SvB E211 Disney Won’t Tell You, But They’re ENDING The MCU

Is Marvel's Phase Six a reboot or a desperate last gasp? 
Theo and Mr. Benja break down Disney’s wild Avengers Doomsday marketing stunt, cast reveals, RDJ’s return as Doom, and whether the MCU is still alive—or officially on life support.

Plus, we have Art vs AI (Miyazaki is in this), fitness, and discussing future selves.

00:00 Introduction and Hosts' Banter
00:11 Living in the Future: A New Mindset
01:47 Pushup Challenge and Fitness Goals
02:48 Future Self and Imagination
05:20 Travel Tales and Reflections
06:45 Comment Corner: Fantastic Four Trailer
07:44 Casting and Character Essence Debate
16:05 AI and the Future of Art
27:30 MCU and Avengers Doomsday Speculation
36:38 Phase Six Movie Lineup
37:56 MCU's Product Overload
38:24 Spider-Man's Core Essence
40:12 Character Core Concepts
43:13 Casting Surprises and Expectations
44:27 X-Men Cast and Reboots
47:37 Promoting Upcoming Movies
49:15 Captain America and Confusion
53:40 Marvel's Ensemble Strategy
01:01:15 One Battle After Another Trailer

YouTube link to this Podcast Episode:
https://youtu.be/nXCVmAoZVHg

#MCU #DisneyPlus #AvengersDoomsday #RobertDowneyJr #FantasticFour #MarvelReboot #ShowVsBusiness #Podcast #Entertainment #AI #technology

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Transcript

Introduction and Hosts' Banter

Theo Harvey: What's up everyone? This is show versus business where pop culture means pop money with your host, the real Theo Harvey and Mr. Benja. Mr. Benja, what's been going on with you? Ooh, boy. I have been 

Living in the Future: A New Mindset

Mr.Benja: living in the future dog. I'm, I don't know what's happening with me, but I'm having visions of people in front of me just dying and I'm like, oh, I'm in the future and you're old.

Not in my life now. You did dog. Get outta here. And I'm just I think I'm, I think it's Benjamin Hardy. His books again are just hitting me. I was looking back through my future self 'cause I realized I wasn't living my future self. Now I was thinking about the future, thinking about what would happen in the future, but I wasn't living it now.

If Michael Jordan were to go back in time to high school or whatever, and he was playing basketball, he couldn't imagine he was in the future. He would just have to be that Michael Jordan living in his younger body. Dang, I can't shoot, I haven't lifted weights. I need to do this. Let me just start into it.

He had, he would have to believe he was his future self. So not so much going into the future, but bringing the future to you. That's changed everything for me. 'cause now I'm just like, I'm in the future already. You don't exist. Yeah. I can say whatever I want to you because in the future you won't exist.

I can do a hundred pushups right now because my 80 pushup self doesn't exist. It's just a slightly different way of thinking about the Future Self Now book and, yeah. I'm it's got me dog. I'm in the future now, so I don't know what year is it 2030 something? Yeah. 

Theo Harvey: Taking the book literal. I love it, man.

Wow, man. 

Fitness Goals and Daily Routines

Theo Harvey: 80 pushups. That's what you can do. Now I'm doing about 50 every day, so I'm trying to get it up to 60. I'm probably, turn up to 60 here. So that's my, of all that's what I got outta your comment, right? That you're doing 80 pushups right now. I'm, oh, I got step my game up.

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Okay. I haven't done that in about a month or two, but in a row. I'll do 30 30 and then I'll finish out with however many else with a small break in between. 

Theo Harvey: Okay. 

Mr.Benja: It's not like I get up go to the bank or whatever, run some errands and come back and do the rest of them.

I try to bang out 25 to 30, chill for a little bit. Breathe in, breathe out, all right, keep doing the rest. But if I'm just doing straight, I'll cap out around 50 something usually because I try to bang. Yeah. Yeah. 

Theo Harvey: I try to do it every morning, do my stretching, pushups sit ups and everything.

Man it's real, man. It's old and you wake up in the morning your bones hurt. You like, oh, I'm wobbling. I didn't even drink last night. What's going on? I love it, man. 

Future Self Concept and Book Insights

Theo Harvey: Let's go into what you just said about your future self. Yeah, man. I think the thing that I got out Dr.

Benjamin Hardy book, Hardy's book and matter of fact, I brought that with me. That was one of the few books I brought with me to New York. 'cause I'm trying to write my book too, right? And do some things there. I was reading, I took this course with. Almost a year and a half ago that that 12 week course. And so I wrote a bunch of stuff in there and there's a lot of good future stuff in there. And I think the thing he impressed upon me is like using your imagination to to truly believe that future self and that becomes more reality than your present self or your past self.

And that's really, yeah because, I think Myron Golden said this. He said, it's all lies anyway, so might as well make lies to help you.

Because even the past, your frame of reference now, when you look at past experiences. Probably didn't happen, actually happen that way. They just colored with your emotions and Yeah. Your understanding at that time and all that. But now, so it's, there's lies you tell about the past, so why not tell lies about the future and make it reality exactly.

So that's how I look at it. Do make lies that, that serve you. Yeah. 

Mr.Benja: So the switch that hit me for some reason was thinking about myself in a closed circuit television monitor, but my future self was watching my current self. So I'm sitting down goofing around right in the kitchen.

I'm like, I wonder what would happen if I put tomatoes in this? And I'm like, rifling through the refrigerator and going through the pantry just trying to think of something interesting to eat. That really doesn't matter. It's fun or whatever, but it's another way to waste time, right? I'll spend a half hour screwing around with random stuff in the kitchen.

And I thought of myself on A-C-C-T-V camera and my future self looking at it. Look at this dumb jackass 30 minutes just on A-C-C-T-V. So once that happened, I was like, it was kinda like inception or whatever, like a looking up at the camera and you're seeing yourself like, oh my future self wouldn't be doing this.

My future self has better things to do and would go do that. So CCTV self try thinking about that. Watching yourself outside of yourself. Or as astral playing if you prefer, 

Theo Harvey: yeah, I think that's a good way to think of it, pull yourself forward that way that your future self is looking at you and is looking down at disgust.

You made the 

Mr.Benja: disgust face like. I don't know, dog. You can do better, 

Theo Harvey: man. Yeah. This ain't going to do. Yeah, I get it, man. I get it. No, I love it, man. Shoot. Oh yeah. 

Travel Tales and Personal Updates

Theo Harvey: My week was interesting. Went down to Miami and got me some customers, potential customers, and did the traveling. I took a train down there.

I think I talked about this. Oh, they have a bright line train. It's not the Amtrak, it's not your mama's train, but bright Line is supposed to be high speed rail, which they still takes about three and a half hours to get from Orlando to Miami. But I enjoy it, man. Just sitting in the cart. 

Laugh: Yeah.

Theo Harvey: Having your wifi and just, just vibing. Didn't have a car down there, so I had the Uber everywhere, but I didn't mind man. I, it was just, I just, I just love that experience, man. I wish they had more, we had more travel experiences like they have in Europe, right? We could just don't have to use a car and get around and maybe, 'cause I drive so much, I'm just eh, and now I've been flying around.

I think I flew to, Michigan and we just got back from New York and so I was just like, man, I just wanna. I don't wanna fly, I don't wanna drive, I just want to vibe. So I sat in the cab, I just got in the train and just let it take me where it takes me. So yeah, I enjoyed it, man. So just a good experience and and when you're just traveling like that, you just get a lot of good thinking time in.

I caught up on some shows, so yeah man. That was good. And then got back, with the family and saw kids playing sports and spending time with them. So I think, overall it's been a good week to reacclimate myself into that, the grind that is running the business and work.

Yeah. But yeah, it was good. 

Mr.Benja: Good stuff man. Good stuff. So we got some other things to talk about. 

Comment Corner: Fantastic Four Trailer

Mr.Benja: You want to go ahead and start the ball rolling in this start with the comments. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Comment corner. Bing. Let's get into it. Cc 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, that's right. So yeah, we always check our comments and send us the hate, send us the love, send us your interesting facts.

Interesting. Facts are good. By the way. We love. Getting educated in a lot of the stuff. A lot of the stuff we just pop on and give our commentary on. You let us know what we're missing or what we need to do more research on. But yeah, we got a comment from Cora Gray on the Fantastic Four trailer, and we were saying that we wanted to see just a little more of the stuff, but the comment was to be fair, you have to keep in mind that it's a teaser trail.

They probably don't wanna show everything. Good point. Especially Reed, Mr. Fantastics powers. So they're probably gonna show a little bit of that in the next trailer. Fair point. Also, I couldn't care less how the casting is gonna be in the movie, as long as you have the essence of the characters for the film, especially if you're doing a superhero movie.

Casting and Character Essence Debate

Mr.Benja: Someone who doesn't care about casting, I know you care about casting. What's a, what do you think of not caring about the casting? Ah, it's bs they're just, I. The essence of the characters, but part of the essence of the characters is the actor themselves have to be believable.

Theo Harvey: You can't you gotta cast age appropriately. Tom Holland can play Spider-Man 'cause he looks young as hell. I think that's part of it. The essence of a characters, how they look, how they move, how they react and stuff like that. Like for instance, I'm not, go ahead.

Mr.Benja: I was about, say you ma so you're matching up a certain level of expectation with the actual person. Hey, 

Theo Harvey: good point. Yep. Is that, I would say that would be yeah. So the expectation of what the character is portrayed usually in the comics should match up. And that could be physical, it was a black character or was a Latino character.

Should be like that. Sometimes they do what they call what Race Bend, I guess what they call it, race Bend. I don't know if that's 

Mr.Benja: swapping. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, swapping races in certain cases. Like we have a Nick Fury in MCU who was black, but an original comic book version. He was played as portrayed as a white man.

But I digress. I would just say that 

Mr.Benja: real, real quick. Someone called us out in the other comments before. Yes, we do know about the Ultimates, Nick Fury. Yes. We know about a lot of these characters, but in general. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, come on. The OG Nick Fur was a white guy, so let's not get twisted.

Great for the Ultimates. But anyway yeah, and written by Malar, which who we know is an interesting character in himself. So yeah, that guy. But anyway I digress. So I just say that I think that, we do need to understand like the essence of the characters, but I would also say especially for Fantastic Four, let's be honest, how many have people have read a Fantastic four comic book or really get a sense of the essence of Fantastic Four?

This is, these are characters that came out in the sixties but haven't been really relevant and I can't remember when. Yes, there was some early movies, but I mean they're not like a Spider-Man or Batman who, when they out the gate, they've been relevant ever since. And so we gotta have a sense of what the SPI Spider-Man character's an essence of that, an essence of Batman. I don't know what the essence of. I have some general, so I read some comics recently. Yeah. Of, of Fantastic four and you may have an essence as well, Reed Reid Richardson Smart, he loves Sue. Sue's like the mother hen. Johnny's a hothead, he the flame.

And of course Ben Grim, he's kind like a, the brother figure of everybody and always sad 'cause he looks ugly in so many words. Yeah. Exactly. It's Clobbering time. So yeah, I'm gonna just drive the car and scare people. Exactly. Exactly. So I think that, I don't know people understand what the essence of a Fanex Ford character is like.

So that's number one. And number two, I think essence is tied to phys physicality and looks a little bit. I hear, fair point at Core Gray 4 7, 9 4. But I do wanna say there's nuance here and how I think through it. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Exactly. And I think it's one of those properties where you can get away with a lot of stuff, because aside from, yeah, aside from Ben Grim, the other characters you can fudge around with a little bit and people wouldn't be too upset, I don't think.

Unless you may, read Richards like a young bratty kid. You know what I mean? You don't, 

Theo Harvey: which in the ultimates they have a re Richards Franklin Richards who, bratty kid. Exactly. Franklin, yeah. So there you go. So we guys, we know our comics now. Don't try us now. Don't let us bring the smoke.

Mr.Benja: Any, anytime I get, I wonder about what they're going to do. I think back to Guardians of the Galaxy, I was just like, what in the heck are they talking about? Why would they do this? And it worked. Yeah. We'll see. It's 

Theo Harvey: so funny, I saw an interview with Amanda Siegfried. I don't know if you know who that is.

She played Elizabeth Holmes in that docu, that movie. She's like an up and coming, actress been around for a while. She was a mean girl. So that's how far back she goes. Oh her, yes. But yeah, she got ding dinged to play the Gamora part for guardians of the Galaxy, and she said no.

'cause she didn't wanna be a part the first MCU bomb. You know what, that would be a valid point to think bring up when you, if you think about the script, it shouldn't have worked, yeah. And it does as well as it does. It's just out there weird, just talking about some different characters 

Mr.Benja: dancing the eighties music and 

Theo Harvey: Yeah.

But I think that was a key, I know you you have your way about your boy what's his name? The director? No, the director. Gun. No. You have some concerns about gun, which, I hear your point. No 

Mr.Benja: he's he's a weird dude. And if you're bringing the weird go for it.

But then once you start trying to make the more standard stuff veer into the weirds, you're like, okay, are you gonna how's this gonna play out? And I just start getting curious. 

Theo Harvey: He knew enough to ground it in this. Eighties, yeah. Rock or seventies rock, motif to yes.

Star Lord is in space. He's facing monsters and creatures and different civilizations, but he sure loves him some soft rock, a Walkman. Yeah. And that, and those songs were hot, man, I ain't gonna lie. When that it was I listened to those songs after the movie. I was like, oh, wow.

And they had some Michael Jackson on there too. A couple set Jackson Five, excuse me, on some of those needle drops. So kudos to for doing that, man. But I think that, she would be rightfully so to reject that part because it just seems so out there. And when you say things like that, that Guardians of the Galaxy yeah, it should have worked, but it did work.

But you know what, I knew Marvel had something when Thor worked. Hulk fine, 'cause it's been Hulk movies before. Captain Ironman was basic nineties, like superhero movie, but with a little heart in there. And even Captain America, yes, it was a little hokey, it had some stuff.

But when he did Thor and Thor did money, I. Because it, they, they went all out. They really went to Asgard. You saw the Rainbow Road? Yeah. You saw everything. I said, oh shit, they got something here because people are watching this. So anyway yeah man, I think there's something there with all that.

Mr.Benja: Yeah. So football really quickly we were talking about Gun, but for this movie, fantastic Four first Steps coming out soon. It's directed by Matt Shackman. Are you familiar with him? 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, 

Mr.Benja: he 

Theo Harvey: did. 

Mr.Benja: Dang man. He's a, I'm looking at the list right now. Monarch Legacy of Monsters. He did a couple episodes of that.

He did Wand Vission for nine episodes. That's what it 

Theo Harvey: was. Wand, Avi. Yeah. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Solid there. The boys, he did an episode of, I don't know which one exactly. Game of Thrones. Did two episodes there. American Gothic one episode. He's got, he's touched quite a few cool things and some more.

A lot of pe pedestrian level stuff. I don't, I just mean not superhero wee. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, he did Game of Thrones, like you said some other stuff. Check this out. Now I'm going into his 

Mr.Benja: Chippendales two episodes. Oh 

Theo Harvey: yeah, I think I said I saw the episode, that series. That was a little different series. How, but yeah, he was a, yeah, he was a child actor.

Man. I'm looking at some of the stuff. He was in just the 10 of us. He was in growing pains. He was in different strokes. So yeah, he started off as a kid actor, man. Then just so I'm done. I'm gonna go ahead and be a director now. So he Interesting. 

Mr.Benja: You know what, this dude's been around, so bringing in somebody who's really been able to see so much, bringing something from the sixties into he, okay.

He's making a lot more sense now. Just looking at, yeah, 

Theo Harvey: wine division was really good. That, remember we talked about that back in 2021 and about the, how different it was and how he brought the motif of the different TV eras into that, 

Laugh: yeah. 

Theo Harvey: Into the storyline.

And he would pretty much ran that. So yeah, it makes sense for him to kinda do this show. This movie, so we'll see how well he does with Fantastic Four. To your point. So yeah, I think we I think we all agree that there's gonna be some interesting things to see characters and all that, but I think the jury's still out to see the essence will be there until we kinda see what the, what's put on film, in my opinion.

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Alright. What's next, 

Theo Harvey: man? 

AI and the Future of Art

Theo Harvey: We talk about art and what people are talking about and, getting people excited about Essence. Mr. Benji, you told me about a story that. AI is trying to suck essence out of art, man. What have you heard? 

Mr.Benja: Artists have been complaining for a while and it's a really sad situation.

'cause you hear so many artists and myself included, complaining about a lot of stuff. Hey man, gotta get the copy protection together. Hey, we need some more protections on X, Y, and Z. And then, I was online and this artist was just like post, after post. It's no one does art like me.

And I type in these parameters, which are all over my website and suddenly the AI can generate all these pictures that look like my art. This is terrible. And it was like I, it was like, man, I don't know what to say about this because it's coming. What are you, what you going to do? Kind of thing.

And I remember I was at a video game company and I. I heard about the story where this artist was doing all this great work, and they just walked in and said, Hey, this is your work, huh? And we're gonna hire you. They hired this person for a couple months, let him go, and then basically did his art better than he could.

So now the company was getting all the money from that art style, and he's yeah, I created the style, but look, it's over here now and I can't do anything about it. Woe is me. And it's it's a hard game, right? So now studio Ghibli a very well known and beloved studio from Japan, really known for their animation and their art has something weird has happened.

They've gone viral, but not in the way they wanted to. The. The head guy, I believe it's pronounced Miyazaki. He's, I've seen him recently and over the past several years, decades, even talking about computers and ai, that is not cool. Not natural. Humans bring the art to art. And suddenly in a twist of evil fate, it's his art style that's being used in this new chat GPT model that can produce images.

So it's Hey, have me and my friend sitting in front of a pub in the style of a studio Ghibli film and bing, there it is. And it's so unique. You're like, oh, that's cool, cute and wonderful. Kinda like a studio ly film. And what do you it's weird because the person who hated it and fought against it so hard is suddenly the poster child for having their art style or the studio's art style just get used up like this.

It's, yeah man, I don't know what to say, but sad day. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, this whole, that's a hot take man. I think about art being over, and it's something that you've been talking about, obviously with Big Journey and other image, AI based image generators and obviously open eyes through the hat in the ring, and now they created something that's a lot easier to create.

Almost like comic books. Someone just showed, like it could actually recreate comic books in a little bit of style and different styles and stuff like that. Frank Miller and things like that with actual, thought balloons and stuff like that, because the way it renders the written word a little bit more effective.

So I'll be curious to kinda see where this all goes. I, so I have a hot take on ai. This is my take. We got this image, generators, open air release that not too long ago. They talk about deep research with ability to create these limp, these, esoteric long reports on any type of topic where you can get strategic reports on that.

And then they talked about AI agents, right? How you can book your next flight to Paris and stuff like that. Mr. Benja, man, I think AI is a distraction, just like they're just throwing so much at the wall right now. And not saying that it can be useful, but it is becoming too much slop out there where it's hard to make it useful because it's so much out there and, yes, we got these Ghibli images and they took over the internet and people are having fun with it.

The real world applications and how people are using them, for the future is still kinda is it that useful or is it just making our job even that much more harder? And so I do feel like it is becoming more of a distraction than really being helpful in solving real world problems.

Mr.Benja: Lemme say lemme say this. This kind of touches on both of our takes. And my take by the way, in case you didn't catch it, was art is done. Find something to do. If you're an artist, I'm just, 

Theo Harvey: I'm if you're being it, if you're not being clear, 

Mr.Benja: yeah, you're done, buddy. I'm, 

Theo Harvey: you're done, son.

Mr.Benja: I'm saying this for your protection and your safety. It's not good. It's not the same as you thought it was when you were in school. Get off the plane. You in the back with the art pad and pencil, you're done. And I love you got my art pad over there, by the way, and my colored pencils.

But yeah, so the thing that is interesting that I wanted to say, based off your point being a distraction, not useful. I was in a, I was in a game studio, small game studio for a while, and there it was myself acting as a designer. The guy running things and talking to, the publishers and all that.

The director the money guy, money slash marketing guy. So that's three people who aren't touching the product. One programmer onsite, one programmer offsite, and five artists. So that's five to five people. Five other stuff and five artists, because we just wanted to crank out the art. Now I'm going through Steam, I'm going through all these different places online for independent games.

You have five of these other people and no artist, and it's like, how did you have, how did you get that to happen? Yeah, ai I. It's out there in terms of art. But to your point, yeah. 

Theo Harvey: This whole thing about vibe coding, right? That's the next other distraction that AI is throwing in our, you don't need programmers now.

You could just vibe, give to the vibe, right? Just use your words and create code, your own video games with words. You don't need a programmer. And so it's getting to the point, where they have these agents, this code, and look, as a business person like me, I'll be honest with you, I am excited about stuff like that.

Someone who has, people that I hire, I absolutely believe there's some opportunities there to utilize AI potentially. But because there's so much slop out there, it's hard to make it useful. Does that make sense? Because you're trying to figure out you're trying to get through all the.

Marketing spin and these, you can do this and, but you can do this, but you can't do it with that. And you can do this. And it's damn, I just wanted to do these three things. And it can do, one version of AI can do that one thing, the other one can do one and a half and the other one can do four other things I didn't even ask for.

So it's like, how do you make it useful? And I think that's what we're cutting up against, where you're gonna have to hire consultants to help you figure out how to make this con this, so you have a whole nother middle layer of an AI whisper manage. Yeah, 

Mr.Benja: I was about to say AI manager, some guy.

Yeah. Oh, AI whisper 

Theo Harvey: to help you make it useful. Because number one and I think that because they have so much money these AI companies, right? I mean they're raising billions. Mr. Benji, billion, I can't impress upon you how much money they're raising on the speculation that's gonna be so useful.

For the future. And ability to create so much productivity because you can get rid of whole slats of people, right? Like you just said it, you could replace five artists. You could probably replace the marketing guy as well. Who else was in that list? 

Mr.Benja: The marketing slash money guy. The, 

Theo Harvey: you can probably replace the money guy.

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Business slash operations guy. He talks with the publishers and all those guys the designer guy and two programmers get rid 

Theo Harvey: of the designer. Designer's gone. The program is gone. You got one business op guy. To underst people did 

Mr.Benja: in a blank room with the table with the laptop, and he's just walking around.

Vibe coding.

Theo Harvey: Yes. So that's why we're getting all this slop out here, but not really getting the sense of the usefulness. What problem are we solving with this stuff? And I don't think there's a good sense of that. You're searching for pro. I'm trying to figure out like how can I use it?

And the only way you can do that is by playing with it. But that's, you don't have a lot of time to play. So it's let me put this on a blackboard. Unless you just hire someone that's all their job is to do, play with it, to kind find something useful, then it's so I'm at that point.

I'm probably gonna bring on an intern. I'm already telling her, Hey, look up on chat, GPT how to code. Let me see some of your GitHub stuff. And then, let's, I'm gonna throw it into GitHub and see, what kind of feedback it gives her. And then I'll say, okay now can you work with AI to make your code better and do this instead?

And that, now I'm not a programmer, but I know what I want. And so I can guide her in using the tools more effectively to be more efficient. And then she can come back and say. This is how this can be useful, and boom, I got something. But other than that, Mr. Benji, you're not gonna these companies are not making it easy.

And so it's becoming of a distraction to what you're really trying to solve, try to do, which is solve a problem and to make money with by solving that problem. So that's my hot take right now. So we used the artist done. I'm saying AI is a distraction. 

Mr.Benja: I didn't know what you meant by that when you put that in the notes.

But you're chopping it up there for now, at least in a similar vein of blockchain and other stuff like that where it's just like, all right, y'all play around for a while. In the meantime, we got work to do. 

Theo Harvey: They could solve some problems and get some stuff done, but it becomes a messiness where you have to dig through some stuff pretty deeply to find the usefulness. And I feel in some cases, for your specific use cases, there's some easy ones potentially. But anyway, so that I, that's and be, and because the marketing messages are becoming so frequent with new stuff, it becomes a distractions like, what's it called?

Shiny. What's it? Shiny toy syndrome. Hey, a squirrel, dog squirrel, you're looking this way. Oh, what's that? Hey, I can do this. It can do that. It can do that. So it's just like what I was still trying to figure out how to use chat LLMs. Now you're talking about agents.

Wait a minute. I was just trying to figure out how to do deep research. So now you're saying I can vibe code. So it's it's all useful, but when everything's useful potentially, then none of it's useful. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. I'm looking through this thread, and people are throwing art at each other from AI in the comments.

It's comedy man, and yeah it's, these artists don't talk at about it there. It's like people yelling about the purity of cooking with an oven when, and the, when the microwave came out. It's yeah, I know, but I just want my oatmeal dog. It's not that much different. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Sad day. That's crazy, man. Sad day. Yeah. You know what else is another sad day, Mr. Benja. What's that? 

MCU and Avengers Doomsday Speculation

Theo Harvey: MCU and Avengers Doomsday. That was a sad day for the MCU. Oh man. We're talking MCU and Avengers Doomsday. We've talked about RDJ coming back, everybody was bubbling about saving the MCU and we had a whole episode about it, where he's on stage in his doom outfit and it was a big thing.

Mr.Benja: And over the months we've started to wonder something and it's a serious question that we gotta ask. And I think, is Disney calling it done? No more MCU are they silently pulling the plug on all this with all this stuff we're seeing? They're getting some hype going on, but is it like fire sale, last five days, get it while it's here kind of thing.

I don't know what's going on, but may, maybe you can help explain the situation now. 'cause this media stunt just came out and it got everybody talking for a minute. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Mr. Benja, did you hear about this five and a half hour stream of chairs that went on earlier this week? 

Mr.Benja: I saw a still shot of some chairs and RDJ and was like, whatever, man, I don't care about this.

Behind the scenes crap. Gimme some beef, some steak to get my teeth into, 

Theo Harvey: shoo into it. Mr. Benja I think I heard rumors of it, of the day. I think it started at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time. And it was one of those things where I was like, okay, cool. During the day I just really don't have any cycles for the nerd shit, but after seven I'm there.

Yeah. I'm bit, I'm eating it up. So anyway, I'm watching the after seven. Yeah. I'm like, what is going on? So it looks like there was this. Stream. You could just had your you can have your internets up and looking at chairs get revealed. First Chairs revealed was, and it was saying this is the cast for the doomsday.

And the doomsday Avengers Doomsday movie that's coming out next year. Oh, wait. And so the, hold on. 

Mr.Benja: No one was in the chairs the entire time? No, they just revealed the chairs, not even the people who would sit in the chairs. Okay. So the director until 

Theo Harvey: RDJR, Robert Diamond Jr. Showed up at the last chair.

Mr.Benja: Okay. 

Theo Harvey: But they just showed the chair, 

Mr.Benja: the movie chairs with the name on the back. 

Theo Harvey: I see. So you're watching, I, I wasn't there to watch and someone on YouTube, maybe we'll put in the show notes, but you can actually go to the actual five and a hours, five and a half hour stream and see when the Jazz scout revealed over the five and a half hours.

But the first chair was Chris Heworth, so he Oh yeah. Chris Christmas. I don't know how excited people are. 'cause it seems like anytime, anytime Figi just, spits out some kind of. MCU project, Hemsworth is gonna be right there. It doesn't matter. He's spending everything from what if voice acting to, all his movies, to showing up on a spoof, the YouTube spoof, which is funny with him being a roommate to the guy in America, which is funny when it first came out.

Because I think this is just money train. Chris Heworth knows where his bread is buttered and is buttered with MCU money. So he shows up. Cool. Then I guess you have to wait another what, 20, 30 minutes or whatever to the next chair gets revealed. And then it was this next actor. And then the next actor.

The next actor. And Mr. Benja, yes. This, okay. From two ways we'll talk about cast and what this means for this plot line, all that in a second. But, as a marketing ploy, right? I think it was genius because number one, it was. Questionable. It's, you got what? Marketing has always gotta capture attention.

We like, what is this about? And so I think there was enough there to capture it. Plus, because it was so long, and people like live form content, they gave other podcasters who were probably doing li doing live reaction videos of the chair announcements in between making money off of Yeah.

Or making their own content off of when the chairs got revealed. And so they were starting to jump in on it. Yeah. Like plankton next to a whale. Trying to get this Yeah. Must needed content. 

Mr.Benja: So hold on, Doug. I'm looking at this I found the stream, I just searched for Marvel Chair Stream, right?

And I go to seven minutes and see Chris Hemsworth name, and I'm like, yeah, it's the back of a chair with the name in this weird, ominous noise. But I knew this was a live stream, so I was like, okay, where's this chat? Where's this chat button? I wanna see what the chat's up to, right? I click on the open chat panel and text is just flying by.

Someone's they're stalling. Avengers Kang. I wanna see Miss Marvel. It's Thor crying. I think someone's late. It's just, 

Theo Harvey: if you get so no one knew what to expect. You didn't know if Chris Hensel were actually gonna show up. Yeah. You didn't know if that's all they're gonna show. And they just said the cast announcement and that was it.

And so you didn't know what to expect. So it was that anticipation of something I. Bigger that you were hoping for, but it creates so much, much side content, right? It was controversial enough, so much side content that people ate it up to the tune of 275 million people watch that stream over the course of five and a half hours.

Mr. Benja this was very interesting. Ploy, ploy for MCU and Kevin Faye and team, and I would say it worked. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Okay. This is actually a pretty nice production. I'm jumping through the stream right now and the chat hasn't stopped, but it reminds me of the, it reminds me of the Twitch do nothing streams or no viewer streams where somebody basically gets on, turns on their camera and then cleans their living room on camera.

They may actually leave the house, go pick up food and come back in and just look at the chat. Like they'll leave and then they'll walk in hey Chad. Yeah, I just went to get a burger. I'm gonna sit down to eat it now and they'll just eat a burger for a half hour. It'll be like zero views, right?

And then somebody will jump in, Hey, thanks for eating the burger. Here's the donation, and then go away. And you're like, what? So it's bizarre, man. But I think this may have been, keying in off of that the do nothing streams or the zero view streams? 

Theo Harvey: No, you might be right. Kudos to the marketing department.

I. For MCU kinda keying in on it, that trend and figuring out this could work here to change the conversation a little bit about Marvel. So from a marketing standpoint, definitely genius and creating anticipation and creating and intrigue, controversy, A platform for people to communicate and create their own content based on the content they were creating.

But there's it, there's a sniff. There's this whiff. A whiff, just a little whiff of desperation. And I. Basically this is coming off two mo what two movies that they got that got released and the TV show captain American Ford that didn't, that underperformed Vastly Daredevil is doing okay, but it's not, I.

Blockbuster. It's not right. People not ready to go, check it out every week. And then of course, the controversy, and this is Disney, even though it's not a Marvel movie, but Disney brand, snow White, which was needs to say A shit show followed mincing words between the main actress, Rachel Ziglar.

Scout Gadot and Disney and the and how they promote that movie and the flames that came against that casting Rachel 

Mr.Benja: Singer was like, we want the flame. Yeah. 

Theo Harvey: She likes all the flames and we're probably not gonna get into it now, but go check out her tweets and what she was talking about.

And basically Disney was trying to throw her under the bus to say it was because of her. We belonged to him. Yeah. 'cause of her that Disney lost all this money. Yeah. Basically only made 40 million or something like that based on the $260 million budget. So opening weekend, which is unheard of. So anyway, make a long story short they need to change the conversation and fast, and I think they did that with this move.

So I think there's a whiff there when we say this could be the end of MCU, that, they're pulling all the stops to keep you interested in this, mr. Ben, what about the movies, that they're trying to release around this time? I guess 

Mr.Benja: so. Yeah. Yeah, I don't wanna leave people hanging with the idea.

We'll get to the movies. I'll throw those out there. But we started this because we were saying, yeah, they're doing all this stuff. There's this big stream five hours, but it's nothing but chairs. It's as I said, when you know, there's your favorite coffee shop or whatever, and they're like, Hey, new, new Baja Blast Coffee.

And you go in there and you drink it. You're like, Hey, wait, this is the same old coffee, whatever, except it's got an umbrella in it, and somebody sprinkled orange in my coffee. What is this? This makes it Baja. What are you talking about? You're trying to get me with this. Your coffee shop is done, kid.

You're done, son. And that's what I, that's what we felt. So I. I was like, okay, these Marvel phases are usually pretty big. 

Phase Six Movie Lineup

Mr.Benja: And the Bre and Robert Downey Jr. Back, let me go check to make sure all the movies are, we're gonna have all these movies out. What's in phase six? What's gonna be there?

And officially there are only four movies. So we're talking about, captain America four, and Thunderbolts are part of phase five technically. But going into phase four, they've, phase six, they've only got four movies. Fantastic. Four, doomsday Avengers, doomsday, Spider-Man, four, and then Avengers, secret Wars.

So two of those are these big ensemble movies or whatever with Fantastic Four in front and Spider-Man jammed in between. And when you compare that with all of the buildup, the hype, the planning, the plotting, the marketing. The story weaving with the phase one, that people, when people think about Avengers and these big Epic two part movies, they think of, end Game, infinity War and all the stuff that was happening up before then and leading to it.

And it's four movies. Oh, okay. And some of this. Okay. 

MCU's Product Overload

Theo Harvey: Yeah, I think there's this a sense that we gotta change the conversation. We don't have a lot of product coming out. And now be honest, they did mention there was too much product coming out from MCU Right. With the TV shows and the movies and all that.

And so there was a concerted effort to slow down a little bit with some of this stuff. But I still agree with you. There does seem to be like, what is this all going toward, right? And what are we trying to build here? And so I. Mr. Binge, yeah, and there's some TV shows coming out Isaac of Wakanda, Mar Marvel, zombies, Wonderman, we are already, Daredevil is out now.

Vision Quest and your friendly neighborhood, Spider-Man kind of was done as well. But I would say the ones that have already been completed, Daredevil, born again in your friendly neighborhood. Spider-Man. I'm not saying Friendly neighborhood. 

Spider-Man's Core Essence

Theo Harvey: Spider-Man was unwatchable, but I couldn't, I didn't, I didn't see a sense to finish it.

And look, I get it what they were trying to do with it, but there was just so many things that just not core to Spider-Man. They were just like, who created this? It was like the court thesis of Spider-Man was that he has what great. Guilt, great power comes great responsibility.

Laugh: Yeah. 

Theo Harvey: But in this version of Spiderman, that's what threw me off the whole not to get down to the little rabbit wholeness, but what threw me off this whole show was that he got his powers randomly when this multiverse creature came through the gates. And then Steven Strange showed up. Dr. Strange showed up to help him, and there was a spider that came from this multiverse and bit him, and that's how he became Spiderman.

I was like, what are we doing? Yeah. And I knew they were messed up because Uncle Ben had already died before he got his powers. So I'm like. Dude, if he, uncle Ben was still alive and you got his powers that way, fine. I don't care how you got his powers, but you have to have Uncle Ben still alive when he has his powers so he can learn that core tenement to who he was and when the cartoon did not do that.

Yeah, it looks cool. And his retro, yeah, they doing all these different things with race races and all that because he is lived in Brooklyn. But I don't give a shit, man. They did not have the core instance of who he's as Spider-Man, and that what threw me off. So I digress. So they're just doing stuff that's, that doesn't make sense.

Mr.Benja: That's a very good point. 

Character Core Concepts

Mr.Benja: And I've always been frustrated with this with a lot of characters where it's like this core, you create a character with a core concept and idea and the character becomes a representation, a caricature, a front for all these concepts that are built up behind that character.

And then you strip that away and try to subvert and or whatever and say, Hey, you know what? What if what if Batman was poor and black and he came from da, and you're like, yo, I don't want, I don't need to see a inner city Batman. I could, but after, at some point, it's just a big what if drama that I don't actually connect to and care about.

Because what we care about was the essential story and the meaning of that character. And it's amazing that these moves that they seem to make are the same mistakes that happened in the comic world. It's Hey, we've got this new, we got four new supermen. And it's I don't care about none of them.

And you're just like, what are you doing? No point. Hey, we got this brand new version of whatever. And you're like, I don't care. 

Theo Harvey: Just good point. Batman got his bat broke and so now you know who's this new Batman and stuff like that, but who cares? I giving a crap. Yeah, man.

It's, yeah. They just have to think through these things, man. And so anyway, make a long story short, mcu how, think through what the core to the essence of this, these characters are what were you about to say? 

Mr.Benja: Oh, I was just gonna saying they're not thinking through anything. They're just like, whatever 

Theo Harvey: this.

See what sticks. Even the announcement, it was met with some kind of playing both sides of it. They were like, Hey, here's all these cast members and we're not done yet. So basically if you don't like who we cast or you feel like you're mad 'cause someone's missing and there's enough uproar.

Oh man, don't worry. So it's just what are you doing, man? So anyway, that, that is why we're getting a sense of, this doesn't seem on the up and there, there seems to be a whiff of, obviously with the Downey casting as Dr. Doom, that was a start of this whiff. Now we have this five and a half hour live stream showing you all these different cast members and all that.

And we'll go through that briefly. There's more. Pretty soon it's gonna stink. This whiff becomes a full stench. So we're gonna be like, is this carcass dead? 

Mr.Benja: We, you think you're smelling something? You're like, did you smell? And you're like, no, hold on, I'm not sure. And then you go about your business and you're like, no, there it was again.

No. Hold on a second. Hold on. And then you start investigating and then you like pull back the covers and it's look, I. What's that doing there? You ate a sandwich last night and you stuffed it under the covers 'cause you didn't want anyone to find out and you forgot about the sandwich.

Now your whole room is funky. Get out here. Watch the, watch. Those sheets. 

Theo Harvey: Marvel. Man. The carcass might be dead. Marvel. Be careful man. You gotta be, get to the core what you guys are building. So anyway, real quick, let's just go through this, 

Mr.Benja: okay? Yeah. 

Casting Announcements and Reactions

Theo Harvey: Were you surprised by any of this casting moves?

I broke it down in our show notes on the different groups of cast. I think some other channels have done that as well, but, we can talk high level about that. But, was there anything that was super surprising to you? And I got a couple that were surprising for me.

Mr.Benja: I wanted to see I like Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, but I wanted to see the what's the guy's name from 300? Do magneto. 

Theo Harvey: Really? 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. The other magneto from the other Magneto. Yeah. The age of apo. The Apocalypse movie. Magneto, 

Theo Harvey: oh. Michael. Fast bender. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, fast bender. 

Theo Harvey: He's, yeah, he's not in 300.

You think about Gerard Butler, but 

Mr.Benja: no. He is in 300. He's one of the characters in 300. 

Theo Harvey: That's right. He had a small part. Yeah. Before he was a big time play. You're right. Good point, fair point. I thought you would think about Ard Butler 'cause he was a star of 300, but now how am I gonna mistake 

Mr.Benja: him from Magneto?

Come on now. Come on, 

Theo Harvey: Mr.

Okay good call. Yeah, I like the younger guys, but I think there's a reason why they're doing this. There's a lot of love in this casting. So we'll talk about, let's briefly talk about the cast. 

X-Men Cast and Reboot Speculations

Theo Harvey: The first group we'll talk about is the two thousands Fox. Movie Studio X-Men Cast.

That's what we'll call this group, is The Beast who is played by Frazier. Kelsey Grammar Patrick Stewart, professor X, Ian McKellen, Magnio, Alan Cumming, Qualer, Rebecca Oma Mystique, and James Mar Cyclops. Yes. So it's of a piece, right? So that's probably why they didn't want bring back Magneto, fast Bender, yet.

He may still come back, who knows? But there's something going on with this 2000 X-Men cast, and the rumor is they're probably gonna try to probably negotiate for Rogue, trying to go, with Anna Quin, Holly Berry, can we get Holly Berry? Can we get her back with her fine self in this almost sixties, in the fifties, late fifties, sixties, and, yeah. I think that's the rumor that they're trying to bring these characters back into the mix. To your point, no is this, I don't like this to do something with it. This uhoh, Mr. Benja, I 

Mr.Benja: just don't like this man. This is all like an effort to kill off the, yes, they're doing a soft reboot, but it's like one of those, stupid ensemble series on TV where they're just gonna bring a bunch of people back and it's Hey everybody, you remember these guys?

Remember that guy? Hey, you love this, don't you? It's a love letter to the all the years we've done and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Actually, we don't really care much about this movie 'cause we're killing it. What's good gonna be cool is what's coming next. And we're gonna have a soft reboot with Secret Wars.

And it's ugh. It's just, and 

Theo Harvey: didn't they, and didn't they literally kill Professor X in what's a multiverse of madness when they did that? That version, of him. Yeah. On the ca on the council. That, that tried to judge Dr. Steven Strange. He basically got murt by Wanda in the astro plane.

Remember? Yeah. So it's like we gonna bring him back to kill him again. I hope not. It's just weird, 

Mr.Benja: man. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, it's it, there's a whiff here. There's a whiff. There's more of a whiff.

Basically we say Fige. Farted. That's what we're saying guys. James put that on wax fige farted. And he don't want to admit he 

Mr.Benja: dealt it. He started talking about fike. You got blurry on your camera dogs. I know, man. Figes watching. I don't care. 

Theo Harvey: They coming after you. I don't care. But anyway, so yeah there's a, there's an interesting mix of why they're bringing this particular cast.

To fair. They did hint at it when they brought the beast. And was that Marvels? Yeah. The Marvels, the Beasts 'cause, so I don't, no one watched the Marvels. I, yeah I know that. But there was a tag at the end of Marvels where I liked it. Oh, you did? Okay. Do you remember the tag where, what happened?

Yeah. What's her name is stuck in that universe. Yeah. Spectrum. The character Monica Lebo, she's stuck in Yeah. The beast world. So I think that's what they're using that to bring in that X-Men into to our world. And so that's kinda what they're trying to do.

So anyway, so that's that the next, so anything else about this X-Men cast real quick, we're not gonna go too much details on this, but. 

Promoting Upcoming Movies

Theo Harvey: The other ones is promotion for movies out this year. So this is the other category. So basically, yeah, the whole cast a fantastic four and Thunderbolts will be in this movie.

So I don't know, look, they're going to have their own movies this year. What does that mean for Dr. Doom? I have no clue. Maybe it's they're sitting on in a room together watching TV and looking at each other, and that's the extent of their cameos. I dunno. But it does. But like I said it looks like there was a spoiler too, because if you look at who's included in the Thunderbolts cast, yeah, there's no task taskmaster listed at all.

I don't know who the actor plays taskmaster, but looks like they're not showing up for the party, but everybody else is. For the Thunderbolt, so we'll see, so bad. Even in the marketing of the taskmaster, I think, I don't know the actor, but they even have the actor's face comfort up.

It is pretty clear that person's not gonna be important. Matter of fact, century the villain, quote unquote, the villain, thunderbolts is showing up in his so I guess they don't Merck him even though he's the villain or he doesn't get up, wrapped up. So anyway, so they're just promoting other movies.

There's rumor, it's okay, sure. But yeah, so basically they're trying to say, if you don't watch these movies, you're not gonna understand Doomsday. Come on, we played that game before. Get out here, Marvel. So anyway, support for just Okay. Movies. So these are movies that came out, sequels that did okay.

But, I think they're gonna show up to bring some continuity to the old version and Yeah. And try and bring them to, so basically Captain America four, 

Mr.Benja: okay. 

Captain America and MCU Continuity

Mr.Benja: You're about to jump into Captain America four. And this is just bothering me again because this is the kind of stuff I would stand up and yell at in design meetings, and then everybody would have that uncomfortable.

Okay. We'll take that into consideration. And everybody knows, look, I will speak the elephant in the room, but it's like, when you say the Falcon now, are you talking about Danny Ramirez or Captain Black American Falcon? 

Theo Harvey: They're telling us that Anthony Mackeys is the Captain America.

So we're gonna have to go with that. 

Mr.Benja: Exactly. And that, once again, I'm not hating on him beating Captain America. It's just confusing. The story's weird. You still haven't given me a reason to get up and say, you know what, gosh dog, I need to go see this movie Storywise. 

Theo Harvey: Guess what?

Now you will, because he's going be in doomsday, so you gotta figure out what he did in Captain America four to be in Doomsday. No. 5G is Figi boy. He go play them Figi Tricks. Tricks on us. He's trying to get you to watch Captain America four. Did you watch it by the way? It's been several weeks now.

Have you seen it, Mr. Benja? Have you seen it? 

Mr.Benja: No, I I think I was about to go and I started back into watching one piece and I cleared episode 700, by the way, in case anyone's wondering. 

Theo Harvey: Okay good. Kudos to you, man. The one piece watch, that's what we'll call it. So keep us abreast your due diligence of watching all on a piece on piece shows, but yeah.

So yeah, it was okay. Movie Mr. Ben. Just, someone just seen it. We all went to go see the support captain. It had potential. There's just a lot of stuff there. And Anthony Mackey, when they let him cook, when he just being himself and not, trying to adhere to what, steve Rogers was about, I think there's some interesting things there, right?

With the Isaiah Bradley piece of it, you just look old man to you. You know that guy. Yeah. Who's been experimented on via, we talked about this with go check out that pod. We talked about the whole Tuskegee experiments. That's the synonymous of how they tested the secret serum on Black soldiers and Isaiah Bradley Yeah.

Was a benefit of that. But that, I thought that part was good. And then when he went up against Giancarlo Viper Vi villain, that was good. 'cause he was able to be himself. He's not like Steve Rogers, he's more of a street level kind of guy where he's Hey man, you can't do this, man, this let's talk about this.

Let's negotiate. He's more, a little bit more 

Laugh: yeah. 

Theo Harvey: A negotiator. And I think if they stay in that vein, it has promise. He's not gonna be like, I can do this all day. That's just not him. Anyway, so then Black Panther two, we have Wilson Duke Cup and Baca. To know Chota Meia.

Meia. I hope I got that right. Played Namor and the Leticia Wright who played Black Panther. Sure, I think the comic book, black Panther played a big part in that. And of course, Namor and Sue Reed, Sue Sue Richards from the Fantastic four they go back a long way. He'd been trying to get with her since 1962.

They gonna bring that back. I don't know how great of a actor this guy is to pull that off. 'cause Namor is a kind of an asshole. I don't get that vibe from that guy in that movie. He was a kind of an asshole, but it was like for a reason where Namor is like just.

Overall Dickish. So I don't know how they're going to do that, but 

Mr.Benja: you were talking about the representation of the character coming across the screen and just bridging that gap. I get you. 

Theo Harvey: Yes. But but yeah, we'll see. I don't, we'll see if they're, what they're gonna do in do day. Oh, Lord.

Go on. New folks, Simi Lou plays Sean Chi, which finally people have been asking for that character. He had that movie. I thought it was pretty decent. I liked the movie. Matter of fact, it was better than I thought it would be. I just came outta bad time with the pandemic and all that stuff.

But I thought it was a good movie. So finally he's gonna have some play, and this is weird. Channing Tatu was finally going to get to play Gambit never showed up in the two thousands, been long, talked about being gambit. And now he finally, after that one little cameo in Deadpool. Which is mostly play for laugh.

He's gonna show up in this, so Sure. I guess 

Mr.Benja: I got no words man. 

Theo Harvey: I no, I, and then we got, 

Mr.Benja: yeah, 

Theo Harvey: and then we got the old folks, Tom Hilson, Loki. Sure. Tom Hilson pops up. Chris Hemsworth, we talked about him. Anthony Mackey, of course. Sebastian, Stan, Bucky, Paul Rudd, Atman. Do we care Aman, is it, are we still checking for App Man out here?

Mr.Benja: Ha. Haven't cared since Quantum mania. And even in around 35 minutes into condominium, I stopped caring. Exactly. Because that movie was so terrible. Oh man. I just remember how I felt when I went to go see that movie. I said oh Lord, this is bad. What made it work bad? Just the CGI.

Theo Harvey: When the CGI was that bad and was that noticeable? I just like, oh, no. Marvel lost it.

Mr.Benja: It's funny that didn't even register on my radar. I was just like, yeah, man, whatever. CGI keep going. 

Theo Harvey: That was, it was so obvious it was because I'm not saying they can't do it. They've done it before, but it was just so obvious when they went to that I. Quantum world that was just like, oh, this is not good.

And then last but not least, Robert Downey Jr. Is Dr. Doom. So Mr. Benja that's the cast, that's what people have been talking about on the internet for the last several days. People are, wetting their pants, excited about it, creating content. We got things to talk about, at least for another two months.

Change the conversation. Does all the things that Fi u wants to do is will the movie be good? Wait a minute, I have no clue. 

Mr.Benja: Wait a minute. They just deflated Galactus by putting Dr. Doom in here. So whatever happens with, oh, it's like the whole celestial thing. It's supposed to be a big event, but you're like, all right, guess I'm small.

And you keep going. It's, 

Theo Harvey: yeah, it's a small little thing. But think about it, it's like 

Marvel's Reboot Strategy

Mr.Benja: Disney's doing the reboot. Press the reset button. 

Theo Harvey: That's fine. They have to, which is great. It just, I want it, this movie begin and then No, 

Mr.Benja: it's not fine. It's not fine. I want an epic reboot.

I want some craziness. I need like some other movies. I want people, doing crazy things, giving up stuff. I want Thor to go away and Beta Ray Bill to show off anything. I don't care. There's some crazy stuff happening. And I don't know, it might come out with some craziness, but right now it just seems like ensemble cast on stage, arms around each other doing the the Las Vegas, they're 

Theo Harvey: trying to recapture the end game feeling and I don't think they can.

I think this is what we're trying to do. They're 

Mr.Benja: not trying to capture it. They're trying to milk it. They're trying to suck the last little life out of it. They're giving that, they're trying to 

Theo Harvey: get you to have that feeling that you had when you had all those actors on stages. Yes. They had, everywhere you went it was like 50 actors that you all knew.

But they had built that over what, 10, 15 years of just building up stories that we understood, loved. And lot of these people grew up with these characters. Think about it, when you first watch oh eight and then until end game, what's that 15 years you were like a baby and then now you were almost finishing with high school when that finished.

So that was formative years to a lot of people. So to try to recreate that in less than five years, that's gonna be tough, man. And the fact that the Russo brothers who will be directing this again that it seems like they lost their fastball. The reviews for that, that Netflix movie they did, the electric state got were terrible.

The, they did the gray man, which is terrible, which is not good. So like everything they've done, it hasn't been good at all since then. Came, this, they have not done one thing that was like, oh, that's interesting at least, or that's different. It's been slop. So do they still have what it takes to make an mc movie that's interesting and good, or was there, or were they just good for that time?

For MCU when they did Captain American? I think they did did, they did Civil War and I think they did Captain American two right. The I forgot what it's called with Bucky came back and then that gave him confidence to do infinity and end game, but. I don't know, man. So do you think it's, 

Mr.Benja: how much of this really quick do you think is a fallout from changing plans after the Kang debacle?

Theo Harvey: Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. But even then, I don't think it was working, let's be honest. Even before Quantum Mania, and then I think the Pandemic had something to do with, black Widow, she had to do a streaming release, Shaun Ching, there was some stuff there.

The Marvels, there were some things there that wasn't working well, that was after the Quantum Mania. So it was just like these, there was a, there's all these movies in the middle. It was just like there. But, and I think with the, they were probably spending too much time creating these TV shows too.

You had moon night, you had, obviously Wanda Vision. You had winter Soldier Falcon and Winter Soldier. You had the Hawkeye show. You had Kamala Khan, you had, miss Marvel show. You had six, seven and The Hulk, remember she Hawk, I think that was the one that got people in uproar.

Boy, they did not like that show. I thought it was okay. I thought it was okay. 

Mr.Benja: Did you rewind the twerking scene?

And on that note, Mr. Bitch shake them gamma rays the gamma gams. All the 

Theo Harvey: Gammas, she was shaking it. Boy, shake your money making when you make your money making it gamma, 

Mr.Benja: I'm make, make a t-shirt that. 

Theo Harvey: And did they try to do something different with it? With the whole Fige computer and all that crap.

I liked it. I thought it was different, but it was a little too much on the nose. But that's, you know who that character was? Yeah, she was. And, but you can show, you can see, 'cause she's a fourth wall breaking character, just like Deadpool. Yeah. But because the actress and, they created a scenario for her.

Ryan Reynolds breathes that, and so that's why he can break the fourth wall and make it work, yeah. Whereas Sheol could not, so anyway, so they got all the, and so there were rumors, people were like, where's Spider-Man in this c Where's she Hulk? Where's and there were people claiming for she Hulk, and they, and people were asking, where's the most powerful being captain Marvel?

Where's she at? You got like a li you got a big threat. Where's she at? Bree Lawson's. Man, people don't wanna see me. She said it in so many words. People don't wanna see me in that role. Matter of fact, she was in the Marvels. I don't think she wouldn't even be in the Marvels. She just did it out to help the other characters, out.

And she's I'm fine, I'm good. So anyway, Mr. Benja, it's cautiously optimistic. I think we're saying, but there's a whiff here. Can Figi do it again? But our take is don't know. Don't know. All right, Mr. Benja, what's next? Man? 

Mr.Benja: I Bree Larson's non smile. How she just has that look that's like when, when Thor was, when Thor called the hammer and she was just standing there staring him down. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. 

Mr.Benja: I actually really liked that about her. Look. So I would like to see that one more time. So are you gonna be in the next movie?

So yeah, sorry. He 

Theo Harvey: believes she has Academy Award. I keep, always forget that she has Academy Award. Oh, nice. I didn't know that. Yeah, she was in Scout Pilgrim versus the World back in, but everybody was in that. 

Mr.Benja: She's been around man. Yeah, you're right. 

Theo Harvey: She was in Fast XI forgot she was in that.

Just, I guess people went hot this let's get this money. 'cause you don't know how long it's gonna last, so they just show up in everything. But yeah, she's been around man. She's been around. Yeah, 

Mr.Benja: all right, let's get to these trailers. 

One Battle After Another Trailer Reactions and Movie Expectations

Theo Harvey: Yeah, man. What's up? 

Mr.Benja: By the way, if anybody has any information, input or anything like that on this whole Marvel, Disney thing, the reboot, what they're doing with phase six and possibly phase seven and all that, got some insider notes wanna correct us, send us the flames, you know what to do in the comments.

All right, so we have a trailer and we're gonna, we're gonna do this a little differently than we did last time. James, you gotta be ready for this one. It's gonna be fast. You ready, Theo? Yes. Okay. This is the trailer for one battle after another, starting in 3, 2, 1, play,

All right, wb, let's say you, you go first, Theo. 

Theo Harvey: Paul, Tom Anderson great filmmaker. He is done a bunch of stuff. I wanna say that's the director of Boogie Nights. I think that is I'll look it up in a second, but look Leonard DiCaprio, what? 

Mr.Benja: Carry on. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Leonard DiCaprio, doing his.

It's funny, he's like the most boring celebrity. 'cause he does stuff I'm sure crazy, but we never hear about it. 'cause he's the old school celebrity. We don't. He's not on TikTok. He's not out here on sports center like Charlem Ma. He just does his work and goes home to his models.

But it is craziness comes out in his roles. The whole scene when he was on Quaaludes in what's that movie? Wolf of Wall Street, right? Yeah. Right where he barely could walk and all that stuff. It's just this dude is he's a crazy dude man. So it looks like there's a piece of that.

This little goofy dude, that's in him that he's going showing this. But looks like a very serious topic and shout out a lot of black women in this one. This is interesting. You got Regina Hall, you got Tiana Taylor in there. Looks like his daughter's playing by a young black actress. And I think this is one of the first times he's played a, a.

A dad too. So I haven't seen him do that too much. 'cause he's, I think he's he's not too much younger than us, or he's about our age, Mr. Ben, I wanna say, I think he's later forties or almost fifties. So anyway I'm interested, it seems like an interesting movie to go check out.

Looks like he, a little humor, but also some story. So highly optimistic about this one. Okay. 

Mr.Benja: Okay. I'm glad you said story because this has been something that's been bothering me just about the general state of media right now. What is the log line for this movie? I don't know. 

Theo Harvey: Do I need to look it up?

Mr.Benja: No, no one knows because that's not what they gave you. They gave you a crazy Leonardo threw in some Venicio del Toro. Oh, look, there's a pregnant lady with the machine gun with some quippy joke. There's Tiana Taylor. Okay, what's this all about? Oh, look, car flips over. Guy flies out of a car and gets rolls down the hill.

It's it's just stuff. I still need that log line. And I think May, maybe this is just, my generation, the movies where it's like you have the log line of, man falls down the cliff. Crazy monster meets up with him, he controls the crazy monster, climbs up the cliff to destroy the village.

It's okay, you get what the story's about that. Even if you don't like it or you do like it, you get what the story is about the main flow, and then you decide whether you wanna see it or not. And even if you don't, you're interested in it. This is just a representation of stuff.

And no matter what happens, I just can't get into that without the plot 

Theo Harvey: interest really at all. But look at the movies he's done. Boogie Nights, Magnolia Punch, drunk Love. There will be Blood, the Master Inherent and Vice the Fan and Thread. Have you seen any of his movies that Paul, I think he's he's like a Low, does certain directors that, Scorsese, who else? I'm drawing blank right now of all the different directors, but the one that did your favorite movie inception Nolan. There's certain, do we know all the way what his movie's about, but we go see because he's the marketing angle. If he's got a movie he wants to show you, it's gotta be something interesting that he, that's about, and there's certain people who feel the same way about, paul Thomas Anderson. There's a movie he's creating. Regardless if you know what the plot is or not, there's something interesting that you need to go see. So to me that's the angle there. And then also the angle, other angle is just interesting images, right in sight. Pregnant lady, obviously Tiana Taylor didn't see her.

For those that I know she's more known in hip hop circles and RB circles as a singer and choreography last known to be married to a basketball player. So yes, I, to see her in a high profile. Now she's been acting more, of course, that's just what these folks do. They switch over, but she not these folks, but just, musicians in general they switch over and get some acting roles here and there. Yeah. But yeah, I'm, I'm intrigued enough to go see it. 

Mr.Benja: Most of his recent. Out most of his recent outings have been from music videos and I didn't know that part of it. But he did yeah, it was Boogie Nights.

So this is I don't wanna call 'em Hollywood Royalty, but he's one of those definite Hollywood people where all of Hollywood knows him and it's like, Hey, Paul Thomas, Andrew doing a movie. I'm in it. We're gonna hang out with each other and do stuff. I get it. I get that vibe and I do I did really There will be Blood, of course.

Oh man, that's a classic. I took it, I took his milkshake, I took it up. That movie was crazy. 

Yeah, he did. Yeah. Yeah. No, as I said I understand the reasons why people would get into that, but that's not why I go generally to get into a movie. So it just, 

Theo Harvey: what's the, what was the last movie you went to go see and why'd you go see it?

Mr.Benja: I am trying to think of the last movie that I went to go see because of a trailer that hit me with the log line of, there's a situation, there's a protagonist. It doesn't even have to be a person, a protagonist. It could be a world, a city, a concept, whatever. There's a driving force that has to get through something and get to some type of resolution.

If I didn't see those things in a trailer, and I'm trying to think of the last time that happened, and it's yeah, I'm even thinking back to the aliens trailer, I was turned off because it just seemed like jump scares and not really tried to tell a story. And I was like, huh, okay. Interesting.

I may just be of a certain chunk of the watching audience that only that cares about that setup and could give a damn about anything else. 

Theo Harvey: I can't, look, man, you I'm not saying that, you're not wrong. Movie, we talked about this, it's just harder, hard for people who want to go to the movies anyway.

And it's gotta be, yeah. Almost an event to wanna go see it now. Now unless you just love a filmmaker or love, you know the story. Then you know you're paying a lot of money when you just probably, this could probably be on a streaming service. But they're trying to hope that you got Leonard DiCaprio, you got Paul Thomas Anderson.

Those are the two big draws to kinda get you to get out. Yeah, you got, some bands of Regina Hall and Yeah. Or Deltoro. But really those are the big draws to get you out. Just see. But if it ain't event man, it's I hear you. I think I'm just a movie. One of the movie guys. I'll go see it anyway, just to see I sat and just look at it.

But I get your point and it's not the same anymore. 

Mr.Benja: I, while we were talking, I was thinking just going back to the trailers that we've seen. I really did get into the F1 trailer for the visuals, the movement, the kinetics of it all. I want to see that in the theater, but not so much because of the story.

I like what they're doing with the, the new guy and the trainer, that dynamic coming up. That's interesting. Tell 

Theo Harvey: as old as time. 

Mr.Benja: That, that's interesting there. If not a little played out, but yeah I did like that one for the kinetics and the visuals of it all.

And not so much for what they were doing. So even that one. Okay. Like I said Mr. Benja, I think we will see if this movie does well, probably not. It just is what it is. Movies like this don't do well anymore, so it it is what it is. Mr. Benja, I think we're gonna wrap up here, man.

Wrapping Up and Future Plans

Theo Harvey: Any plans for next week briefly. Hey, watch the tr watch the trailer for the account number one. I think that was the last one that I went back and was like, I wanna watch this movie because of the trailer. Just a weird premise. Any plans for the week? I got the CCTV as actual plane camera set up and my future self is always watching me, so I don't have plans for this week.

Mr.Benja: I have plans for a week 72 months from now and I can't talk about them in public. It's because it would just be too strange.

Theo Harvey: I. Tell, tell the tell your walk, brother. Walk your walk. Yeah man. Just another week, man. And la Land man. April, we'll do Q1. Can you believe it, Mr. Benches? I'm doing my Q1. That's reviews. That's right. Trying to, wrap up, look at, what went well, what didn't, and just trying to hit up Q2 hard.

As I try to make some moves in business and just personal, I got some goals personally I'm trying to do. Got some big plans for the summer with. Some book stuff and some other things I'm doing. So yeah, that's my goal. This is the 50th year, Mr. Bitch. I'm trying to do something big, for my future self 'cause yeah, that's the goal.

Future self is I'm counting on you this year, man. This is 'cause I ain't doing what you were doing in your forties. I so I feel you. I feel you brother. Yeah. So I'm in that same mode too right now. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. Alright everyone. Thank you for listening. Look, if you like what you heard, please subscribe and common at show versus business on X Threads, YouTube and Instagram.

Listen to us at Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to. Shout out to our producer James. Also visit us on our website at show versus business. All right, Mr. Benja. Take care. Peace.