to be conquered by Zod. At no point they implied that change is always bad. Only that changing the past is bad (which is a lesson so common in time travel stories that it's almost cliché) because our past makes us what we are today.
One reason I’m a bit of an apologist for Multiverse of Madness is that Strange winds up learning that Peter was right in No Way Home. The Docs were all stubborn in the “I’m a grown up I know best” way like how Prime Strange was (one even repeats the calculus of the multiverse speech). But after seeing Peter was right he learns to step aside and let America handle it. Let the younger generation of heroes do their part and lead us into the future. Yeah it’s not done as well as the Spider-Verse movies but it’s there and fits the ongoing message.
I rather enjoyed this episode of The Big Picture. Despite you covering The Flash extensively up to this point, you managed to take on the events during and post release with a fresh perspective. Well done. I ironically loved your COVID PSA so much that I am going to back your Patreon this month for the first time. I really needed to hear a common sense recounting of the pandemic and how it is [not] being dealt with. In my opinion, I think you should put that PSA down in text, or have this entire episode written out in transcript [if you haven't already]. Heck if you do an edit of just the PSA I would likely share it with my friends and loved ones because I am sure they need to hear it too. Good stuff! Looking forward to part II.
Personally I get my COVID updates because I work with kids. My father only got the vaccine because his work gave him a bonus. He nearly died last year from COVID. He is worth enough to his company they should have given him. I think he should make smart choices but his work really ought to bribe him again. When I bring this up to people they,, no joke, have asked me if he had any co-comorbidities that mean he should die. No he doesn't.
I think what confuses me is everyone who acts like multiverse storytelling has “gone too far.” If you watched/played anything from Ben 10 to Bioshock Infinite and TMNT, you know that multiverse plotlines have been happening for decades. So why treat the concept like a new harbinger of cinematic destruction?
From my perspective, the difference is that now the multiverse is a crutch of the inter-connected movie franchises. Rather than being a central concept to a single or at least complete story, it is invalidating the stakes of any part of a movie franchise because no one's ever really gone, there is always another dimension/version/timeline/world to replace or fix what was lost, and a story never needs to commit to choice. Just consider the impact that Infinity War made when Loki and Gamora were killed, brutally. But now they're back! Compared to the way GOT made Ned's death and the Red Wedding nexus points in their story, there is a before and an after. Consequences are important for drama or else why should I care? Thank you for coming to my Ted Talke
@@Banvillen But the examples you describe- Gamora and Loki - are not multiverse counterparts. They’re time variants from Earth-199999 whose survival complicates one universe’s storyline. Objectively speaking, the MCU’s multiverse roster includes NWH, Loki, Multiverse of Madness, What if and Quantumania. Not all of it is perfect, and the Kang setup is detached enough that it doesn’t quite feel like there’s major big bad stakes yet. But it’s far from the only thing we saw in Phase 4. And the premise doesn’t really dominate MCU storylines so much as it hangs over these new hero’s origins as a warning of what’s to come. And i’d argue most are better than we’d like to admit. Really people are concerned with how multiverse opens up an endless IP glut. Specifically what studios will do with the IP toybox once they gain the ability to revive everything.
I still maintain that George Clooney could have been the greatest Batman on film. Take his characters from Syriana or the American. He knows how to be scary.
This is awesome! I love your analysis and so I am so glad to see this thoughtful analysis of the Flash! I had accepted we might not get it after your extensive, and very good break down in Marthabox and I was anticipating that this subject might just be too exhausting for you to go back and revisit. I am so glad that despite all the frustrating hours you have already had to spend on this (and your neighbor’s annoying leaf blower) that you decided to jump back into this and give us such an interesting episode and I am looking forward to episode 2.
One thing you mentioned that the story of Flash might have made more sense at one time where perhaps they were trying to echo the comics by saying it is OK to keep some elements while changing others 18:06 (probably a bad summary of your point, sorry). One idea I had is that one of the criticisms of those more optimistic multiverse movies like Spiderverse where you can and should change things in the multiverse, is Ok but are there any stakes anymore? Doesn’t that just mean you should go back and change any negative event? Character deaths and such might lose their teeth if we can just go into the multiverse and change them? What if this is what the original Flash script was trying to address - to make sure multiverse shenanigans didn’t mean the movies lost their urgency? What if it established that when we see a character played by a different actor, this isn’t just stunt casting but the very real possibility that Barry might have erased the other version from existence, so for instance when he sees Michael Keaton Batman the movie gives us a scene where Barry is really grappling and truly grieving the fact that his meddling may have erased his mentor and friend (Ben Affleck’s Batman) from existence. (Not unlike how the recent Guardians of the Galaxy movie established that Gamora was back, but she was not the one that they lost. She is a new version.) But in this story this idea is established through recasting. Barry however has to go on, despite his grief over possibly destroying his friend, he must continuing fighting to set things right. I think at one time the Flash movie was meant to introduce a new slate of DCEU heroes, some perhaps played by the prior actor, but some changed. So at the end of this movie, as our last reveal, we see the results of Barry’s meddling: this brand new slate of DCEU heroes, but the very last reveal would be Barry himself - recast from the problematic Ezra Miller to some new actor. Thus Barry’s meddling has even resulted in his own oblivion and change. Establishing once and for all that while change is possible in the multiverse it comes at a great cost. (Probably too dark of a point to end a movie on but would establish that their are stakes in the multiverse)
I just hope Calle comes back in the new DCEU, but as Power Girl. Literally how the latter exists in modern comics. And that 3rd Batman reveal honestly got a huge laugh outta me.
This movie is freaking weird. Like... having a story where the main character has to accept death and loss and that they can't magic away their problems is fine because that's how the real world works but then it gets to convoluted and blinks at the end with Barry managing to change things just a little fucking over an actual sensible if sad message leaving you idea that you can change things just a little but not a lot which is totally arbitrary nonsense. Commit to the lesson or don't and have him save his mom and dad.
You’re so right about the push to return to the older lighter pre-90s tone of superhero comics (which I’m a big supportive of all else being equal) can sometimes come with it’s own kind of reactionary conservatives and hinder the expression and depth of characters and stories. There is room for stories about accepting loss or not trying to control everything about your life that don’t have to also come off as arguing that people should just accept any lot they’re given uncritically. Excited to see where stories in the future will go. If getting one across the spider verse has to come with five or six mediocre superhero films I’ll take that deal any day.
Bob, I *deeply* appreciate the tangent setting the record straight re. covid and its effects on the industry, and all of us, that are also ongoing. THANK YOU.
Spiderverse: what's the point of having power if you don't use it to help people? Flash: don't try to use your power to help people, there's no point. Can't imagine why one is selling better to the public.
That bit at 11:48 had me cracking up One extra thing that bothered me about the Flash is he didn't bother to check to see who actually killed his mom. It's most likely a cut scene that if the DCEU didn't implode they would've made a thing establishing Thawne or Zolomon or whatever, but still
Another thing was when Batman looked at his family photo and caressed… himself. Which is weird unless it was originally meant to be Thomas like in the comic.
My bet: the mean-spiritedness was ALWAYS at the heart of DCEU. It reveled in suffering worse than a BDSM enthusiast spending a full weekend with their favorite dominatrix. Over and over, even in the original Wonder Woman and Shazam, pain was upheld as a virtuous teacher that taught "hard" lessons. Might have worked for Gen X throwbacks but not a general audience. The Flash simply put the period on the angsty sentence with a FUCKING LEAF BLOWER!
Anyone remembers Mama Kent's inspiring speech about heroism? "Be their hero, Clark. Be their angel. Be their monument. Be anything they need you to be. *OR BE NONE OF IT*; you don't owe this world a thing!". Yeah, the moral core of this whole endeavor was pretty rotten. The parts where it wasn't, was the writers overcoming the central themes of the franchise.
@@CamiloFHSC"Superman! Save us!! Please, save us!!! ...Unless you'd rather not. We fully acknowledge that you are an individual, in all likelihood a brave, rugged one. We understand if you would rather not take responsibility for the fates of others. It's not like we ever saved YOU. We who are about to die respect your agency." (Dies)
If the sacrifices Wonder Woman and Shazam had to make and the suffering they go through show that the DCEU "reveled in suffering", doesn't that mean the MCU revels in suffering as well? It's not like "Spider-Man: No Way Home" or "WandaVision" didn't also end with some pretty terrible suffering and sacrifices for their title characters.
@@adamdavis1648Those latter examples are more organic in their outgrowth, the results of character actions leading to traumatic blowback. There is hardly ever a moment in DCEU (and I will allow that Wonder Woman and Shazam are the sole exceptions) where the angst and misery is not simply plot contrivance because the creators are being meanspirited fucks about it.
Meanwhile at the Legion of Warner Brothers Legal Doom... Lackey: "Takedown notices didn't stop him! Nothing can stop him!" Lackey 2: "We need the big guns..." Lackey 3: "You don't mean-" Lackey 2: "Yeah, get me The Leafblower!"
Why did I hear this in the voices of The Monarch, Henchman 21, and 24 from The Venture Brothers? Because WB is trying to Arch Bob! Running a leaf blower while he's recording has to be a level 3, at least.
As a lifelong Digimon fan I have to say listening to Bob's summation of what's been going in these films and the impulses surrounding them and the real world tragedies influencing them, let's just say I got some WEIRD flashbacks...
Well now as a former Digimon fan (I basically stopped around Tamers) I am VERY intrigued what this could mean. Is this about those new sequel movies that came out?
@@goranisacson2502 Digimon has had an up-and-down last couple of years. On the plus side there is a very good card game that came out a couple of years ago and is going very strong, the most recent season in Ghost Game was a genuinely fascinating and interesting forward-looking show (it's basically an anthology horror series with very strong humanistic themes), the ongoing web novel of Digimon Seekers is interesting and has a really nonstandard main partnership, and we got a slew of very good video games like Horror visual novel Digimon Survive and the Digimon Story Cybersleuth Duology going in a lot of different interesting directions and exploring a lot of interesting themes for the franchise. On the minus side we had everything stapled with the name "Digimon Adventure". We got a reboot season, Digimon Adventure: (the colon is part of the name) which had a very strong start but was was completely gutted by covid and turned into a meandering, exhausted show that slowly burnt out. By the end of it the whole thing was flagrantly being slapped together wholly out of obligation and moreover it was clear that many of the characters on screen were there just because they had to be since they were in the source material (does that remind you of anything?) And what's worse we got the movies that were sequels to the original two seasons which were to a greater extent absolute dogshit. The six movies that made up Digimon Adventure Tri were a confused, meandering, occasionally incoherent and dreary mess that were tediously dark and which transparently changed course midway through (does that remind you of anything?) and the follow-up movie Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna, which I abbreviate to DA:LEK for a reason. That movie is the one where an authority figure shows up and explains to Taichi that when you grow up past a certain arbitrary point you run out of "potential" and your partner drops dead, but hey that's life and it's completely normal so get over it already, it's only the death of your best friend after all. Now they never say out loud that all the Digimon characters are fated to die because they're too cowardly, and the 02 epilogue where the cast are still partners with their Digimon remain so this isn't even a permanent thing, so you might rightly ask why the hell they would even bother with this story. That's a good question, and nobody has a particularly good answer. Moreover, the only character in the movie itself who looks at this system where people's closest friends are destined to die for no particularly good reason and tries to change things is the VILLAIN of the story, who discovers that her partner did indeed die and that partner Digimon won't ever be reborn other unlike Digimon and resolves to change things but goes evil as a consequence of fighting fate. Also her partner died when she was 13 years old on what should have been a triumphant day because she was too "mature" and ran out of "potential", right as she was poised to start chasing her dreams. No the movie is not internally consistent. Anyways, the movie ends with the villain defeated by a pair of truly ugly new evolutions for Agumon and Gabumon representing their eternal bond with their partners... and then their partnerships hit the arbitrary time limit on their bonds and Agumon and Gabumon die. Roll credits. So again, a film where trying to change a pointless and cruel system that causes nothing but trauma and heartache is evil and destructive and morally wrong. Does that remind you of anything in this video?
As a society (yes, we still live in one of those, just not the one Joker fanbois want you to believe), we are still seriously, psychically scarred from the COVID fallout. It's similar to what I saw happen after 9/11 in that we've probably got another four to five years of denial to get past.
Fascinating food for thought, Bob, if you fancy a bit of a palate cleanser after this heavy lifting I suggest bashing out a quick review of My Adventures with Superman, for a nice dose of DC done right but still differently than OG canon!
I haven't been this annoyed about having to wait for a "To Be Continued" that I already knew was coming since I saw Across the Spiderverse. So only like...6 weeks?
The TV cameo shows just HOW BADLY this was handled. An entire TV show had 9 SEASONS of TV during this film’s production. And the TV show began, and ENDED before we got this movie.
Looking at that Flash summary, seems to me the more natural ending would be "mainline Flash can save young Flash's parents but only by separating it into its own universe, he can't save his own parents - but losing them made him selfless enough to dedicate his life to making other people's lives better." Seems like a fair compromise between "try to make things better" and "your hurt is part of who you are."
I would have accepted that compromise. Or if they'd kept things as is but hadn't copted out and let his father be exonerated. At least have the balls to go all the way with the bad metaphor.
Sadly, I have always felt this was the main difference between DC and Marvel: Marvel tells stories about struggling outsiders while DC tells stories about inhuman deities
@@louisduarte8763I hate this quote with a passion. Literally if you look at other heroes in both universe below the surface level you’d realize that’s incorrect. Let’s look at the starting JL for reference. Superman was raised by humans on earth and by human culture. He’s not pretending to be human, he is human despite his Kryptonian heritage. Green Lantern and Flash were both humans before they were superheroes so wouldn’t they fall into the marvel category by your logic. “Humans pretending to be Gods.” Aquaman is half human and also has been raised with human culture. He’s not pretending to be human. Batman is a human and trained years to where he’s at. So by that logic wouldn’t he fit the “Humans being Gods” Marvel category. Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter are the only DC heroes that logic applied to. As for Marvel, they literally have Gods trying to be Human. Thor, Hercules, and Moon Knight are prime examples of this.
A Snyderverse movie being reactionary, maybe slightly bigoted and dour in all the worst ways turning a genre full of life, revolution and color into a grey slate that's all the worst parts of what fanboys THINK they want about superhero stories? So that just applies to...plus three...carry the one...oh. All of them.
I say the cynicism has been baked into the DCEU since the beginning. I mean, this all kicked off with a version of Pa Kent who basically discourages Clark from using his powers to help people. A Pa Kent who chooses death just to teach the lesson that Superman should let people die to protect himself. There's your philosophical foundation for the entire franchise.
And lest we forget, for all the big deal Snyder cultists make about "The Speedforce" in ZSJL (i.e. basically Zack Snyder's version of "Superman spins around the Earth to turn it backwards"), its impact is basically undercut by an epilogue set in the Knightmare future, almost as if the Knightmare is inevitable or something. I know it's popular to label Zack Snyder as an Objectivist, but maybe Zack Snyder is actually a Calvinist. Let’s not mince words - there’s an underlying theme of “do this because God says so” to his characters’ motivations, and a lot of his movies feature heroic-coded characters sacrificing themselves to a fate that they are supposedly powerless to change.
@@tolchok89Objectivism and Calvinism are merely two sides of the same debased coin, an excuse to be as selfish as possible because you've supposedly got larger forces on your side.
That rant about the influences of the pandemic was very much needed. It's a bit frightening just how quickly certain powers that be are moving in to rewrite history still in motion, and just how much certain segments of the population are eager accept it.
@@sathrielsatansonThe optimism he once felt for this whole brand died a horrible death by a thousand cuts...and seeing it has just been killing any residual joy he had for it since. He keeps praying--in a totally secular way--for James Gunn to right the ship and I just... Given that asshole Zaslav is Gunn's boss, that is the sort of faith that is not supported by ANY of the evidence.
Really looking forward to part 2 but I definitely want more exploration of this deep undercurrent of meanness present in the DCEU. Something Bob brought up in the last Marthabox episode was that these were movies made by people who didn’t want to make them. That feels a little more pointed than just “gritty bad” verses “fun good” that gets thrown out and distinguishes these films from say the Nolan Trilogy that preceded them.
@@johnathonhaney8291 yes and I think we can pinpoint it more precisely than an absence of fun. Think about how Pa Kent is basically Capt. Misanthrope and the movie kind of agrees with him. To paraphrase another film “I don’t know what it represents. I don’t know what it is but there are traces and shadows of it everywhere.”
Just got out of Across the SpiderVerse, and yeah, it's subtle like a brick to the face, as it should be. Also it's kind of impressive just how despite that bluntness, it almost feels like a very direct rebuttal to The Flash's terrible moral thesis, especially with how Miguel's insistence on canon events to the detriment of all else ends up creating more problems that it solves.
I hate when time travel movies rely on the classic "You can't change the past, you just need to accept it". Like the hero repeatedly tries to save a dead loved one...only to make things worse. So now the hero is forced to just let them die. That is some dark stuff. I hate it. The hero becomes the villain the moment they have the ability to save others...but choose not to.
I'm inclined to believe that the Flash's "Hope is dumb, don't try to change the world" message is largely accidental, if only because the Flash is such a mess of a movie that to suggest that it has any subtext at all feels like giving it WAY too much credit.
I see you discovered "Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur." It's pretty much a goddamn MASTERPIECE, and frankly I believe whole-heartedly that THIS incarnation of The Beyonder eats the lunch of all OTHER incarnations... I mean, Laurence Fishburne has some freaking PIPES! He's also less of a generic universe-ending villain and more of a reality-warping pain in the ass like The Great Gazoo or Impossible Man or Q... the "Star Trek" Q, not the whack-a-do conspiracy-theory Q.
What, no mention of Mr. Mxpycklk? Also, notice how the conspiracy theory nut jobs ALWAYS rip off from sci-fi for its BS? Lizard people = V the TV series Red-pilled = Matrix Q = ABSOLUTELY Star Trek TNG.
I think this is just the sad ending to the terrible decision to hire Zack Snyder as a man to direct a superhero universe. He might be a fine director with good eye, but his personal politics get way too entangled into his movies. So now we ended up with a bunch of superheroes, created to help the helpless and give hope to everyone, debating exactly how much they're supposed to actually do anything, if at all (man of steel), hearing from authority figures that they don't own anyone anything (Justice League) and teaching gen-z that change is bad and status quo is ALWAYS the right thing to uphold. Thus spoke Ayn. Now I'm not knocking libertarians (well, I usually am, but not right now), this is an especially terrible approach to superheroes. The best stories usually tell how they go out of their way to help, even at their own peril, risking their own lives or lives of their loved ones to save strangers, to go through struggles and pains just to be able to inspire hope in the rest of us. And as much as a message of "learn to live with trauma" might be good, I struggle to believe that was what they were going for. The snyderverse was ALWAYS about leaving well enough alone (remember in the Snyder Cut how Cyborg could literally give money to anyone, but his father said that he should NOT do it?), not changing things and only reluctantly come together when literally the entire planet is at stake, but not form a real team or anything... each hero went their separate way afterwards.
The DCEU died not with a bang, but with a Flash. Honestly, I almost wish they had gone for the original flashpoint storyline. Mainly because it would’ve been at least a little absurd and hilarious to see Gal Gadot and Jason Momoa as rival antagonists.
That PSA is going to be handy going forward for any time someone keeps trying to insist COVID-19 wasn't involved in any of this or anything else in our lives. That being said... Did you say "compliant" at 13:37? Because it says "complied" on-screen, so that confused me a bit.
Y'know Bob, when i clicked on this video I expected to see spoilers about a movie i already watched... i did NOT expect to see theories about the NEXT movie that is UNRELATED to the topic of the video and is based on meta comic information i did NOT know about. I did not appreciate that.
As far as the strikes are concerned, I think we’re going to have to go back to some kind of commercial TV situation for the streaming services. Commercials can show which shows are being watched and would make paying out residuals easier to figure out. Ad Free as a concept may have to go the way of the buffalo. It also probably would help if they didn’t hold onto everything, I know that’s not an ideal situation, but they’re definitely spending tons of money on things that are not being watched.
It seems to me that the obvious answer is to switch from a model where residuals are paid just for having a given thing on a given platform even if no-one ever watches it to a model where residuals are paid based on watch-time/number of views. There are a couple of reasons why people might resist that obvious solution: - it would require streaming services to be reliably, enforceably honest about their viewing figures rather than being able to select what statistics their shareholders get to know. - it would make the value of a given show depend on its popularity, rather than on its ability to sell itself to key decision makers, and it's a lot easier to fast-talk a small handful of executives than to convince the general public. There may also be some technical issues with accounting for tiny sums of money from small numbers of views - if someone's owed $0.0001, how is that tracked and eventually paid - but that doesn't seem like it should be a dealbreaker.
It seems like there are simply too many people wanting to live their dream life working their dream job while there are too little of these jobs: too much demand, not enough supply. Hence they can’t get enough gigs, while the gigs themselves actually pay really well.
@@mabusestestament Yeah, the minimum daily rate for an actor in a big budget movie (just over $1k or ~$80/hour) is pretty good - you only need 4-5 weeks' work per year at that rate to roughly match what you'd make working a minimum wage job full time - though if you get paid the weekly rate, that's at least 25% off the top. That still works out as one substantial role in a big budget movie per year just to get the equivalent annual income of a minimum wage job. If you want better than minimum-wage-equivalent, you need to either be being paid significantly more than union rates, or to be in multiple projects per year. And then there are lower budget movies and TV productions (and direct-to-streaming) which all have lower rates.
The recurring theme of throwing off questionable systems goes through the whole MCU. Multiple plots during the Infinity Saga (ex - Winter Soldier/Thor Ragnarok/Captain Marvel/etc) also deal with the corruption within institutions and the need to shake them off for something better.
I often equated the Infinity Saga to the decline of American hegemony as a whole. One throughline I noticed was how the old institutions consistently failed to deal with the new threats, be it a small New Mexico town getting vaporized by the Destroyer, the battle of New York, the complete destruction of Sokovia and the whole Snap.
@@johnathonhaney8291 In addition to the likes of Damage Control, created by Tony Stark and a product of said old systems, building on what Civil War set up. With this escalation of incidents (ex - Wanda holding a whole town hostage for Sitcom LARP Therapy, John Walker Cap rage killing a dude in front of people w/ their phones out, etc), they establish a private prison system to deal w/ supers, hero or not.
I can’t think of a more fitting way to cap off the DC Ended Universe than hundreds of millions of dollars dumped into an investor call with hundreds of millions of dollars of CGI.
Unfortunately, COVID 19 isn't the first time a disease has been made to seem less dangerous/impactful after the fact, and regrettably it likely won't be the last. After all, most history classes mention WWI, but leave out The Spanish Flu. Which, I would point out, was worse in just about every was as COVID...
Then there's the Black Death, which barely gets a mention on the devastation it wrought. See also Plague of Athens, the sweating sickness during King Henry VIII's reign and so on. Disease gets glossed over in the history books because it's an ugly reminder on the parts we humans have little control over.
I saw this movie in theaters and I had the same thought at the end when BOTH Berry's kept going back to the Kryptonian invasion trying to fix everything and failing. This was the Marthaverse, this is what fans and even DC/WB have been doing for the past 10 or so year's, been trying to fix this thing that was broken almost from the beginning with Man of Steel, Older Berry being the non Marthaverse fans saying "just let it go, it's over". There was of course so much missed opportunity to go even more meta, and the meta commentary likely unintended since the vast majority of the movie was just doing the No Way Home approach of using the multiverse concept to shoehorn in as many old characters and references as possible into the story for 40 something year old fanboys to nostalgically jerk off to. Almost to an insulting degree like Ghostbusters Afterlife ( nothing tops that movie though ), but still slightly less nostalgia gangbangish like No Way Home. I now hate nostalgia because of these movie's, Flash sort of sealed the deal, but my girlfriend liked it, so that's fine I guess
Funny thing about this episode. I work in a movie theater, and we dropped the Flash a week after it opened. We're still showing Across the Spider-Verse.
0:42 Well Damn Boss! Right off the Bat you Echoed something that Jim “Steph” Sterling echoed early this morning! Reporting on the Same F**king issues that Major Companies and people of High standing office position just don’t seem to get every time. Telling them to Stop Doing the same Damn Crap they’ve been doing for over the last 100 years. An honestly I can’t help but agree that this is all so damn depressing that we wish we could just talk about something else.
Based on some of the quotes I’ve read from studio executives regarding the strikes and union members, I would say “Listen to the wise billionaire and don’t try to change things for the better yourself because it will only get worse.” is absolutely a theme the major studios want to promote.
Go Union!
Just more of the same from the studios that still glorify the military and insist that every ground-up political movement be written to be terrorists, so the heroes can defend the status quo.
Better for you but worse for everyone else. After all Flashpoint was all about whether Barry had the right to make everyone else miserable to make himself happy.
Defenders of the Status Quo. Coming soon to a cinema near you.
5:50 ok yeah wow watching this a second time once it's been more than an hour after the movie and I'm not dead tired, if Miguel's intel is right then how does Earth 42 still even exist? Hypo: him finding Miles in 42 and getting clocked hard enough to see sense for a few seconds is gonna be what turns it all around on her
@@uanime1 Yeah, not sure if you were missing or making this point.....
"but worse for everyone else." is indeed "a theme the major studios want to promote." (or any other large-scale corporation for that matter)
Go Union!
OH MY GOD, thank you so much for the PSA at 13:10. It is so refreshing to hear a well-spoken reaffirmation of the truth we all went through and continue to go through, and not the BS society is trying to collectively gaslight us on to get us to be oblivious little workers.
In my opinion, it can also be summed up like this: "COVID isn't over but people's patience with it is"!
@@amazonstormAddendum: "...And COVID doesn't care, which is why the pain will continue for some of the unwary."
Co-sign
The World Health Organization declares the global health emergency of COVID-19 has ended.
@@tom9841 Yes, they ended the emergency, but that doesn't mean the virus has disappeared or doesn't still remain a very dangerous threat, especially to high risk populations. This ISN'T a black or white matter.
The WHO chief also said the following in the same speech ending the emergency:
“The worst thing any country could do now is to use this news as a reason to let down its guard, to dismantle the systems it has built, or to send the message to its people that COVID-19 is nothing to worry about.”
“Last week, COVID-19 claimed a life every 3 minutes and that’s just the deaths we know about.”
“This virus is here to stay. It’s still killing and it’s still changing. The risk remains of new variants emerging that cause new surges in cases.”
The best thing DC's done recently apart from Gunn's Suicide Squad is prolly this new Superman cartoon-- it calms the hell down and just does a fun Superman show for kids, and the fact that that's honestly refreshing just says so much about where we've been for so many years
Well, if we're counting tv stuff as well, then I'd definitely add Superman & Lois to the (embarassingly short) list...
The fact that the entire DCU looks like it was filmed with a tragic family housefire happening just offscreen is a massive part of why it failed. Marvel could do gritty, because its a more grounded setting than DC for the most part, but they still wisely chose to make it fun. DC is not suitable for gritty. Batman *can* be gritty, but is still better when its dark but campy. Arkham games batman is peak batman for that reason.
So right from the very beginning with Man of Steel they set off on the worst possible foot. Compounded by the fact that the entire time the DCEU had the energy of "Marvel is doing it, so we can too" where they would try and do big Avengers moments without earning it.
The thing that baffles me even more than their decision to pick the worst possible aesthetic and stick to it despite its lack of success, was that there are still to this day people that are fans of the DCEU. People that like them. That take them seriously. That genuinely consider that dumpster fire a rival to the Marvel films.
I can totally see doing a “just for kids” thing being valuable, but for me the Harley Quinn show is the best DC thing in my memory at least
@@ASpaceOstrich Yep, ALL of this. Warner execs must wish they could "Deadpool 2" their decision to hire Zack Snyder something fierce (tho, hopefully, not to the point of actual time travel murder); that one choice took what should have been a surefire slam dunk and turned it into...well, what we got. As to its fans, ya got me, I've questioned some about just what they LIKE about the DCEU and those who actually answered instead of going silent, basically just say, "It's different from Marvel". That's it, that's all they got...smh
Luz lane is GOAT
Calling the Snyder-Era DC films the "MarthaVerse" is brilliant and I vote to adopt it as the series' official pop culture title.
(In Scruffy voice)Second.
Thirded
Motion carried…. Democracy rocks!
@@cleverlilvixen Hal Hydra!
@@jordansweet8054 … Be sure to ride The Cyclone (lol)
The thing is, I can see a version of this moral working. “You can’t change the past, so the best you can do is move forward” is a pertinent message, and you could portray this by having Barry unable to change the events of the past no matter how many times he goes back. The problem is, this moral doesn’t work because we Barry LITERALLY DOES CHANGE THE PAST. So why can’t he just go back and make things better?
That bugged me. I could've forgiven the other mistakes from a script point if it had let the rough conclusion be the end of it.
Funny you mentioned that, because that was the plot of a booster gold comic.
Flashpoint’s message of “you have to have bad things happen to you to be the right kind of person” really reminds my of the discworld book “lords and ladies” by Terry Pratchett and how much better it did the message
Minor spoilers
After saving the world from the elves the witch Esmerelda Weatherwax and wizard Mustrum Ridcully take a walk alone together, Ridcully reminisces about the live they had together before they took the path of magic and what could have been between them. Weatherwax, who has been having visions of the other lives she could have had, tells him
“You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘If only I’d…’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it.”
He asks if she thinks theres a possible future where everything went right and she tells him yes this one
Okay, now I seriously got to start reading the Discworld stories because this is the latest kickass point from one of them that I had heard. It certainly sounds similar to (and going off of your spoiler here, better that) a little sort-of throwaway discussion between characters in a story I wrote to keep myself occupied during the first wave of the pandemic.
Basically, the main character, Nathan Williams (sorry for the largely unimaginative names), finds himself looking back over his life, which at this point in the story has spanned about 50 years (though the initial setting puts him at about 30, so 20 years pass over the story), and he focuses on five big points, not so much historical ones but what he took away from them:
1) His motivation about trying to help his high school beat his stomach cancer (and to him, failed because the friend died)
2) His war experience as a US Marine F/A-18 pilot (think the story of the game Ace Combat 5, but set in an alternate timeline Earth)
3), How he met his first wife, Alice von Wächter der Hölle, and the events that ultimately led to them entering their relationship (the bulk of the first third of the story)
4) How he met his second wife Lucifer (yes, Lucifer - like I said, I wrote this just to keep myself occupied, so it is probably at least as bonkers as your think) and third wife Neftet Nasser, and the impact they all have had on him and the family he built with them. Oh, and none of them died or divorced him, so they are all married in a polygamous arrangement of which he is absolutely NOT the head of (roughly the second third of the story)
5) How he let go of or embraced so much of his past up to that point since the kids he had between his wives were born (part of the second third of the story)
During a longer talk he has with Lucifer, he brings up how it is very likely that even if he somehow was able to change his past and maybe save those he deeply cared about then, he would not have the life he now has. He acknowledges that even if there are other universes and/or timelines that exist with the hypothetical changes made, while they would be interesting to ponder on, reflect over, and maybe even watch if possible, it does not change the fact that they are not the universe and/or timeline that he is in. He concludes that it is therefore ultimately pointless to think about them and that all he can reasonably do is focus on when and where he is now, do his best to not screw up big time, and just hope that he can look back on his life at the end with more happy than sad memories.
Just from your minor spoiler, it feels like Terry Pratchett did a much better job of writing a story around this kind of point than me. Still, I would like to think that my story is not my equivalent of The Flash to (for the purpose of this comparison) what feels like his equivalent to Across the Spider-verse.
@@DavidRichardson153
This will be way more helpful in explaining discworld then i could ever be
th-cam.com/video/ZzmHrHs4emc/w-d-xo.html
The quote i used was from lords and ladies, part of the witches series for context
@@exceedcharge1 Appreciate it.
@@DavidRichardson153
Btw
For starting books i recommend mort, guards guards or wyrd sisters. Their all wonderful and written early enough to need minimal context
@@exceedcharge1 Noted.
Thanks Bob. I'm immune compromised and it can be exhausting listening to people pretend Covid never happened. I still can't leave the house, but it's nice to hear someone acknowledge that I exist and count as a human being.
My father, who nearly died of covid, likes to bring up how there are not enough Americans working anymore. Yea, there are over 100 million less than 3 years ago.
The World Health Organization declares the global health emergency of COVID-19 has ended.
@@tom9841 Cool. What does that have to do with anything people wrote here in this thread? Does it change the things people wrote here?
I doubt Miguel's AI is the Beyonder - but I think you hit the nail on the head that it is eeeeevil (or at least, that it is trying to maintain a status quo because algorithms feed on predictability, not unforeseen changes).
Definitely something Lord and Miller and all the other writers would build up to.
Something I especially appreciated about Spiderverse was that the 'Canon' narrative Miles is fighting against is one that has DOMINATED the editorial direction of Spider-Man for the last 20 years- (e.g.)the ending of the Spider-Marriage, the deletion of May-Day Parker Spidergirl's comic despite its continuous, strong sales, and the general insistence that Peter and MJ MUST be tortured and unhappy in order for Spider-Man comics to work (not to mention several things that happened in the Ultimate universe, like the death of that universe's Gwen Stacy). All of those things can directly be traced back to an editorial insistence that only this way can good Spider-Man stories be told, an insistence on continuous, 'canon' tragedy as the vehicle for storytelling.
It is notable that this movie, indeed, features an MJ and Peter who are happy together, and a baby May-Day Parker who serves as the cheerleader for the audience, while telling a Spider-Man story that pretty much directly challenges that central premise. (Another example is that it features a Gwen Stacy who resolves to directly challenge the forces which forbid her from loving, and having a successful relationship with, a Spider-Man.)
Oh boy, did I love this movie.
Yes. Amen. Me too. All of this. I have to say, I thought it would be good, but not THAT good. Just adore it.
Why would anyone care about a comic if the canon can be changed at any time? Is Spider-Man going to have to learn to deal with the death of Gwen Stacy and the consequences of this? Nope because she came back to life.
That is some strong observation. Well done. 👍
@@uanime1 If you're talking about Spider-Gwen, she's not a resurrected Gwen Stacy. She's a Gwen from an alternate universe. 616-Gwen is still dead. Has been for about fifty years now.
@@L1701
"616-Gwen is still dead. Has been for about fifty years now."
And the fact she and Uncle Ben have remained dead is good for the canon because it means that their deaths had consequences that affected how Spider-Man acts. Something that wouldn't happen if they suddenly came back to life.
The messaging in The Flash goes all the way back to Man of Steel, in which young Clark Kent got the answer "maybe, if you could get in trouble for it?" when he asked his dad if he should just have let a schoolbus full of kids die.
Super-Rand! And the Just Us League!
Good Lex Luthor: I'm the hero in this universe? Crazy!
@@Thessalin That's just Earth 3.
Every time Bob has to summarize a DC movie it is comedy gold.
Yeah still can't figure out how "You have to accept loss because its an inescapable part of life" wasn't the basic story they went with for Flash and they went with "Change is bad, suffering is good"
Yeah, I mean, accepting loss is the better lesson.
That's probably what they were TRYING to say, but unfortunately, DC's writers got drunk on the grimdark again.
I think it would have helped if Nora died of natural causes or a heart attack, not murdered.
What are you talking about?
That's literally what the movie was about. Barry's inability to accept loss caused the world to be conquered by Zod. At no point they implied that change is always bad. Only that changing the past is bad (which is a lesson so common in time travel stories that it's almost cliché) because our past makes us what we are today.
Zach Snyder's ghost.
One reason I’m a bit of an apologist for Multiverse of Madness is that Strange winds up learning that Peter was right in No Way Home. The Docs were all stubborn in the “I’m a grown up I know best” way like how Prime Strange was (one even repeats the calculus of the multiverse speech). But after seeing Peter was right he learns to step aside and let America handle it. Let the younger generation of heroes do their part and lead us into the future. Yeah it’s not done as well as the Spider-Verse movies but it’s there and fits the ongoing message.
I rather enjoyed this episode of The Big Picture. Despite you covering The Flash extensively up to this point, you managed to take on the events during and post release with a fresh perspective. Well done. I ironically loved your COVID PSA so much that I am going to back your Patreon this month for the first time. I really needed to hear a common sense recounting of the pandemic and how it is [not] being dealt with. In my opinion, I think you should put that PSA down in text, or have this entire episode written out in transcript [if you haven't already]. Heck if you do an edit of just the PSA I would likely share it with my friends and loved ones because I am sure they need to hear it too. Good stuff! Looking forward to part II.
Personally I get my COVID updates because I work with kids. My father only got the vaccine because his work gave him a bonus. He nearly died last year from COVID. He is worth enough to his company they should have given him. I think he should make smart choices but his work really ought to bribe him again. When I bring this up to people they,, no joke, have asked me if he had any co-comorbidities that mean he should die. No he doesn't.
I think what confuses me is everyone who acts like multiverse storytelling has “gone too far.” If you watched/played anything from Ben 10 to Bioshock Infinite and TMNT, you know that multiverse plotlines have been happening for decades. So why treat the concept like a new harbinger of cinematic destruction?
Because in their eyes, multiverse is new because it's out of the niche and kids stuff and on major blockbusters. the other stuff don't count.
Thank you!
"it's in everything i don't like and i don't understand it, so it must be lazy and bad"
From my perspective, the difference is that now the multiverse is a crutch of the inter-connected movie franchises. Rather than being a central concept to a single or at least complete story, it is invalidating the stakes of any part of a movie franchise because no one's ever really gone, there is always another dimension/version/timeline/world to replace or fix what was lost, and a story never needs to commit to choice. Just consider the impact that Infinity War made when Loki and Gamora were killed, brutally. But now they're back! Compared to the way GOT made Ned's death and the Red Wedding nexus points in their story, there is a before and an after. Consequences are important for drama or else why should I care? Thank you for coming to my Ted Talke
@@Banvillen But the examples you describe- Gamora and Loki - are not multiverse counterparts. They’re time variants from Earth-199999 whose survival complicates one universe’s storyline. Objectively speaking, the MCU’s multiverse roster includes NWH, Loki, Multiverse of Madness, What if and Quantumania. Not all of it is perfect, and the Kang setup is detached enough that it doesn’t quite feel like there’s major big bad stakes yet. But it’s far from the only thing we saw in Phase 4. And the premise doesn’t really dominate MCU storylines so much as it hangs over these new hero’s origins as a warning of what’s to come. And i’d argue most are better than we’d like to admit.
Really people are concerned with how multiverse opens up an endless IP glut. Specifically what studios will do with the IP toybox once they gain the ability to revive everything.
Wait so you're saying a DCU film missed the central point of the comic's ideology and made it a grim, sad thing?
Good to know some things never change. Lol
@@jordansweet8054 It's retarded to say comics have a unified ideology.
This one’s DCEU, not DCU.
@@MarkunatorRotten tomato, rotten tomahta...we know what they're speaking of, yes?
The comic's ideology was that Flash shouldn't change things because it caused problems for everyone else. It was always a grim ending.
I still maintain that George Clooney could have been the greatest Batman on film. Take his characters from Syriana or the American. He knows how to be scary.
Just take his Bruce Wayne and make him Danny Ocean. A sequel really could've helped him.
0:35 As a working writer myself and grandson of a union organizer, I too stand with the Hollywood strikers.
This is awesome! I love your analysis and so I am so glad to see this thoughtful analysis of the Flash! I had accepted we might not get it after your extensive, and very good break down in Marthabox and I was anticipating that this subject might just be too exhausting for you to go back and revisit. I am so glad that despite all the frustrating hours you have already had to spend on this (and your neighbor’s annoying leaf blower) that you decided to jump back into this and give us such an interesting episode and I am looking forward to episode 2.
One thing you mentioned that the story of Flash might have made more sense at one time where perhaps they were trying to echo the comics by saying it is OK to keep some elements while changing others 18:06 (probably a bad summary of your point, sorry).
One idea I had is that one of the criticisms of those more optimistic multiverse movies like Spiderverse where you can and should change things in the multiverse, is Ok but are there any stakes anymore? Doesn’t that just mean you should go back and change any negative event? Character deaths and such might lose their teeth if we can just go into the multiverse and change them?
What if this is what the original Flash script was trying to address - to make sure multiverse shenanigans didn’t mean the movies lost their urgency? What if it established that when we see a character played by a different actor, this isn’t just stunt casting but the very real possibility that Barry might have erased the other version from existence, so for instance when he sees Michael Keaton Batman the movie gives us a scene where Barry is really grappling and truly grieving the fact that his meddling may have erased his mentor and friend (Ben Affleck’s Batman) from existence. (Not unlike how the recent Guardians of the Galaxy movie established that Gamora was back, but she was not the one that they lost. She is a new version.) But in this story this idea is established through recasting.
Barry however has to go on, despite his grief over possibly destroying his friend, he must continuing fighting to set things right. I think at one time the Flash movie was meant to introduce a new slate of DCEU heroes, some perhaps played by the prior actor, but some changed.
So at the end of this movie, as our last reveal, we see the results of Barry’s meddling: this brand new slate of DCEU heroes, but the very last reveal would be Barry himself - recast from the problematic Ezra Miller to some new actor. Thus Barry’s meddling has even resulted in his own oblivion and change. Establishing once and for all that while change is possible in the multiverse it comes at a great cost. (Probably too dark of a point to end a movie on but would establish that their are stakes in the multiverse)
6:29 hands up if you saw Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and love it. 🙋
🖐🏻
I just hope Calle comes back in the new DCEU, but as Power Girl. Literally how the latter exists in modern comics.
And that 3rd Batman reveal honestly got a huge laugh outta me.
8:26 woah, I didn’t notice that… but I’m pretty sure my brain did. Nice observation Bob, as always!!
This movie is freaking weird. Like... having a story where the main character has to accept death and loss and that they can't magic away their problems is fine because that's how the real world works but then it gets to convoluted and blinks at the end with Barry managing to change things just a little fucking over an actual sensible if sad message leaving you idea that you can change things just a little but not a lot which is totally arbitrary nonsense. Commit to the lesson or don't and have him save his mom and dad.
You’re so right about the push to return to the older lighter pre-90s tone of superhero comics (which I’m a big supportive of all else being equal) can sometimes come with it’s own kind of reactionary conservatives and hinder the expression and depth of characters and stories. There is room for stories about accepting loss or not trying to control everything about your life that don’t have to also come off as arguing that people should just accept any lot they’re given uncritically. Excited to see where stories in the future will go. If getting one across the spider verse has to come with five or six mediocre superhero films I’ll take that deal any day.
that wasn't the message though, the message of The Flash is don't let your tragic past completely consume your present.
Nah, let’s just retire the genre.
@@mabusestestament no
Bob, I *deeply* appreciate the tangent setting the record straight re. covid and its effects on the industry, and all of us, that are also ongoing. THANK YOU.
I genuinely appreciate the Covid PSA. Thank you.
As someone who has to consider the safety of an immunocompromised partner, I super appreciate the covid PSA
Five stars for the covid rant alone
Thank you so much - that really means a lot 👍
Oh God, the LEAFBLOWER thing had me in TEARS!😂
The leaf blower bit at the beginning caused me to burst out laughing. Not the best thing to do while surrounded by people on a bus.
Spiderverse: what's the point of having power if you don't use it to help people? Flash: don't try to use your power to help people, there's no point. Can't imagine why one is selling better to the public.
That bit at 11:48 had me cracking up
One extra thing that bothered me about the Flash is he didn't bother to check to see who actually killed his mom. It's most likely a cut scene that if the DCEU didn't implode they would've made a thing establishing Thawne or Zolomon or whatever, but still
Another thing was when Batman looked at his family photo and caressed… himself. Which is weird unless it was originally meant to be Thomas like in the comic.
Thank you for the public service message--it was needed!😷
The UnderThinker....Comicsgate....SnyderBros....only now does Bob's ultimate foe reveal themselves. CURSE YOUR FOUL WINDS, NEIGHBOR'S LEAF BLOWER!!!
My bet: the mean-spiritedness was ALWAYS at the heart of DCEU. It reveled in suffering worse than a BDSM enthusiast spending a full weekend with their favorite dominatrix. Over and over, even in the original Wonder Woman and Shazam, pain was upheld as a virtuous teacher that taught "hard" lessons. Might have worked for Gen X throwbacks but not a general audience.
The Flash simply put the period on the angsty sentence with a FUCKING LEAF BLOWER!
Anyone remembers Mama Kent's inspiring speech about heroism?
"Be their hero, Clark. Be their angel. Be their monument. Be anything they need you to be. *OR BE NONE OF IT*; you don't owe this world a thing!".
Yeah, the moral core of this whole endeavor was pretty rotten. The parts where it wasn't, was the writers overcoming the central themes of the franchise.
@@CamiloFHSCOne of many such moments, yes. I'm certain there are plenty more that would work just as good.
@@CamiloFHSC"Superman! Save us!! Please, save us!!!
...Unless you'd rather not. We fully acknowledge that you are an individual, in all likelihood a brave, rugged one. We understand if you would rather not take responsibility for the fates of others. It's not like we ever saved YOU. We who are about to die respect your agency."
(Dies)
If the sacrifices Wonder Woman and Shazam had to make and the suffering they go through show that the DCEU "reveled in suffering", doesn't that mean the MCU revels in suffering as well? It's not like "Spider-Man: No Way Home" or "WandaVision" didn't also end with some pretty terrible suffering and sacrifices for their title characters.
@@adamdavis1648Those latter examples are more organic in their outgrowth, the results of character actions leading to traumatic blowback. There is hardly ever a moment in DCEU (and I will allow that Wonder Woman and Shazam are the sole exceptions) where the angst and misery is not simply plot contrivance because the creators are being meanspirited fucks about it.
Meanwhile at the Legion of Warner Brothers Legal Doom...
Lackey: "Takedown notices didn't stop him! Nothing can stop him!"
Lackey 2: "We need the big guns..."
Lackey 3: "You don't mean-"
Lackey 2: "Yeah, get me The Leafblower!"
Haha!
Why did I hear this in the voices of The Monarch, Henchman 21, and 24 from The Venture Brothers?
Because WB is trying to Arch Bob! Running a leaf blower while he's recording has to be a level 3, at least.
Could you clip out your COVID PSA and post it separately? I’d like to post it EVERYWHERE!!!
You know, I couldn't hear the leafblower the first few times but each time I watch this episode, I hear it better.
As a lifelong Digimon fan I have to say listening to Bob's summation of what's been going in these films and the impulses surrounding them and the real world tragedies influencing them, let's just say I got some WEIRD flashbacks...
Well now as a former Digimon fan (I basically stopped around Tamers) I am VERY intrigued what this could mean. Is this about those new sequel movies that came out?
@@goranisacson2502 Digimon has had an up-and-down last couple of years. On the plus side there is a very good card game that came out a couple of years ago and is going very strong, the most recent season in Ghost Game was a genuinely fascinating and interesting forward-looking show (it's basically an anthology horror series with very strong humanistic themes), the ongoing web novel of Digimon Seekers is interesting and has a really nonstandard main partnership, and we got a slew of very good video games like Horror visual novel Digimon Survive and the Digimon Story Cybersleuth Duology going in a lot of different interesting directions and exploring a lot of interesting themes for the franchise.
On the minus side we had everything stapled with the name "Digimon Adventure". We got a reboot season, Digimon Adventure: (the colon is part of the name) which had a very strong start but was was completely gutted by covid and turned into a meandering, exhausted show that slowly burnt out. By the end of it the whole thing was flagrantly being slapped together wholly out of obligation and moreover it was clear that many of the characters on screen were there just because they had to be since they were in the source material (does that remind you of anything?) And what's worse we got the movies that were sequels to the original two seasons which were to a greater extent absolute dogshit. The six movies that made up Digimon Adventure Tri were a confused, meandering, occasionally incoherent and dreary mess that were tediously dark and which transparently changed course midway through (does that remind you of anything?) and the follow-up movie Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna, which I abbreviate to DA:LEK for a reason. That movie is the one where an authority figure shows up and explains to Taichi that when you grow up past a certain arbitrary point you run out of "potential" and your partner drops dead, but hey that's life and it's completely normal so get over it already, it's only the death of your best friend after all. Now they never say out loud that all the Digimon characters are fated to die because they're too cowardly, and the 02 epilogue where the cast are still partners with their Digimon remain so this isn't even a permanent thing, so you might rightly ask why the hell they would even bother with this story. That's a good question, and nobody has a particularly good answer. Moreover, the only character in the movie itself who looks at this system where people's closest friends are destined to die for no particularly good reason and tries to change things is the VILLAIN of the story, who discovers that her partner did indeed die and that partner Digimon won't ever be reborn other unlike Digimon and resolves to change things but goes evil as a consequence of fighting fate. Also her partner died when she was 13 years old on what should have been a triumphant day because she was too "mature" and ran out of "potential", right as she was poised to start chasing her dreams. No the movie is not internally consistent. Anyways, the movie ends with the villain defeated by a pair of truly ugly new evolutions for Agumon and Gabumon representing their eternal bond with their partners... and then their partnerships hit the arbitrary time limit on their bonds and Agumon and Gabumon die. Roll credits.
So again, a film where trying to change a pointless and cruel system that causes nothing but trauma and heartache is evil and destructive and morally wrong. Does that remind you of anything in this video?
Survive and Story vs Tri and Kizuna I'm guessing
@@cactus_judy3929 And Ghost Game vs Adventure 20 as well.
The neighbor's leaf blower to MovieBob: Finally! A worthy opponent! Our battles will be legendary!
Saw both of these films in theaters a few days apart. Bob pretty much hit the nail on the head.
great video again bob! keep it up my man, and may the algorithm bless you with some views.
The writers strike note was somewhat expected, but the COVID reminder wasn't, damn. 3 big summaries in 1 show is a lot of work.
As a society (yes, we still live in one of those, just not the one Joker fanbois want you to believe), we are still seriously, psychically scarred from the COVID fallout. It's similar to what I saw happen after 9/11 in that we've probably got another four to five years of denial to get past.
Fascinating food for thought, Bob, if you fancy a bit of a palate cleanser after this heavy lifting I suggest bashing out a quick review of My Adventures with Superman, for a nice dose of DC done right but still differently than OG canon!
This is so annoying; I'm trying to clear my drive with my leafblower and my neighbour keeps distracting me talking about The Flash.
I hope The Flash doesn't tarnish Calle's career
I haven't been this annoyed about having to wait for a "To Be Continued" that I already knew was coming since I saw Across the Spiderverse. So only like...6 weeks?
Great episode, and thank you for adding MarthaVerse to my vocab
The TV cameo shows just HOW BADLY this was handled. An entire TV show had 9 SEASONS of TV during this film’s production. And the TV show began, and ENDED before we got this movie.
As I and others have said, the irony of a film called The Flash taking this long to make is rich.
I know it hard to work but that leaf blower part crack me up a bit
PTSD Elmo was a perfect representation to how I felt, after learning the Flash storyline
Thank you very much for the Covid PSA at 14 mins. Sober, reasonable, ethical.
Every time bob has to summarize a DC movie it’s comedy gold. Also if any movie deserves to be kicked when it’s down more than Twilight it’s the Flash.
Great video! The suprise mst3k clip threw me into a laughing fit. Well played sir.
I learned about the deep fakes. I did not know about Clooney
12:01 Well that image will haunt my nightmares.
Looking at that Flash summary, seems to me the more natural ending would be "mainline Flash can save young Flash's parents but only by separating it into its own universe, he can't save his own parents - but losing them made him selfless enough to dedicate his life to making other people's lives better." Seems like a fair compromise between "try to make things better" and "your hurt is part of who you are."
I would have accepted that compromise. Or if they'd kept things as is but hadn't copted out and let his father be exonerated. At least have the balls to go all the way with the bad metaphor.
Who uses a leaf blower for more than 10 minutes in July?
Someone working the neighborhood.
Massholes.
This is a great piece of well-researched work, and would only be better if not for THE FUCKING LEAF-BLOWER!!!
Sadly, I have always felt this was the main difference between DC and Marvel: Marvel tells stories about struggling outsiders while DC tells stories about inhuman deities
Even at its most peppy, this is largely true of DC.
I want to say it was Grant Morrison who said "DC superheroes are gods trying to be human, and Marvel superheroes are humans trying to be gods."
@@louisduarte8763I hate this quote with a passion.
Literally if you look at other heroes in both universe below the surface level you’d realize that’s incorrect. Let’s look at the starting JL for reference.
Superman was raised by humans on earth and by human culture. He’s not pretending to be human, he is human despite his Kryptonian heritage.
Green Lantern and Flash were both humans before they were superheroes so wouldn’t they fall into the marvel category by your logic. “Humans pretending to be Gods.”
Aquaman is half human and also has been raised with human culture. He’s not pretending to be human.
Batman is a human and trained years to where he’s at. So by that logic wouldn’t he fit the “Humans being Gods” Marvel category.
Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter are the only DC heroes that logic applied to.
As for Marvel, they literally have Gods trying to be Human. Thor, Hercules, and Moon Knight are prime examples of this.
A Snyderverse movie being reactionary, maybe slightly bigoted and dour in all the worst ways turning a genre full of life, revolution and color into a grey slate that's all the worst parts of what fanboys THINK they want about superhero stories?
So that just applies to...plus three...carry the one...oh. All of them.
The DCEU is dead heres hoping that James Gunn does justice to these characters! 🎉
I say the cynicism has been baked into the DCEU since the beginning. I mean, this all kicked off with a version of Pa Kent who basically discourages Clark from using his powers to help people. A Pa Kent who chooses death just to teach the lesson that Superman should let people die to protect himself. There's your philosophical foundation for the entire franchise.
And lest we forget, for all the big deal Snyder cultists make about "The Speedforce" in ZSJL (i.e. basically Zack Snyder's version of "Superman spins around the Earth to turn it backwards"), its impact is basically undercut by an epilogue set in the Knightmare future, almost as if the Knightmare is inevitable or something.
I know it's popular to label Zack Snyder as an Objectivist, but maybe Zack Snyder is actually a Calvinist. Let’s not mince words - there’s an underlying theme of “do this because God says so” to his characters’ motivations, and a lot of his movies feature heroic-coded characters sacrificing themselves to a fate that they are supposedly powerless to change.
@@tolchok89Objectivism and Calvinism are merely two sides of the same debased coin, an excuse to be as selfish as possible because you've supposedly got larger forces on your side.
That rant about the influences of the pandemic was very much needed. It's a bit frightening just how quickly certain powers that be are moving in to rewrite history still in motion, and just how much certain segments of the population are eager accept it.
Consider the massive societal trauma involved...it shocks me not one bit on either count.
The World Health Organization declares the global health emergency of COVID-19 has ended.
Movie Bob said "labor is the source of all wealth."
✊
First "Spider Man into the Multiverse" leaves me on a cliff hanger and now you do too.
Nope, still not tired of these analyses.
But i do worry Bob might be tired of making them.
He has been harping the same tune for last 5 years at least so I doubt it.
@@sathrielsatansonThe optimism he once felt for this whole brand died a horrible death by a thousand cuts...and seeing it has just been killing any residual joy he had for it since. He keeps praying--in a totally secular way--for James Gunn to right the ship and I just...
Given that asshole Zaslav is Gunn's boss, that is the sort of faith that is not supported by ANY of the evidence.
Really looking forward to part 2 but I definitely want more exploration of this deep undercurrent of meanness present in the DCEU. Something Bob brought up in the last Marthabox episode was that these were movies made by people who didn’t want to make them.
That feels a little more pointed than just “gritty bad” verses “fun good” that gets thrown out and distinguishes these films from say the Nolan Trilogy that preceded them.
And that meanness is right there at the start with Man Of Steel, which had some exciting parts but, let's face it, were anything but fun.
@@johnathonhaney8291 yes and I think we can pinpoint it more precisely than an absence of fun.
Think about how Pa Kent is basically Capt. Misanthrope and the movie kind of agrees with him.
To paraphrase another film “I don’t know what it represents. I don’t know what it is but there are traces and shadows of it everywhere.”
Sometimes, I feel like a crazy person for mentioning COVID. Thanks Bob
Keep mentioning it...because I guarantee you that no one else wants to aside from a few folks like us.
Just got out of Across the SpiderVerse, and yeah, it's subtle like a brick to the face, as it should be. Also it's kind of impressive just how despite that bluntness, it almost feels like a very direct rebuttal to The Flash's terrible moral thesis, especially with how Miguel's insistence on canon events to the detriment of all else ends up creating more problems that it solves.
Anyone else hoping for more cameos from the leaf blower? I'm sorry, but I laughed at every outburst
not the leaf blower, it's the FUCKING LEAF BLOWER!
CURSE YOU, NEIGHBOR WITH LEAFBLOWER!!! 😤
the moral of the story: Japanese Spider-Man is always awesome, nuff said!
I did click on this video because it had Miles on it, because I'm also tired of Flash, but so starved for more good Across the Spiderverse Content
accross the spiderverse is so good. I've seen it twice already, and might yet go back and see it again while it's still in theaters.
I hate when time travel movies rely on the classic "You can't change the past, you just need to accept it". Like the hero repeatedly tries to save a dead loved one...only to make things worse. So now the hero is forced to just let them die. That is some dark stuff. I hate it. The hero becomes the villain the moment they have the ability to save others...but choose not to.
That’s because it’s a lesson about real life where you indeed can’t change the past and you should learn to live with it.
I'm inclined to believe that the Flash's "Hope is dumb, don't try to change the world" message is largely accidental, if only because the Flash is such a mess of a movie that to suggest that it has any subtext at all feels like giving it WAY too much credit.
I see you discovered "Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur." It's pretty much a goddamn MASTERPIECE, and frankly I believe whole-heartedly that THIS incarnation of The Beyonder eats the lunch of all OTHER incarnations... I mean, Laurence Fishburne has some freaking PIPES! He's also less of a generic universe-ending villain and more of a reality-warping pain in the ass like The Great Gazoo or Impossible Man or Q... the "Star Trek" Q, not the whack-a-do conspiracy-theory Q.
What, no mention of Mr. Mxpycklk? Also, notice how the conspiracy theory nut jobs ALWAYS rip off from sci-fi for its BS?
Lizard people = V the TV series
Red-pilled = Matrix
Q = ABSOLUTELY Star Trek TNG.
The leaf blower rant has made my day ❤
You know what's weird? Both movies have a silent Nicolas Cage cameo...
I think this is just the sad ending to the terrible decision to hire Zack Snyder as a man to direct a superhero universe. He might be a fine director with good eye, but his personal politics get way too entangled into his movies. So now we ended up with a bunch of superheroes, created to help the helpless and give hope to everyone, debating exactly how much they're supposed to actually do anything, if at all (man of steel), hearing from authority figures that they don't own anyone anything (Justice League) and teaching gen-z that change is bad and status quo is ALWAYS the right thing to uphold. Thus spoke Ayn.
Now I'm not knocking libertarians (well, I usually am, but not right now), this is an especially terrible approach to superheroes. The best stories usually tell how they go out of their way to help, even at their own peril, risking their own lives or lives of their loved ones to save strangers, to go through struggles and pains just to be able to inspire hope in the rest of us.
And as much as a message of "learn to live with trauma" might be good, I struggle to believe that was what they were going for. The snyderverse was ALWAYS about leaving well enough alone (remember in the Snyder Cut how Cyborg could literally give money to anyone, but his father said that he should NOT do it?), not changing things and only reluctantly come together when literally the entire planet is at stake, but not form a real team or anything... each hero went their separate way afterwards.
The DCEU died not with a bang, but with a Flash.
Honestly, I almost wish they had gone for the original flashpoint storyline. Mainly because it would’ve been at least a little absurd and hilarious to see Gal Gadot and Jason Momoa as rival antagonists.
That PSA is going to be handy going forward for any time someone keeps trying to insist COVID-19 wasn't involved in any of this or anything else in our lives. That being said... Did you say "compliant" at 13:37? Because it says "complied" on-screen, so that confused me a bit.
Yeah, there are a bunch of places where what Bob says isn't quite the same as what's on screen. It doesn't affect the message, so it's generally fine.
great first part! looking forward to the second!
Y'know Bob, when i clicked on this video I expected to see spoilers about a movie i already watched... i did NOT expect to see theories about the NEXT movie that is UNRELATED to the topic of the video and is based on meta comic information i did NOT know about.
I did not appreciate that.
Seems to me that a lot of the MarthaVerse heroes are self-mythologizing narcissistic autocrats.
... I've heard that somewhere before... 🤔
Posting from the soon-to-be graveyard because someone at Warner Discovery really hates it when Bob does his job
Perhaps...though I will say the trend cited is one that goes back to his WW84 review.
As far as the strikes are concerned, I think we’re going to have to go back to some kind of commercial TV situation for the streaming services. Commercials can show which shows are being watched and would make paying out residuals easier to figure out. Ad Free as a concept may have to go the way of the buffalo. It also probably would help if they didn’t hold onto everything, I know that’s not an ideal situation, but they’re definitely spending tons of money on things that are not being watched.
It seems to me that the obvious answer is to switch from a model where residuals are paid just for having a given thing on a given platform even if no-one ever watches it to a model where residuals are paid based on watch-time/number of views.
There are a couple of reasons why people might resist that obvious solution:
- it would require streaming services to be reliably, enforceably honest about their viewing figures rather than being able to select what statistics their shareholders get to know.
- it would make the value of a given show depend on its popularity, rather than on its ability to sell itself to key decision makers, and it's a lot easier to fast-talk a small handful of executives than to convince the general public.
There may also be some technical issues with accounting for tiny sums of money from small numbers of views - if someone's owed $0.0001, how is that tracked and eventually paid - but that doesn't seem like it should be a dealbreaker.
It seems like there are simply too many people wanting to live their dream life working their dream job while there are too little of these jobs: too much demand, not enough supply. Hence they can’t get enough gigs, while the gigs themselves actually pay really well.
@@mabusestestament Yeah, the minimum daily rate for an actor in a big budget movie (just over $1k or ~$80/hour) is pretty good - you only need 4-5 weeks' work per year at that rate to roughly match what you'd make working a minimum wage job full time - though if you get paid the weekly rate, that's at least 25% off the top.
That still works out as one substantial role in a big budget movie per year just to get the equivalent annual income of a minimum wage job. If you want better than minimum-wage-equivalent, you need to either be being paid significantly more than union rates, or to be in multiple projects per year.
And then there are lower budget movies and TV productions (and direct-to-streaming) which all have lower rates.
The recurring theme of throwing off questionable systems goes through the whole MCU. Multiple plots during the Infinity Saga (ex - Winter Soldier/Thor Ragnarok/Captain Marvel/etc) also deal with the corruption within institutions and the need to shake them off for something better.
I often equated the Infinity Saga to the decline of American hegemony as a whole. One throughline I noticed was how the old institutions consistently failed to deal with the new threats, be it a small New Mexico town getting vaporized by the Destroyer, the battle of New York, the complete destruction of Sokovia and the whole Snap.
@@johnathonhaney8291 In addition to the likes of Damage Control, created by Tony Stark and a product of said old systems, building on what Civil War set up. With this escalation of incidents (ex - Wanda holding a whole town hostage for Sitcom LARP Therapy, John Walker Cap rage killing a dude in front of people w/ their phones out, etc), they establish a private prison system to deal w/ supers, hero or not.
@@SonofMrPeanutAny objection if I steal "Sitcom LARP Therapy" for use in future? That is just TOO poetic not to use again for Wanda.
Who needs melatonin. If I'm tired, this helps me go to sleep. Thanks Bob.
Also, LOVE that COVID rant. It needs to continuously be said.
I can’t think of a more fitting way to cap off the DC Ended Universe than hundreds of millions of dollars dumped into an investor call with hundreds of millions of dollars of CGI.
Unfortunately, COVID 19 isn't the first time a disease has been made to seem less dangerous/impactful after the fact, and regrettably it likely won't be the last. After all, most history classes mention WWI, but leave out The Spanish Flu. Which, I would point out, was worse in just about every was as COVID...
Then there's the Black Death, which barely gets a mention on the devastation it wrought. See also Plague of Athens, the sweating sickness during King Henry VIII's reign and so on. Disease gets glossed over in the history books because it's an ugly reminder on the parts we humans have little control over.
Once Bob defeats the first stage neighbor armed with a leaf-blower, he’ll be greeted by the stronger, second stage neighbor armed with a lawnmower.
Great to have you back Bob
Cannot wait for Part II
I saw this movie in theaters and I had the same thought at the end when BOTH Berry's kept going back to the Kryptonian invasion trying to fix everything and failing. This was the Marthaverse, this is what fans and even DC/WB have been doing for the past 10 or so year's, been trying to fix this thing that was broken almost from the beginning with Man of Steel, Older Berry being the non Marthaverse fans saying "just let it go, it's over". There was of course so much missed opportunity to go even more meta, and the meta commentary likely unintended since the vast majority of the movie was just doing the No Way Home approach of using the multiverse concept to shoehorn in as many old characters and references as possible into the story for 40 something year old fanboys to nostalgically jerk off to. Almost to an insulting degree like Ghostbusters Afterlife ( nothing tops that movie though ), but still slightly less nostalgia gangbangish like No Way Home. I now hate nostalgia because of these movie's, Flash sort of sealed the deal, but my girlfriend liked it, so that's fine I guess
Funny thing about this episode. I work in a movie theater, and we dropped the Flash a week after it opened. We're still showing Across the Spider-Verse.
Can we get that PSA as a pop out short for easy sharing?
0:42
Well Damn Boss! Right off the Bat you Echoed something that Jim “Steph” Sterling echoed early this morning! Reporting on the Same F**king issues that Major Companies and people of High standing office position just don’t seem to get every time. Telling them to Stop Doing the same Damn Crap they’ve been doing for over the last 100 years.
An honestly I can’t help but agree that this is all so damn depressing that we wish we could just talk about something else.