Puny Pod | Monthly Bugle January '25

[00:00:00] Welcome to Puny Pod's Monthly Bugle for January 2025. My name is Ryan and my co-host as always is David. David, how are you doing this fine 2025 night, a day after our pod-aversary, a day after our second pod-aversary? Happy pod-aversary, my man. What's second? Is that like copper? Is that wool? Is that tin? I don't remember.

[00:00:30] I should know. Is it adamantium? I'm doing okay, man. I'm a little distracted by the fires that are going on in Southern California right now. I'm not sure when this will release. I'm sure those will hopefully be out by then, but it's just a bummer. I live in a high-fire area. Some friends of the pod also live in high-fire areas in Colorado, so it's just a little sobering, if you will.

[00:00:55] Yeah, for sure, for sure. Definitely want to say that right here at the top. We're recording this on the 8th of January. You will probably hear this just to give a little bit of breathing room to our main show episode. You'll probably hear this on, I think, in about two weeks from now, because our Spider-Man episode just released yesterday, here, day of recording.

[00:01:23] So we'll give it a couple weeks to let that breathe, and then this will drop into your feed. So a little bit of old news, so hopefully we're in the mop-up stages by the time you're hearing this. But anybody impacted, I know we have a lot of listeners in that Southern California region. We'll look at our numbers and that sort of stuff. That's a big, big region for us.

[00:01:49] So for everybody impacted, I hope that you are as safe as you can be, and I hope that the impacts are as minimal as possible. So, not to get us off on too far of a down note, though, do want to get this month, as is kind of our tradition here with PunyPod,

[00:02:15] in the month of January, we kind of dedicate the Monthly Bugle to, in the past we've done our year-in-review in January, but we actually did that last month in December, so go check that out. Go check out the Monthly Bugle for December of 2024. That has all of our year-in-review stuff with a really fun kind of Christmas theme to it. A review of all the Marvel movie. Right.

[00:02:43] And our lambasting of the Sony Spider-Verse. But, yeah, go check that out. This month, we are going to look forward. It's typically light news here in January. January is not a very heavy news cycle for Marvel, typically, so not a whole lot going on.

[00:03:07] And now, granted, I'm going to say that in the next two weeks before release are going to be, like, completely loaded, and you guys are going to be like, you guys missed all the best stuff. They announced that they're going to release ten more movies next year. Yeah, out comes Blade, right? Right. But it gives us a chance to kind of look forward to the year. And so, we're going to do that this month. We've also got some comic content.

[00:03:37] There was a little bit of news in the comic world, so I wanted to cover that. We do have, what I'm really excited for is we actually have some current content. Almost, I think, almost every Monthly Bugle this year, we will have current content to cover, which is really cool. I get really excited about the current content part of the Monthly Bugle. It's kind of fun to put on our critic hat and talk about these a little bit.

[00:04:06] So, this month, we have What If. So, What If was the third season that came out. It aired from December 22nd to December 29th on a nightly basis. They released one episode each time.

[00:04:26] The third season here was written by Matthew Chauncey and Brian Andrews and Stephen Frank directed with the animation coming from Flying Bark Studios and Stellar Creative Lab. So, really, really, overall, it was a good season. We'll talk about it here as we go in.

[00:04:55] I also do want to mention, we're going to talk about some actors and such that were in the episodes. But one actor that is not going to get mentioned just because he was in every episode is Jeffrey Wright. He reprised his role as Uatu the Watcher, which we'll get to here as we talk about the episodes.

[00:05:20] But first, so, for those who don't know, What If kind of explores alternate timelines, alternate ideas for how the MCU could go. Right. How, how, and it's actually based on a comic book by the same title. Or, I guess, sort of based. Based on a comic book is kind of a funny thing to say because it's not, they're not necessarily borrowing storylines from those comics.

[00:05:48] But the conceit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so, really fun. Really kind of, like, lets them explore the space a little bit. Yeah. So, the first episode was called What If the Hulk Fought the Mech Avengers?

[00:06:07] And this was a really fun episode where, basically, the Hulk had bombarded himself with so much gamma radiation that he, like, spun off a version of himself to become a kaiju. Think Godzilla. So, big, stompy monster. Mark Ruffalo voiced Bruce Banner in this.

[00:06:33] And then, the Avengers had to fight the Hulk kaiju. Fight the gamma kaiju. The Avengers were made up. The primary Avengers in the episode were made up of Anthony Mackie voicing Sam Wilson slash Captain America. Tiona Paris doing Monica Rambeau. A.K.A. Photon. Sebastian Stan doing Bucky.

[00:07:04] David Harbour being Red Guardian. Simu Liu as Shang-Chi. And then, Oscar Isaac as Mark Spector slash Moon Knight. And then, also, Milena Voskov, which was Red Guardian's girlfriend in Black Widow.

[00:07:31] She, her wife, she also showed up but was not voiced by her actress. She was voiced by Carrie Walgren instead. And then, Nakia represented Wakanda and was voiced by Brittany. I should have practiced this one before I tried to jump straight into it. Anambola. And, not Nakia's original actor there. So, you forgot one.

[00:08:01] Who did I forget? You forgot one. Incredible Hulk. Welcome back, Edward Norton. Sorry. No, Mark Ruffalo. Yeah, yeah. Mark Ruffalo doing Incredible Hulk. So, all of those Avengers have to use, like, mech suits. Think Gundams or Voltron or Power Rangers.

[00:08:27] Or, take your pick of big stompy robots. Pacific Rim, if none of that was niche enough for you. But, big stompy robots fighting big stompy monsters. It was a blast. It ends in them all combining Voltron style or Power Ranger style. Earth, wind, water, fire. Power Rangers.

[00:08:56] That cracked me up because we were just watching Far From Home where, like, there's that whole little throwaway joke. But then I was like, oh, hey, that kind of came back. Thank you, Mr. Dale and Mr. Harrington. Yep. I loved this episode. This is my kind of thing, man. The Pacific Rim movies are some of my favorite movies from the last, like, decade.

[00:09:21] Um, so, this was absolutely down my alley. This was, oh, Ryan, you want some Marvel joy here? Take it. Enjoy. Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah, the, um, yeah, coming in, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting to think about the stories that they select, the order, how they kind of build upon each other. I think what if is oftentimes for the most part supposed to be a lot of standalone episodes.

[00:09:52] Oftentimes there will be a character or a theme which will kind of advance through the whole thing. So, you think of someone like Agent Carter who is basically, in my mind, the star of What If? All the seasons. If you were to, like, pick one person out. But, um, this was very Stan Loney. I'm not gonna lie. Coming into the season, I was like, oh, man, What If? Let's do this. I'm super amped. And the first one was like, this is not my jam. So, I was just like, eh, it's okay. Like, it's all right. Like, I don't, you know, I don't hate it.

[00:10:21] It wasn't like, this is not the leadoff hitter I would have had. I would have batted this one around sixth or seventh in the lineup. But that's just me. Like, you know, if you, like you said, if you enjoy that kind of, like, mech and the artwork and, like, specific rim, like, right down your alleyway. For sure. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And, yeah, and I will say this season, so I think the second season did this. And I'm trying to remember back. I think the first season did, too.

[00:10:51] The first half of the season is very standalone, right? It's very, like, none of this really impacts the rest. And then it flips a switch and it goes into kind of an arc type story. Mm-hmm. And so this was definitely part of the standalone. These mechs did not come back later or anything like that. Yeah. Yeah. Second episode, What If Agatha Went to Hollywood?

[00:11:21] You know, it's basically Catherine Hahn as Agatha Harkness. Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo. Dominic Cooper appears as Howard Stark. So nice to see him back and working again. That's kind of cool. James Darcy as Edwin Jarvis. And David Kaye as Arishem. So the basic plot, this is the second one. We were choked for the show. Like, I like the show. But there were a couple episodes where, like, I had to watch a few times. I fall asleep. I made a mistake of starting it on late.

[00:11:51] And this was one of them. I had, like, a rough week of work. And, like, I'm, like, 930 like an old man. But in this one, so I had to watch a couple times. Agatha, you know, she's up to her old tricks. She's planning a magical ritual to siphon the power of Tima, the celestial witch is buried in Earth's core. As a reminder for folks, I have not seen The Eternals. So a lot of this is kind of lost on me. But so I'm just kind of like, I'm just like, you know what? I'm just going to let this one play.

[00:12:19] I'm not going to rewatch the scenery. I'm just going to let it go. So, you know, but she becomes an actress. To do so, she becomes an actress in the golden age of Hollywood. And she stars in a film that was directed by Howard Stark. So, again, Dominic Cooper reprising his early role. She has Stark cast Kingo, who is the final Eternal. Camille Nanjiani's character that she needs for a spell to work.

[00:12:46] And she, you know, she's already taken the other element, Eternal's power. So she's trying to, like, hang on. But we get some cool kind of fun dance scenes. The choreography is fun. The music is fun. I like that quite a bit. But with Stark and Jarvis, Harkness takes Kingo's Entumut's power. And she becomes a Celestial after defeating Erishem. Kingo convinced Harkness to give up the Celestial power in favor of joining him in the movie business for real.

[00:13:14] And during the premiere of their movie, quote, Cosmic Queen, entitled Cosmic Queen, Kingo notes that the released Eternals are worried that Erishem's defeat has drawn the other Celestials' attention. But Harkness assures them that they can be, quote, saved for the sequel. So what were your thoughts on this one? I liked this one. I do wish there's some part of me that wishes it was other Howard Stark just because we talked so much about how other Howard Stark reminded us of Walt Disney.

[00:13:44] And so putting him in Hollywood would have been just full circle. But I did like seeing Dominic Cooper come back. This is so every season in What If? I feel like every season in What If? There's like the one episode that you're like, man, I really wish I could see this live action. And this is... Oh, yeah. I could see that. Yeah. That's a good call. I would love to see Catherine Hahn play off of Kumail Nanjiani.

[00:14:10] Like, just to see that chemistry on screen would be super fun. But yeah, I liked this one. I also have watched the Eternals quite a few times. And so it was cool to see them come back. I was really happy in these first two episodes. There was some of those like, have we forgot about these properties that Marvel at least paid some lip service to?

[00:14:35] You know, between Moon Knight and Shang-Chi and now and then in this, the Eternals. It was kind of nice to get at least a little bit of some some for them. You know, of course, it's no movie or anything, but an animated show is at least something. Yeah.

[00:14:55] And it's an interesting comment around live action versus animated because there are some episodes that we'll hit on some in a few that I prefer as an animated, if that makes sense. Oh, absolutely. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. I think the first one... Good luck doing that one. There's your $120 million episode of What If right there. Right. And then, yeah, probably that Howard Duck one.

[00:15:24] That one. Let's do that one live action. No, please. Let's not. Speaking of which. Yeah. Oh, wait. No, we're on three. One more. One more. Yeah. So the next one here, episode three. What If the Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier? So this one was interesting. David Harbour coming back as Red Guardian again. Sebastian Stan voicing Bucky Barnes again.

[00:15:47] And Lawrence Fishburne coming in to pick up Foster, Bill Foster, and finally actually get to be Goliath. Dracoff was in this one. I don't remember if that was his original voice. So it was Karpov. And then actually Obadiah Stain showed up, not voiced by Jeff Bridges, unfortunately.

[00:16:12] But basically, the basic story here is that a jealous Red Guardian stops Bucky Barnes from killing the Starks. Right. And then hijinks ensue. They end up going to Vegas.

[00:16:37] A ranger, National Forest Service ranger by the name of America Ferreira gets involved. Or I'm sorry. By the name of Ranger Morales, voiced by America Ferreira, also gets involved in the hijinks. It's kind of your classic, like, unlikely buddy cop movie from the 80s, I feel like.

[00:17:05] It wasn't quite, you know, it wasn't like they started off buddies, but like enemies to friends type of movie involving classic Russian stereotypes from the late 80s, early 90s. I thought it was fun. It was funny to see Obadiah. I was not sure it was Obadiah at first, and then I was like, oh, yeah, okay, that's who it is.

[00:17:34] I liked this one. It was definitely one of those where, like, this is a story I would like to have seen. Right? This is a story that makes sense to have seen. And in the very end where they're doing the Battle of New York and Red Guardian, like, drunkenly stumbles into frame. Pretty great. Yeah.

[00:17:59] We haven't seen a lot of Red Guardian, so it is a nice way to introduce him and his character and his powers a little bit more. And I always loved seeing Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, so that was good. I, the part where the, it ends up where the Red Guardian joins the Avengers, I was a little bit like, okay. Yeah. The only thing that got, I'm not going to lie, got a little bit tiring. There were a lot of communism jokes.

[00:18:29] A lot of, like, proletary, every other line. And if he, I swear to God, if that's a preview of the Thunder Pulse, I'm going to lose my mind. Yeah. Yeah. He was, Red Guardian was definitely very communism-pilled. Yeah. That was, it got, it got heavy in that one. Yeah.

[00:18:55] It's just, it's sort of like, it's just like, you know, when you tell a joke, like, too much. And you're just like, okay, let's, you know. But I did enjoy the animation, did enjoy the action. And it was a fun little kind of buddy, team-up duo that you wouldn't normally see. Yeah. Yeah. The next one, which caught me by surprise. This one is off the rails. This one is off the rails. Episode four. What if Howard the Duck got his beak wet? Literally.

[00:19:25] Totally. So, we have Kat Dennings' voice as Darcy Lewis. Love Kat Dennings. She's always great. Oh, yeah. Very funny. Like, very charming. Seth Green is Howard the Duck reprising his role from... Guardians. Yeah. Guardians, yeah. Samuel Jackson is Nick Fury. Tom Hiddleston appears as Loki. Clark Gregg is still alive, showing up as Agent Coulson. Michael Rooker shows up as Yondu, and I love that.

[00:19:53] And then I was like, wait, that's not... Who the hell's Matt Friend voice in the ground? It's not Jeff Bull. No. No. You know. And it's just... It was close, but off enough. His voice, I was just like, I'm not buying this garbage. And then a lot of other, you know, same characters who played Ebony Moss, who played Topaz, like, same people. Chris Hemsworth showed up. So pretty... Josh Brolin. Yeah.

[00:20:20] So a pretty large collection of voice talent. And as an aside, like, I don't know if this is part of the original contracts. They have to, like... This is, you know, something that they have to do as part of their service to Disney. But I don't know otherwise how you're getting, you know... Josh Brolin has other bigger things to do than voice... Yeah. ...thanos, like, two minutes of this show. But this was a fun callback to... Was it season one where Thor has his party on Earth? Yeah.

[00:20:50] And I thought that was super fun. Early on, you know... So Howard the Duck has married Darcy for some reason. I guess they met during the party. They get hitched. They have a baby that forms in the form of obviously an egg, of course. They get invited by the Grandmaster to join the crew. As soon as I see the ship, I'm like, ah, let me get me some Jeff Goldblum. And then, like, 30 seconds later, like, yeah, not getting Jeff Goldblum.

[00:21:16] And as they arrive, they're on the ship. It turns out they're trying... They're decoding the menu, the breakfast menu, whatever it is. And it turns out they're trying to eat the egg. Fury... Fury and Coulson show up. And they explain their child was born to a rare alignment of the Nine Realms called the Convergence. And it's destined for great things.

[00:21:43] Yondu arrives, steals the egg, delivers it to Cassilius, who we haven't seen in a long while. Yeah. Who kills Yondu. And then attempts to use the egg as a host body for Dormammu. And, I mean, just pause for a second. Like, I would not recommend watching this movie under any kind of, like, any strong medicines. Or just because it is, this will drive you to madness. So, shield attacks. They try to acquire the egg.

[00:22:13] Couple recovers it. It's a big kind of back and forth, you know, where they're going down the mountain and they're riding. You know, they kind of end up at the very, very end. Yeah, they end up at Jotunheim, which is a ski resort now. Which is a ski resort run by Loki. Just, you know, blue Loki, right? Because it's... Right. Yeah. The Black Order there. Thanos. Zeus. I mean, it's just... Oh, I forgot Zeus was there.

[00:22:36] Like, and the egg, you know, suddenly glows, rises in the sky, and then just starts laying waste. Right? Just wiping out enemies. And then hatches into a human-duck hybrid. Kind of like a duck centaur, I guess, if you will. Which the parents name Birdie, with a Y. B-Y-R-D-I-E. That's not what you think.

[00:23:06] That's not what you think. And then, you know, Fury lets the child stay with the family. And they raise it. And that's the last we see of Birdie in the show. So... Oh, wait. No, it's not. I didn't... Wait, I didn't see episode eight. What are you trying to tell me? I'm sorry. So, did you like the episode? Was this kind of like... I did. I love... Top, middle, bottom third? I... Out of... Out of what?

[00:23:34] So that's top eight, middle eight, bottom eight, probably, as far as like... Just this season. Yeah. This season? Yeah, yeah. I can't... We'd have to go back and watch everything to think about them all. I'd say it's like top of the middle for me. Okay. It was good. I enjoyed this one a lot. I like the absurd ones. Like, the absurd what ifs kind of... Like, it's... They're not fine art by any means, but... They make me laugh. And this one made me laugh.

[00:24:03] I think they hearken to the comic, which I originally read. This is obviously the MCU version of What If? So it's not like following comic lines. But they just take just a wild concept and we're like, what would happen if this? Right? And that is the basic... And this is, I think, very true to that. This is very emblematic. Yes. I agree. I agree. So then... Then this is where...

[00:24:30] And this is kind of where the flips... Or the switch flips a little bit. Like, Birdie does come back, but... The story of that... That episode doesn't necessarily come back a whole lot other than Birdie coming back. But from here on out, it's all kind of part of a larger story. So the next one here is, what if the emergence destroyed Earth?

[00:24:58] So the emergence is from Eternals. Basically, the idea of Eternals is the Earth is an egg and we're going to give birth to an Eternal. I thought you were going to say, Howard the Duck is the parent of Earth. So the emergence happened in this timeline. So the Earth is broken up. And... Quentin Beck!

[00:25:27] Our old buddy, Quentin Beck, has taken over Stark Industries. Unfortunately, not voiced by everybody's favorite red scarf-wearing Jake Gyllenhaal. Instead, voiced by a voice actor, Alejandro Saab. So Quentin Beck takes over Stark Industries and creates basically the Ultron army.

[00:25:56] The big old Ultron drone army. In this episode, we do have Riri Williams, played by Dominique Thorne. I believe that's her original actor. Yep. And then Emily Van Camp reprising Sharon Carter, a.k.a. the Power Broker. Keenny Ramsey voiced Okoye, which is not original Okoye.

[00:26:27] Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, right? Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, which is her, obviously, or her original voice. And then I do want to also mention, in the end, we do get to hear The Eminence, who is voiced by Jason Isaacs. And for my... Star Wars... Or for my Harry Potter fans out there, Jason Isaacs is... Is...

[00:26:59] Malfoy. Lucius Malfoy. Mm-hmm. So you may recognize him. So, story of the episode, right? The Earth's broken up. Basically, Mysterio takes over the world, as it were.

[00:27:19] And Riri Williams is fighting against the kind of oppression of Mysterio. She meets with the Power Broker, who turns her over to Mysterio, essentially. But she is saved by the Alliance. The Alliance is made up by Wong, Okoye, Valkyrie, and Ying Nan.

[00:27:47] After beating White Vision, Riri uses Vision's components to become a human-synthozoid hybrid herself. And then, you know, it's a fairly basic story, if we're being honest.

[00:28:08] You know, she uses the parts from Vision to infiltrate the compound and beat the bad guy.

[00:28:22] And so, it was really cool to see, obviously, right on the back of watching Far From Home, we got to see Mysterio show back up, which was cool. Mm-hmm.

[00:28:40] And then, at the end of this episode, we do see where, like, we see that Riri's about to lose, but the Watcher intervenes, right? Right. He encourages Riri to get back in. She gets back in and fights on, and the Alliance becomes the Avengers.

[00:29:05] But, at the very end of the episode, we see that other Watchers are displeased by our Watcher's interference. Yeah, this one we saw a little bit more of Riri, who we saw in Wakanda Forever, who will be showing up in her own show later this year. Yep.

[00:29:25] And, I like the scene where she is given, like, her, you know, her vast array of, like, because she was, you know, scavenging for parts to make this thing that would defeat White Vision. Which, by the way, White Vision, I love animated. Oh, yeah. And it's frightening. It's great. This one is definitely one I would prefer to watch animated versus live action. I agree. And they're like, how long do you need? And she's like, I need 12 hours.

[00:29:54] Well, spell will last, like, what is it, seven and a half minutes or something like that? And she's like, what? And she's, like, creating, you know, using, trying to take some of the tech that the Alliance had, you know, incorporate in her gauntlet, and then defeat White, kill White Vision, take his parts. And then, as she's, like you said, she's about to lose. The Watcher intervenes by, you know, giving her a little pep speech. Yeah. Yeah. I liked this one.

[00:30:21] And it was a good, like, I like a good dystopian future. It's always fun to do some dystopia. And, like I say, fun to see Mysterio show back up. Mm-hmm. Especially just with the timing compared to our podcast. Yeah. I like this one. The next one was What If 1872. And it features, it's principally focused around just a handful of characters.

[00:30:50] So, Simi Liu appears, again, as Shang-Chi. Haley Steinfeld reprises her role as Kate Bishop. Wyatt Russell as John Walker, U.S. agent. And Mingura Zhang as Zhu Jilin, who was Shang-Chi's sister, played the hood. And good old Walton Goggins appears, Sonny Birch. Much to the happiness of my heart. Yeah.

[00:31:17] So, it's in the 1860s. You know, we see some of, like, Shang-Chi's family stories. This is a story that talks about how, you know, and it feels very real today. It has a different meaning that hits when you start talking about the immigrants and so forth. You know, basically, you know, 12 years, his sister disappears. The hood's plan is to enslave Chinese immigrants in order to consolidate its power.

[00:31:47] It's 12 years later, and Shang-Chi is searching for his missing sister along with Kate Bishop, who wants revenge on the hood for killing her family. They go to the township. They meet a young boy named Kui Jun Fan, who tells him how the hood tactics meet, demonstrates his own prowess with martial arts, which is pretty cool. They, I love the scene where they go into the saloon, and it's just the two of them.

[00:32:13] There's probably, like, I don't know, 14 dudes with pistols. And Shang-Chi just takes his hat, throws it in the air, and in the time before it falls, they've defeated everyone. And it was, that was a fantastic scene to watch. We later saw them, you know, they see the ghost train, which they board. It's basically a train that's running on Stark Tech. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't run on train tracks. It just kind of floats above the ground.

[00:32:41] They, you know, on the train, the young boy sees his dad. They're all kind of, like, hypnotized. You don't really know what's going on. They're all under some sort of spell. Get to the front car. God bless. Who's there? Everyone's favorite. It's old Sonny Birch. And so, basically, the net-net is the watcher, you know, so train stops.

[00:33:12] Shang-Chi goes to fight the hood. You know, Kate Bishop stays on the train. Sonny Goggins' character, you know, opens up a watch, which has this kind of mesmerizing kind of spell. It's an airworm. It hypnotizes her. However, we see Shang-Chi fight. Turns out that the hood is his sister. We don't know if she's been... She's obviously been through a lot in the 12 years. And so, she obviously recognizes her brother, but she's trying to fight. He refused to fight. He...

[00:33:42] She... Kate Bishop breaks out of the spell. You know, kills all the goons. Well, you know, Senne Goggins is still alive. She's... She's... She's... She's... She's... She's... She's sister, as he thinks that she is going to kill him. And... That's kind of the...

[00:34:04] That's kind of the end of the movie, other than the fact that, you know, the watcher is punished by the other watchers for interfering. And, you know, causing shards of their observatory to kind of spill into the multiverse. So... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like this one. This one was fun. It... It's... These, like, elsewhere... Like, out of time kind of ones. They did a medieval one last season. And... Yep.

[00:34:34] It's really fun. I think they called it, like... It was, like... What did they call it? Like, Stark... Or, no, it was cross... Instead of being cross-technology, it was, like, cross-manufacturing was one of the... Yeah, yeah, yeah. ...things. Um... And it's just fun to do some of that. I will say the hood is actually the character that Anthony Ramos will be playing in, um... Ironheart. So...

[00:35:02] Different hood, but... It's kind of interesting, because in this, it definitely depicted the hood as, like... Like a garment that corrupts its wearer, I guess, is the best way to do it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it, right? You know, and obviously, like, mentally, Decade is... Again, she recognized her brother, but, like, couldn't resist... Couldn't kill him, but also had to defeat him, if you will, and only if he would fight her, so... Yeah. Um...

[00:35:32] So, I thought this one was fun. Again, you know, they did a really good job of pulling in some people we haven't seen, right? Haven't seen, um... Kate Bishop, Hawkeye, in a minute, so... Cool to see her... Cool to see Shang-Chi come back again. Fun to see Walton Goggins get to voice Sonny Birch again. Everybody's favorite black market dealer. Um... Yeah. Um...

[00:36:01] Moving on to Episode 7, where we really start to get into the arc story, right? This is essentially... Episode 7 and Episode 8 are two parts of the same story. Um... So, Episode 7 is What If the Watcher Disappeared? Hayley Atwell shows up as Peggy Carter, aka Captain Carter. Uh... Devery Jacobs shows up as Khori, who... Devery Jacobs had voiced her, uh...

[00:36:31] Actually, uh... In the previous season. Devery Jacobs also has another Marvel, um... Credit. She actually was in Echo. She was the, like, sister... Um... She was... She... I don't think she was... She was Echo's sister. That's right. She was Echo's sister. Okay, I didn't know that. Yep. Um... Also, if anybody has watched Reservoir Dogs... Or Reservation Dogs. Not Reservoir Dogs. Reservation Dogs. Devery... I was gonna say, I don't recommend...

[00:37:00] Remember her from, like, Reservoir Dogs at all. Um... But, uh... And then, um... Allison Seely Smith, who I believe, if I remember right, voiced... Yeah. Uh... She voiced Storm in X-Men 97. She shows up as Storm here. Um... Natasha Lyonne, uh... Voices Birdie, which... Not reprising, but... Also, you could have told me that that was the voice of...

[00:37:30] Miss, uh... Mrs. Incredible. And I would have believed you, because that's who she sounded like. Oh, that's a good call. Yeah, I could see that. Um... Karen Gillian reprising Nebula. Kat Dennings back as Darcy Lewis. So, Seth Green is Howard the Duck. Taika Waititi back as, uh... Korg. Russ Marquand, uh... Who is a pretty big voice actor, uh... In as Infinity Ultron. Um... I don't think there's any...

[00:37:59] Formerly Red Skull, right? Yep. Yep, exactly. And, uh... I bet you're bummed to see that, um... No Vin Diesel. No, I was gonna say. No Vin Diesel. No Familia. Yeah. Yeah. Um... So, what if the... So, what if the Watcher disappeared? So, basically, out in the fifth dimension, the Watcher's standing trial for his interference.

[00:38:26] Meanwhile, this, like, team of, uh... Multiversal Avengers, if you will, um... Are kinda jumping around, stopping multiversal incursions. Um... After stopping an interdimensional universe eater from attacking Earth-625, those shards that got knocked out of the fifth dimension get knocked into Earth-625,

[00:38:51] and Peggy Carter and her team, consisting of Kahori, Birdie, and Storm, the goddess of thunder, uh... Complete with Mjolnir, uh... Decide that they are going to... Um... Investigate this. Um... After... Almost blowing all of their... Their charges, they...

[00:39:20] They find three shards, and in classic, you know, kind of movie tropes sort of thing, Um... First, you have Peggy try science to get to the fifth dimension. Um... Using the time pods from, uh... The quantum... From Quantumania. Uh... That doesn't work. Then you have, um...

[00:39:48] Storm try and use god powers to get to the... To the fifth dimension. That doesn't work. Finally, they realize that they only have one shot, so... They have to go pick up Infinity Ultron, AKA an Ultron who got the Infinity Stones. And in most universes where that happens, Infinity Ultron just kind of sits there. He kills everyone, he empties out his universe, then he just...

[00:40:18] Kind of hibernates. Um... So they figure it's pretty safe to go pick him up if they have to. You know, if they have to prune his timeline, they're not impacting anybody else. Uh... So they... They had to go get, uh... Ultron. And, um... By the end, we find out that Ultron is not necessarily the bad guy that... That...

[00:40:47] That Peggy has convinced him to kind of join the team. Yeah, it was kind of a combination like... Ultron, Vision's face, and all the Infinity Stones, right? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So I like this one. It... Like I say, it's part one of the... Like, these last two episodes are part one and two of the same episode. So you're saying that this is your version of Infinity War? This is your... Yes. Okay, just checking.

[00:41:16] What's more than... What was it? What's more than beyond? The last episode, which... I can summarize pretty quickly, because it was mostly fighting. Yeah. And there's very little dialogue. So you get a flashback where the Watcher joins. Watcher Disciple named Watu is recruited to become a full-time Watcher by the Eminence. His... You know, he has the little like... You know, little... He says a few words, and he is basically joined.

[00:41:45] In the present, he is being tried for repeatedly interfering, which is kind of the first rule of the job description, is like, don't interfere. But we saw it interfere in the Shang-Chi episode when he saved his brother, who's on top of the train. Saw him help out Riri Williams, and, you know, has been involved, you know, and has a soft spot, I think, in some sort for Captain Carter. Mm-hmm.

[00:42:15] So, Watcher and Carter are rescued by Ultron. He sacrifices... Or it sacrifices itself to buy them time to escape. You know, the Watchers give chase, and they're trying... They're basically on their vengeance streak. They're trying to erase everyone from existence. And, you know, basically, they're about to kill... The Watcher's about to kill... It's a grand... I usually say CGI battle, but it's a grand animated battle.

[00:42:47] The Watcher tells them to say the special words, and now they are all Watchers as well. So it's like a five-on-three fight. The net-net of it is... You know, they're about to win. They've got them cornered. Watcher asks them to... Watu asks them to yield. They refuse. You know, he lets up. He has some... He has a little bit of sympathy, and they... You know, the existing Watchers...

[00:43:16] Or they weren't the Watchers, but the three that were fighting our group repower, are about to kill them. Captain Carter jumps up, sacrifices herself. The Watcher... The new Watcher group wins, and the Watcher convinces the Humble Trader to learn by watching over life in this new universe. They're now in like the... The Doctor Strange Supreme Universe, where they're now kind of tasked with like watching things. And so...

[00:43:47] And then they just watch it with the multiverse. They can no longer... Birdie, Kahori, and Storm are now Watchers and don't intervene anymore. That's the end of season three and the end of What If for now. Yeah. Which they were such a tease, man, because then they were like, if you ponder the thought of What If, and then they just like show this montage of different What Ifs. You know, Riri Williams is like a Punisher, and like Star-Lord,

[00:44:17] if Star-Lord got the Ten Rings, and they show like all these like concepts for different possibilities. I'm like, man, this is why you don't stop this show. Like, don't stop this show. Stop stopping. I think... I think... I think it's fine to pause it. Yeah. Coming into the season, I had a lot of high hopes, and I think you and I were talking on a prior episode and basically saying, look, it's not that expensive to voice... to create these shows.

[00:44:47] It's all animated. I don't know what it costs for the voice talent, but I can guarantee you they're not drawing, you know, movie picture level salaries. But I got to the end, and I felt like, you know, some of them were kind of repetitive. The 1872 was a little bit like the one from last season, although that was probably my favorite one. The, you know, the last two were fine. I just... Not that... I don't think they'll ever be out of stories, but I wouldn't mind... How would I describe this?

[00:45:16] I wouldn't mind stacking up some more MCU content and then kind of going on from there. Like, I feel like, okay, I've seen all these characters, but I wouldn't mind saying, I don't know, let's get some X-Men in here. Let's, you know, let's get the Thunderbolts. Let's get, you know... But I do like what they did. I like what they attempted. I like the introduction to new characters. I like revisiting ones we haven't seen in a while. Very kind of sentimental for some of them. Yeah. And I enjoyed it. Like, I think it ended kind of at an okay spot.

[00:45:46] I don't think it's over-over. Yeah. Right? Yeah. They left the door open at the end. It felt very much like, like, we might come back to this when we need to. And I think, you know, if they wanted to, they could get away with voice actors over screen actors if they wanted to. It's nice to see. It actually got to be kind of a funny game for me because I'd be like, oh, who's going to show up

[00:46:14] during the opening credits because, you know, they show all the voice actors in the opening credits. I'm like, oh, Chris Hemsworth, Thor's going to be in this one? What? Turns out he says, like, one line. But, yeah, so, I definitely hear what you're saying of just, like, you know, let it stack up a little bit. I think it would be fun if they did maybe, you know, weekly releases in the future too

[00:46:43] instead of the daily releases just to stretch it out a little bit. I would agree with that. I think, I get why you do it all at the same time. They're not sequential. It's not really a binge watch, but at the same time, I would like them to be out and kind of breathe a little bit, you know, even if you did two a day or whatever, but like, yeah, so, yeah, it was fine. It was good. It was enjoyable. Yeah, I'm looking forward to like five years from now

[00:47:13] when we come back to it in our, in our main show, but. We could have murdered people for this, like, you know, in the, in the turf, which was like a lot of 2024 with nothing on. We're like, oh my God, shoot this, what if heroin in my veins right now. Well, let's, let's move on. You talked a little bit about 2024. That was the last thing of 2024. Let's move on to 2025. Um, so yeah, my friends,

[00:47:41] we are in 2025. Um, and I want to give a quick rundown of what's coming out and then actually the way that we're going to talk about what's coming out is going to be a draft. It's going to be our bet. We're going to explain that in a second, but first I do want to give a quick rundown of what comes out this year. So on the movie front, we have Captain America, Brave New World on February 14th. Very excited for that one. Uh, Thunderbolts may, it's Thunderbolts comes out May 2nd. Oh,

[00:48:11] Thunderbolts asterisk. I almost forgot the asterisk. Uh, Thunderbolts asterisks come out, comes out May 2nd. Um, for those who don't remember, uh, Captain America, Brave New World is Sam Wilson, uh, Captain America, and then Thunderbolts is going to be, uh, the, the kind of anti-hero team up. Um, Fantastic Four First Steps comes out, uh, July 25th. And then there's

[00:48:40] actually no non-MCU Marvel movies slated for this year. Sony has dropped wild. Yeah, that is wild. Yeah. Um, maybe, maybe we'll get, uh, a Spider-Verse sneaking in here, but I doubt it. Uh, I think, uh, the animated Spider-Verse that is, um, that's probably not until 2026. Um, there's actually no Spider-Man. Uh, there's, there's a little bit of, there's, there's Spidey and his amazing

[00:49:10] friends possibly this year, but, um, other than that, really no Spider-Man content at all. Spider-Man Noir with Nick Cage is not due out until 2026. Um, it's filming right now. But, um, oh, I say that and then literally the first thing on my TV shows is Spider-Man. I'm an idiot. Uh, second to last, but yeah, you met, but you met non-MC, non-Marvel, like not MCU

[00:49:39] Marvel shows, right? so then over on our, yeah, on our Disney Plus shows, you've got Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man coming out January 29th, so about a week after you guys are hearing this, that'll start up. That's a weekly release on Disney Plus. I'm pretty excited for that one. Um, I actually heard today that they are bringing, um, Daredevil in, uh, for that. that, uh, what's his, Charlie Cox

[00:50:08] is going to voice Daredevil for that, so that's pretty cool. Cool. Uh, Daredevil Born Again, uh, comes out March 4th, again, weekly releases, Ironheart, June 24th, I don't know that they've released, they've said what the release schedule for that one will be, Eyes of Wakanda, um, August 6th, Marvel Zombies, October 3rd, Wonder Man is set for December, they have not set a specific date yet,

[00:50:39] um, and then some non-MCU but Marvel-based stuff, these are both preschool shows, so, of particular interest to me. Um, Spidey and his amazing friends season 4 has been ordered, has not been released, date has not been announced, but I'm gonna guess it's coming out this year, and then also Iron Man and his awesome friends, which I am so excited for, it's the same animation as Spidey and his amazing friends, um,

[00:51:09] but it's, uh, Iron Man, Iron Heart, and actually Amadeus Cho in armor, uh, so I'm pretty excited for that one, uh, so I can get the kid into some Iron Man, so, or as he likes to call him Pew Pew. I like the idea that they'd say, okay, we're gonna take character, we have all these illustration plates, all these voice actors, all this talent, we're just gonna come up, and it's gonna be so-and-so in this, right? So it's gonna be Morbius and his fantastic buddies, right? like,

[00:51:39] so great, um, all right, so the, let's talk about the draft, so this is a conceit that we've talked about a couple times. Uh, last year, uh, we had our, uh, you know, just straight, let's pick the, you know, which movies are gonna make the most money, you know, that's a little bit, it's a little bit tough when you've only got a couple movies, it's tough when there's only one really good one, it's tough when

[00:52:08] like the, you know, other ones don't do as well, but we'll get to that in a second, and the, you know, so we thought like, okay, let's total up, we'll do one Marvel movie, we'll do a related, something that's not in the MCU, but it could be a Marvel non-MCU movie, which we said there are none of, um, so something else which you can, that isn't kind of logically related to the, uh, to MCU, so it's one

[00:52:38] Marvel movie, one related movie, and we're going for like total revenue, and then we're going to bring in like the, like, like scores, like critic scores, fan scores, so the thought is like, okay, yeah, you picked, I don't know, um, uh, you know, such and such movie, but it got dragged, and they got like a 12% critic score, or vice versa, like you, you know, maybe your movie

[00:53:07] wasn't like the highest rated, but it had like a 96% critic score, so, uh, we came up with this very scientific formula, we ran it past the people at MIT, and they gave us a big thumbs up and said, sure, let's do this, so. Yeah, yeah, so, um, so basically the way that the, that we're going to pick these is going to be in a draft style. We are going to go ahead, we're going to do snake draft, um,

[00:53:38] which for anybody who hasn't done fantasy sports, what that means is if you pick last in the first round, you pick first in the second round, which there's two of us, so basically we're just going to be picking two at a time, um, but, um, yeah, so, got to pick fan favorite TV, so kind of keeping in mind we are probably going to use Rotten Tomatoes as our, as our fan favorite because unfortunately there's really not, I just can't find

[00:54:08] a replacement for Rotten Tomatoes that, um, does kind of a percentage based ranking rating situation, um, so we do take with, that the flaws that come with Rotten Tomatoes, right, and that is something I do want to name going into this, you know, for anybody out there yelling at your phone going, you guys are idiots, you're gonna deal with review bombing, yeah, we, we know that that's a thing, and unfortunately that does probably

[00:54:38] color what we choose, right, that changes what we, what we choose for that category, we got our Critic Darling TV show, um, a percentage, um, they do it out of 100 so it's easy to make it a percentage, um, and then yeah, like David talked about, the box office totals for movies, you can, you can take them in any particular order, yep, the, let me, let me ask you this, well,

[00:55:07] what is your going into it, do you have like any kind of strategy, I can tell you right now, I'm not, I'm not picking anything that has like a December release, there's no way I'm picking Wonder Man, like, I, anything which is ordered, no release date, I just can't pick that, that's fair, that's fair, I, December makes me nervous, and maybe we'll talk about it, well, it depends on what people pick as their wild card, uh,

[00:55:37] I don't want to give it away, but there, there's a December release that's really tempting for wild card, um, so, um, so yeah, David, I'm going to give you first pick as you lost this year, and so as we go into this draft, we're gonna key, I think it just makes sense for the previous year's loser to get to go first. I appreciate it, um, I am, dude, so I, I, I looked at, so one of the things was

[00:56:07] if you pick a non-Marvel movie, just, just to kind of reiterate, it has to be, it has to be kind of related, it just can't be like, hey, I'm gonna pick Star Trek, you know what I mean? Like, it has to, right, unless it's like, oh, it's the same, uh, whatever, so, um, this is a tough one. From a strategy perspective, I feel like, the three, I mean, not to, well, things, the three Marvel movies will probably do, all do pretty well, I think there's one that's gonna do probably better than the other

[00:56:36] ones, um, but I am going to go, I'm gonna go with my wild card and just get it out of the way, and I am going to choose, uh, where is it here? Let me get my notes up, bear with me a second, God, excitement is riveting, um, I am going to choose a, where's my word document? Hold on, so sorry, sorry, this is great radio, uh,

[00:57:07] little indie film called Avatar, Fire, and Ash. That was the December, that's a December release. It is a December release, but as the rules last year, I got all of Craven. Yeah. Now, I'm gonna tell you the tie, the, the connection, so, in Avatar, Fire, and Ash, Don Brooker does prosthetics for Fire and Ash, for Avatar, and was the uncredited makeup

[00:57:36] artist for Thor Ragnarok. All right, so let's go and go with the Zoe Saldana or, you know, Disney made it. No, it wasn't, well, it wasn't, maybe I did, so I got some more, uh, and they get a little bit better. So, uh, Damon Weathers, he was the special effects studio manager at a company called Legacy Effects. He worked on Civil War, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and 3, the Holiday Special, Captain Marvel, uh, Infinity War, Endgame,

[00:58:06] She-Hulk, um, just based, uh, uh, Black Panther and Wakanda forever, like, worked Legacy Effects, uh, and is also, is working on this movie, Special Effects. Uh, Wet FX, which if you remember, is the New Zealand-based digital visual effects animation company based in Wellington, founded by Peter Jackson. They do all the Avatar movies, and they did VFX for Thanos in Infinity War, and it was

[00:58:35] the work they did on Thanos, which helped inspire some of the work that they kind of advance. Each time they kind of iterate and they get the, the visuals better. Avatar Flight of Passage is a 3D flying simulation from Pandora, the world of Avatar, Disney's animal kingdom. Disney World also has the Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind, a Marvel theme ride. But, you know, on a serious note, the, the ride was actually, uh, created involving

[00:59:05] staff from Walt Disney Imagineering and James Cameron's production company Lightstorm Entertainment. Nice. Um, three other real quick things and I'll shut up. Black Panther became the first film since Avatar to hold the number one box office spot for five weeks in a row. And Avengers Endgame famously beat out Avatar, James Cameron's film, for, uh, the all-time top grossing movie of all time. Cameron, who was the self-proclaimed king of the world, re-released Avatar

[00:59:34] in spite to climb back to number one. But the, the number one thing, and this is actually, you know, the other ones are kind of a little loose, but James Cameron in 1990, as the popularity of X-Men is exploding. Marvel set up a meeting with Lightstorm Films, which is owned by James Cameron. So it's James Cameron and others and Marvel sent Stanley and Chris Claremont, who was the writer of X-Men, to go pitch the X-Men. And from the reign of Marvel Studios book, Chris Claremont describes the meeting as, quote, so we're chatting up,

[01:00:05] we're chatting, and Stanley says, I hear you like Spider-Man. And James Cameron's eyes light up, and they start talking and talking and talking for 20 minutes about Spider-Man. And then Claremont says he turned the lights from, guys, realized that the X-Men movie just died right there. And Cameron wrote a scriptment, which is like a cross between a script and a treatment, that moved towards movie production. And they had Leonard DiCaprio, who was going to play Spider-Man, and Doc Ock,

[01:00:35] who was going to be played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. And because there were lawsuits over the movie rights, Cameron moved on to make Titanic. And Cameron would go on to say that Spider-Man was the greatest movie he never made. Wow. That's really cool. No, I thought about Avatar. Because it's going to make a lot of money. It's going to make a lot of money. I have a

[01:01:04] proposal for you, but let's get through some more of the movie drafts, and then we can talk about the revenue piece. Yeah. So, round one, pick number two. I am going to go for my Marvel movie here. You're not going to pick Raven. That is bold. Let me type it in. Hold on. I'm going to take Fantastic

[01:01:33] Four first steps. I think, for me, that stands the best chance of making the most money. I think that people are very excited for Fantastic Four. It's got a really great cast. even Bach Mac even I can't say his name. Even Moss Bacharach as the thing. Joseph

[01:02:03] Quinn is Johnny Storm. You've got obviously Pedro Pascal as Mr. Fantastic. Sue Storm. I actually don't necessarily recognize that actress's work for myself, but I can't remember her name off my head. I wish I had it written down. Vanessa Kirby? Vanessa Kirby. Yep. The first

[01:02:32] family is the first family. I think it's going to... I do fear that it may not have legs. Isn't Superman right after it or right before it? Superman's right around it. I think that the other risk to it is that it is a... One, it's a period piece. Two, it's an alternate universe piece, so it's not actually on Earth

[01:03:02] 616. So I do have some concerns with that, so I'm definitely banking on a big opening weekend. I think it probably has... It has some risks for its run, I would say. And so I am picking this as hopefully something that just storms out of the gate and makes a boatload

[01:03:31] of cash and then the cooling kind of legs don't matter too much. Let's do this. Let's for the movies, let's predict how much we think it'll make. And not like price is right kind of rules. I will say that Fantastic Four is the clear number one pick and I would not be surprised if it made a billion dollars. Yeah.

[01:04:01] I think that's very well north. I think that like if I were to pick a number I would say 750 ish. Yeah. 750 was kind of where I was. And I think it makes because because Deadpool and Wolverine made made 630 in its opening weekend.

[01:04:31] and I think that Fantastic Four I don't think eclipses that opening. It's not it's it that was just ravenous fans just hungry and they marketed the heck out of that movie. They did. so I don't think I don't think you'll hit that but if it made eight nine hundred I would I would not be surprised at all. I'm not I the period piece I get you those typically don't do as well

[01:05:01] but that's kind of when you're talking about like you know World War it's not a return to a character it doesn't have it doesn't have needless controversy around it

[01:05:31] you know it kind of just is going to be what it's going to be they yeah they don't have to write out their main villain character because of some domestic assault right like it's all good that's a great choice that would have I debated like taking that number one moving over to my round two so snake draft this is a tough one this is a very tough now question for you when

[01:06:01] you draft the show do you have I I am going to draft as my

[01:06:31] fan favorite okay so highest fan rating highest fan rating I'm gonna go daredevil born again god damn it I so I think there there is someone who could come up from behind and I won't say it because I don't want to give it away but I do think daredevil people are hungry again people are

[01:07:11] there is a low floor here wherein they mess it up I doubt it I really doubt it yeah I agree but I think the fans are going to be the harshest critics where either it's gonna I think that it's either gonna be like 100% fan score or like 60 right there and no in between there's gonna be no middle ground for this project um

[01:07:42] it's it's gonna be like 90s or 60s and nowhere in between I hear you because and because the series premiered on Netflix and was pretty well received if it's seen as like oh this is kind of like a knockoff version I can see a low score but conversely you know Marvel did the Deadpool movie and

[01:08:12] fans loved it so that's a great choice that's a great choice this is by the way for because I saved talking about stars Charlie Cox is playing Daredevil basically everybody from the Netflix show Debra Ann Wall the guy who played Foggy everybody's back Kingpin's back so and we don't know a lot about the plot other than I think it's going to involve Kingpin's political Kingpin maybe as his

[01:08:42] time as mayor of New York but really not a whole lot out there about the plot which is kind of exciting I kind of like that right I the only question is whether you would pick it for fan favorite or

[01:09:12] critic darling and I think fan favorite makes more sense because people love them some violent daredevil right yeah for sure so with my second choice I will pick for my fan favorite I'm gonna pick

[01:09:42] hmm I feel like there's a couple choices all right I'm gonna pick two TV shows I'm gonna talk myself through fan favorites critic darling I'll take eyes of Wakanda and I will take I don't know how well the kids shows are rated so I have no idea like but people love Spider-Man so I'll take friendly neighborhood Spider-Man and I think I'll do

[01:10:12] eye Wakanda for my critics choice and my fan favorite being friendly neighborhood Spider-Man I feel like the floor for eyes of Wakanda are it's pretty high yeah the last Black Panther movie was good not great and it's possible that eyes of Wakanda is kind

[01:10:44] risk doing doing that as my fan favorite because of because Rotten Tomatoes is basically the you know can can you can kind of like bomb things but Black Panther the movie I think remains the number one ranked Rotten Tomatoes MCU movie of all time so I feel okay about that one and then Friend Neighborhood Spider-Man man fingers crossed I saw the trailer we'll talk about it it looks good so

[01:11:14] to clarify you're taking Eyes of Wakanda as fan favorite and then Spider-Man as critic darling yep it'll be interesting we should run the math next time at the end of the year what if we had swip those and would that change the result yeah for sure and Eyes of Wakanda for those who don't remember four episode miniseries animated Ryan Coogler at the helm kind of telling the story of what Wakanda was doing

[01:11:44] while it had to stay hidden the elevator pitches this is the history they had to hide when they were isolationist okay we'll talk about friendly Spider-Man when we talk about its trailer we'll talk a little bit more about it who is your number three choice my number three choice is I'll go ahead and get my wild card so I thought heavily

[01:12:13] about picking two Marvel movies because I did think I do agree that I think the three Marvel movies are very strong contenders for big bucks but I'm actually going to branch out and I do not have to stretch to get this connection because what I'm going to go ahead and pick is I'm going to the dark side and I'm going

[01:12:43] to pick Superman are you yeah I'm going to take Superman I think the trailer got a lot of buzz it I think was like the most watched trailer maybe of all time maybe the last decade or something it's trailer has a lot of buzz James Gunn is at the head of DC he's at the steering wheel now and he knows how to make a movie

[01:13:14] the guy knows how to make a superhero movie and I think I think the DC fans are hungry because you know they've gotten some good TV shows but they have not gotten great movies you know their latest movie was Joker Fully Adu which was not great from what I understand

[01:13:44] and the Superman fans haven't had a movie in a long time and Superman is a has a big fan base so I do think I will say I think that next year could be a big box office year for superhero movies I can absolutely see a world where the top four movies of the year are all superhero movies there's some kids animated IP stuff sequels that I think it's gonna be

[01:14:14] hard to beat but I would say of the live action yeah probably yeah yeah like Avatar stands you picked Avatar which is a super legit that was absolutely on my radar for a wild card it's gonna they always have Avatar always has a big opening weekend that's that's how they work and they're always awesome in theaters right they're the type of movie that you don't want to watch on Disney plus you want to go to the theater and see it because it's big and

[01:14:56] billion soups soups I put it at a billion yeah I'll put it at a bill I think I think your two will combine for two billion for sure yeah I think so you know kind of come down score we can talk a little bit about Superman is a good one that's a good choice who's your what's your critic darling this is a tough one because I have not looked up how

[01:15:25] Spidey and his amazing friends or how Iron Man does on or how they would do on the critics I don't know those I and I'm worried I will say I think that the big TV shows have been plucked which if we added another one it gets this kind of like which one's got like the highest I don't even want it I want like a 13 on Rotten Tomatoes yeah uh

[01:16:01] do I take okay I'm gonna take the risk because I don't have unfortunately I am gonna love I know because it's robots I'm gonna or it's it's mech suits and stuff I'm gonna love Iron Heart I'm gonna love Marvel Zombies but I don't know that the critics will um I think that um Iron just a shoot them up type of show for the critics

[01:16:30] and I worry that Marvel Zombies is just a little bit too weird right it's a what if plot so I am going to take the risk I this is a risk because it's a December release date are you doing it but being a critic choice we will have a return right it's not like Craven where we don't know what the number will be or whatever we'll have a return

[01:16:59] already um so I am going to take Wonder Man okay I think that's a good choice for a couple reasons I think um one you know when you yeah and so that's tough Wonder Man could be really good um there's also chance and the one reason I thought about like picking Wonder Man is like there's also

[01:17:29] chance it doesn't come out so I yeah that that doesn't it doesn't hurt me there is a chance that I get a I get a big fat goose egg there which it'll be what it is I I don't think it hurts you though I mean it doesn't add to my multiplier right but think about like this so so okay let's let's think about this so Daredevil Born Again its score I think will almost certainly be above Wonder Man yeah and if you take that math and if Wonder Man you know I mean it's

[01:17:59] possible Wonder Man does well in which case you're going to do real well in results but then if Wonder Man doesn't come out then you just have your you know you just have your Daredevil score right 100% of your splitting it between two right for sure for sure yeah so yeah I think I will also say I think having a two billion dollar movie projection makes me

[01:18:31] bit of a risk on the TV side yeah those are pretty much how I'd rank things dude I don't know how critics are going to feel about Marvel zombies or Spidey and his amazing friends it would have been funny if we had to draft everything if we could figure out like the movies would have gone first because I think Fantastic Four is going to make significantly more than Captain America Brave New World or Thunderbolts

[01:19:01] Captain America Brave New Order not World is my it's World right or is it Order I think it's World I think it's World I've been writing Brave New Order a bunch of places but Black Panther was also awesome

[01:19:32] and I just know that there was I was not going to take Captain America Brave New World if I had to multiply that towards the fan favorite score I was absolutely not going to do that because you know people are going to bomb the hell out of it so I'll take Brave New World now now looking at the totals here if you feel like do you feel like that's fairly balanced do you feel like do you feel like

[01:20:02] Avatar skews things too much no I think we're pretty fairly balanced and I will also say we do have so let me ask you this are you worried about Avatar having enough legs to where we shouldn't settle this in January next year no we can settle by January I feel pretty confident like I feel that like four weeks

[01:20:31] or so like it's going to be in December I think it's going to be in for like 13 or so days if it time time if we wanted to let the box office completely play out we could do that yeah I

[01:21:01] think again unless it's within you know a couple thousand maybe yeah and then we bring in the accountants and then they do all the audits it's fine the only thing a very small part of me I'm not a huge avatar fan I I I I pick it not because I want it to do well but I pick it because I think it will do well yeah a very small part of me also hopes that it bombs out I

[01:21:40] novelty of the first one this kind of amazing world you're like oh this is so great I really want to see this and I

[01:22:10] I know I thought about it I think that could come back to buy me but I think we'll see we'll see yeah yeah so in total real quick David's team is Avatar Ash and Fire Fire and Ash Eyes of Wakanda as his fan favorite TV show Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man as his critic Darling and Captain America New World Order or Brave

[01:22:40] New World whatever it is as his Marvel movie for my team I am picking Fantastic Four First Steps as my Marvel movie Daredevil as my fan favorite Daredevil Born Again season one since we know there's two seasons I guess I should probably denote that and then Superman as my wild card movie non-Marvel movie and then Wonder Man

[01:23:09] as my critic darling so look forward to kind of tracking that throughout the year and speaking of the rest of the year and in our podcast I want to give a quick rundown of what this year has in store for our podcast so January on our main show we released our Spider-Man Far From Home episode that released on January 7th so go listen to that it's a good one it's nice tight like I think we finished it in like two hours or less than two hours

[01:23:40] really fun fun episode so go listen to that one you're obviously listening to on the year and preview here on the monthly bugle in February we will have our phase three phase in review on our main show and on the monthly bugle we'll get to review Captain America so we'll we'll kind of get our actually at that point we will have our first returns because we'll be able to

[01:24:09] talk about potentially Captain America but also depending on when we record but also friendly neighborhood Spider-Man so that'll be cool we'll get kind of our first returns on the bet we'll kind of be able to check in on a few things there March we are actually doing a brand new type of show on our main show we are doing a saga review we don't know exactly what that's going to entail but I will say

[01:24:39] we are going to encourage some audience participation so get in on the ears up discord if you want to join in on the audience participation side of that it's just me and Ryan trying to fight to get the six infinity stones I probably talk a little bit about daredevil we should be probably partway through the season at the

[01:25:09] time we record I'm also going on a cruise in March so I will get to talk about the experience of watching Captain America on a boat on the monthly bugle so that should be fun actually I specifically picked a room down the hall from the movie theater on the boat just so that I could you know sneak out and go watch Captain America that's cool um and then we get to April uh and our main show in April

[01:25:38] so David are you ready for our grand reveal of the payoff of last year's bet sure let's let's run the numbers I've got my accountants on the other line I'm ready to like audit these results all right so for a reminder uh our bet last year was it was originally the very very original bet was David got the top two performers

[01:26:08] of Sony's releases now this was under the auspice that into the spider that the last spider verse animated movie was going to come out so David was going to get basically that plus probably Venom was our guess at the time I it was we had it was awfully quiet it was like we haven't heard a lot and I'm a little worried about it was like blade level

[01:26:37] volume right um so then it became clear that that wasn't happening um and so we felt pity on me and just gave me a bunch of other Sony crap to like try to pull it out to be that you got all of the Sony Marvel so you got Madam Web I think I think after Madam Web came out is when we were like oh god yeah let's give him all three and then I forget what bet we

[01:27:10] it was our the total he gets the the box office from the best performing non Marvel Sony movie which this year ended up being Bad Boys Ride or Die so David your

[01:27:40] totals for this year Madam Web 100 million dollars or yeah about 100 million dollars a little bit over 100 million dollars I'm not going to read the exact numbers but I'm going to kind of round for us here about 100 million dollars Bad Boys Ride or Die $404 million Venom The Last Dance

[01:28:12] $478 million not bad now I have here now I don't know if you win the last time you checked the box office I'm looking at box office mojo dot com for craving the hunter I'm including January in the likes 587 million 872 thousand 610 I think you added a zero there bud what oh

[01:28:42] 58 million oh Jesus Christ wow I almost I almost made as a joke in the draft was like hey we got to throw in if we added Craven's January numbers and that was another Marvel movie how quickly we would have dove on like the three Marvel movies because it made dude it made 1.76 billion

[01:29:12] million dollars this month and then dropped out of theaters so yeah um so that's so bad at math it's it's uh it's been a rough year for Sony and their their spider villain verse and it's dead they've crushed that spider um who knows maybe dollar gap so

[01:29:42] on the flip side I got just Deadpool and Wolverine now if I had been better at betting at guessing who was going to show up in Deadpool Wolverine I would have got the Taylor Swift eras tour theatrical release added to my total that was my side of the bet um but um Deadpool 1 billion

[01:30:12] 338 million dollars I think it's number 9 or 10 in MCU now yeah if you were not doing the math at home which no one is which no one absolutely no one is did I clear 600 you cleared a billion okay 1 billion 1 1 billion and 41 million dollars I had five movies or four

[01:30:42] four okay I'm sorry I had um two you know a tour films two half a billion yeah or you had two that that didn't clear the half a billion mark but they got close actually venom didn't do terrible it was the number 10 movie last year dude venom did yeah but venom did tear I mean it was a bad year for the box office um first half was really bad second half was better Deadpool Wolverine certainly helped that out

[01:31:13] venom if you were like we could look at the numbers another time but like if you would just look at the venom films I think first one made like 800 it was north of 800 850 and now this

[01:31:47] the bag over there at Sony so with that what our bet was we wanted to expand beyond just Marvel movies or just MCU movies right and so in the interest of that keeping ourselves sharp keeping ourselves able to explore other things we are we each kind of we each had our preferences but I am here to announce as the winner that in April

[01:32:16] we will be doing our typical breakdown on Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift this is my favorite of the Fast and Furious movies so I love this movie so much and it has a Marvel actor in it it's got well it's got a couple Marvel actors actually now that I say that

[01:32:46] the guy who plays DK was actually in Drift King in the movie he was in the Wolverine and then also obviously Vin Diesel he shows up in a cameo in the movie and he's great so there we go yeah we'll do this I'm absolutely not writing the screen breakdown for this my man although that would be a great double

[01:33:15] punishment just like yeah you gotta write you have to do 10,000 word like oh god have fun with the production details I'll have fun with production details for sure so then we actually get into what's what's interesting is where we are in the movies right we're in we're we're getting we're inching towards 2020 right I think actually was Wando Vision released in 2020

[01:33:47] yes yeah wait so we are in 2020 so we actually have a we have a lack of movies for a little bit here so we're really really excited I'm I'm really excited this is a part of the MCU that I have been really looking forward to us getting to and so we start in on some

[01:34:17] TV shows instead of movies we don't know exactly what this is going to look like I'm going to say we're not going to break it down in the same like nth degree detail that we break June will be Falcon and Winter Soldier

[01:34:46] I believe that is also first and only season July will be season one of Loki August will be back to a movie the universally enjoyed and not at all controversial Black Widow September we will have What If season one October Shang-Chi

[01:35:13] which I'm actually really looking forward to that one that one I'm actually really excited to rewatch and then David's favorite I'm actually really looking forward to this episode November will be Eternals which famously David has not watched so we won't be a Marvel rewatch podcast for that one episode I've watched like the first 15 minutes and fell asleep Shang-Chi is the

[01:35:43] only movie I'm looking forward to on this list I like Black Widow I actually this is a decent year for me personally but and then actually what's kind of cool is the way it all worked out is Hawkeye which is based at Christmas time we will be releasing in December so that's kind of cool right in the holiday season yeah it'll be fun to I've not I actually

[01:36:13] started rewatching Falcon Winter Soldier recently after what was it it wasn't I don't know if it was Endgame but before then I was just like oh let me I just want to go kind of revisit those characters because I really like the dynamic and it's been a minute since Black Widow and Shang-Chi and others so it'll be we should put things in context of the pandemic and like how things were really very difficult to make and produce certainly in some cases there was very little box office we'll talk about Black Widow stuff when we get there

[01:36:43] so yeah and I think it'll be interesting I think about Falcon and Winter Soldier and the way some of its themes will be interesting in modern eyes as well yep totally and also in the context of the new Captain America film yeah absolutely absolutely so yeah definitely good year here ahead on the pod I'm excited for it like I say this is stuff I haven't watched a whole I haven't rewatched a whole lot

[01:37:12] of because it's new there hasn't been a lot of chance to rewatch it and I I also struggle to rewatch TV sometimes so I'm excited to get back to it this is these are some ones that you know a lot of the movies will say I rewatch this every other week or whatever I would say this year is not not really one of those years these are these are ones that I couldn't recite right now from heart

[01:37:43] so yeah looking forward to that I hope you all join us on this journey real quick before we do our wrap up stuff I do want to get to a little bit of comic news so I know that in the past I have done the kind of Marvel unlimited releases and I've been trying to do that every month I'm going to skip that this month there's not a whole lot coming out that's super exciting other than there is an Ewoks book

[01:38:13] coming out so go go read Ewoks you have to read Ewoks but what is really exciting that I do want to mention is we did get the titles announced for our free comic book day comics those who don't remember free comic book day first first Saturday in May and your friendly local comic book shop will have free comic books for you to pick up those free comic books from Marvel this year will be

[01:38:42] Fantastic Four and Giant Size X-Men number one this is kind of being built towards movie fans so if you are a movie fan go to your comic book shop pick this one up it's being kind of targeted towards like hey this is right before they come out Fantastic Four comes out on the big screen so go check it out you know good couple of really basic teams easy teams to read with Fantastic Four and X-Men

[01:39:12] so go check those out this is not to be clear this is not the 1975 Giant Size X-Men correct it's a bummer man because that comic's worth a lot yeah moving over to something more for our comics heads so if you are already a comics reader this is probably the one that is going to tickle your fancy a little bit more it's a combo issue of Amazing Spider-Man and Ultimate Universe number one so last year they brought

[01:39:41] back the Ultimate Universe though it is a different Ultimate Universe than what they had done originally but for those who don't know that's that's an alternate universe where they kind of explore some different ways it's very closely related to 616 but this is a prologue to kind of the big event in the comics for the summer which is ultimate which is into the big event right this is kind of your entry ticket there

[01:40:12] so those are the two more traditional ones moving on to some less traditional fare you do have Star Wars which includes three stories one is a Luke story so a story about Luke another one is a story about Qui-Gon Jinn and Tensu Run who's actually a comic books Jedi he's big in the comics books but not real big on the TVs or movies and then a new era story about a mysterious character and how

[01:40:42] he links up with kind of our big Darth Vader guys Marvel Voices number one that also has an Ironheart story in it this was meant to lift up kind of underrepresented voices within the comic book sphere so in this particular issue you will have an Ironheart story you'll have Mystique and Destiny's wedding you'll have a Patriot story that's not Iron

[01:41:11] Patriot that is Patriot and then you will also have a brand new Ghost Rider kind of cool usually focusing on communities like the LGBTQIA community or communities of color those sort of situations usually what you get in Marvel Voices so check that one out and then last but not least one that I definitely will have to pick up is Iron Man and his awesome friends and Spidey and his amazing friends

[01:41:41] number one these are super cute it's based on the Disney Junior shows it actually has like coloring pages in it too so if you are somebody out there who wants to get your preschool or kindergarten age kid into comics go get a free one let them rip it up let them color on the pages and you get a fun little story I've read actually from Marvel Unlimited they upload these on Marvel Unlimited like a couple months later

[01:42:10] and I read last year's free comic book day one to Ted as like a bedtime story at one point and it was really fun it was really cute it's one of the episodes in comic book form it's not they're not breaking any new ground it's not challenging by any

[01:42:40] you know whatever for a comic and then they're ripping it up instead it's a free one that they can do with as they see fit so so yeah those are our free comic book day titles really excited for that I'll probably remind you guys again in April's monthly bugle about all those again just because then it's a little closer to the actual free comic book day but we had referenced

[01:43:10] the trailer park I do want to just quickly touch on the trailer that released this month so we did see a trailer for friendly neighborhood spider-man I'm not going to go too far into the trailer because you're literally going to get to watch the whole series next week or at least the first episode of it basically the trailer does establish a few things it establishes that this is going to be early on in spider-man's career

[01:43:40] for those who don't remember the original working title of this was spider-man freshman year he's very much in college or I'm sorry in high school we do see that Nico Mineru is a key player she showed up we see Norman Osborne and we also saw spider-man in his future foundation suit that white and black suit now in the comics future foundation is run by Reed Richards the trailer would have you believe that here it's run by Norman

[01:44:10] Osborne so we'll see how that goes but yeah I'm I'm pretty excited for this show and I think the trailer was pretty good kind of set the tone really well I did hear today I was actually pretty excited heard today on the Marvel official podcast it's gonna be rated TVG so I'm I'm pretty excited I get to show the kiddo this one yeah that is cool

[01:44:40] and I hope the ratings are through the roof no I like the trailer it was fun I you know with these especially with the animated stuff you know you don't get a lot of trailers yeah one or two gives you good flavor what it looks like gives you a flavor for like the style I have no idea where the story is gonna go but I'm down for it when does it come out again it's January what is it 29th January 29th so about

[01:45:10] a week from when we're releasing when you got listeners when you're hearing this episode about a week later put it on your outlook put it in Google calendar set your reminder check it out cool David do you want to cover just a couple of anniversaries real quick sure there's you know January is not the big movie month but I would say that the biggest things are what has come out

[01:45:39] on Disney plus so Wanda Vision we talked about earlier it is it's actually came out January 15th 2021 not 2020 we were both dead wrong dang we're just off my year so that is it's four years ago four years ago and then one year ago literally tomorrow Echo came out season one only one spotlight echo spotlight yeah so that was kind of like the best of the

[01:46:09] best that came out January is a pretty dry month so yeah fair enough cool well let's see here so yeah check us out on our socials you can read our name on your pod catcher we are on the socials is that I have been having an issue with my auto push to Twitter and I'm not super invested in fixing that so if you want to know when our episodes are dropping

[01:46:39] you know the main places are going to be Instagram and Facebook so go check those out we are on the ears up discord as I mentioned earlier in the episode we'll actually be using that discord for some fan interaction here in for the saga review what else do we have check out the other shows on the network Bantha Milk I think is

[01:47:09] wrapping up their stuff with Skeleton crew because it's wrapping up the Supreme Resort still talking about hotels and doing wonderful wonderful work over there if you don't listen to the Supreme Resort you're wrong go listen to the Supreme Resort very genuinely even if you're not a even if you are one of our fans who's not a Disney fan those guys are just a blast to listen to so go listen to their stuff and also if you

[01:47:38] listen on Spotify and you don't see Asher's dance party go over to a different podcast platform and grab Asher's dance party because it's pretty great it's pretty great let's see scraping the vault just did the Mr. T don't be somebody's fool fool or be somebody or be somebody's

[01:48:08] fool which was pretty great episode so those guys they have one more dealer's choice they'll have Audrey's choice coming out here soon and then they'll get back to their straight to DVD straight to video Disney sequels which I think they're on the Tinkerverse if I remember right so I think once they get back to those they'll be doing Tinkerbell movies Buena Vista boys are on hiatus they just finished their

[01:48:38] season with Babes in Toyland they're doing like 10 episode seasons and then taking a break the flagship show for the network is on a hiatus this month so they they should be back in February years up in depth yeah go listen to all the shows listen to to

[01:49:09] listen to scraping or not scraping bowie's blading bowie's blading was the one I was aiming for and also listen to the hub crawl yeah so go listen to all those shows on our network and the ones off our network as well check out our patreon if you want to get our super secret spoiler shows

[01:49:39] we just released I just scheduled the one for captain lady pants to go out so that one should be going out I think later this month then we need to record a end game one here soon so go check those out and oh a programming note for our feed we're still debating what this is going to look like but there is a good likelihood that you will start to get those

[01:50:08] super secret spoiler shows put into the main feed we're thinking about bringing those out from behind the paywall two years later starting with Ironman and working our way forward each month so kind of something where if you're on the patreon you get a little bonus you get it two whole years earlier than everybody else and in a time frame that makes a whole lot more sense

[01:50:38] burn it to a CD and mail it to you there we go it's fun content so go check it out but yeah other than that I have blathered on and I apologize but with that all said our next main show will be that phase three phase in review so really looking forward to that one and other than that stuff said