Episode 50; 2024: DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

Let's. Flippin'. Go.!!  

The two most perfectly-cast comic book actors ever are reunited; but this time do it SO much better! The MCU fully embraces the best bits of the legacy of Fox's X-Men films, goes R-rated for the first time and is an absolute winner! Maximum Effort!

Join me for the penultimate episode of the podcast, as the end is nigh...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello and welcome to episode 50 of Milestone Movies. Did you ever think we'd make it? 50 episodes. Now, if you've been listening to the last few episodes, you'll know about this, but if you've jumped back into this one uh from an earlier episode and perhaps missed the last few, you won't be aware that in fact, despite the fact that I've been promising it for 40 odd episodes that it was going to be 50 episodes and done, uh, due to a little uh issue with my maths, we're actually going to 51 episodes. So I wanted to always get to 2025 as being, you know, that was the year I turned 50, that was the 50 years we were looking at from 1975 to 2025. Obviously, that is gonna take 51 episodes when you think about it, which obviously I never did to begin with, always just assumed it was gonna be a 50 episode run. So this is the penultimate episode of Milestone Movies, and we'll be talking about obviously 2024. So welcome. Um, I'm sure you know the score by now. Looking at every movie from every year since I was born, well, not every movie, every movie I think is notable and worth talking about, um, and basically coming up with my own favourite movie from each year. Uh, and in 2024, there is no doubt that my favourite film of the year was Deadpool and Wolverine, and we will move on to that in a lot more detail later on. Um, it's the first of the Deadpool films that is officially part of the MCU. It also is the first MCU film to fully embrace the sort of history of the X-Men and bring the characters over from that, um, apart from previous sort of cameos that we'd had up to this point. Um, and it's just, yeah, it's just everything that the best of those films were uh combined, and it's just a brilliant ride from start to finish. Absolutely fantastic. But um, first, as is tradition, I will look at the most successful five films of this year. Um, number one was Inside Out 2, so that was obviously a sequel to the original Inside Out, which had been a bit of a sleeper hit. It had been one that had done fairly well in its first release, but had gone on to become like a real favourite of people uh in the Disney Pixar films. Um and the second one just really, really latched onto what people loved and became an absolute smash hit. I think it was the biggest um animated film of all time for a couple of years, and I think Zootropolis 2 or Zotopia 2, depending on where you're watching it, uh, overtook it this year, I do believe. Um possibly was that out of Christmas last year. Uh yeah, anyway, but I think that's overtaken now. But yeah, it's a good film. It was marred slightly by you may remember me talking about a bad cinema experience uh on the Ole White, actually, of all places, uh, where it was just a pretty poor um cinema with crappy sound, and uh yeah, not I didn't hear most of the film because most of the the track wasn't on it, there was no music on there. Uh you had like a left hand speaker, but not the right hand, so you have a two-way conversation, you can only hear one of them. Um but we've since watched it again, um, and it's good. It cut it's obviously dealing with the same issues as the first one in the inner thoughts of uh young girl. She's now sort of reaching maturity, she's a teenager, so she's dealing with all that sort of stuff that teenagers do. Um, and so basically there's new emotions, so new little characters inside her head, inside her body, um, which uh deal with all the new emotions that you get when you're a teenager, anxiety and all that sort of stuff. So it's very well done, um, and deservedly a very, very successful film. Um second biggest was Deadpool and Wolverine, which we'll go into in a moment. Uh, another animation was the third biggest, which was Moana 2, obviously a big success, the first one. Um, and I d well, I'm going basically on my kids who are the target audience for these films. They like the second one, but not anywhere near as much as the original. Uh I don't think it had Lynn Memoral Miranda's um songs in it this time around, which was perhaps one of the big sort of hooks of the first one. But um, and due to be remade this year into a live-action version, which is too soon, let's be honest. Um, but there we are. Uh Despicable Me 4, keeping the animation theme. So three of the top five films of this year were animated. Uh Despicable Me 4, obviously the latest adventure for uh Gru and his minions, and I just literally, by coincidence, seen yesterday that there is a new minions film coming out this year, next month, I think, July. Uh, Minions and Monsters. Um, hadn't seen anything about it till yesterday, and now everywhere I look on the internet and magazines and all that, it's all over the place. So that will be the so there's been four Despicable Me's. This will be the third minions, so seven Despicable Me's in total, not to mention all the uh little shorts that they've done and all the little uh animated intros for the Illumination films. So yeah, um no sign of the minions going away anytime soon, which is fine by me. And the fifth biggest film was Wicked, so the first of uh the Wicked films, it was obviously split into two. One came out in 2024, one came out in 2025. Obviously a big hit uh musical based on uh sort of a prequel to the Wizard of Oz story, uh been massive on Broadway and London for years and years and years. They made a big, big film of it, which they split into two. Um for my money, I think the first one's probably the most effective. Uh I did go and see them both. The second one was fine, but it just uh had big sort of leaps in uh narrative logic from as far as I can tell, which you know, when you're talking about uh things set in uh mystical land of ours, that's perhaps uh you know a bit too much to ask for that, it makes sense. But yeah, uh it was okay, it's fine. Ariana Grande and um the other woman, can't remember her name. Uh Orivio, I can't remember her name, but uh yeah, so that's not bad. If you like musicals and you like sort of big old full-blown theatrics, then you'll probably love this. Um what else did we have? So there was a few little bits and bobs of note this year. Uh so we're still having the sort of lesser superhero films sort of dribbling out as well. Uh, one of the worst, really, from the Sony Spider-Verse, as they try and call it. So, not to be confused with obviously the uh animated Into the Spider-Verse, but the ones that they're trying to spin off with Spider-Man adjacent characters, uh, was Madame Webb, which was uh Dakota Johnson, uh, as this woman who is the daughter of uh an explorer who got bitten by a spider and has basically spider powers. Um yeah, it's not done particularly well, excuse me. Um I think my main draw to go and see it was Sydney Sweeney in uh one of the roles, but again, pretty wasted, didn't do much in it. The story goes nowhere. There's some massive uh holes in the uh in the plot and the logic in that one. Can't remember too much about it, but uh I think it did pretty well, but yeah, nobody particularly liked it, I don't think. But yeah, apart from that one, there wasn't any other um Marvel films apart from Deadpool Wolverine, so none of the Marvel Sony's films, none of the MCU, anything. It all sort of left room for Deadpool Wolverine. There was no other um DC films this year, so obviously we had sequels due for things like uh Aquaman and um Shazam and all that sort of thing, which had come the previous year. Um I don't think it was anything. They were obviously waiting for the next sort of Superman film and the next sort of relaunch of of those ones, so nothing there. Um but the you know, the way that a lot of those DC films had been going, that's probably just as well. There was some continuing um franchises in Godzilla X Kong or Godzilla vs. Kong, I suppose, uh the New Empire. So that's the fifth one of the Monsterverse Um to date, and I went to see this one thinking I'd seen all the previous, but realised that I hadn't actually seen the first Godzilla vs. Kong, but I don't think it made too much difference to my enjoyment of it. Uh, we've got a fourth, Bad Boys, so Bad Boys Ride or Die. Uh obviously still Will Smith, Martin Lawrence. Um, again, a big hit. The previous one, the third film, had been sort of one of the bigger hits of the pandemic year of 2020, uh, because it was out, you know, early, early doors before um all the cinemas have shut down. So obviously, because it was a massive hit, you know, it got another quick sequel, um, which again in my memory they all kind of blend in together a little bit. Uh we had the what what ended up being the tenth Planet of the Apes film. So a second sort of batch of films based on uh the original. So you had your original runner five films, you had some TV series, whatnot, you had a remake, then you had uh the trilogy from uh Matt Reeves and the other fella whose name escapes me with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, uh Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and War for the Planet of the Apes battle. Hang on, Dawn Rise, Dawn War, yes, war for Planet of the Apes. So that trilogy was sort of done, and then all of a sudden uh Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes came up. So this is set many, many years after the War for Planet of the Apes, but continues that story. So Caesar's, you know, kind of a martyr, kind of a uh an icon, kind of a legend, um, and it's you know what's happened since, but it's pretty good. There's some sort of mysterious sort of uh human characters in it as well, um, and it sort of sets up a mystery for I haven't seen yet whether there's gonna be another one. I assume there's gonna be some more films somewhere down the line to continue that story. Uh likewise, another well, the start of a new series, but doesn't seem to have quite come to fruition yet, is Kevin Costner um had his sort of life's work basically doing a um an a Western epic, uh, which he's calling uh Horizon, an American saga. Obviously, at this point he'd been big in obviously movies for years, dancing with walls, all that sort of thing with his uh Western's open range. Uh he'd then just done five years on Yellowstone, which is a very, very good modern Western um series, um, which we've got over here on the Paramount Plus, I think it is. There's lots of spin-offs from that now. So his sort of era of it is done, um, and he's sort of concentrating on these Horizon films, which you know he again came out the gate saying it's going to be this big sort of trilogy, etc. Um, basically launched the first one. It's very sprawling, quite a slow build story, lots of separate sort of storylines, different characters I assume will come together at some point. Um, but yeah, it's pretty good, nice, nice watch, nice steady watch. Um, but it was supposed to lead straight into the next one. I believe the second one's shot, I believe they've done sequences for like the third, possibly even fourth. But it seems to have stalled a little bit as to what's happening. I think he's put a lot of his own money into it. I don't know if it was the success or got the release that it needed to be a big enough hit to support all of those. So, yeah, we shall see. But uh yeah, Horizon American Saga Chapter 1 was out in 2024. Um what else did we have? Argyll. So that was a Matthew Vaughan film, so kind of in the the style, I suppose, of um things like Kingsmen. And this was a story with uh Henry Cavill, and you had uh Bryce Dallas Howard. So she is a writer who has created some characters who she's then sort of caught up in this real life story that seems to be echoing the characters and the way that her life has gone, and she's got to help sort of solve because she's you know the writer and she comes up with these crazy characters and stuff. So it's all a bit you know, mind-bendy, and there's some kind of out there, you know, not supposed to be very real type sequences in it. It's quite good fun, it's um it's fine. Everybody sort of gives it their old dua Leaper in a sort of I believe a movie debut is quite good in it as well. Uh what else we've got? Um another one I enjoyed was the Fool Guy. So this was I was dubious about this because it's essentially a remake of the 80s TV series, which is one of my sort of you know 80s iconic action series, Lee Majors as a stump man who made extra money on the side as a bounty hunter. So it was a Glenn A. Larson production, lots of just crazy stunts, obviously, because he was a stump man, um, and yeah, the usual thing with fantastic supporting cast, Heather Thomas and uh Douglas Barr and stuff like that, Marky Post, really, really you know, iconic series of my childhood. So I'm always cautious when they're gonna remake those. So we've already had things like The A-Team and The Dukes of Hazard and all this sort of stuff, um, and you know, that hit and miss to varying degrees. This was okay, but it's okay if you enjoy it in isolation, as in it's a series where right, you know, it's a story, it's a film where Ryan Gosling plays a stump man called Colt Severs, and that's kind of about the the extent of the connection, really. There's nothing else to it that really links it to the series. He's not really a bounty hunter, he's just caught up in a sort of criminal thing. Um he's got a girlfriend called Jody, which Jodie in the series was never his girlfriend, she was just his like young apprentice and stuff like that. So they kind of jets in most of the sort of storyline from the series. Don't really worry about that, and just carry on with a yeah, pretty good you know, actioner about a stuntman, really. So it's okay, but yeah, with with the exception of a little cameo from the couple of the original stars at the end there, doesn't really link into the original at all, but it's alright. What else we got? Um Furiosa, which was a Mad Max story, so obviously a few years ago we had um Mad Max Fury Road, which instead of Mel Gibson, you had um not Eric Banner, what's his name? Uh Tom Hardy uh as another character called Max. I don't think it's supposed to be the same one, but also uh Charlie's Thrillon's character Furiosa was very popular in it. So this is her prequel, now played by Anna Taylor Joy. Um still George Miller, still a lot of fun, uh a lot of you know very cool car stuff going in there. Um and yeah, well we're seeing on the big screen if you can. We had a new Garfield animated movie. So obviously, this being 2024. If you're gonna have somebody voice an animated movie, obviously it's got to be Chris Pratt, that seems to be the law. Um he does a pretty good job of it. Um it's not a bad film, you know, as Garfield movies go, they keep having stabs at it at different animated shows. Um, you know, I love Garfield the character, I love the comic strip, I read that pretty much every day. Got it as my home page at work when I open it up, I'll get to see what Garfield's up to today. Um yeah, I think nothing they can do on film, whether it's animated or you know, live action, air quotes, um, or sort of 3D CGI like this is, it was never gonna quite work. It's never gonna quite work in the same way as that little three-panel, you know, cartoon in the bottom of the newspaper, I don't think. But you know, it's okay. It's a decent stab, in it. And this um the sort of focus on this one is it's a bit of an origin story, so it shows Garfield and Nodie when they're, you know, puppies and kittens, basically. Um, which is quite cute. Hopefully uh sold them a few toys, but uh yeah, it's just go back to the source material as a like a lot of these cases, you know. I'm talking about a uh daily comic strip and it's not as good as the book, but you know what I'm saying. So one that was um a little bit underappreciated, I thought, and came out of nowhere. I wasn't really aware of it before it came out, um, is one called Fly Me to the Moon, which is um directed by Greg Bellante, who you may well know from uh things like the Aroverse TV series. Uh he's basically all over tele produces and um uh writes a lot, a lot of stuff all over the place. But this is a movie that he's done with Challen Tatum and Scarlett Johansson, and it's kind of a fictionalized version of the uh faking of the moon landings, you know. So obviously there's that you know apocryphal thing that the moon landings didn't really happen, the Americans sort of faked it to make sure they did it uh uh before the Russians did. So it's kind of a the behind-the-scenes thing at NASA of when they were doing that, um, and they frame it as it's it's kind of like a backup in case the moon landing doesn't work properly. Uh so they're sort of you know putting these uh directors and uh sets and all this sort of stuff in place, and it's quite good and it's you know it's got a bit of a a sort of love story romantic sort of thing going on as well. Both elites are brilliant in it, uh and it's just good fun, really. But yeah, Fly Me to the Moon. It's um escaped a lot of people's notice, I expect, on that one. We had a good um Aliens uh sequel, prequel, I think it's a sequel. Trying to think where it comes in the um in the in the timeline sort of thing, but Alien Romulus, uh, which is uh Freddie Alvarez who did one of the uh Evil Deads back along. Um so yeah, big on horror, and it's a very well done film. Um it's it's a bit of a dubious sort of use of Ian Holmes likeness in their CGI um I guess AI or CGI uh him back to life, his character. So, yeah, so it must come after the original alien because they find the sort of destroyed version of of the synth that he plays. Um and it's yeah, these kids that are basically trying to get off world, um, sort of manage to get passage off of this crappy world that they live in on the on a ship, which has obviously got a xenomorph on it and and the usual alien hijinks in shoe. Um, but it's good, it's really creepy. Uh it looks fantastic, and it does keep you on the edge of the seat. I just actually last week, a little bit behind the curve, but I just finished uh Alien Earth, which is the um Hulu series on Disney Plus, um eight-parter. Uh really good, really recommend that. I think it came out in like August of last year. I mean mean to sort of you know sit down and get around to that one. Uh, and that's you know, very, very much recommended. And it does, you know, it's of a of a piece with this alien romulus, really. It's um along those sort of lines, it's about a sort of new bunch of kids, but these are sort of humans in synths in with humans consciousness implanted and uh a ship that's crash-landed to earth, which has got the alien on it, and all but it's done so well, it really, really is good. Um, the best episode, I think it's maybe fifth or sixth episode in, which is kind of like a flashback one, but yeah, brilliant, really, really good. Um, but yeah, Alien Romus, very good. In 2024, uh, we had an unusual Christmas film of um called Red One, which is um Chris Evans, The Rock. JK Simmons is is Santa, so a bit of an outlay. Santa, we I talked a couple of weeks ago about uh Fat Man with Mel Gibson, where and this is pretty much saying JK Simmons is you know, he's like a bodybuilder sort of hard guy, um, and he's got a bodyguard, which is The Rock, um, and it's basically Santa gets kidnapped, and uh The Rock has to basically get him back. Um but it was pretty good. It was one I was quite looking forward to seeing it at the cinema, and it just I it maybe came for like a day or two and completely disappeared. And I was like, Oh, that's you know, shame. I was looking forward to watching that one, it looked like good fun, and then it came on it just appeared before Christmas on um on Amazon Prime. It was like must have been one of the shortest windows between cinema and uh and streaming like ever. It was you know, but it was good because it was on there in time for Christmas, so that was quite good fun. Um we've talked about Wicked, um what else have we got? So, in terms of my own oh uh Twisters, sorry, didn't mention Twisters, which was a you know long-awaited sequel to Jan de Bont's uh original with Bill Paxton. So this has sort of flavours of the month, Glenn Powell and Daisy Edgar Jones, who I'm a big fan of. Um and yeah, picking up the story, I guess, of these tornado hunters. Um it does, it's what I it's a legacy sequel in the best way, in that it's not a remake of Twisters, it's you know, it is a sequel many, many years later, so you know the events of the original are acknowledged, but it's not, you know, necessarily following those same characters. I think you've got the same um Dorothy, which is the machine that they use to try and analyse the uh tornadoes, that's in there. Uh so there's that little link to the originals, but yeah, it's not sort of slavishly to the original, but it's yeah, good. Obviously, you know, brings the technology up to date and all that sort of stuff to give us the best uh sort of effects that you can, but it yeah, it's good fun. Like that one a lot. Um, and yeah, so in terms of my own top five for this year, uh I would definitely put in there, so we've got Transformers 1, which is uh an animated Transformer. So obviously, I mean you could argue that the majority of the last few uh Transformers films have been animated because they're pretty much all CGI with the occasional sort of humans in there. Um but this is fully animated, like as in per you know, a CGI cartoon. I saw that was coming out, I was like, why have they done that? Why don't they just continue with this, you know, the storylines that they've they've got? They've kind of left stuff half done on those um Platinum Dunes films that they've done. But it was brilliant. I really, really enjoyed it. It's uh it's a prequel, so it's you know, back when Optimus Prime and Megatron were best mates in a kind of like a an academy sort of thing, you know. So it is it is quite kidified, but the humour of it is fantastic. The storylines actually, you know, you you go along with it, it's good fun. Um and yeah, it was just uh quite an unexpected treat, really. So I'm really glad I did go and see that. It's you know, ends up being one of the best Transformers movies, if probably, you know, argue it. Well, probably was very good, but yeah, it could well be one of the best, certainly. Um we also had Ghostbusters Frozen Empire, so I talked just a couple of uh episodes back about my massive love for Ghostbusters Afterlife, which was the uh many, many years later sequel um from the son of the original director, uh so Jason Reitman. Uh he's still involved in this one, um, and the original cast are still involved to varying degrees in this one as well. Um, but it's actually directed by Jill Keenan, Gil Keenan, who was the co-writer on um on Afterlife. And yeah, so this again it's carrying on the story of the new Ghostbusters. So uh Gruberson, played by Paul Ryder, is now married to Carrie Kuhn's character. Uh you've got all the young Ghostbusters from the last film have all come back as well, Finn Wolfard and McKenna Grace and everybody. Um, and it's yeah, great. And you've got you know extended cameos, I suppose you call it, from Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson. Um, what obviously the the best thing they did in um Afterlife was the way that they managed to bring back and honour uh Harold Ramus. I talked to at length about that. It I was a little worried they were gonna try and sort of you know catch that lightning in the bottle again, and this one as a little sequence that seems to be tipping towards that they're gonna do that, um, but they actually have misfooted you, and it's you know, it's something completely different. So that was quite nicely done. So it was good. The the restraint that they showed in that I think was you know honourable again because you know they could have easily wow that worked so well in the last one, we can do that again. So it's a completely separate story, involves other um new characters as well. I mean, bizarrely, you've got James Acaster, who's a you know, a UK stand-up comedian who's you know, I really like seeing him live, you know, um in my hometown, sort of thing, and all of a sudden he's playing a nerdy scientist in a Ghostbusters movie that's kind of weird to get your head round. Uh, you've also got Kamel Ninjani, who is obviously quite a big successful uh US stand-up and uh actor and stuff like Eternals and The Big Sick, he's also got nominated for the right in that one, and currently in the UK uh Taskmaster. So we've got me on series 21, uh, and he's a contestant in that because he loves that show. So he's sort of you know come over here to do that and he's very, very good in it as well. It's a good show, it's a good lineup. Um but yeah, so they're all in there as well. It's slightly less effective, I guess, than Afterlife. You've still got that nostalgia thing, but it's I guess it's just it's a little bit more of the same rather than something completely, you know, unexpectedly out there as the as Afterlife was. But very, very good sequel. Definitely put that up there. Um I didn't mention actually Saturday Night, which is a um film directed by Jason Reitman. Perhaps why he didn't do this Ghostbusters one because he was doing this one, and this is a behind the scenes of the creation of Saturday Night Live, obviously the iconic US uh comedy show which has launched so many people over the years. Um, and it's basically a dramatised version of what was going on in the lead up to that first episode going out, so it's sort of behind the scenes almost in real time of them trying to get to air with this one. Um, and some of the um you know the actors playing those iconic roles from like Cherry Chase and Dan Aykroyd and stuff like this. Dylan O'Brien is um Dan Aykroyd, who you I've seen you know a lot of stuff from you know Tim Wolf to Mazer and all that sort of thing. Also, he's a really good actor. Um, but you wouldn't never look at him and think, oh, he's just like Dan Aykroyd, and yet somehow he just absolutely sort of epitomizes him. So he's very good in that. But yeah, so that's sort of an additional mention. Saturday night, very good film. Um, what else we got in my own top five? Also, oh yeah, the show Beverly Hillscott Axel F. This was a made for Netflix return for Eddie Murphy back in his you know best character. You know, I love the first two Beverly Hillscott films. There's also a third, um, but the first two, absolutely brilliant. Um, just you know, Eddie Murphy to a T, absolutely the role he was born to play, uh basically written around him, I suppose. Um, and they'd been a long time sort of trying to relaunch it. There'd been a TV pilot made, which no one's ever seen, uh, which was supposed to sort of launch his son as the new um, you know, star of the show, I guess, um, with Eddie Murphy cameo in as Axel. Uh, hadn't come to anything. And um yeah, they came back for this one. So there's everybody in there, Judge Reynolds there, uh, John Aston's there, um you know, even Bronson Pinchot, basically a very, very memorable cameo in the first one and came back for the third in this one. So yeah, everybody's there and it's very good. I really enjoyed it. For you know, it doesn't sort of, you know, scream, well, it's a you know cheap Netflix knockoff the original. It's a proper Beverly Hillscope film, uh, really, really good action stuff in there. Uh Joseph Gordon Levitt's pretty good in there. He did a little teaser video, I think, just before the film came out, where he's playing all these different instruments and he does the Beverly Hillscope theme, Axel F. Um, yeah, Google that. Yeah, Jason Joseph Gordon Levitt, uh, Axel F. It's great. He's really, really good. Um, but yeah, it's some there's some good stuff in there. Really, really good. I hope it leads to more because it was a great, you know, return to form for for the Beverly Eels Cops after the uh very lackluster third one setting the theme parts. Not a big fan of. Um but yeah, that was good. And yeah, so before we move on to Deadpool Wolverine, the other one I want to mention, a bit of a cheat because over here it didn't don't think it was cinema release, but it was a big um BBC One Christmas film for Christmas Day. Um, and it was the latest Wallace and Gromit. So Vengeance Most Foul. I knew this was coming, but I was under the impression it was just going to be another sort of half hour short. I thought it was gonna be along the lines of uh matter of loaf and death that we'd had probably a few years previously. Um had no idea it was a proper full-on, full-length feature film like uh Curse of the Ware Rabbit, um, and yeah, the best Christmas TV in decades, if not years, you know. Years if not decades. Um fantastic. It is essentially a sequel to uh The Wrong Trousers. So the villain from that one, as you'll no doubt remember, uh, it was Feathers McGraw, who's a penguin who disguised himself as a chicken. Uh and it turned out that when they foiled him, he'd actually stashed the uh blue diamond uh in a teapot in Wallace and Gromit's house. So he breaks out of prison, the zoo, um, and basically comes for vengeance. Uh and it's also got a brilliant new character in Norbot, which is a robot that uh Wallace has created to essentially help out Gromit in the garden, but uh they I think Feathers manages to sort of change the programming and this fleet of Norbots becomes this you know robot army and all sorts of stuff, and it's great, you know, there's characters that they've sort of taken from past one, so the the the policeman that Peter Kay plays, uh PC McIntosh, which is a fantastic pun name, is um you know a small character in uh Curse of the Were Rabbit, but they actually sort of you know put him up into full-time status in this one, and he's brilliant, and it everything works really well. Uh the voice is obviously not Peter Sallas this time, he's passed away, unfortunately. But uh, you know, the guy who does him is very, very good. I think it's the um co-director, Marvin Crossingham, and uh obviously Nick Park's the main director in it as well. So yeah, it's brilliant and it's fantastic. I think it may have got cinema release, but certainly in terms of uh if we're now counting streaming movies as movies of the year, then we can definitely count uh a TV movie of the same. But yeah, brilliant. Absolutely, you know, do not drop the ball at all in terms of the quality of those Wallace and Grobble films. Fantastic stuff, vengeance most foul. But that brings me on to the focus movie of the year, which is Deadpool and Wolverine. So a little potted history, I'm sure you know you're aware of it already, but obviously the X-Men films, which went for several years under the guise of um of Fox movies, they bought the characters off of Marvel many, many years ago. So Brian Singer did uh X-Men, X-Men 2, um, then they did X-Men Last Stand, a couple of other Wolverine spin-offs with Hugh Jackman, uh X-Men Origins, Wolverine, the Wolverine, all of these, and they didn't quite tie in together. There wasn't this sort of consistent storyline. Um, there was elements from each that would carry over, but never quite managed to have a consistent thread through them. Um then they did a sort of prequel um series of films, so you had X-Men First Class, which although didn't feature Hugh Jackman Heavily, is an absolutely fantastic one-line cameo in there. Brilliant. I won't tell you what it is because this is a uh non-swearing podcast, but really, really worth it. Uh, and that's a good film anyway. When they came back to do uh the next one, they did the Days of Future Past, Future Past, which is one of the best X-Men comic storylines that they ever did, and they managed to do that in the movies in terms of crossing over the prequel cast and the original cast. So, you know, you had two different actors playing the same characters at various stages uh throughout different timelines and crossing over and stuff, and that was really, really good. Um, and then X-Men Apocalypse was the next one of that series. Again, a little bit of a Hugh Jackman cameo in there just from where it was set as a sort of a prequel to the original X-Men, sort of leads him gradually into there, but he hung up his claws, so to speak, with Logan, which I did talk about um a couple of episodes back. This is you know based on the old man Logan storyline, and spoiler alert, it ends with Wolverine's death. He's buried by X-23, he's you know given a graveside and all that, great, given a grave marker and all this sort of thing, and that's where it sort of ended. And you know, Hugh Jackman was adamant that was it, he was done. Um they carried on the X-Men films essentially, they sort of well spluttered to a stop, I suppose, with um the Dark Phoenix, and um they tried to sort of relaunch it again with the new mutant, neither of which were particularly good, and notably neither of which featured Hugh Jackman in any way. Uh, in the meantime, also through Fox was Ryan Reynolds doing his proper, proper version uh of Wade Wilson or Deadpool as we well know him. He was sort of again, he was teased in X-Men Origins, was actually played by Ryan Reynolds, but they got that so wrong, you know, through no fault of his, but you know, the way that they did that character, you know, the whole idea of him is the murk with the mouth, and they sewed his mouth up, he didn't have any of that, there was no, you know, that iconic Deadpool look, but he's just such a popular comics character that they just completely did it wrong. Um, and in the comics, he's regularly teamed up with Wolverine. So, you know, there was great, you know, anticipation that that might happen at one point, but you know, they did two Deadpools, you know, the first one 2016, the second one 2018, Deadpool 2 is also I've talked about before, uh, Once Upon a Deadpool, which is a recut version of Deadpool 2 to make it a little bit more kiddie friendly, and loads of extra sort of film sequences in there, um, which spoofs Princess Bride bizarrely with Fred Savage. Very, very good, well worth a watch if you can if you can hunt that out. It's not easy to find. Um, but yeah, so then you had this whole Fox Disney merger, so it kind of bought obviously the ultimate goal of it is that it's bringing the X-Men into the MCU so they can be involved in the ongoing Marvel films, which is brilliant, but it kind of put a stop to the X-Men films that were being made, so there was no more of that series. They also cast a lot of doubt over, you know, Deadpool. A, he was a Fox character, so they didn't really want to continue a lot of those films, and also could they, because one of the big things about Deadpool, with the exception of that, you know, um what's up a Deadpool cut, is that they're very, very adult, you know, the stuff that he says, uh the stuff that he does, the stuff that you see in it, you know, it's swearing, it's proper, proper violent, uh, you know, there's sex and nudity and all that sort of stuff, and it worked brilliantly, you know, coming out of Ryan Reynolds' mouth, it's fantastic, really, really good, grown-up fun. But could they ever really do that in the MCU? You know, the MCU is slightly edgy in places, but you know, generally speaking, they are family films. I think up to this point, I think there'd been one swear word in uh Gardens of the Galaxy 3, literally one in 30 odd movies. So it was like, could they really incorporate Deadpool into it? Um and I've talked about before when there was this um teaser trailer that Ryan Reynolds put out. It's basically him sat in a room talking about how they've been trying to get a best idea for Deadpool 3. He talked about doing this, it's all sort of this dreamy sort of bit of him walking in an orchard and talking about the way they could do it, but they he just we just couldn't come up with a storyline. So I don't think we were gonna be able to do it. But we did have one idea, and then Hugh Jackman walks by in the background, and Ryan Reynolds is like, Hey Hugh, do you want to play Wolverine one more time? And he's like, Yeah, sure. And just literally, there's just like and he just like smiles at the camera and it's like coming soon, Deadpool and Wolverine, and it was like, Oh my god, this has to happen, this is gonna be amazing. You never know with those videos when he put them out whether it's just a jokey thing or whether it will actually come to anything. Because he was so adamant, you know, you Jack was so adamant that it was it, he'd hung up the claws, you know. Logan was such a fantastic finale for that character as well, but they do do it in yeah, I mean, there's a story-wise, there's a logical way that they can do it because you know Logan was set in the future long time after those X-Men films, so there is a kind of gap as a sort of prequel to Logan Um that they could do it, and also, you know, they do honour it, they don't do it like they don't do it in a nice way, but they do pick up on the fact that he's dead at the end of that one, and um, you know, he's kind of gone back in time bringing him back and all this sort of stuff, and he literally dig him up and yeah, it's brilliant, and it's just that's the whole like opening sequence of this one. Uh, and it's brilliant, and it ties in a lot to the further MCU in that it's based around the TVA, which is the Time Variance Authority from uh the Loki TV series, so that's the one that he's been sort of working for and with and variously against as well through his couple of seasons of stuff. So they've got the characters from that, um, and that's the way in which you know Deadpool's able to go back and sort of find the anchor being, which is is Wolverine, to help him bring the future, uh, you know, save the future and save the MCU. Um, and it's we it's always Deadpool. I can't remember the moment it's Deadpool the anchor being. He might be easy. I'm Marvel Jesus. Um, but there's yeah, there's just so many fantastic bits in there. I don't want to spoil it if you've not seen it, but you know, it was such a big hit, I'd imagine you probably have. But there's fantastic, not only cameos from existing, you know, MCU characters, there's a really sort of great tease about um with Thor sort of holding a dying deadpool in his arms, he sees his vision of that on the screen. Um, but also, you know, they bring back characters that we've seen, you know, briefly before in you know, little cameos and also sort of bigger roles as well. And then particularly with the legacy of the Fox film, so they bring back um again, I'm sure you've seen it, so if not, cover your ears. But they bring back Jennifer Garner as a lecturer, they bring back Wesley Snipes as Blade, for God's sake. Um, they actually put Channing Tatum in as Gambit, which was a film that they were gonna make, you know, it was happening to be happening, and probably got caught up in all this um Fox buyout and stuff and never actually came to anything. But you know, he's in there. X23's back, Daphne Keene's fantastic in there. So, yeah, it's just the way that they've done it and they've meshed in with the all the existing Fox films, all the existing MCU films, and just created something new and brilliant, and you know, as far as I'm aware, both those characters are gonna be in Doomsday. Um, so yeah, it's gonna be fantastic, and it's just it's so self-referential, which obviously all the Deadpool films have been, uh, with him sort of telling Hugh Jackman they're gonna have him playing this character till he's 90 and all this sort of stuff. Uh and it's great, and it's really affecting, and it's you know, there's little twists in there just when you think you know where it's going, it goes somewhere else, and yeah, it's wicked. And it's you know, it was definitely my film of the year, it's definitely straight into you know my top MCU films as well. Um, and it's great. I mean, it's tricky to know where to watch the Deadpool films in the run of the MCU when you're watching them because they don't initially tie into them. Do you watch you know all of the X-Men films now that Wolverine's part of it as part of the MCU? Not really, because they don't tie into that. Uh, so it's gonna be interesting to see where they go with it. Obviously, they've also teased other X-Men characters and things like the Marvels, um, and there's definitely gonna be some legacy characters coming back for Doomsday. We've already seen the trailer with Magneto and Professor X, so yeah, it's you know, like I say, it's pretty exciting. There was, you know, that was the only MCU film out in 2024, and it just opens up so many possibilities, it just ties in all of these characters that they've not been able to use up to this point, um, and it's brilliant, and just yeah, it is just out and out, hilariously funny. You know, they spend the majority of the film trying to kill each other in various hilarious ways. This humongous drawn-out fight sequence just inside a car. Uh it's great, it's so, so good. Just even now, just thinking about it, I haven't watched it in you know a few months probably, but it's I really want to go and watch it again, like right now, because it's reminding me how brilliant it is. I love it. So, yeah, Dead Paul and Wolverine. What a fantastic film for 2024. To round out our 50th episode, I say we are coming back to do one more 51. 51. So that's gonna bring us sort of almost bang up to date. So for last year, but 2025. Um, but yeah, this is very nearly done, this little project. So thank you so much again for sticking with me. I won't get too emotional right now because uh we've got one more to go. Um, but yeah, fantastic. I mean, we've pretty much done everything we said to do with it. Um, and we've got one more year to talk about. So 2025, here we come. Um the final episode. It's probably gonna be a week or two before that one lands. It may not land on the regular um sort of Monday or Tuesday of next week, but we'll try depending on when I can get down. But I want to, it's probably gonna be a bit of a bigger episode because it is gonna sort of tie up not only everything that we've talked about so far, uh, but also possibly tease and what might be happening further down the line. Um, you know, I'm not gonna continue milestone movies as a regular thing, but you know, there might be something else coming, these tea teases, even though I've not really planned anything completely. But uh yeah, so join me next week, tune in for that one, um, and we will go over it again in a lot more detail. But, you know, again, thank you so much for listening. Do appreciate it, and we will see you back for one last time next week. Okay, thanks very much. Uh keep watching movies, and we'll speak to you next time. Bye bye.