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Hello, Welcome back to Superhero ethics.

We are primarily on hiatus in part because I have just become a father within five days of us recording this.

We just came home with my new baby yesterday and we have lots of family around, and I figured I needed to go see this new Superman movie so that I can talk to you some wonderful people, Jessica Plumber and Riki Hayashi about it.

So we are still someone on hiatus with this podcast, but we wanted to make sure we got to talk to you a Superman because something has happened that I didn't think was gonna happen.

Jessica Plumber, I think I really liked the Superman movie that I didn't see as a little kid.

It's a miracle.

I really love this version of Superman, and we're gonna talk about it.

This isn't a movie review podcast.

It's an etex podcast.

This movie has a lot of great ethical questions to discuss about, completely hypothetical and some that are real world parallels.

But let's you kind of start with.

For you, Jessica, you're not even a fan of the Crystal Reeve movies the way I am.

How did you?

How did you like this movie?

I you're right.

I have.

Never seen a Superman movie that I thought was a good movie.

I've seen many good Superman actors, but I've never seen what I thought was a good Superman movie until now.

I loved it.

I thought it was wonderful.

I walked out of that theater just so happy and just feeling so upbeat and joyous, and I thought I was gonna like it, but I didn't realize I was gonna like it this much.

And I've just been riding that high ever since.

That's awesome.

That's awesome, Riky, What about yourself?

So a lot of people have been doing the whole ranking thing.

Is this the best Superman movie, Is this the best Superman portrayal.

Et cetera.

These movies are like.

Talking about Christopher Reeves Superman.

These movies are almost fifty years apart, like literally a lifetime, and so it's very hard to compare.

But I think in terms of impact and meeting the moment of society, they are both perfect for the time that they were created.

Like that's my opinion.

Like I don't know how to rank or compare things that are fifty years apart in terms of movies, Like just everything is different about the industry, how movies are made, how we perceive them.

But for like what we needed from the Superman character, this in twenty twenty five is just perfect, just as it was in nineteen seventy eight.

That's how I feel.

I think that really works.

And I'll say I went back and rewatched the Christopher Reeves the first the Christopher Reeves movies.

But I've seen all three of them pretty recently.

Well, I say all four.

I've always technically a fourth, but.

Four is better than three.

I love three in a It's awful and campy, but really a lot of fun.

Kind of a way less said about that the better.

Perhaps it's kind of like the rocky horror of Superman movies as a terrible commerce, but you know what I mean.

And I will say I have recently watching what I think is some of the best superhero content I've ever seen, and certainly the most emotionally intelligent show where the characters have the highest level of emotional intelligence I've ever seen on television, which is Superman and Lois So the last the CW shows that sanded a year ago.

That show is amazing.

I love that version of Superman.

Superman and lois in their like late thirties forties, raising two teenagers in Smallville, and like, it's fantastic, and I really love this version of Superman as well.

It had hopeful to me more than anything.

And I'm I'm gonna try and make this a comparison of difference, not of better or worse.

I am glad that Man of Steel is a movie that everyone that a lot of people really love.

To me, it made me realize what even that title feels wrong because in this movie, for me, his fighting ability, his being superhumanly strong, he's being a man of Steel is probably the least important thing about him.

It's his hopefulness, it's his goodness, it's his as someone who grew up in punk rock scenes.

He is not punk rock, but he thinks he is.

And you know, there used to be a T shirt that said falling in Love is totally punk rock, and now it's being nice as totally punk rock, and that I can to agree with.

And I just it just was really hopeful, you know.

And Jessica, to me, this was the movie you'd always told me about about like Superman being the antithesis of the grim Dark and all that.

Yeah, it really like I want to take everybody to the theater and point at the screen and be like this, this is the guy.

This is why I love him so much.

Like I feel I'm like proud, I'm like I loved him hard enough that this movie got me.

Big job me.

Yeah.

Yeah, And I think a Man of Steel, like that title of Superman is fine.

But to me, the contrast is that in that movie Man of Steel, that embodies power and especially like punching power right, like the he and ad are just like constantly punching each other through buildings.

And in this movie, I don't even know if they use the phrase man of Steel, but if I were to try to embody what that phrase means to this Superman, it is his ability to shield people, to use his man of Steel body.

To protect Yeah.

Yeah, no, I think I think it makes sense.

And for me also, it's the we're gonna get it into spoilers.

We probably always had some spoilers, but this is not a spoiler free discussion.

We're gonna talking a lot about the details.

I love that a number not only does he on numerous occasions rescue people and save people and save us like not even a dog, a squirrel for God's sakes, but he inspires others to do so, you know.

And the fact that by the end the Justice Gang are going in and are saving people, like they're still literally killing people, including you know, Net and Putin as I've been referring to the Dictator character in this movie, uh, you know, and like that they're not inspired.

He's not inspiring them in that way, and I think that's just fine.

But like the fact that Green Lantern guy, Guy Guy what's his last name Gardner winds up like protecting and putting up a wall between the two nations and saving the little boys holding Superman flag and John and poor like and clearly they're inspired by Superman.

I just was.

I just loved every bit of it.

Yeah.

I think the movie got so much about the characters right.

And one of those things is consistently like, it's not that other people in this movie aren't good, and it's not that other people in this movie aren't trying to do good.

Like the Justice Gang.

They're not villains, they're not like they they are heroes.

They are stopping Kaiju and saving people, but they are inspired by Superman to be better.

Lois is inspired by Superman to to have more hope.

You know, all the staff of the Daily Planet, they are all good people doing the right thing.

But every single character who's not an outright villain is inspired towards goodness by Superman.

And then you have other characters like Lois.

Lois Is role is to speak truth to power, and she repeatedly does that over and over again with Clark, with the Justice Gang, with her expose.

Like those through lines of the characters are so clear and they're stucked, they're so just correct to what the core of those characters should be.

Yeah, I'm going to push back one small part because there's one character who's ethical decision making.

He's positioned as a hero.

But I need to know.

What do we think of leading someone on and letting them think you are ready to commit to them romantically for the rest of your life in order to get them as a source.

Because I think Jimmy Olsen is a player in this and a honeypot and he's great at it.

But like I was like, oh, miss tech Maker, you're not going to find true love.

I'm so sorry for you.

I will say this is the first movie ever that has known what to do with Jimmy Olsen.

They've never like in the movies.

Usually he shows up and he's like, and I'm also here, and then he leaves for the entire rest of the movie.

And this one was like, Okay, why is this guy in this movie?

And I appreciate that.

I will also say Jimmy gets action in the comics.

Jimmy has got a list of girlfriends as long as my arm.

Okay, very accurate.

Good for him, I get it.

I didn't.

I will admit I really like the reveal that Eve was the whistleblower.

I did not, And I thought the first time, like, we see that she's super into him and he's not into her.

It was funny when we kept getting that joke, I was like, this, this just is starting to feel mean spirited in a movie that should not be means spirited.

So that joke did wear a little thin for me on the ethical front, though, I do think that if the entire planet is about to be split in half, it's okay to leave someone on.

That's the case where the ends justify the means.

You know, he's a lot better than James Bond about it, so those we can give him that, And I do say, I thought, yeah, I agree with you.

It felt like a.

Little misogyny to like, you know, have that repeated joke.

But the idea of her being this very attractive woman who's kind of played off, like on the surface level as a stereotype, I think that a lot of people have of like the female influencer you know, who takes all these pick selfies and gets you know, like simps as the term would be, you know, to to to to follow them.

And the fact that she uses her like looking at how sex ai am selfie is always taking them with like the important documents in the background as like some spy level shit.

I was like, oh, test Macker's brilliant.

I love this so yeah, I was off for that.

Yeah.

And you can you can tell how good she is at this from the very beginning when she takes the selfie at the perfect time, timing it with Superman falling from the sky right like she gets him in the frame as he's falling, So her selfie game is super oh point.

Yeah, and even when she's thrown in prison, Lex still does not realize what she did.

He thinks she was just texting another guy.

Yeah, he has no idea that his plans were leaved.

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean she and she doesn't break.

Yeah, And for me, as like one I did, I am definitely the generation that grew up.

I think Riki, you're the saying that grew up with Christopher Reeve movies.

I really love them.

I'm very okay with things going in new directions, but I did want a little bit of nostalgia, and I will say they gave it to me in in part with her character because of course spoilers from movies from nineteen seventy eight.

But you know, one of the things that helps Superman is that miss Tech test Macker.

She'sn't referred to Eve, She's Missed Testmcker.

But like when she realizes that Lex's evil plan is going to hurt her family, she rescues Superman and kind of betrays Lex.

And so there was that thing.

But also the way that they used the original John Williams Superman score from those seventies and eighties movies.

It just like they didn't overdo it, and it was often kind of like a new version of it, but like I could hear it so clearly, and when there's like the big powerful reveal of Superman's back, it hits the music that plays is that exact theme.

It just regat how is that for you?

Like, it felt to me like it was really saying, we are paying homage to Christopher Reeve and all the versions of Superman over the years, while still doing our own thing.

Yeah.

I how I feel about this is that some people might feel like it's like pandering to nostalgia, But in my opinion, it's that John Williams is a generational talent.

Yeah, and what he.

Has done in terms of scores for movies is just like in the DNA of the movie industry so deeply that at this point to have Superman without hints of that melody feels wrong.

Yeah, and so like he has.

Just added that to the mythos of this character.

I think it's the same with Star Wars.

Anytime you hear that Imperial March, you're like, this is a bad guy.

And like so many other movies, it's just his music is so integral to their DNA that to not use them is kind of kind of criminal.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think this movie does a really good job of taking I mean, it definitely synthesizes a number of Superman sources.

There's a ton from the comics.

There's stuff from Smallville, for sure, there is a lot from the Christopher Reeve movies.

Like it's in conversation and it has a lot of very strong DCAU vibes, like it's in conversation with Superman's sort of entire multimedia history over the course of eighty seven years.

But I think in particular it's particularly noticeable with the stuff that it's taking from the nineteen seventy eight film, And I think it's really smart about choosing when to homage it in a way that feels fresh, but it's still like very much in the same vein, like with the Superman theme, and when it plays on your expectations to flip them on their head in a fun way, like the reveal about Eve actually not just being a bimbo who follows Lex around, and like, I know, she saves Superman at the end of seventy eight, but that's just because she thinks he's cute, Like it's not.

It's not the same level of intelligence and heroism.

She wants to kiss him and she wants to save her family.

Right right.

And then there's times that it really contradicts what's laid out in seventy eight in a way that I think is really important and really powerful.

And I'm thinking specifically about like the Fortress of Solitude existed in the comics for a long time before the nineteen seventy eight movie, but that's the movie that made it like a crystal structure, And that's the movie that introduced the idea of holograms of Superman's parents talking to him.

And this movie takes that idea and absolutely reverses it in a way that I really really loved and I thought was desperately needed, as you know, in a Superman story.

So I think James Gunn was very smart about how he used what he was taking from that film.

Like, to me, one of the most powerful visual c references was it is an intergalactic thing instead of just the San Andreas fault.

But there's a little literal fault line going through the movie exactly like there's the end.

I mean, the part Lex's whole plan is still a real estate scheme.

He's still real estate games of.

Well, there's no Odisberg, which made me a little sad.

I did get Otis, we did get Otis, we did get notice let's talk about what you brought up, because I think it's one of the first interesting ethical issues.

You know, a lot of the versions of Superman that I've seen, there's this sense of his parents imbued him with all this sort of moral teaching, and that Ma and Pa can't echo it.

And here, as you said, it's really not that the Kryptonians were sending him there.

They have a benevolent idea.

It's not like you know, some of the stuff of like, you know, go repopulate Krypton and kill all the humans, but it's it's more kind of like Red Sun.

If anyone's seen that, it's we want you to rule the people of Earth and help them through you know, force, and kill anyone who gets in your way because you're superior and better to them.

What what was your guys take on that?

As like, I think you're right, it's new, it's fresh.

It felt very like I think I liked it, but it was so jarring to me because so often I think one of things I've always really liked is the idea of this immigrant story of yes, he learned these great values from mon paw Kent, but they echo what he was learning from his Homeland from Krypton.

How do you think I felt about that that being so turned on its head?

I have a lot of thoughts.

Do you want to go before I.

Correct me if I'm wrong?

But this is an element they've kind of borrowed from Smallville, right, This idea that Jorel's message is more of a we want you to rule over humans.

It's in Small Villain.

I think you see like something similar in My Adventures Superman.

Not Joryl specifically, but Krypton is like a very aggressive, warmongering culture.

Interesting.

Interesting.

So for me, I still think there's the element of what he inherits from his Kryptonian birth parents, right, because like he has watched the first half of the message for all his life and he has this belief of what they tried to imbuw and then when the second half message is revealed, there's the subversion and he realizes he was wrong.

When I watched the movie, actually I didn't believe it until like the movie was over.

For pretty much the whole run time, I thought that Lex Luthor had still manipulated it because it's kind of what happens in the comic Bookman birthright.

I think where he fakes this Kryptonian invasion to kind of frame Superman, So they were barring a lot of elements of that comic.

So I thought that was just going to be the reveal at the end that he had manipulated the footage, and it wasn't.

So I'm like, oh, Okay, I guess.

I guess the l's are bad in this one, and I'm okay with that, And I think it fits fine with the idea of the immigrant story still, because immigrants, especially like this first generation that is either born or raised in a new place, has these disconnects with their home culture.

And you know, as an Asian, that disconnect can be so big, like you see it in movies like Crazy Rich Asians where people try to go back to their home countries and it's like, oh, I actually don't fit in here at all, and so like that's to me, like that's the culture shock of the immigrant story that Superman is feeling in this is like, oh, like everything I thought I knew about my home is wrong, Like everything that like I thought growing up is wrong.

And then to connect that back to the Kents, I think is the most powerful thing about this story, and just like the best one of the best scenes in the movie is like his talk with Paul Kent.

Mm hmm, yeah that no good.

Go ahead.

I was gonna take you a little diff director of the Pot can't quote, so please go ahead.

I was gonna say.

They took so much from Superman birth Right, which is written by Mark Wade, that at one point you literally see a street sign that says Wade Street, which made me really happy because he's one of my favorite writers.

Yeah, I mean, for me, one of the biggest problems with Jorel in really all of the movies, especially Superman seventy eight, is that having that long speech from Jorel where he just tells Clark what to do and how to live his life, takes so much agency away from Clark as the protagonist, like Clark is in no previous movie has Clark become Superman or been a hero because he decided to.

He did it because the hologram of Jorel told him to, and in particular, like, not only does it take agency away from Clark, but in particular if you're looking at the Superman seventy eight timeline, which would also encompass Superman returns, because that is the same backstory.

Then it's complete, Like we have this hologram of Superman's dead biological father that gets all the power and like one percent of the raising of him, and we have his living adoptive mother who is completely disregarded by the movies, and like that we like she dies off screen.

I think it's in Superman three that he goes home and it's like, yeah, anyway, she's dead.

Like it's just I I am so tired of Jorel and I am so tired of lengthy speeches by Marlon Brando being repeated in movie after movie after movie, and like holograms of Russell Crowe doing you know, Kryptonian jiu jitsu on a dragon, like I'm over in it.

So that the fact that this movie took that and was like, no, no, we're not doing that.

And in fact, we're explicitly stating that Clark is a hero because of who he is as a person.

It's not even because Mat and Paw can't raise him to be that way.

It's his decision, it's his choice to act in that way.

And that's what's important.

I think is so much more powerful now framing it as an immigrant narratives and as a story of adoption.

Yeah, like in my ideal world it would there would be more of a balance, right, showing that there are values coming from Krypton and their values coming from the Kent.

But in reaction to eight movies that go way too hard in the l direction, I'm was really really pleased to see this, although I'm very curious to see how all of that plays out in the Supergirl movie because I guess you like never asked her what his parents were like, which.

Interesting, and I like, I'm not getting the Like I love the CW Supergirl show, but in it, she's very much like a blonde Clark Kent in that she has so much purity and goodness, and so I am interested to see her as a party girl, uh, you know, who hangs out on Red Sun planets because she can get drunk easier.

I'm curious to see where that's gonna go.

Two things that came up for that as you're talking.

One is that I really love what you're saying about, like him having more of the choice, especially because you're like in the second Christopher Reeves movie, the whole point is that Clark Kent doesn't want to be Superman.

He wants to have this life with Lois.

He tries to stop being Superman, and he has to be Clark Kent.

He has to be Superman.

I mean, like I always thought that was like honorable and heroic and noble as an eight year old, and then as a fourty year old, I was like, this is kind of awful.

And for that reason, one of my favorite scenes.

And this in part comes from as someone who's worked in the nonprofit sector for all of my life, but also just in activism and all that, but also just in anything.

Like the idea of you are a good person if you constantly sacrifice yourself in order to help others is really kind of dangerous, and like, I think it's good to sacrifice, but also like there's a huge amount of burnout in the nonprofit industry because if you never take care of yourself, you can't take care of others.

And like, as a new father, me and Mary are talking about this that we want to be awake every single moment and watch every single thing this kid does because he's turned blue once or twice on us, you know, because he couldn't breathe.

But also we know we have to take care of ourselves.

And so Superman saying to like Superman having this emotional conversation with Lois while the super Gang, the Justice Gang is fighting what clearly Starro, I think.

It's it's a mister Mix's pedol, like he says, it's an interdimensional imp specific.

Okay, okay, it looks like Starro, but but I'll take your word for it.

And like we're seeing the like I want.

I want to know about like the big baseball bat that uh, you know, Guy Gardner is creating to hit the thing over the head with.

But Superman's like, no, they got it.

I don't need to go rush to their help.

I can focus on this emotional conversation with you I thought was just phenomenal.

The other thing, I'll say a little bit in defense of the the l Family, I think that, like, to me, there are two things I got out of it.

One is that I think that they did have fundamentally good intentions, but their means to it was terrible.

And and in terms of the kind of like because their whole thing was we want you to help, like we sent you to they say, they sent you to a planet where you can do the most good.

But it's these sort of like might makes right.

You know, what's the one where he puts, like all of Metropolis in a bottle?

Oh uh, Brainiac puts the bottle city.

Well, it puts a city of candor in a bottle?

Right, what's what?

Oh, Superman, I'm bound?

Is that what it's called?

No, it's something.

But because the whole point is that like Superman kind of like decides to become kind of a benevolent fascist and like rule everything.

Well, he becomes fascist and injustice, there's a lot of stories, there's a lot of bad Superman.

Yeah, the idea that that's what the Kents want, which is not good, but it's also not like ruling for He's certainly not lax.

He's not doing it for a real estate scheme or for you know, something like that.

But also I thought it was also a really interesting commentary on our social media world where like, yeah, well they can't say is bad, but.

It's taken what the els say.

The l say, yeah it is bad, but there's no context given to it.

It's just assumed that Clark would be exactly what they found.

You know, it feels like that kind of like a lot of social media today feels like We're going to take the worst moment connected to you and shout a million times out of context in order to like, you know, tarn feather you in the modern sense.

And I think that you know, a person's worst moment can often say a lot about them, and I'm not against that, but I feel like it raised some answering questions of what does it mean to take only that half of the cent.

Well, I mean they play the whole message, but like to take that part specifically, and then also to blame Clark for it, you know.

Just going back to the scene where the Clark and Lewis are in Clark's apartment in the Justice Gang is fighting mister Nix's Piddolick, which was my favorite scene in the movie, and oay it everything about it was so good, Like the Clark and Lewis conversation was so good.

The gag the recurrent, like that was a case where a gag kept repeating, like every time you saw that thing at the window, it was still funny, and the longer it went, the funnier it was.

But also like Clark saying maybe that's the real part Rock made me cry, Like yeah, I loved absolutely everything about it.

But one of the things I love so much about it was like, as you said, yeah, like he can take a beat and not go fight that thing because it's handled and that's important for like self care, but also he can take a beat and not go fight that thing because this movie takes place in the DC universe, and it feels like it takes place in a larger universe, like a Kaiju shows up and nearly tramples buildings and that's just kind of Wednesday for them.

Like this just feels like a movie that exists in the middle of something, Like there was Superman stuff before this, there was Superman stuff after this.

There's all sorts of heroes.

It's like a really fleshed out world.

And even though I think that means it's kind of an overstuffed movie, and like I'd like to see Lois get more screen time.

I think some of the ethical questions we're going to talk about don't get really thoroughly explored because the movie had to be over.

Yeah, but for me, that's a trade I'm willing to make because I love the DC universe and I really like I felt like I was living inside of it for two hours and nine minutes.

And that's like the greatest thing it could possibly experience, unless it was also a musical, which would be the actual greatest thing.

We'll get there.

We'll get there someday.

So let's start talking about some of the ethical stuff.

First of all, I think this movie really plays up journalism and the importance of Clark and Lewis being newspaper people, especially Lois, and it starts in kind of a weird place with that.

You know, Lois kind of teasing him about the journalistic ethics of interviewing himself and then giving him this pretty hard hitting interview where she's pushing him on should he have intervened in this you know, one big strong country invades this one small week one.

He's just like, no, We're just not going to do that.

What'd you think of that scene, like what was being said about journalism as a whole, but also especially that picular scene, because like, I kind of liked that they didn't specifically say by the end like Clark was right or Lois was right, They're kind of sittings in some of the tension.

But I'm curious how that that all played out to you guys.

Yeah, that scene was so good and For me, I agree with Jessica that I wish I had gotten a little more Lois.

But then I read this statistic that that interview scene is ten percent of the runtime of this film, and a like that is kind of a startling thing to think about for a Superman film.

But then I was like, yes, like it was just like a long scene.

Yeah, that went on for a while without cutting.

I mean, they had like camera cuts, but the scene stayed with those two characters for the whole time, And I think that was so important because we need to see this interaction between Lois and Clark, like we've talked about it on this podcast in the past, us that like a strong lowest character is one of the most important things, and how hard it is to fit that into a Superman movie as opposed to a TV show.

And yes, Matthew said that that scene both emphasizes their relationship, which we are in the midst of, but is also finally like emphasizing journalism, their jobs and what that means in this universe.

And it was just I don't, I don't know, like I was.

It's not like a jaw dropping scene the same way some of the action set pieces are, but it left me just going wow, like that happened.

That whole scene happened, and like all of the little, the little things that happened in that scene, like when when Clark raises his voice, and I think the phrase he says, like people were dying, Like that was so great for the character development, Like that's what makes him upset, is that people were dying and he has the power to do something about it.

And of course, like get raises these questions about like how far should superheroes go, especially when it comes to international jurisdictions and laws, right, and and I think like Lois hammering those points on him was so good because like that's that's what a journalist would do.

They wouldn't ask, you know, like oh, what's your favorite ice cream flavor?

Superman?

Like, hey, should you have done that?

Like was that right?

Yeah?

I loved that scene and I thought it was phenomenal.

I thought the writing was phenomenal, the acting was phenomenal.

The chemistry between the two of them is so good.

The way that they kind of like talk over each other and it's like, yeah, of course you two are journalists, Like you can't neither of you can like shut up or let it go or stop arguing for two seconds.

And I really loved that, Like we saw him get more and more flustered and like saying things and then going wait, no, that was off the record and turning the recorder off and just like being really like he was not prepared for this conversation and he doesn't handle it well, Like he's kind of being a big baby for some of that scene.

And it never feels like it never makes him unlikable.

It just makes him feel really human and much more like accessible and relatable as a character.

And especially like you said, like ending on that like mic drop of people who are going to die, like that's it.

That's that's the end of story for him.

And so even though he is he did not think this through and even though he is not handling being questioned about it, well, you can't like, I don't think that that scene is about I agree.

It's not like he's wrong or she's wrong.

You can't argue with the the importance of his point, even though Lois is also making valid points.

And it just felt like a like it was such a good scene for showing why these two work, even the fighting, because they have such a good balance and because you know, her pressing him to question like what he's doing and why and how he's doing it makes him a better superhero.

Yeah, and it's so interesting.

It's so interesting to me that she calls him out on I think she used the word torturing the president of Bravia, right, like pushing him up against a cactus, and by the end of the movie, Hawk Girl straight up murders that guy by dropping him from a high altitude.

I want to get into his character and Bravian all of that, but just just focusing on that one scene, right Like, for me, I think we could a whole episode just on that one scene because it captured so much and we try and just like rapid hit a bunch of things.

You guys have said, please stop me any point.

First of all, just like we've all talked about how we love rom comms, and Jessica you said that, like the best Superman story is a rom com and I wanted that out of this.

But I think, especially like as I said, in Superman and Lois, they are an established couple, but there's still a huge amount of romance, and that show helps remind me that I don't like that most romance on TV is just the courtship, and then once you're done with the courtship, either I have problems or we just forget about them.

And at first when they were kind of like flirting in the office and maybe she doesn't know who he is, I was like, Oh, we're gonna get this again.

And so it was who quickly revealed she knows his secret and they are already dating.

The courtship is over, we're now in the like can this work?

Is relationship?

I loved that.

I was so happy for it, And you're right, it felt like some tension.

It felt like I could see like they're not sure if they're going to make this relationship work, but they have so much respect for each other.

They're pushing each other.

And yeah, the interview hit me on so many levels.

First of all, like, I already love that this isn't an origin story.

It's instead like a milestone movie.

You know, it sets up so well, this isn't the start of Superman.

This is the start of him being challenged because this is the first time he's ever lost a fight, And an interview with Lois felt so in the same vein you know, this is the first time he's really been questioned, and I am always the cynic I am always the one who doubts Superman's hopefulness, and so during a lot of her interviewing with him, I was like, yeah, you're right, it's not good for one random guy to decide what foreign policy of the world should be.

And then I support all of the things Lois is saying until he says, but people are dying, and that should just be the flat out part.

And it it reminded me of how frustrated I am with so much of modern journalism, where it's just always we gotta have both sides, and we got to we can't be inspired.

We always have to look for the cynical, we always have to look for the dark side.

And I really love that it just sort of sat in that tension, like, you know, of like I, you know what, maybe it's not the best thing for all these other stuff reasons for Superman to decide foreign policy for other nations, but damn it, people are dying, and so he's going to do it.

And actually I'm pretty happy he does it, you know.

And I just watching the evolution of journalism in this movie, watching his evolution, watching her evolution.

To me, that one scene captures so much of all the things I loved about it.

Well, that argument I keep.

The thing I keep coming back to in the context of that argument is a civil war the movie, which in a way sort of revolves around a similar question, which is, can these American superheroes go into a foreign country and do whatever they want?

Or is that not cool?

And it's I mean, essentially the same question, but it's framed so completely differently for a number of reasons.

But like, right, first of all, it's one thing for Superman to say I'm not representing America even though he is a resident of America.

It's another thing entirely for Captain America to say I'm not representing America Like that is just like Steve, there's no plausible deniability there.

This is nonsense.

And there's also a difference between well, we went into this foreign country to be superheroes and we actively caused harm while we were there, and Superman went into this foreign country and stopped harm, and then a guy followed him home and caused harm.

He can't like it's not fair to hold him.

I mean, I guess someone, but like, it's not really fair to hold him responsible for what somebody else does.

Like if you try to save people, I'll come threaten people where you live.

Is like responding to that is just obeying an advance.

So I just thought it was interesting these two movies kind of hang a hook on the same central geopolitical question and they take such divergent paths.

But I also think a big part of it is we are supposed to sympathize with Clark but not think that he is unequivocally right, because that conversation frames it as an argument where they both have a point, Whereas we are supposed to think that Steve is right because he's really nice and handsome and sad, and I don't think he's right, and that movie sits really poorly with me because of it.

Yeah, I'm we are grown ups, and we don't just punch each other to ever escalating levels of like destroying parking garages because we can't deal with our emotions.

But yeah, team Tony.

And I have discussed the idea that there should be complete and total accountability to this one corrupt government.

There should be no accountability whatsoever, that there might be some discussion in between those two rather than just.

Much, much, much well and then and this movie had a discussion remarkable how much that helped.

Like I found myself kind of thinking of that Superman in this movie is what I wish the United Nations was, you know, something that isn't a nation state telling other nations what to do, but just an overall body that's just like, no, you're You're just not gonna do this.

This kind of slaughter, this kind of genocide, this kind of you know, steal, literally is just ceiling from another nation for your own financial gain or your own political gain or whatever it is, is just not okay.

And to me, the movie had like, as someone is very politically invested, I'm really frustrating.

I'm the person who wants to go ten levels deep with the analysis, but I feel like this movie was kind of challenging me on that and kind of reminding me of a place of sometimes it's hard to go into ten, fifteen, twenty levels of analysis when people are literally dying, and even if it's not the best, like if you can put something in between the two people and say stop shooting them, that's what you do, even if it's not perfect.

You know, all right, so we're gonna we're gonna talk about these fictional nations.

Now, I think that's where we're going.

Sure, let's do it.

I in this discussion, like it watched the movie, I was just like fine with everything, but in this discussion about the situation, looking back on the movie, like, I have a lot of problems with how this has been framed because we are not given any context that I recall as to like who these nations are and why they are doing the things they are.

Like we're given a very weak caricature of a dictator in the President of Bravia, and it's like, obviously he's the villain because of like the way he is, and then obviously he's the villain because he's working with Lex Luthor, the villain of the movie.

But nations are complicated, and I do think like they oversimplified it to manipulate.

Our emotions, and it works.

It absolutely works, because when that kid raises the Superman flag in the middle of a battlefield, like, someone save that kid, do something like stop this right, like and that's that's fine.

Like I have said in the past that I'm okay being manipulated in this way, but here on this podcast, like we got to talk about the fact that we don't know anything about this fictional geopolitical situation, and to some degree, I'm okay with that.

And I like the fact that the DC universe has fictional nations and fictional cities because it allows us that separation from our real world.

And I think that's that's absolutely very important here because we can just be like, yeah, Bravia is just like this comic like literally comic comically or comically bad evil nation, and we don't have to sit with that too much.

But when you have.

Situations like Captain America Brave New World where Japan, like I I was there watching that movie, and like, what why is Japan in this movie?

Like why are we the.

Questionable like bad guys or like the opposing the US, like we're supposed to be allies?

And I was like, I wonder if they wanted to use China as this like Asian opposition, and then at some point just decided we can't do that because China would be mad and then like ticket sales, right, so they just decided to pick on Japan just like okay, fine, but but the that's like the level of complication when you use real places and real names and nations, and I'm glad that in movie can just ignore that and be like Bravia bad.

So that that's my entry point into this discussion is like, I think it's great that we just had this fictional conflict.

I will just say I've never been more I've never been as aware that Metropolis is literally New York as someone who grew up in New York as I was in this movie, down to the Justice Gang hanging out in what is quite literally Penn Station.

But yes, other than that, you never hear your point.

Yeah, apparently it's like there are specific Cleveland landmarks in this but yeah it's new.

Like the original Hall of Justice was based on like a Cleveland building, and they actually filmed the outdoor scenes for this movie in Cleveland, so like a lot of the visuals are Cleveland.

I Thinkolis is supposed to be in New Jersey.

Yeah, I mean Gotham there at one point.

Well know real quick though, Matthew, you like this.

The building that Luther's little flying headquarters is like kind of the middle of is a real building in Cleveland, and it's apparently nicknamed the Batman Building because it's got the pointy little ears which is pretty funny.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's there is.

It's a very hard needle to thread, right when you are talking about superheroes and uh, geopolitical conflict in general, but really anything that has a bearing on a real world problem that that is causing harm because on the one hand, if we aren't using these larger than life figures to talk about real you know, meaty questions like if we aren't using figures that are meant to represent justice to talk about issues questions of justice, what are we even doing here?

And like what's the point of this podcast?

But if we get too real about it, like if it gets too specific, especially with a character like Superman, it can feel disrespectful.

Like during World War Two.

You know, Superman was created in nineteen thirty eight, so the US wasn't part of the war yet, and after the US joined the war, they had to do a story.

They had to acknowledge that, like Clark Kent is of you know, an enlistable age.

But they couldn't just have Superman go fight in the war and either just like be a private and not accomplish anything, or go immediately end it like there is actually before before the US joined the war.

There is a story where Superman flies to where that war in Europe is happening, and he grabs the leaders of those two nations and we don't know which ones, and he's like, if you guys want to fight, you fight.

Which did the grabbing the president of Brabia did remind me of that, but that that was not going to read well when Americans were fighting and dying overseas.

So what they did was they have Clark go to enlist and his X ray vision accidentally kicks on while he's reading the eye chart and he reads the one in the next room, and they're like, oh, this guy cannot see at all, and so he gets four F and he's he can't join the army.

And it's like it's a neat solution to be like, and that's why he didn't, you know, just immediately end the war, right, It doesn't really you know, they're thinking about too much.

But it was like nineteen forty one, and so in this case, I think, you know, like you're saying, like, these are fictional countries, and I don't think we're being invited to read them as close analogs of any real world conflict because I think if they were, that would be again pretty disrespectful because people are still dying in like Green Lantern is not showing up to put a green wall around anyone in Goza or Ukraine.

So I think I somewhat disagree with you too, But I think it's a really good conversation.

I love the movies raising the conversation, and I'm not entirely convinced by my own argument.

To be sure, this is a quick aside though, just where I thought you were gonna go with the World War two stuff that I think is also relevant as a here's why it's a little dangerous sometimes to have the superheroes fight things that are exact mirrors of what is happening.

In the real world.

Some of the most viriantly and Riki you probably speak on the Spent and Night ten, but some most currently anti Japanese propaganda that comes out of World War Two was the portrayals of Japanese that Captain America and other superheroes were fighting and deeply racist.

Superman covers mostly covers, not so much in the comics, but they're right.

I'm not going to repeat anything that's on them.

It's yeah, and I'm not sure.

My hero Batman, I know, goes after you know, spies and stuff like that.

That being said, I I'm always so torn because I think you're right.

I think it is good to have some fictional distance between things.

But I do think there's there's power in acknowledging the metaphorical, like it makes you think of things, you know, And I think I went into this movie having been told that for a lot of people, they really saw it as a very clear like critique of Israel and what it's doing in Gaza with Palestine.

I thought that was there a good deal, but I also thought it was just as much a like like I made a joke about the villain in being putin Yahoo as like a mix of net Yahoo and Putin, because I also think is just as much like Russia invading Ukraine, and I think it's clearly inspired by both of those things.

But but it's not that and like a point I'll say, on kind of your side.

At first, I was.

Annoyed that the dictator was just clearly a mustache twirling like rubbing his hands working.

With lex because that's less realistic.

But I then later, as you guys are talking, I'm like that's probably actually better to make it feel like more of a separation.

I think the way in which to me like to me, if I think there's a message about this that is relevant to those situations in the world today, but you're right, doesn't have to exclusively.

Be to them, is.

Like, I think one of the frustrations sometimes because you're right, RIGI, as you said, we don't have all the context in this situation, and there is more context, but I feel like this is the people are dying argument for me, If a whole bunch of people with mass very good weapon weapons are shooting people who don't have good weapons, I want to know the context so I can figure out the long term solution.

But I don't give a damn about the context.

People are dying.

That should stop, you know.

And I kind of feel like that was the here and on most of you.

Maybe I'm more inspired by that part of Superman than I should be, But to me, that really felt like the message of is like, yes, the complexity matters, the nuance matters.

All the questions Lowis is asking him are important.

But when we get so locked in to the complexity and the nuance that these horrible situations happen for years and years and years.

That's not okay too.

And Superman's kind of having a what I think is kind of a naive attitude of people are dying.

I don't care about the context.

I'm going to stop it.

I think you can believe in that message without applying it to those real world situations.

I think God is saying, like, I think you should apply to these real world situations.

But whether, but whether or not you play it in these specific instances.

That's the overall message that the movie had, and I really like that one as an ethical message for a movie, which is the weird because it's so against everything that I've said before in some ways, I mean, I.

Would be hesitant to try to totally draw conclusion about what exactly gun is trying to say because all of these big budget action movies have like funding from the US military.

So true, I find it hard to believe like whatever is in James Gunn's heart, whatever his personal political beliefs are, like, I think whatever he wanted to say would probably have been edited and filtered somewhat through what was permitted by Warner Brothers and the US military, which is a sad state of affairs, But like I always want to kind of take these these types of or is with that grain of salt, and I think it doesn't change like what we take away from it and the resonance that the messaging has for us as an audience, But in terms of intention, I think it can be hard to parse when you have to navigate those filters, if he was even navigating them, which I don't know.

And this's point Riki, You've made to me a bunch of times, and I think I've come around on you, right that, like I want to think that's what guns point was.

I really have more of the postmodern idea of like that's an interprettion I got from the text at least, and whether or not that was Gun's intention, it's probably a better way of describing it.

Yeah, I mean I would agree with your point that if we break this conflict down from what we are shown from an ethical standpoint, one side Bravia has modern mechanized weaponry like tanks and machine guns, and the other side, I don't even remember if we were shown, which are hand poor having any weapons, like maybe a lot of who just had pitchforks, right, And that's that this is like the most extreme example of like, oh, like one side, one side is like very powerful, the other sides not.

And drawing that line of like.

If you, if you are a mechanized modern military, maybe you shouldn't be turning your your weapons of war on what are essentially civilians with hand to hand weapons.

And if if you want to draw like real world parallels, I'm sorry to say, like that's the story of the United States.

Yeah, very much so, very much so.

Yeah, I'm gonna think in some ways what we're seeing in Ukraine and in Gaza, you might say, is kind of like the most modern iterations of this, but are by no means unique moments of history that have never happened before.

And I will say, like I keep mentioning the Russia thing because I in terms of looking at the discourse, I think there is an awful lot of discourse of naming this movie as like a very pro Palestinian, anti current Israeli government kind of thing, and I see where that's coming from.

But I do think that that a lot of that is going a little too far, and as sometimes happened, someone's getting down right anti Semitic is that are really problematic.

But like to me, it felt like, yes, it's a nation of round people in a desert area, Like there's a lot of things that look an awful lot like that.

There's a map of John and Poor that looks an awful like the gods a strip, but then also having like the language of Bravia sounding a lot like Russian, and like the capital city having these literal onion domes.

I was like, okay, okay, so where this is as much about Putin as it is anything in Israel right now?

And I appreciated that as a like, don't this isn't a one to one comparison of anything right now.

I think it's just generically foreign.

And I think that the uh, the impoverished people with no modern technology who need help are generically brown, because those are the stereotypes that American audiences kind of expect and are easy for us to digest.

Like, I really, I don't think it's that pointed.

I don't think it's that specific.

I think we're just grabbing out of the box of.

You know, that's the lens we're seeing it through, because yeah, I.

Think this is right out of a commercial for you know, some philanthropic organization with Sarah MacLachlan playing over the credits like it's you know, I don't think I just it just doesn't feel like, yeah, this is the venue for specific pointed political commentary about specific current political events.

To add to that, the actor who portray is the President of Bravia.

His name is is Latko Burich and he is listed as born in Croatia and residing in Denmark.

So if I were to guess, like the accent that he uses in this movie is probably like very much close to his natural accent, so Croatian, like a Southeastern European Slavic accent, and maybe to us, like I don't know any of these European languages, so yeah, like I could understand if people are like, ah, yes, like this sounds kind of Russian, but maybe to Russians they listen to that.

And that's that doesn't sound Russian at all.

Yeah, I mean, even the names Bravia and jar and per are so linguistically completely disconnected from each other, like they don't sound like they come from the same region of the world.

And you know, DC has plenty, like Riky is saying, DC has plenty of fictional countries in the comics that they could have used that are not subtle about what they're meant to be.

Like there's a country called Quorak with a Q, Like they're not subtle there.

They have tons of countries that are like somewhere vaguely in the Balkans, like they there were these two.

New countries or these country names from older.

I believe they're new.

I have to dig into it, but I don't remember reading anything.

In terms of in terms of fictional DC countries, I will say I'm surprised that Jarhanpoor was in conduct because then then you still have like this kind of impoverished brown people.

But if it's invaded by a mechanized force, then eventually it opens up the avenue of having black Adam.

To get away from that on purpose, well, no, because the movie was not.

I mean I say that someone who's played the movie.

But that's part of the problem.

Like we can't do it in Flatava because Count Vertigo will show up.

We can't do it in uh Moldova because Sonar will show up.

We can't do it in Markovia because Geohorse will show up.

In DC have too much history.

Yeah, they all have a superhero or a super villain who's like the Grand Duke or whatever.

What what's the Latin American nation that they make up so they can invade it in the first one of the second best Suicide Squad movie.

Oh I don't remember, I know that Bain is from Santa Prisco, which is another made up right.

Yeah, well with all that, then let me throw one other modern political situation.

At you, Corto Maltese.

Are we also going to say that Lex Loose putting as much invective as he can to say you are an alien has nothing to do with the modern day immigration discussions.

This movie is so woke.

No, I mean, I'm gonna say it doesn't like again to me as an immigrant.

It resonates deeply.

But Lex Luthor has been anti alien, anti Superman in the comics for ages, like including the President Luthor storyline, which if that happens then it will become like even more pointed.

But the people who are trying to say that, like somehow this is a critique of right now, like the Superman story in Lex Luthor have been critiquing this for decades.

So yeah, I was talking about this with a friend and we were comparing Lex in this movie to Jesse Eisenberg's Lexman.

Yeah, the rich HM or the rich joker, I should say.

Yeah, it's it's like what if Mark Zuckerberg was he fled to his choker, which is a choice, but that also feels like, you know, he was very clearly cast because he had played Mark Zuckerberg, and he was very clearly being directed to sort of evoke that's like a specific person.

And what I said to my friend was, I feel like there are elements of Les that will make you think of plenty of you know, public figures, Like there are elements of him that you know are reminiscent of Trump, or reminiscent of Elon Musk, or reminiscent of various other people.

But Tariki's point, I don't think it's so much because either James Gunn or Nicholas Holt was specifically going to those people for inspiration.

I think it's.

Because that kind of like small, petty, greedy bully of a man is timeless, and you know, if you dial into that kind of villain there, you know, twenty years from now, somebody will watch this movie and go, oh, he is just like and talk about a current figure like it's unfortunately Evergreen.

Yeah, I get that, and I like, while I do, I do think that the.

Situation with John and Poor and all that is more inspired by current events that you guys are saying.

The immigration thing felt to me more like it's not that they were like, let's let's have Superman have a pro immigrant message because of politics.

It's that Superman has always had an incredibly pro immigrant message that just resonates a lot more right now because of the current anti immigrant situation that we're in.

I will say the one thing that I did think was like, oh, this is taken from right now, it's a commentary on right now was the Monkeys Oh on Twitter social media.

I was like, that is a a commentary on what is specifically happening right now.

And it was very fun and I appreciate.

In a beautiful Simpsons reference right yeah, Oh.

Yeah, I didn't catch that, but that's awesome.

It was the blurst of times I definitely had.

I think, like, at first, I wrestled with this version of Lex a little bit, in part because I love Nicholas Holt, because he's my favorite Romeo that I've ever seen, which if any of you seen the movie Warm bodies.

He's ombie Romeo, but it is like he professes his love to j while she's standing on a balcony and her best friend is a nurse.

Like I was, it's a great movie, and it's a Romeo and Juliette story in such a wonderful way.

And he plays r are uh and I very much got vibes of the Smallville version of Lex.

And Michael Rosenbaum, yea who has a cameo in this.

I kind of first wanted him to have more of a high minded like he really is scared for humanity.

But when I heard his final villain of monologue and it's that it's envy, I realize it is so because you're right.

He is small, he is greedy, but in some ways he is just as human as Superman is.

And like I felt like that scene of him saying I'm human to me, it was like very much a kind of like the good and bad sides of who we can be, you know, in that we can be hopeful and inspirational and look for the best, and we also can be incredibly envious if anyone we think is doing better than us, you know, I mean every time they told me like, how did my baby score on.

Some particular scale.

Some part of me is thinking like, oh good it.

You knows better than that amount of babies out there, you know, because we're envious stupid creatures on some level, and Superman asks us to rise above that.

And I.

Gene Hackman will always be my favorite Lex luthor and he's a terrible villain.

He just has he just wants to get rich, but he's so smart and neat.

I love him so much.

But in terms of like, oh, like the kind of weighty villains we talk about, I really love this version of Lex.

I really do.

Yeah, I would put him on par with Michael Rosenbaum.

If not, like he might have the edge.

I haven't finished Small Dell.

I've seen the season and a half of Small Villa.

But like before, now I would say, well, Michael Rosenbaum, there's absolutely ero competition for me.

He is by far the best Lex, and now there's a competition.

Like Nicholas Holt, who you know, stated that he was taking inspiration from Michael Rosenbaum's performance is so good and he has such a perfect balance of humor and menace, where he's always menacing even when he's funny, and then all of a sudden, like when he shoots that guy when they're in the pocket dimension, like the whole the whole theater recoiled.

It was really even though he does have that creeping menace all the time, you were not expecting it.

And it's really like, even though he's at this point already tortured a dog and you know it like it's right.

It's a really brutal moment.

Yeah, I thought it was an incredible performance.

I was just looking for It's driving me nuts because I cannot find the source on this quote.

There is this fantastic quote about Lois and Clark, not the show with the characters, and that relationship works, and I can't.

I wish I could remember who said it.

It's gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna dig it up after we're done recordings.

But the person who said this said that the crux of their relationship and why it works is that she's a better reporter than him.

Clark Kent can do anything.

He's stronger than everybody's, faster than Anybody's always been able to vest everyone in the world at everything easily.

But you can't, like superpowers don't make you a better writer.

It can make you a faster typist, it can help you get sources, but it can't make you a better writer.

She is perfect and she is better than him and Superman.

The difference between Superman and Lex Luthor is that Superman looks up at somebody above him and he feels love, like his response to that is to fall in love with her, and Lex Luthor looks up at someone above him and he feels hate.

It's such a good book.

I wish I could find I will find the source on it because it's wonderful.

But what you were saying just really reminded me of that that it's it's that grasping jealousy that really is the core of who Lexes.

So for me, my Lex Luthor is Clancy Brown from the DC animated shows, and it's because Clancy Brown is a great voice actor and a live action actor and he brings so much gravitas to that Lex Luthor or but maybe too much gravitas, maybe too much confidence.

And I do think like this Nicholas Hold portrayal now might be my favorite portrayal of Lex Luthor because it gets his vulnerability so right like that it is all a facade, like the confidence that he puts forward is fake, and he's so insecure.

He's deeply insecure.

And when it finally comes out, when he loses and it finally comes out and he sheds that tear, I was like, oh my gosh, like this is amazing.

Yeah, because that's well, because that's what Lex that like.

People people are like, oh, like Lex would never cry.

He was utterly defeated revealed to the world.

I mean, he's not gonna like ball, but I found that tear rolling down his cheek like very believable.

I was just gonna say, this is a man who locks up all of his ex girlfriends in an intern dimensional prison.

So like, yeah, insecure is the word for it.

Right, Yeah, very much?

And in some ways and that like in the same way that I felt like that this wasn't an origin story for Superman, but this was a important milestone of how does Superman evolve when he faces his first real challenge.

I felt like this is similar for for Lex.

You know, like this is not I don't want Lex to be the only villain we get, but I think we'll absolutely get if we get more of these movies.

Lex coming back being changed from this experience, I will also say that I keep praising Superman and Lois.

One of the most interesting villains they have is someone who could best be described as like a biker daddy who's also a billionaire.

And it's played by played by Michael Kodletz, who's been, he's been a lot of other great things, and he's a fascinating character.

And he comes across one hundred percent as like biker daddy, look like that's his thing.

He looks like he should be the head of a Harley Davidson crew.

But his name is Lex Luthor, and that just made like it is such a weird portrayal of Lex Luthor.

So with that in mind, I think I was a prime to like almost any Lex Luthor, but this one especially.

The three of us love to talk.

We're already going so long, but I do want to make sure we hit some of the other things.

How did you guys?

We had Mister Terrific, we had a Hawk Girl, we had uh Guy Gardner, and we had a bunch of other little cameos, but those three were kind of the main other parts of the other superheroes we had.

What'd you think of their portrayals, so we had.

A pretty big role for Metamorpho too.

That's he's the guy Rex in the cell who can turn his hand into kryptonite.

Okay, cool, Yeah, who maybe joined the Justice Gang solely because he likes the name Justice Gang.

Well, he likes he likes helping people.

Yeah, I al will say, like as a Green Lantern fan, not so much a Guy Gardner fan, but he's in a lot of the stories leelling, so I know him well.

I have no notes on Nathan Fillion.

It was just like perfect in just about in any way imaginable.

I don't think, like given the actor's age and kind of like where the character sits in DC Lower, I don't think he'll get his own movie.

But if he keeps showing up in things and just like doing his like one or two jokes and like being smarty, perfect like let him keep coming back.

I loved it.

I am a Guy Gardner fan.

I have literally cosplayed as Guy Gardner.

Like that's how hardcore of a Guy Gardner fan I am.

And I agree, no notes, absolutely perfect.

I don't think he should ever be the lead.

I think he's designed to be a supporting character and he does it.

Beautifully here.

Like, I'm very interested to see if he shows up in the Green Entering TV show, which seems totally completely different.

That would be to yeah, which I have no idea what that's going to look like.

Very excited.

I'm much more excited for that show now than I was before, and I was like cautiously optimistic about the show one.

So my big concern about the Justice Gang going into the movie was that they were going to be like, not bad guys exactly, but kind of antagonists that they were going you know, they're corporate funded.

They're funded by Maxwell Lord, who's billionaire and he's a villain in the comics, like it's the Petro Pascal character in Wonder Room in nineteen eighty four, and we do get like a very brief glimpse of him in this movie.

He's played by Sean Gunn, who's James Gunn's brother.

So I was worried that they were going like they were going to be scenes where Superman had to fight them because he needed to do the right thing and they were getting in his way, and I was so I didn't want to see that, because they didn't want to see these characters portrayed that negat guy.

Okay, Guy, he's an asshole, that's his whole thing.

But I didn't want to see mister Terrific or Hawk Girl that way.

And they're not they're his friends, Like, yeah, they know his secret identity.

They're heroes.

They still, like you know, are inspired to do better because of his actions, like I was saying, but they are heroes, they are good people.

And one moment that I really loved was there's a scene where it's after they found out the Lex's broadcast the full message from Clark's parents, and he's really upset and people in the crowd are like yelling at him and throwing garbage at him, and he goes into a building and the Justice Gang follows him in, and we see a shot of this in the trailer, and we can see that guy is like lighting up his ring, and I thought, I think most people watching that thought, oh, they're going to fight, But what is actually happening in that scene is Guy is using his ring to block out the windows to give Clark privacy because he's really upset.

And I was so touched by that, and like, guy is a complete asshole in all of the dialogue, but also.

Yeah, but then immediately, dude, do you have a harem?

Yeah?

Like it was such, it was such a good balance of that character, and it just it brought me so much joy.

I'm so happy.

Thank you, James Gun and Nathan Fillion.

He was so good.

And one thing, one thing I've been thinking about ever since the last time you and I talked about Superman, Jessica, you talked about how it could like at its best, it's a workplace rom com and frankly I could have dealt if you had taken out all the stuff about like multi galaxy whatever, throw all of that away and give us a lot more of the Daily Planet.

I love it.

I would have got forty five minutes of Clark and Jimmy doing their stupid little handshake the planet ball.

Then I don't understand how a person who lives happily in space can suffocate, but we'll move right past that.

But to me, it made me realize that some of my favorite Justice League stuff.

What I like about it is that it's also a workplace show, where it's like it's about people who have workplace rivalries would also always have each other's back.

And to jump to yet another thing, guy in that moment, being like, look, I'm gonna harass you all the time, but when it's when it's like it's us against each other, except when it's us against the world, and him kind of having Clark's back in that moment reminded me a lot of like the other Mandalorians who are always giving dnjar in like they're beefing with him until he's kind of like got problems with everyone else, and then they're like, we got your back.

You know, this is the way, And I really love that, and I could also to me it contextualized I like Superman best in the Justice League when he's not the only hero.

Because he does feel a little ridiculous to me, you know.

And so Hawk Girl being like, cool, you wanted to save the life of the Kaiju.

That's adorable, this dictator, I'm just gonna kill him, and the movie's not like, well, Superman is clearly because I'm watching the Kaiju do incredible damage, and I'm thinking, Clark, it's really cute you want to save it, but every minute you try to save it, it's killing more people.

So maybe we just fix the problem right now.

Well, no, it didn't kill anybody.

If the evacuation was it was causing a lot of damage to a lot of things.

That like, I'm if Daredevil's not killing people by hitting people in the head with sticks, then maybe the Kaiju wasn't killing anybody, but it I certainly had a like I don't feel bad about trying to take this thing down right now.

Kind of moment there.

But my points being like, I like that it puts Superman's like protect every life we possibly can, not as the only superhero perspective, but as one perspective among many.

And maybe in this movie you were rooting more for him, but like, no one ever goes to a Hawk girl and was like, oh, you're a bad superhero for doing that.

You know, Nathan Fillen is like killing soldiers from the invading army and giving them the finger with au the green fists, and Superman's not lecturing them.

It's just like, yeah, they're doing their own thing.

Yeah, and now let us talk about mister Terrific.

In my opinion, this is the character that stole the show, like the unexpected character that stole the show again.

I think, like Nicholas Holt, his lex Lutor was spectacular, but an unexpected I didn't know how big his part was gonna be.

This was great.

Edie gathegi Yep who was in X Men First Class as Darwin and was supposed to be invincible but unceremoniously done away in terrible fashion.

What a redemption for him, Yeah, what a redemption for him in the in the comic book movie circles.

And this guy might be deserving of like a solo movie down the line, or a TV show or something like.

I was just everything out of his mouth, every all of his actions, like his typical James gun like set to music, fight scene like one wonder take fight scene, which we've seen in all the movies.

Still, like, I enjoyed it so much, and it was perfect for him to use the tea spheres in that way.

Just just fun.

And you also like got a sense of his intelligence, which is important to his character the third smartest person, yeah, DC universe, and it showed like when he was working the computer and all the all the calculations stuff and oh god, damn, mister perfect.

Yeah.

He was great.

And I know he's been in other things, but I think for a lot of people like myself who aren't huge comic book people, our only point of reference for him is from the CW shows and Supergirl, and it's Arrow actually the one he most shows up in.

And I to me that also felt like a bit of a nice homage to yet another portion of the DC universe that's been out there.

Yeah, I think he's the character that people are going to be well Ham or Metamorpho is the character people are going to be least familiar with.

And I really appreciated that he got such a chance to shine, he got such a showcase, and it was really like, he's a great character and he's absolutely, I agree, the one who could get a solo movie coming out of this.

Yeah.

I think there is talk to already of him getting a solo TV show.

Excellent, I'll watch it, yeah, which I'd really like.

I will say for Hawk Girl, that was a case where I did feel like she is she has the least amount of screen time and dialogue of all the other superheroes by far, and the least amount of character development.

And that's pretty repeated motif with female characters in this movie, Like we have mon Pa, but Pa gets the big scene and you have you know the like it's right.

All the women in this movie were great but their screen time and the things they got to do in the movie did tend to be pretty limited.

And it's again, like you know, I keep saying, I felt like this movie was embedded in the DCU, and I'd rather feel like it was in the DCU and have less time to spend on specific things because we were putting so much in it.

And I still feel that way, but I would have liked to see her do more.

And when she does just kill the president of Bravia, I was like, Oh, we're just completely disregarding all the questions we raised for the sake of a joke because the movie's almost over, which felt a little bit like they didn't really know how to get out of that, so they just did a joke and moved on.

And Yeah, I would have liked if she'd had more interaction with Superman, like if she'd been the one who is the most like pro killing the Kaiju or something like that, you know, and they've had some establishment of that.

I was also thinking in terms of other female characters, like I've seen Superman fight a clone of himself so many times.

I found the Engineer so fascinating, and she has that one line where she talks about how she has sacrificed herself to become this thing just to fight Superman and she has this tension with Lex and then they never do anything with that, and I was like, you could take out everything about you know, the Superman clone and just give me a lot more of the Engineer and I would have been really happy.

Well, good news, because there she's from the authority and there's an authority movie or TV show or something planned.

So I think there, she's already, she's booked, she'll be doing more.

Okay, good.

So the actress was great and I really liked her power set and HER's a character.

Yeah, she was really she was.

She was fun.

She was really interesting visually.

But yeah, like she's like I did all this so I could kill Superman and I was like why, Like why, Yeah, I just I wanted, you know, that little bit more from her.

I agreed that the Ultraman thing was the most interesting thing to me.

That Ultraman was that they dressed him like Doom's day the whole time, Like that's a little outfit, and I was like huh, but you know when they went into the fortress with him, I was like, well, that's a clone of Superman.

Really if if you if you're kind of paying attention in a in a metal way.

I was like, yeah, that's.

Yeah, and then they were like oh uh.

That was another one where it was like, uh oh, movies almost over.

Better do something about this black hole.

And I the most speculation now is that this this is also a Bizarro origin story, yeah.

Which I would be interested to see Bizarro come back and be like, dude, you threw me into a black hole or I guess dude, you did not throw me into a black hole.

That that character is so hard to have any consistency with.

Because of all that, I would be okay if they made like a more realistic Bizarro who is able to talk in complete sentences that aren't backwards, because I think that would be more more compelling.

So I'll be curious because I will say another recommendation for Lois and Superman.

For Superman and Lois, he is probably the most commonly recurring villain antagonist maybe teammate, and they do let him have a lot and they give him a lot of backstory and like they really make him a very interesting character and so yet, but also he is so used in that show that a part of.

Me was like, oh god, no, not more bizarro.

I've seen so much bizarro lately.

You don't have to pay a second actor.

Well, yeah, Tyler Hecklin was already there, Yeah, in Canada, so.

We'll see you in original to this movie.

Or was that also.

I didn't recognize him from anything, which is not to say that he's not, but I I had no immediate like, oh, that's Bob the Kaiju.

I like what you said, It's just a kaiju because it's Tuesday.

You know.

Yeah, It's just that's just how we roll here in Metropolis.

Michael robots on Thursdays, Kaiju on Tuesdays.

Yeah, and from the guy, Yes, thank you, that's okay, Malik right, Molly, Molly's Molly as much as like mister Terrific stole the show.

That was the like emotional center of this whole movie for me, because like, the scene with him where Lex shoots him is just shocking, and I was so conflicted because Lex Luthor cracks a joke right after and it's it was so uncomfortable in the best way because you kind of want to laugh, but you are also like crying in that moment.

And then to see how much Superman cared for that man and remembered him and honored him at the end the article at the end written by Clark Kent like calling him like the true hero or whatever, Like I all the stuff we talk about, like Superman and kindness being the theme that through line of that character and what they did with him and the portrayal was part of that story of kindness, but also just honoring the small heroism because he didn't have superpowers, but in that moment in the first battle with the Hammer of Barraba, he stopped to help Superman in this dangerous situation and ultimately like that's what got him killed.

Yeah, just like I had this moment of John Wick being so happy with Superman because like he is when it's his dog that is, and I remember being like a little like there's that scene at the beginning where the dog is at the Fortress of Solitude and Superman's kind of mean to him, like it's just like I'm just walking away from you, and the reveal at the end that it's not even his dog.

Basically he's just like dog sitting for the weekend and he doesn't like this dog very much.

Like this is not his beloved pet.

He doesn't like this dog, but he like, he doesn't like the dog, but he loves the dog.

When the dog's danger, like you know, he goes full on John Wick about it, and it just and he says, a god damn squirrel, and like that's I can't I was so annoyed that I liked that moment so much because it felt so silly, but it was so well done.

But I think that's why it works, because it if you play it too straight, then a lot of people will bounce off of it, right, But if you turn it into a joke, then it's it's a lot easier to accept.

But at the same time, like I was iffy when I heard that James Gunn was going to be making a Superman movie, because I think he's a very talented director and he's a nerd and he gets superheroes, but his sense of humor always seemed too cynical to me.

I was like, I don't know how he's going to pull this off.

And he manages to make it so that you're laughing with Superman and not at Superman.

Yeah, and it just works.

He nailed it.

And I've all like I've said for years that Superman is laughing most.

Like Superman's kind of control and that's part of what I like about him, and like his little like you know, digs at Lois and at the post credit scene like that's yeah, he's he has a sense of humor, and this movie really dialed into that and got you to sort of swallow the pill of sincerity with life after not you specifically, but a little bit you specifically.

Yeah, no, not very much for me specifically.

That's one of the things that people bring up as like a core memory of Superman nineteen seventy eight is that Superman saves that little girl's cat who is in the tree, Like that is one of the core.

Things about Superman that you remember that he did.

I mean, I think that is the the origin of the save the Cat trope that like they talked into writing about Hero movies, they often used Jessica's shake your head that it's.

I mean correct, No, I forget I own the books Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, and I think it's some Al Pacino movie.

I don't know what, Yeah, Scarface.

I don't remember which one, but yeah, the character like literally saves the cat and like he's a terrible person, but he saves the cat, and so you'd like him anyway.

And I don't remember which one it is, sorry, but yeah.

Then and then in this one, it's like even the squirrel.

It's like, yes, even the squirrel.

And that is that fits so consistently with a Superman who says golly, Like he literally says golly in this movie.

And and those two factors together is like, this is the character.

This is what you get.

It's like, oh, I get it now.

At one point when he scolding Crypto, he says, what the hey, dude, I.

Keep wanting to wrap up this interview that I keep wanting to wrap up this podcast, guys, but you keep saying more things that I just want to mention.

I love that they present him as incredibly wholesome, incredibly sweet, like a nerd in like not like the cool way, but in just kind of like that, hey, listen is to pop punk, not punk rock.

But also Superman fucks.

Like there is some hotness in the scenes between him and Lois and some of those kisses.

I'm like, oh that we're getting back into c W steaminess here like this, And I love that for him being and again, that's something that like there's a big old about how Superman has these like romantic getaways that when like the kids are asleep, he like flies lowesst to like an Italian villa to make love to her and Superman and Lois it's really sexy and they're.

Both like in her forties at this point, and it's great.

And yeah, I just like that he is the super sweet, super wholesome golly g and you know that he is doing very good things with Lois that she's very happy about.

And I just love that they captured all of that.

Listen, Superman and Lois have been horny since nineteen thirty eight.

They've been horny on screen since Christopher Reeve x rayed Margot Kidder's panties.

Like, I love that she did ask him to She did.

She asked him too.

It was consensual.

Yeah, consensual X ray consensual panty x ray.

Yea, And what a.

Relief that not only does Lois know, but Perry and Jimmy, No, they don't know that he's Superman, but they know that they are.

Superman and Lois are in a relationship.

Yeah, he does a big deal.

We have to go hide and like do an interview and then yeah, the Bunk are either of you the Wire fans, I haven't seen it.

So the actor who plays Perry White is very famous for having been the bunk, which a detective in is a bunk.

Morland is the full name of the character in the TV show of The Wire, and I just love him to death.

Wendell Pierce believes the actor's name, and so yeah, he was.

I would have loved.

I want now a TV show about the Daily Planet, you know, That's what I want.

That's all I ever want, every minute of my entire life.

Yeah, because some of some of those characters feel so lived in, but we just didn't get to see enough of that.

Yeah.

Yeah, like poor Ron Truth named in this movie for his one single line, but they do let him.

He does get a real seat in mister Terrific's flying Egg thing, which Steve Lombard does not.

That was such a perfect Steve because Perry is like counting off right, He's like how many seats are there?

It's like I don't know, five or six?

Is like all right, Steve, you can come.

To all right.

I guess we'll save Steve.

But it turns out and that's just like.

And well, I agree the movie could have been a lot better about female characters.

We have very little of Cat Grant, but they don't play her as the like there's a lot of versions of Kak Grant I have seen recently, Lois and Clark uh being I think by far the most egregious, where she is just like every bad stereotype of the woman who's at the office to find a man kind of things.

And granted they kind of fixed her a lot already with.

The Supergirl TV show, but I appreciate it, like, yeah, she's very fashion college.

That was also like every stereotype of the girl boss, though well a.

Different bad direction.

She wasn't an airhead bimbo.

She was now, yeah, the girl the terrible girl Boss.

She was the Devil Wears product kind of instead.

But she wasn't terrible because we never saw anything about her.

But they didn't take two seconds to establish through some bad stereotypes, So I at least appreciated that well.

And I appreciated that like she and Lois, I mean, for her, like one line of dialogue, she and Lois are clearly friends and get along because historically both on Lois and Clark and it's alluded to on the Supergirl Show, but also in the comics that has been very much like Lois Roberty does a rivalry and like Lois doesn't like Kat because she's too sexy or whatever, and that was not present here, which I appreciated.

Yeah, definitely, definitely.

I'm going to close out by just saying, as someone who became a father literally five days before I saw this, there were two moments that just hit me so hard.

One, I hated everything about the Hidden Universe, the Pocket Universe.

I just didn't care.

The anti proton river thing didn't seem to make sense to me.

But watching that little green baby bounce around and Superman like protecting it so much as someone who now has a child with, I think my child is just in wonderful and perfect and it looks like a little alien because its.

Head is weird shape, because that's what five day old babies look like.

I had so much affection.

But really the sort of like message of parenthood that I saw that I just My favorite line in the movie is pad Kent saying parents aren't for telling their children who they're supposed to be.

We are here to give you all tools to help you make fools of yourselves all on your own.

Your choice is Clark, your actions that would make you who you are.

I teared up because it was at first I kind of like grimaced a little when I saw the portrayal of the Kents, because they were very much clearly like ash like backwoods, like you know, like not sophisticated, almost like at one point I thought they were kind of going for like they might be like developmentally disabled in some way, but no, they're just they're not city folk at all.

They're very much like good American you know, uh, farm folk.

That sounds incredibly condescending.

I'm a New York City person trying card not to sound like that, but I just can't not do it.

Salt of the Earth, yeah, but that's yeah.

But like that, I think that Lione had the most wisdom of anything I heard in the show in the movie, especially that idea of not like so often is just all praise.

The idea of we're giving you the tools to make a fool of yourself.

To me, that was so beautiful as well, because it wasn't a I think you're gonna go be perfect.

It was I know you're gonna screw up and that's okay.

I don't want you to be perfect.

I want you to I just I was like, okay, that's the father I want to be, and I agree.

With all that.

And this is where I don't understand the criticism of the idea of Superman as an immigrant story.

And it just feels like people are being outraged for no reason without watching the movie and understanding this character.

Because what is more American than this immigrant being adopted and being given these values by as you said, salt of the earth, just like the most like basic American mother and father you can imagine, and because of that he becomes a hero.

Like why why isn't that the narrative of like America is where like we you know, I don't want to I don't want to say like terrible, as terrible as Jorel, like as the l's right, but where we take people and we forge them into something different and new and strong like that that I, of course I teared up, and that seem like it's amazing.

And the actor Pruett Taylor Vince is like was so perfect, Like he's this character actor that you've seen in everything.

He's all over the place in small roles and having someone like that, who from our perspective of like movie stars, isn't nobody like no disrespect, but like he's not Kevin Costner, right, But to have that type of person deliver that message really resonated to me, and I love the casting for that reason.

I immediately recognized him.

I was like, but I couldn't.

I couldn't have told you his name without looking it up.

And I can't really off the top of my head.

Like tell you any other roles.

But he's just everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that scene.

I also I also peered up.

I think everybody, everybody I know cried at that scene.

I so my first thought is how thick must Clark's natural accent be?

Like how hard is he code switching all the time?

And if Lois had stayed in Smallville for five more minutes, she would have heard it, uh, because you know he did not grow up sounding way that sounds in this movie.

But I actually to your point Whereankie about like, you know, him being from the heartland and also an immigrant.

I actually wrote about this in my undergraduate thesis, how like Superman's origin makes him simultaneously like every sort of American narrative.

He can possibly be because he is an immigrant, but he is also like he is a story of an immigrant coming to America, but he is also the story of a kid from the heartland moving to the big city.

And he embodies urban and rural and immigrant and native born all simultaneously because of this really delicate juggling act that he's doing.

And I think that's you know, like that's getting swallowed up by like the use of immigrant as sort of a flashpoint, but it really is a very multi layered He has a very multi layered identity, which many many Americans do, I mean many people from all over the world, I'm sure, but like that is a huge part of our narrative.

Yeah, I mean I obviously I'm not adopted in any way, but like I as someone who is a you know, grew up in New York City and has a very New York City worldview and used to you know, we used to joke like could go to Kansas, I would need my shots and a visa.

You know, I'm now living ten miles from where a little house on the prairie took place.

You know, in Minneapolis is a big city, to be sure, but this is much more the heartland than you know, anything east of Pennsylvania.

So yeah, I get that.

Really glad we had the discussion.

I actually had a lot to say starting to Eyuiki, any last comments you want to make?

What a movie?

What a time to be alive?

As I said in the opener, how can we rate this against other Supermans, especially like nineteen seventy eight, so distant and so disparate.

But to me, this is the best and perfect Superman for this moment in twenty twenty five.

And as a movie, like I think it has its ups and downs, like if we just examined it as a as a piece of media, but like what this character means to us as as just humans, right, goes so much deeper than anyone portrayal.

And this is just it did it.

It did every like.

It fulfilled my very very high expectations in that regard, and I'm just very thankful that it exists and that I got to watch it.

Like it's weird to talk about a movie that way, but I don't know, Like I just I needed this so badly.

I'm gonna respond to that actually, because Jessica, I want to let you have the last word, as our like super Superman expert here, I very much agree what you're saying, Rieky, and I kind of feel like this is a movie you're gonna look back on as a watershed moment in the history of comic of movies.

And you all know what a huge fan of The Dark Knight I am.

And I think that The Dark Knight fun mentally changed Superhero movie making and I really like the change it made, and I think the pendulum swung too far the other in that direction.

And I think this movie and like, I don't want this from Batman, and same way I don't want dark gritty from Superman.

I think this movie, though, kind of put back down that flag of like Batman is great and I want to see a lot more of Robert Pattinson, but Superman is just as great.

And like, to me, dark gritty works if it's not all dark gritty, and this in some ways I always felt like it's not that this this is a dark Superman is in a dark gritty world, but he's not dark.

It doesn't get to him the way it got to him in Man of Steel, and I just it's a movie with a sense of hope that you don't get in so many other things.

So yeah, I just I think ten years from now, we're gonna look back at this as I think Dark Knight's a better movie.

But I think that it's going to be regarded as like the first you know, Sam Raimie Spider Man movie, a real kind of like watershed moment in superhero movies.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I agree with everything that Riki said.

This is this was the movie we needed.

This is the movie I needed.

I you know, I love Superman so much, sitting here in my Superman T shirt, like I it's not a perfect movie.

You know.

We sat here and we picked apart a lot of it, and I think when you when you do that, when you take the pieces apart and you examine each one, you can find places that that are maybe not what not perfect on their own.

I think it is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

It just it made me feel good to watch it, like, which is not a feeling that I have had for most superhero movies for you know, since Adventures, and it's not a movie like I had a long conversation with my brother the day after we both saw it, because he's also a huge Superman fan, and we both agreed it's the only time in our lifetimes we've gone to the movies to see a Superman movie and we had fun, and that shouldn't be a thing.

It's the first time that's happened to me, and I'm forty one years old, but it is, and it finally happened, and I'm yeah, I Riki, I agree with you.

I'm thankful for this movie.

I'm so thankful that it exists.

Yeah, me too, well Son, Thanks, thanks, super thankful to both of you.

Thank you so much for being a part of this.

Thankful to you the audience.

Both Wreaky and Jessica obviously have so much more to say about these kind of things.

Jessica has written books and articles, and also, she mentioned, has a whole podcast about Superman called Fights and Tights.

All the links to that will be in the show notes.

Riiky has been my guest on this podcast on the Star Wars podcast him and his partner Sarah for a long time.

We're our co hosts.

There lots of great stuff to find his thoughts on, and we're probably gonna a lot more to say about dc the DCU, because there's just I'm I was never a Snyder fan.

Everyone knows that.

I'm glad people liked it.

I we don't even to talk about this, but I'm just now super excited about where the DCU is going.

So I think these are characters we're gonna talk about a lot more with these guests.

Thank you all so much for listening.