Issue 03: (Sigh) The Snyder Cut

March Movie Madness Part 2 (of 3). Welp. It's here. We watched it. Is it better than the theatrical version? How did it get here? Did we like it? Tune in for all these answers, plus a lot of swearing.

Also! Come back in a couple of weeks for our final "March" movie episode! 

Have questions/comments/concerns? Shoot us an email: tencenttakes@gmail.com

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Episode Transcript

Mike: Ancient Lamentation is my new favorite type of music.

Jessika: Warning: this is a spoiler full episode, discussing Zack Snyder's newly released Cut of DC's Justice League. If you haven't already seen this film and don't want to be completely spoiled, we'd recommend you check that out before joining us. You can't say we didn't warn you.

Mike: Hello. This is Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we ruin your favorite fandoms one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson. I am joined by my cohost of chaos, Jessika Frazier.

Jessika: Hey, Mike.

No I'm. That was hysterical. I did. Yeah, I know. Did you see my face? I was like, okay, don't breathe in too heavily. You're being recorded. 

Mike: Yeah. Everything is forever on a podcast. If you're joining us for the first time, the purpose of this podcast is to talk about comic books and the things that connect to them in ways that are fun and informative.

We want to look at the coolest, weirdest and silliest moments as well as examine how they are woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today, we are going to continue our run of March movie madness and talk about. Dun dun duh, the Snyder Cut, which just dropped a few days ago. Before we get to that topic though: Jess, what is one cool thing that you've read or watched recently? 

Jessika: I grabbed some original print used comics from an absolute time capsule of an estate sale. I went to recently -masked of course- I hope everyone is staying safe. We are still mid- pandemic. So I didn't even look at the comics prior to purchasing them.

But ooh boy, I found some treasures and we will talk about a couple of them later in a, probably a couple of upcoming episodes. But the one I looked through this week was an issue of Archie and friends from 1975. And this one just has this awful one- pager that it took me a really long time to get what it meant.

I'm going to send it to you. 

Mike: Okay. 

Jessika: And then I'll tell you why I didn't understand it at first. 

Mike: W- what? 

Jessika: That was my reaction. 

Mike: Huh? Okay. Should I describe this? 

Jessika: Yeah, absolutely. Please. I've given you the worst thing. 

Mike: This is a, a one-page comic call called little jinx, you know, L I apostrophe L jinx with an X and then "Weak End" as in W-E-A-K as in not strong end.

So it's this little blonde girl in floral print bell-bottoms running up to her dad who is apparently painting a cupboard or something in the garage. And she says, "daddy, it hurts when I swallow." And the dad -who I guess is a relative of Archie based on his hair color and style- he says, come on little jinx," we'll get, we'll let our doctor look at it."

And she goes, "er... Do I have to?" "Don't you want him to fix up your sore throat? "And then she says, "sure. But when he fixes this end" and she points at her throat, she then is like gesturing at her butt in the final panel. And she goes, "I have trouble with my other end when I sit down," which raises so many questions.

Why namely, why would you take your child to the proctologist for a sore throat? 

Jessika: I don't think that, yeah, well that too. I, you know, and I was trying to figure out, okay, wait, first of all, I'll get around. What's funny. It's probably not funny to us in this modern day. Um, and then I realized, Oh, wait, it's casual child abuse abuse.

So it's it really, isn't funny because she's saying basically when she's able to talk, she says things that displeases her dad, which causes her. Uh, to be physically abused by him. So I just, you know, this has caused me to think, wow, I keep getting really upset at these old comics. 

Mike: I interpreted it in a way that I think is arguably worse, which is that when she goes to the doctors, she gets the rectal thermometer, which is, I think still a thing back then.

Jessika: Yeah. I think you're probably right about that too. So I don't know if it's both. 

Mike: I don't, I don't know. I, it could, it could be either. It could be both. 

Jessika: It's a million times awful either way. 

Mike: It's terrible. I hate it. Thanks. I hate it. 

Jessika: You're welcome. I had to see it. So, so did you,

God, what about you? 

Mike: Mine's a little less traumatizing. A couple of months ago. A friend of mine from college reached out to me.  He revealed that he was getting rid of stuff that free up some storage space. And so he sent me down a couple of boxes of comics from, you know, the eighties and early nineties.

So I've been going through those and I came across the miniseries from Marvel GI Joe and Transformers. So it is a cross up of two of my favorite franchises. And it has the two most popular characters on the cover. It's got Snake Eyes and Bumblebee and the cover itself is kind of traumatizing. It's it's got Bumblebee getting blown apart by the GI Joes.

So yeah, it's very much an eighties comic. It's a lot of fun though. And it feels like I'm a little kid again, mashing up my favorite action figures to have an adventure with my friends on a Saturday afternoon. So yeah. 

Jessika: Well that's cool. Everybody wanted to see Transformers: Soldiers in Disguise, so... 

Mike: Oh, that's so good.

All right. You ready to do this? 

Jessika: Oh, let's turn this page. Flip a table while we're at it. 

Mike: Before we actually start talking about the Snyder Cut. I think we need to take a couple of minutes and talk about how we actually got to this point. Let's start at the beginning. How familiar with Zack Snyder and by extension his work in the DC universe are you? 

Jessika: I mean peripherally, honestly, every time I hear "oh yeah, that was a Zack Snyder," I'm like, Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. But I don't, I don't know, like I wouldn't be able to point to any of his movies and be like, "those are classic Snyder, man." 

Mike: Okay. Zack Snyder is pretty much synonymous with the DC Extended Universe at this point. And it's largely because he directed the first two movies, Man of Steel and Batman Versus Superman.

Before that he was originally doing music videos and commercials. He wound up hitting a home run when he directed the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead, which is still I think his best- reviewed movie. You know, and he's done adaptations of things like Watchman and 300, which is again, another, it was another big success for him.

And then he did Man of Steel and Batman v Superman. And those movies are pretty divisive. And in fact, I would say that they're incredibly divisive. Everyone agrees that they're good looking movies. They're really beautiful. They're, you know, they're gorgeously shot, they've got amazing special effects, but they're really divisive amongst the fans and have you seen these?

Jessika:  I've seen some of them and, I would... I'm gonna admit. I am more of a Marvel fan girl than I am DC for some, for some reasons, not that I'm opposed to seeing DC films, but I don't see them with as much enthusiasm. Let's just call it as I do Marvel films typically. 

Mike: So which, which of the DC extended universe have you seen? 

Jessika: I just recently had a whole, I've gone down a rabbit hole. I, so I've... 

Mike: Yeah. You, you did your homework out of this. I think you've seen more than I have at this point.

Jessika:  I recently watched Aquaman just because my brother and I wanted to watch it and I was like, okay, present this movie anyway. So might as well check it out. Mamoa is up. Then I watched... I was thinking, Oh, I'll just jump into Justice League.

But then I realized I hadn't seen Batman Versus Superman, and I didn't realize how those correlated, like I didn't realize it was like, it was a one into another situation. And so my brother and I started watching it, I was looking down at my phone and the newspaper with "Superman is dead!" floats across the screen.

And my brother turns it off and he's like, "wait a second. Have you seen...?" 

And I was like, "shit, here we go." Because I'd been avoiding seeing that film just for the reason that I had been told "maybe, maybe skip that one" by multiple parties, which in the end I would have to agree except for the plot line tie-ins. 

Mike: Right. What was your big complaint about Batman Versus Superman? 

Jessika: The whole thing was just ridiculous. Honestly, the plot for me, it just, I had moral issues with a lot of the characters to start off with. Ben Affleck. I love Ben Affleck as Batman. Ben Affleck is a great Batman. I actually really like him as Batman.

I do not like the writing choice to make him branding people. 

Mike: Oh, that was a whole thing. That was fucking gross. 

Jessika: I did not, I did not enjoy that at all. And having conversations with people, it frustrated me even more because they didn't see some of the people I was talking to. You didn't see any moral issues with that because quote unquote, they were bad guys anyway, kind of a vibe.

And I was like, no, no, no, no, we don't let one person decide who's going to be the arresting officer, the judge, the jury and the execution, or that's, that's not the way this works. And there's a lot of implications for, you know, innocent. People being killed. And I mean, it, it, it is a really good allegory for our own justice system. Like a really intense version of it. 

It bothered me so much that it wasn't done in a way that made people more negatively reactive to it, I would say. 

Mike: The good news is that I think more people didn't like it, than you would assume based on the internet. I mean, first of all, like so many people that I know have huge problems with the DC Extended Universe and primarily to tone set by both Man of Steel and Batman Versus Superman, because they're so grim. In Man of Steel, you have a fairly joyless story, and then at the very end, you have this huge battle with all the Kryptonians that winds up leveling Metropolis. And it's, you know, the result is thousands of people die and then Batman Versus Superman kind of tries to correct for that, where it's like, "Oh, they're trying to hold Superman accountable." In turn Batman is -just in the few hours that we watch him- a mass murderer.

Jessika: Yeah. 

Mike: And then to your point, not only is he  murdering people, but also he will sit there and survivors of like the criminals that he takes down, he will then brand them with like a heated up batarang or something. It's been a while since I saw it, I just remember the shape of the batarang on the skin.

And then when they go to jail, they get like beaten to death for no explained reason. The label that started circulating as soon after this came out was  the DC Murderverse. It came from a really funny article that was written as a spoiler FAQ for io9 by Rob Bricken. And he founded the blog topless robot and then he was an editor for, for io9 for awhile. And it is both one of the funniest things that you will ever read and also one of the most damning. And one of the best, one of the best lines in it is "welcome to the DC Murderverse. Hope you survive." And then in parentheses: "you won't, Batman will murder you."

But I mean, there's another scene in it where, you know, you see Batman drive the Batmobile up I think, uh, the back of a truck. And the bumper is within an inch of a dude's head and then it cuts away. But it is very heavily implied that his head did a very realistic imitation of an overripe pumpkin getting smashed with a baseball bat. And so a lot of people have massive problems with Zack Snyder, taking a fairly brutal nihilistic approach with the fandoms.

I'm not going to lie. I'm one of those people. I spent a long time thinking that he just didn't understand these characters and we'll come back to that later on. Batman Versus Superman wound up causing a pretty big course correction and Warner Brothers acknowledged that it was problematic.  I think they would have written it off.

It had a massive opening, like I think it was the top. It was the number nine grossing film of the year or something like that. But what happened was, if you look at the actual box office data, it also featured the most extreme drop-off I think in film history at the time of the Friday to Sunday box office, like it was very front-loaded.

It took in a heinous amount of money on Friday. And by that Sunday word of mouth that started to get around. And so it was just dropping off fast and it was a movie that, that did really well at the box office, when you stop and think about it. I think it, I think it earned around $350-400 million, but it was all front-loaded. People weren't going back to see it.

And the other thing is that -based on the elements that we've discussed- people with kids weren't going to see it. They weren't taking their kids.

Jessika: Yeah, you're removing an entire demographic. And not only that, a lot of the times parents don't get the opportunity to go to the movie theater to see these things.

So if they're not going as a family, you're also losing those parents as, as part of that demographic. In my opinion, I don't know if that's actually factually based. 

Mike: Well, I mean, I don't think you're wrong. Speaking of someone who has step-kids and the other thing is that so many kids with little parents will take their kids to a movie because we just want fucking five minutes of silence and quiet and calm, and we will take those children -depending on what's available- we will take those kids to go see the same movie multiple times. I mean, my mom took me to see the original Ninja turtles movie four times in the theater. And I've since talked to her, uh, having watched it since then it acknowledging it's not nearly as good as I remember it. And I remember when I talked to her about it and I apologized for making her take me to see it so many times the last time she was like, "meh, it was fine. I just sat in the lobby and read a book and wait until you came out. I wasn't worried."

Jessika: That's amazing. Can you imagine parents these days doing that? 

Mike: Oh my God. I don't want to. CPS would be called on your ass so fast. 

Jessika: Yeah, no, it was a different, different time. I sound so old. 

Mike: Yeah. The seventies and eighties were that, that golden age of latchkey kids. 

Batman Versus Superman came out, it didn't make nearly as much money as they wanted it to. I think it wound up at the, at the worldwide box office making about $200 million less than they expected it to. Meanwhile, Suicide Squad came out and actually overperformed, they sorta evened out. Wonder Woman came out between all these and Justice League, and performed gangbusters business.

And then Snyder started to shoot Justice League. So he's shot the principal footage for Justice League and then in March, 2017, he very understandably stepped away from the movie because his daughter committed suicide. 

Jessika: Oh, I wasn't aware of this. 

Mike:  Yeah. It's one of those things where you have to acknowledge that this happened because the man suffered a horrifying personal tragedy that you would not wish on anyone.

And after this happened, Joss Whedon stepped in Zack Snyder apparently actually asked for Joss Whedon to take over. DC and Warner Brothers brought him in. And it was really big news at the time, because this was the guy who had singlehandedly, you know, in fan's eyes unified, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

He had created the Avengers movie. He had then done Age of Ultron, which wasn't as well received, but he was really popular at this point. And people were really enthusiastic about this. In fact, some people were so enthusiastic that it was actually really gross, how a lot of outlets treated it. So a lot of the more fan- oriented websites and outlets were treating this with, with headlines like Zack Snyder is out shall sweeten is in, and they were really trying to frame it as Oh, "DC fired Zack Snyder and brought in Joss Whedon to fix Justice League," which wasn't the case.

It was absolutely vital the way that some of those outlets played it, none of the major ones did. In fact, I was doing a search on the web and it's really hard to find those sites with those stories because they got so much backlash that a lot of them got taken down. But I remember it circulating on Twitter, on film Twitter and comics Twitter at the time that it all happened.

And it was really gross not to go into too much detail, but it's since been revealed that Whedon fostered a pretty toxic environment on set as did DC's chief creative officer, Geoff Johns. Cyborg actor, Ray Fisher, was really outspoken about this and wound up potentially nuking his film career. This was his first big role and it took a lot of guts for him to come out and not only make the public accusations, but then stick with them for a long period of time. And it wound up creating an investigation which ultimately left him pretty vindicated. Joss, I think has wound up if I remember right, he wound up losing a TV deal with Warner Brothers, you know, and now he is kind of persona non grata. Eight months after he stepped in his version of the movie came out and it was really underwhelming, both in terms of reviews and in box office take, in fact it was the lowest box office take out of the entire DC Extended Universe.

Yeah. As opposed to the Avengers, which I think set box office records, I think it was the top grossing domestic movie or  the second top second highest. It was a pretty notable fall from grace. And we'll talk about that later on, especially our issues with the film, but a section of Snyder's fans immediately started to latch onto the idea that there was a director's cut out there. And it was something true to his vision as the grand culmination of the DCEU and that it was just sitting on a shelf somewhere. And Warner Brothers was screwing over their favorite director by not letting his fans experience his vision because they got scared of how brilliant it was or, or something.

Um, side note that didn't exist. It wasn't real. Snyder has since acknowledged to Vanity Fair that he had the footage for a director's cut on his laptop, but it didn't have visual effects. It didn't have music, it wasn't refined at all. It was just something that he would show to friends when they were over at his house.

So this group of outraged fans started the hashtag "release the Snyder Cut," and it began spreading all over the internet and picking up steam. And eventually even Snyder and the movie star started sharing the hashtag. But the movement was really problematic because of how toxic the campaigns. A lot us champions were Joanna Robinson wrote a really excellent article for Vanity Fair about the campaign noting, and this is a direct quote, "plenty of earnest pleas came with the hashtag, but also vitriol was extreme even for Twitter, including harassment campaigns targeted at critics, HBO Max, Warner Brothers, and its employees. Former DCEU film chief Geoff Johns left the platform entirely after receiving endless Twitter attacks and director James Gunn, who was hired to write and direct a Suicide Squad Sequel for the studio discovered that his new gig came with at least one death threat from a user with a Batman avatar. 

Jessika: Not a good luck.

Mike: No, the movement from my end, as someone who has no connection to the film industry reminded me a lot of Gamergate, which I had a lot more connection to.

Because at the time I was working in the video games industry and I'd come over from the side of being a tech slash games journalist. And it was really worrisome to watch this whole Snyder Cut thing go on, because I had seen a lot of my friends, especially that were women from the parts of the industry that I was involved with, really awfully treated and it really made my stomach turn.

And it was really upsetting because at the time my company that I was working for basically told us not to talk about Gamergate. And it was really upsetting. So there was this weird Venn diagram kind of miasma between the two groups and it continued to drive home how toxic nerd culture can be. 

Jessika: Yeah.

Mike: Anyway. 

Jessika: That's why we love all the nerds here. Just however you want to be a nerd, but just don't be mean to others. That's the whole thing you don't need to, you don't need to be mean in your nerdom. It doesn't have to be a contest either. Like you can just like things. 

Mike: Yeah. It makes me really sad to watch these really toxic elements, shout the loudest and thus they get the most attention.

And most of the nerds that I know are lovely, wonderful people. It just bums me out. And that is an understatement in an extreme regard, but it's just so upsetting to watch this continue to happen over and over again. And it's been really picking up steam over the past decade. We're going to fast forward now to February of last year.

So Warner brothers has just announced that they're going to commit another $70 million to letting Zack Snyder complete his vision. And then he's going to release the Snyder Cut exclusively on HBO max, which I can't remember at the time, if it was actually live or not. I think they had three different versions of streaming HBO platforms and then they also had the DC universe. And there was also the AT&T acquisition of Warner Brothers going on at the time. So they were trying to sit there and centralize all these different fandoms into one platform that would pay 15 bucks a month or whatever. So they need exclusive content. And now here we are a year later and the Snyder Cut dropped about four days ago and we both watched it.

What was your reaction first of all, to Joss Whedon's version, because I remember you, you watched that recently, right? 

Jessika: So not only did I, I love torturing myself. Not only did I watch it the day before I watched the Snyder Cut. I also watched it the day after I watched the Snyder Cut. And I'll tell you why as I was watching the Snyder Cut.

 (You lost a bet?) 

No. Yeah, I know. Right. It feels like it, um, to myself, maybe I couldn't, I really had to identify. What exactly had been removed from that other, you know, to make the Whedon, the Whedon version of it. 

Mike: And I mean, a lot seemed to have been removed. 

Jessika: How did it get this diluted? 

Mike: Yeah. And I mean like the, the Joss Whedon version was two hours long, you know, as opposed to the four hours that we get with a Snyder Cut.

Jessika: Yes. I would say that when I first watched it, it was confusing. It took a while for the narrative to tell the story of the mother boxes. And even then the explanation felt really flimsy. The new Justice League characters felt like they were just sandwiched into the movie to push the plot narrative. And we didn't really get the chance to get invested in their well-being enough to care what ultimately happened to them.

In my opinion, we just didn't know enough about them. I mean, I don't kind of, didn't give a fuck about Cyborg at the end of the movie. I'm not going to lie. We didn't get enough of him. And he just seemed like this stoic non- character. He just seemed like a filler. Yeah. He was a red shirt. 

Mike: Yeah. Except he didn't die. 

Jessika: Except he didn't die, but he was, he could have died and nobody would have cared.

Mike: No, no one would have. And I mean, it's funny that you bring up the thing about the mother boxes because when Justice League came out, I was actually really grumpy about the mother boxes because I felt it was again a colossal misunderstanding of a very important piece of DC cannon lore. And I remember I actually wound up texting with Sarah.

We'd only been dating for about a month by that point. And I had this whole rant. Talking about how mother boxes are generally these neutral, good things from the comics, from the bonkers, Jack Kirby, New Gods/Fourth World continuity that he created, which is where Darkseid comes from and all that. And largely they're these neutral to kind of neutral, good benevolent self-aware supercomputers that can perform all these tasks.

They open up boom tubes, which are how the New Gods get around the universe and everything. They also can repair and heal, and they are defined by this definition of love, where when their user dies, they actually commit suicide. It felt kind of like peak Zack Snyder, where he took a thing that was known in DC comics as a relatively benign creation, defined by love and turning it into a weapon of mass destruction.

Jessika: Wow. 

Mike: They made it better in this version. I felt. 

Jessika: Agreed. 

Mike: But I was so angry about it. And I remember texting Sarah about this whole thing. And then I went and saw the movie. I was just so grumpy about that one element for the longest time. I, I have not seen it since it came out in theaters, you know, and at the time it was really remarkable that it looked as cheap as it did considering it had a $300 million budget, which means that now Justice League has cost AT&T 400 million or Warner brothers 400 million to make.

I don't... film finances are very weird, but, but ultimately we are looking at a movie that costs 400, almost $400 million to make, not including any of the marketing costs, which are just astronomical at this point. You know, and I, I described it back then as a solid five out of 10 And that rating's kind of slipped over time.

Like, I I'd say it's a three or a four now. There there's just, there's so much stuff that didn't make sense. And none of the new characters really felt like characters. Like you said, that said, I will say it looks even a weaker now when you compare it to what just came out and, you know, I, I have my own quibbles about that version of the movie, but it's certainly a lot better than what was released in 2017.

Jessika: Yeah. Doing a side-by-side I'm going to have to agree with you on that too. 

Mike: Moving into my reactions to the Snyder Cut. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised overall. I really didn't go in expecting much, but this was a much more coherent film that took the time to develop its characters and felt... not a lot, but a bit more faithful to canonical DC lore.

Like I told you about the mother boxes, I thought that was a pretty vast misunderstanding. But then in this one, there's the line where Cyborg. It says that they're changed engines. They don't really perceive good or evil. They're all about changing things and it's not great, but I didn't have a problem with that as a comic book fan, that said a pretty big problem with how Snyder's movies are just so violent and Justice League really continued that trend.

Jessika: Yeah.

Mike: I mean, at the end of the day, these are comic book movies and they have a ton of merchandise marketed towards kids, but none of them are things that I would want to take my kids to that said some of the other DC extended universe, I would totally take the kids to go see, I I've shown my stepson. Shizam it's one of his favorite movies.

We've let him watch Wonder Woman. Which you know, you and I have discussed it. It's got its own issues, but it's still a pretty kid friendly movie as opposed to Superman recreating 9/11 on his own or, or Batman terrorizing an entire city for two decades. 

Jessika: Yeah. 

Mike: Also like, can we talk about how Batman outfits, all of his vehicles with guns, which is just fucking weird.

Jessika: That is a very strange choice. 

Mike: It continued in this, like we saw Wonder Woman, literally murdering terrorists. I'm still kind of floored at how lazy that scene was, where they're just like, Oh, we don't have any goals to this. These terrorists move into a, I guess, a government building or something like that.

I don't know where it was. It was somewhere in there. 

Jessika: Not very well explained. Yeah. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. And then when she sits there and tries to interrogate them with her lasso it's, "we don't have goals. We're just extremists who..." something about resetting Europe back to the middle ages and it's not well explained.

And then she just. Drops down and goes completely ham on all of these dudes. And it is not subtle the whole, like she, you see her kick a dude in the wall and there is a very vivid red stain on the wall behind him afterwards. And it's literally in front of a group of school girls. 

Jessika: That's exactly it. And I, I feel like with this scene, one of the things that I preferred in this cit over the Whedon version is that at least at the end, she was trying to calm everybody down and they showed that piece of it.

That kind of more human piece of you expect Diana to do, but that was completely removed from the first version, that theatrical version of it. 

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And the theatrical version was also going for that PG- 13 rating so that they could be as marketable as possible. And, you know, I guess Diana showcasing her kindness was just deemed something that could hit the chopping room floor in order to get that much more time back. And then they could squeeze in one more showing of the film in the theater for the day. But I mean, this was a recurring theme. Like Superman comes back and then he tries to murder Batman with his heat vision.

That was something that wasn't in the, in the Joss Whedon version, but he straight up tries to murder Batman. And as he's doing so the police and the national guard that are there that are trying to contain the situation, get caught in the crossfire and would have straight up died if not for the other members of the League.

And then also, you know, Steppenwolf keeps on popping up and going bonkers with his ax and just lopping people in half right and left. Like that scene where he teleports into Atlanta's you see multiple people bisected with that act? 

Jessika: Yeah. It's really, really graphic. 

Mike: How did you feel about all the exposition? Cause there was a lot of it. 

Jessika: It was too much. I mean, I think back to your point about over-correcting this was an overcorrection, you know, we, yeah, we needed a little bit more. We needed slightly more, but it's like, please sir, can I get s'more? And they threw the whole bucket on us and that's not what we asked for.

You know, I, I don't know. Maybe some people asked for that. I didn't necessarily need that in my life. It just was such an overabundance of, "Oh, it's this person to tell you what's happening right this second and what's going on." And uh, it's just, ugh. 

Mike: It was a fire hose. There wasn't even a bucket. 

Jessika: Yeah, I agree.

Mike: And I mean, like that was the flip side of the plot being a lot more coherent, but so much of it came in the form of exposition. Like that whole giant battle scene with Apokolips was a lot of fun, but we didn't need constant narration from Diana. Explaining everything that was happening. And then on top of that, the placement of it was so random where she just shows up and Bruce Wayne is working on his plane thing and then she's like, "Oh, and then this happened."

And then it's this whole scene that feels incredibly out of place. I don't understand why they didn't pull a Lord of the Rings and just put this all at the beginning. 

Jessika: Yeah. Agreed, agreed. It would've made a lot more sense at that point to, you know, bringing it back to if you're trying to make it more coherent.

Mike: I mean, this is the way that I felt, but I like to be taken on a narrative ride and we never got that this time around, we were just shown a lot of what happened and then these omniscient narrators were explaining it to us. 

Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. I'd agree with that. 

Mike: The other thing is that you mentioned that like these new characters were really kind of sandwiched in and the Joss Whedon version.

And in this one, they got a lot more screen time and development time. How did you feel about the Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg and what the movie did with them this time around as opposed to last time?

Jessika: So what I wanted out of this, if you're going to keep it in this direction, I think that if you were going to have so many new characters, yes, you absolutely have to explain where they come from, especially for folks who aren't familiar with the DC universe and comics or other, you know, other forms. That being said, I really wish they had done this in a mini series where they could have really focused on "this is what happened with Victor in Cyborg's perspective," and maybe told a portion of the story, or, you know, did you see House on Haunted Hill or Haunting of Hill house?

That's what it was. Each 

Mike: Yeah.... The Netflix series, right? Yeah. That was really good. 

Jessika: And what I liked about that, and I really think they could have done a really good job of doing it this way is each episode they layered in new person's perspective that told you just a little bit more of the story. I feel like this plot line had all of the makings of that and it would have been really cool to see it build up.

And I feel like you could have gained a lot of really good fan base excitement around, okay, we're going to show you episode one and then you get a week to talk about it. And then we're going to show you episode two, and then you get a week to talk about it. And I think in the same way that Wandavision had such good presence and such good reaction from the fan base, I feel like in a way there's the potential that there could have been the same thing that being said.

When I think of. DC TV shows. I think of the CW, which is not necessarily a good correlation, you know, alternatively, I don't know that I would have necessarily had full faith in the making a TV show because of what they have produced in TV shows in the past, unless you were to make it... I think if you would put Snyder's name on it regardless, you probably could have amplified it to a place where it needed to be, to kind of outgrow that.

And actually that maybe would've been a good direction for their TV shows to kind of get a good spotlight into, but what do I know? 

Mike: Yeah. Going off on a, on a side tangent, I have generally enjoyed the, the CW shows. I haven't watched all of them, but they're fun. They're disposable Legends of Tomorrow really became a fun experience after it turned into Doctor who, but with superheroes. 

You know, the Flash at this point, I think they're on what season seven or something like that. Now I haven't watched for awhile. But something they actually did was during their big crossover, which, you know, you normally don't see in TV shows and they turned it into an annual thing.

They did, uh, I think it was Crisis on Infinite Earths. And at the end of it, they actually had Ezra Miller show up in his Snyder Flash costume, and then there's Grant Gustin on the other side, it's really a charming scene where they're sitting there and talking about how much they like each other's costumes.

Jessika: Yeah.

That's actually really wholesome. 

Mike: It actually makes me really happy when I think about that. Yeah. It's really fun. I think the new character is definitely benefited in this version of the movie. I really liked Barry Allen's intro. Actually. I thought it was really solid. We'll get into this because the Snyders' movies are always very male gazey. Women are not really well done as characters in his movies. That said, I thought as her Miller's Flash, was pretty fun. I loved the sequence where he was applying for jobs. And then we see him talking to his dad. And there's the little bit where his dad's like, "you know, where's the, where did this interest in criminal justice come from?"

And he goes, "Oh yeah, where did this interest come from? It couldn't be the fact that my dad was committed for murdering my mom, which he didn't do. And I want to prove that he didn't do it." And I was like, that's fine. That's great. The whole Cyborg thing where he's getting the training montage narrated by his dad.

I was okay with that too. I thought it was actually really neat when it was showing him wandering through the internet and he looks human and then he winds up helping out that for waitress who is just getting screwed over by the system. Aquaman, I thought was kind of the least interesting character in terms of backstory, because they were trying to do a backdoor pilot basically for his movie that was coming up.

And so they have Willem Defoe show up as Volko. And we were like, we don't fucking know who this guy is. The only reason that we know who he is now is because Aquaman has come out since Justice League. And Amber Heard as Mera, which whatever, the less said, the better, but they're sitting there and providing so much exposition about his brother or about his mother and how Mera's using his Tridents and who cares?

The only thing that saved this for me was the fact that Aquaman has played by everybody's future ex-husband Jason Mamoa

Jessika: Mhm. Never wearing a shirt nor do I want him to.

Mike: I will forgive Zack Snyder for so much just for the fact that he gave us so much shirtless Jason Mamoa 

Jessika: It's true. That was a heavy pause. You were, I might leave in part of that pause. Cause you were like, you were thinking heavily on it. There was, it was weighted.

Mike: I'm not sorry.

Jessika: Don't be.

Aquaman as the fun, loving the surfer, bro. Was such a great casting decision and direction. I mean, I was so glad that they kept in the bit where he, in that final scene in Russia, he stabs a Parademon and then surfs him through the sky, into a building and then surfs him out of the building and jumps off and does a hair flip.

And I was so happy they kept that in. 

Mike: I was too, although my one qualm with, with Jason Mamoa and how they, they wrote him, this is such a little nitpicky thing, but there's no way he would have like thrown a glass bottle into the ocean with such reckless lack of care. Like he did. There's no way. And it was in bold cuts.

And I was like, come on, Snyder

Well, right. That kind of goes back to my earlier point where I used to think that Snyder doesn't understand the major DC characters that he's putting on the film because he pulls shit like that. Or he gives Batman guns or he has Superman try to murder the police or Wonder Woman killing people in front of children, you know, or... well, the flashy actually I felt got pretty good, but it just, it always felt like this thing where I was like, Oh, I think you see these comic book panels that you really like, and then you decide to recreate them on film.

And then his brand is a very traditional over the top type of masculinity. Like you look at the movies he's done and they are all super male gazey. Like they are all about women as objects and men as power fantasies. It's not even up for discussion. 300 and Sucker Punch, I think are the two movies I hold up as examples of that.

And they're really pretty, but they don't hold up too much scrutiny in terms of depth. 

Jessika: Speaking of it, being for the male gaze Barry, I find low key cringey in both films, but like in different ways, which is interesting. 

Mike: Right? 

Jessika: And the attrical Barry has that really gross moment of falling directly onto Wonder Woman's breasts that was cut out of Snyder's version.

And like that's not the characters fault, but it's how it was written. Was it knocked out? 

Mike: No. So actually that is a scene that's pretty controversial. Apparently Joss Whedon was recreating a scene from Avengers: Age of Ultron, where Bruce falls onto Natasha, the black widow. You know, he was apparently really bitter about how Age of Ultron was not as well received.

So he was kind of just recreating things from Age of Ultron that he thought were going to play really well this time around. This isn't confirmed, but at least a couple of journalists have commented on this, on Twitter at that scene, Gal Gadot refuse to film it. So they had a body double actually do that sequence.

Jessika: Okay. Yeah. I know what that actually, the way I'm like thinking of how her head was with, I think her head was to the side. It was. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well that I, that makes me feel a little bit better. Good for you girl. That's, that's amazing that they had this whole infatuation with Barry, this random woman he's just met or he's just kind of run into, we didn't even meet her.

Mike: No. And the thing is, you wouldn't know this, but like the thing is that they had announced her casting and all that. So that's supposed to be Iris West, who is the woman that he winds up marrying. And, you know, in comics cannon, they are one of, you know, the, the, the fa- their marriage is one of the foundations of the DC universe.

It's like them and Superman and Lois lane, and a couple of others, but Barry Allen and Iris West are one of those really just kind of like permanent foundations of the DC cosmos. 

Jessika: Well, then this is a really unfortunate choice and how it was chosen to, I don't know, I get Barry being infatuated and kind of watching after her.

And that would have been all well and good. That's whatever you're going to do. My dude, you saw a pretty lady. That's fine, but it was them feeling the need to also make her as she's driving look like in a completely different direction to the side, watching him as well. And somehow that also felt like it contributed to the accident, even though that other guy also had something going on, you know, really coincidentally, you know, it just, it felt really, um, contrived and it felt very gazey in that way. But then also he does that thing where he gets closer instead of just fucking saving her. He has to like brush the fucking hair out of her face and like fucking touch her face.

And it just was so gross to me. She didn't have a choice, like, yes, maybe he was helping her, but that doesn't mean you have the right to touch her as well. 

Mike: Yeah. And I think if they had taken that one bit out of that scene, I think it would have been perfect because he's this kind of socially awkward weirdo, which I actually really enjoyed because you don't see that a lot.

And then there's the whole bit where he grabs the hot dog and then he uses it with the dogs afterwards, which I thought was clever and funny, I thought that was really cute. But the thing is, is everything about this movie, every time they did stuff, I liked, I would then wind up throwing my hands into the air about 10 seconds later because of some weird cringey decision that they did for whatever. 

Jessika: That was exactly how I felt.

Mike: And that said, other than that one moment where it's like, Hmm, okay. So I knew who that was supposed to be. And I was like, yeah, they're supposed to be, you know, destined to be together. And again, they're trying to set that backdoor pilot information up for Barry Allen and the Flash, which that movie is never fucking happening.

It's had so many production problems, but Oh my God, everything else about that scene. That was great. I, I thought one of the coolest things was the bit where he rips out of his shoes because he's moving so fast. I thought that was such a great little touch and 

Jessika: exactly. 

Mike: I mean, that's something that Zack Snyder does really well is he makes these incredibly visually arresting sequences.

And I, I also love the bit where they show, how Barry all he does is he just very lightly touches things because he's moving so fast that if he does anything more than that, it will destroy whatever he's interacting with. And so you saw that initially with the glass window in, and then later on where you see him very gently taking her down, you know, and it's, it's like a tender embrace, which with that setup makes a lot of sense.

I really liked that though the whole bit where, where he has to be so gentle with everything, because he's moving so fast that it made sense that he would save Iris in a way that looked almost like a gentle embrace. And that part didn't feel gross. 

Jessika: No, exactly. That felt necessary. And to your point, it felt like he was doing what needed to be done so that she was safe in the end.

Mike: Yeah.

Jessika: Okay. Wait, there was one other Berry thing that I didn't like though. One more. And then I'll and then I'm done with Barry for now. It was so unnecessary and just why there was the point in the movie where Barry's talking to Victor and he goes, so what do you think, do you think Diane is into younger men?

It was so unnecessary. And especially after you telling me about this whole Iris business. Okay. If you've already got your eye on someone, why are you trying to get at Wonder Woman? 

Mike: No. And again, okay. So this goes back to my earlier point of like, I don't think Zack Snyder understands DC characters. I think he thinks he does and that we don't. 

Jessika: Zack, honey. 

Mike: You could have cut that scene out.

It served no real purpose. It's like, yeah, they're digging up the mother box, whatever who fucking cares. You could have cut that out. And it would have been fine. Barry scamming on Wonder Woman was just kind of an eye-roll moment. And I was like, this is dumb. I will say that overall, I did like Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman.

I actually, I really liked the fact that Joe Morton, the guy who played Cyborg's dad, he was on the show Smallville in a recurring role as Professor Hamilton, who was another STAR Labs employee, you know, almost 20 years ago. And I thought that was actually kind of a nice little throwback and overall the moments of levity, I generally, like, I felt like most of them hit pretty well.

And a lot of that levity was delivered by Barry or by Aquaman. 

Jessika: I would agree. 

Mike: And I also have to say it's a really good-looking movie. Like, especially when you compare it to the theatrical version, I wish Zack Snyder would learn to use color a little more. Sarah described it as "we get it, dude. You like to film things in, black." 

Jessika: Open his wardrobe. That's all he has. 

Mike: What were your favorite things about the movie? 

Jessika: Well, I felt like this version definitely felt more narratively succinct. And with the caveat that I agree that it's too much. So, you know, I, I know that I already went through that a little bit, so I won't focus on that too much, but I felt like the boss scenes, there was so much taken away from them because we spent so much time that we had what we're supposed to be, these big, epic battle scenes that felt really diminished because of the rest of the exposition that was kind of taking place around it.

Things that I did like, yeah, I did like that the Amazons got a larger and more Epic battle added bonus. My goal Robin Wright was back. 

Mike: That was so good. Yeah. All of that was so good. 

Jessika: What was such a bummer was that we didn't see the temple fall in that first one. And I, I think that was such a, that was such a big moment then it, I think it meant so much more that there was actual physical destruction. It was such a good representation of the metaphor of them being physically destroyed by the fact that they failed to protect this mother box. This was their one job that temple's one job to protect this. It could not do it. It is gone now. 

Mike: I'm actually really excited about the Amazon spinoff movie that they're planning to do. Cause I'm like, yeah, I'm, I'm fine with just two hours of the Amazons being a bunch of bad-asses. 

Jessika: Absolutely. Which means could it be possible that this will be a movie completely devoid of men? There's a very good possibility, which just puts my heart a flutter. There are plenty of movies -before everyone gets all uppity- there are plenty of movies with literally no women in them. 

Mike: Yeah. 

Jessika: You know, let's throw one in our direction. Why not? 

Mike: Exactly. I don't know, but I'm really excited about it. It's funny because we still have these movies on the slate, you know, that's coming down the pipeline. And people keep on screaming about how the Snyderverse needs to be restored.

The Snyderverse is still here. Wonder Woman is still part of the Snyderverse Shazam is still part of the Snyderverse. But the thing is that the Snyderverse is not actually the Snyderverse. It's the DCEU; Zack Snyder started it, but he's not the person that gets to define what the DCEU is. It's it's Warner Brothers and AT&T ultimately kind of like, you know, how Disney gets to determine, the MCU.

What were your biggest problems with the movie? I'm curious, 

Jessika: You know, the movie's already so damn long. We did not need those stupid ass post-apocalyptics cenes. Those were stupid. They didn't make it a no, you know, we get it. You want to make another movie. Fuck off and make another movie, but you don't have to show us a half an hour of it in this movie.

This is this movie. 

Mike: No. And you know that Zack Snyder was really gearing up to make that it's quote "the knightmare sequence" that knight as in K N I G H T. Because of course it is. The fact that he's included both the sequences in his movies, you know that he really wanted to make an entire movie set with that as the backdrop.

And this was all the lead-up. Again, these are movies for kids. I don't want to see Superman murder the entire fucking planet because his girlfriend died, which they're like, "Oh no, Lois Lane died and, you know, he's going crazy." 

Jessika: Sorry, but Superman is a fucking alien. Who's going to live so much longer than Lois Lane. The very best he can hope for is that she is going to grow old and die in his arms.

And I hate to be that way, but it is the truth. And you know, what's more realistic because of his line of work. And her line of work quite frankly, is that she is probably going to lose her life a lot earlier than most people, most healthy white women, let's say yes. 

Mike: Yes. And I'm gonna jump in with one of my big problems with a movie, which is, I feel that the Snyderverse does Lois Lane real fucking dirty.

She exists to be put in danger and then to be sad about Superman then, I mean, that, that's kind of going back to the whole male gazy thing. It's like women in this movie other than Diana exist to be threatened, which is what happened with the Amazons -even though they got a bad-ass action sequence, it was all about them being used to wipe the floor by Steppenwolf- to be sad, which was the whole dialogue scene between Lois and Martha -which by the way, not even Martha, we'll get to that in a second- or to be put in danger and just saved like, you know, like Iris West and  Barry Allen, or Mira and Aquaman, that whole thing where Aquaman comes in out of the blue and saves her at the last minute from Steppenwolf.

Jessika: Hey, going back really quick to the post-apocalyptic stuff, are we to assume now that Brucey boy has some sort of like future vision. What the fuck is that like, he's just some normal ass rich dude. 

Mike: It's not explained, but it's really implied that he's suddenly receiving visions of the future for no fucking reason.

Jessika: Nah, that's stupid as fuck.

Mike:  I don't understand. 

Jessika: Come at me, Zack Snyder, that's stupid as fuck. 

Mike: It's ridiculous. I am going to say I did like one thing out of that, which was I -ugh-, I mean, like the first episode I talked about how Jared Leto, I was like, Oh God, he looks like the nun on his day off. 

Jessika: Um, I mean, no lie. 

Mike: The other thing is that in Suicide Squad, his character and acting was just insufferable.

I couldn't stand it. And in this one in the two minutes of footage of the Joker that we saw, I actually really enjoyed it. I liked the whole speech that he gave. I liked the bit where he was talking about the losses that Batman had suffered both as a son and as a father, I thought that was great. And the whole bit where he's like, "Oh, so I'm gonna present a truce. It's going to be in the form of this card. And when you want to end it, just tear it up." 

And I thought that was such a cool moment and they fucking ruined it again, where Bruce Wayne immediately goes, "well, when Harley Quinn died in my arms, she begged me to kill you. And I will-" and this is what he actually says, "and I will fucking kill you."

And I'm like, wuh- I'm out. 

Jessika: I hate about that situation. It's like, if you want to off him, you clearly don't have any issues offing people just get rid of him, stop terrorizing him. But I guess that's Batman's MO. He literally told somebody in both versions, I believe I want you to fear me or whatever the fuck he says, he's going for active fear and terrorization.

Yeah. 

Mike: Yeah. Well, and that kind of ties into what happened right after the knightmare sequence vision, which is Bruce Wayne wakes up. And then we get the most useless, goddamn cameo in the entire movie of the Martian Manhunter, who is portrayed by Harry Lennix. And he has one other scene, which again, going back to my earlier point, Martha Kent, after she leaves Lois's apartment, when they bonded over being sad about Superman being dead turns into the Martian Manhunter and there, I don't remember what the line was that Lois said, it was something about like, well, the world needed Superman or something like that.

And then, and then the Martian Manhunter you see him... Martha turns into the green-skinned Martian Manhunter who, by the way, it looks like ass. I'm sorry. I think it's one of the ugliest character designs I've ever seen. And then it turns into Harry Lennix in a military uniform and Harry Lennix has some line of like, well, the world needs you to Ms. Lane. 

And then he walks off with no further explanation. And then he shows up at the very end of the movie and delivers a speech about, Oh, well, you know, you handled Darkseid well, but I'll be around. And by the way, you can call me Martian Manhunter. 

Jessika: It was a barbershop quartet of exposition for sure.

Mike: It's such bullshit. It is, again, it goes back to that thing of like Zack Snyder clearly wanted to do another movie. He was trying to set it up. So he had another movie to use this as a jumping off point from, but Martian Manhunter in this movie, but he's Tuxedo Mask like, well, first of all, he liked delivers all this random exposition, but then it's, it's that Tuxedo Mask meme where he's like," my work here is done" and everyone's like, "but you didn't do anything."

He's like, AWAY!" So come at me Zack Snyder fanboys. Martian Manhunter in this movie is Tuxedo Mask. 

Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. I didn't love it. 

Mike: Let's compare the two. I think it was better than what we got in the theatrical version. There's no question about that. 

Jessika: Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. 

Mike: I think it was fine. I don't think it was good. It's not something that I'm going to rewatch. It's something that I'm certainly not going to show to any of my kids anytime soon. 

Jessika: No. 

Mike: It reminds me of this experience I had when I was working as a writer at a game studio where one of the CEOs wound up haranguing me in the lead designer for this digital card game we were working on because the latest expansion we had put out didn't feel epic enough.

And that was the thing they kept pushing was they wanted something epic and people like that just don't understand that when your story is epic all the time, people get burnout and they stop caring about it. And the Snyder Cut was just, it was four hours of "epicness." 

Jessika: Agreed. I, there was only ramping up.

There were no dips or anything to take you on, you know, an interesting narrative journey. There just wasn't anything like that. It was, we are full steam ahead. We are headed in one direction. You are going there, whether you want to or not. It was, it felt very forced. 

Mike: Yeah. And I think it's also really tainted because this thing only exists because a conspiracy theory morphed into a harassment campaign. And then AT&T and Warner Brothers wound up caving to it because they were trying to harness that movement and that's not up for debate. It probably won't be the last time we see something like this happen now that it's proven to be a successful formula. And that really fucking sucks. Yeah. Set a precedent for sure.

Oh, and Young Justice, the cartoon, season three, does this whole storyline way better go watch that on HBO max.

Jessika:  Oh, well there you go then. Shoot. I mean, not that I want to even touch this storyline, like after sitting through arguably eight hours of it in the last couple of days, since I watched the Whedon version twice.

Mike: Why, why would you do that to yourself? Like... 

Jessika: Because I just, I, I, you know what, here's the full transparency I fell asleep the first time I watched it. So I felt like I couldn't really accurately gauge. And you know what? I felt like I woke up pretty quickly. Like I was watching my brother and he was like, Hey, you know, so he'd like, if he noticed.

He'd like, say something, if you see something, say something, my friends, but about people waking up in movies, I'm saying no. So I just, I decided I needed to, like, as I was watching the Snyder Cut, I just couldn't remember was wait a second. Was this in the movie? And I was live tweeting as I was doing it.

And then I was like, I'm going to look real stupid if Robin Wright was in this other movie and I'm like saying she wasn't, you know, because I was about to like tweet at Robin Wright? God damn. I wish I had. 

Mike: Hey man. She's like a Bay Area native isn't she? 

Jessika: Probably. She's amazing. 

Mike: Well, I know that she was when she was married to Sean Penn, they've lived right down the road from us. They were down on Fairfax or, or Greenbrae. Yeah, that's a, that's a marriage that I don't envy. Ugh, imagine marrying Sean blech. 

Jessika: No, I can't even imagine watching one of his movies right now without pausing it several times. 

Mike: Hmm. Do you have any final thoughts? I mean, we've kind of run the gamut, but you know, is there anything else that you want to talk about with the Snyder Cut?

Jessika: Well, I would say that, you know, I'm glad I was able to pause it. I did pause it like seven times while I was needed to get like snacks and things. You know, this is not a movie. That I would casually watch. I would not just sit down and be like, Oh, I think I'll watch the Snyder Cut tonight. It is a full ass time commitment.

I planned my day out. 

Mike: Yeah. 

Jessika: Yes. I got to get really baked and watch the Snyder Cut. Here we go. You know, I do want to say two more things in comparison about the films though, in both films, speaking of the male gaze, I could not even count the amount of times the camera was aimed so that it got a shot up Wonder Woman skirt in the bathroom.

Mike: I remember the one sequence where she's jumping off that people mover and you see ass cheek. 

Jessika: Oh yeah. And it happened several times in the Snyder Cut as well. It's not just that singular time. I would say make it a drinking game, but you may die of alcohol poisoning. So please don't do that. 

Mike: Yeah. And I mean, like, you need a couple of cocktails just to get through this movie anyway.

Jessika: Yeah. 

Mike: Like you said, it's an undertaking. 

Jessika: And the other thing is I kind of actually really enjoyed that Steppenwolf had someone to be subservient to when he was actually driven by something other than this ridiculous unknowing desire to get these boxes put together. For some reason that never were explained, you know?

So at least it kind of made him feel like he was a kid who was trying to get the approval of his parents. 

Mike: Oh yeah. Like during his 3D Zoom calls with, with, with the various members of Apokolips and his court. Yeah. 

Jessika: Yeah. Definite Dotty issues. That is for sure. 

God. I, I will 

Mike: say that I actually appreciated that they gave a little bit more backstory on that because in the movie he shows up in the theatrical version he shows up, there's no explanation about anything. It doesn't make any sense of why is this dude here instead of Darkseid. And then they do the bit where they explained that he's an exile. I thought that was better handled. I do have to say though that no matter how ominous and deep and full of rage, your voice is, the phrase "anti-life" sounds goofy as fuck.

And they say that a lot in a lot of deep threatening voices. 

Jessika: Especially when it's set out of that funky ass CGI mouth, which they did not do a good job in that second version that was messed up. It was like watching the scorpion King. It was like, I felt like it was maybe not exactly on that level, but it definitely had flat face vibes.

Mike: Yeah. Which, I mean, I love the scorpion- or the Mummy Returns, right? That's what you're talking about with, oh, it's a terrible movie, but like, oh, that whole sequence, but the Rock is another of my future ex-husbands and they did him dirty. 

Jessika: It was disappointing for something and otherwise lovely movie.

Mike:  It's a fun movie.

It's dumb as shit. But I remember watching that when it came out in theaters, I saw that movie like three times in the theaters with my friends and the other CGI and the movie is actually really good. And then they have that sequence and I was 20 at the time. And you know, this was what, 2000, 2001, when it came out and all of us were sitting there and we're dumb kids, like just out of high school.

And we're like, "that looks like ass." Like we're, we're not connoisseurs of CGI. At that point, we were just like, that looks terrible. That is so bad. It might violate the Geneva Convention. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not a lawyer, but that might be a hate crime. 

Jessika: The top half of him swaying, like it, like it's drunk on his scorpion body.

Oh, so bad.

But the armor, I like the armor better in Snyder's version for Steppenwolf. I thought it was cooler. I liked the way that it kind of moved- 

Mike: -it rippled and it had almost like a fur. It would like bristle, like fur, I thought that was cool. Yeah. 

Now it's time for us to discuss our Brain Wrinkles, which are those things that are comics or comics adjacent that we just haven't been able to stop thinking about lately.

So, Jess, how about you? What's wrinklin' your brain these days? 

Jessika: Well, since I've been so DC forward in my life, these tasting notes of mine, I recently saw the Wonder Woman 84 -it was recently released- the Wonder Woman 84 gag reel. And I sent it in your and Sarah's direction. Cause I saw it and I was like, they have to see this.

It was hysterical. Not only was it funny, but it showed a side of the characters that I think really is missing from that film. And don't get me wrong. There were absolutely moments of humor overall. It's more serious in nature, especially than the first one when you're looking at them in comparison. And I think that's why I'm such a Marvel fan girl, the Marvel characters to me, just, they seem to present a wider range of human emotions that make them feel more relatable than a lot of the characters in DCEU who just seemed like these kind of stoic, vanilla flavored, putting characters, you know, that you could kind of put them in a mold to be the other character and they might just fit.

Mike: I mean, I love the fact that the Marvel movies are a lot of times really funny like Ant-Man and the Wasp is one of my favorite movies. It's arguably my favorite MCU movie. And it's just because it's so fun and funny. Like Scott Lang is a walking dad joke. That's his entire thing. That's a huge part of his character is that he is just, he is trying to be a good dad and he is not afraid to be goofy and weird. 

Jessika: Oh, that's so wholesome. I'm getting to those films. I had to stop my, my Marvel universe jaunt in order to jump, you know, face first into the DC world. But I'm coming up for air friends. We are, we're going to get there. So what about you? What's what's been on the brain? 

Mike: Um, so last week I wound up watching a TV show called The Watch and it's based on a series called the Discworld, which have you, have you read any of this? The Discworld books? 

Jessika: I haven't, no. 

Mike: The Discworld books are by a British author named Terry Pratchett. He co-wrote good omens if you saw that on Amazon. 

Jessika: I've read that actually. Yeah. 

Mike: Yeah. So he co-wrote that with Neil Gaiman, immensely talented, immensely funny writer. His book, he wrote, I think 40 or 41 of these books over about 30 plus years.

And they are set in a fantasy world. That's like what Lord of the Rings would have been like if the industrial revolution had happened, where they all start, all the different races start congregating together and together in cities and there's vice and corruption. It's generally pretty funny. A lot of the books are set in the city called Ankh-Morpork where there is the city watch. 

The BBC did a new series that just came out and it's not great. Because the books are all really funny and sweet and they're universally a little philosophical about life and how we all interact. And the show is such a misfire because the show runner clearly had a vision about what he wanted to do, and he wasn't going to be dissuaded away from that.

It was kind of like what Zack Snyder was doing. And so he went with this overall aesthetic. That's very punk rock that doesn't really work except for one scene that's actually kind of fun about halfway through and there's some cool moments to it where it's like, there's some neat set designs and costumes.

And I liked some of the gender swapping they did with the characters, but for the most part, it just really,  is not fun. And it's also not funny, like the moments where they try to be funny, not they just, they aren't. Like, and I mean, like there are a lot of other problems. Like the show runner really stirred up a hornet's nest when he commented about like filming wrapping and he thanked everybody except for Terry Pratchett, the guy who wrote the books and Terry Pratchett died a couple of years ago.

So he is especially beloved and like his estate  and his daughter who is a very successful games writer, she actually wrote the last couple of Tomb Raider games if I remember right... uh, they, they totally disowned it. 

Jessika: Oh, wow. 

Mike: So it's not good. But it's also just kind of all of this media that we have watched over the past couple of days has made me feel like we're on the cusp of this cultural repeat of revamping really kind of iconic or beloved properties and turning them into these dark brooding antihero takes. 

And I'm, I'm really not looking forward to it. I feel like we're on the cusp of that nineties extreme again, taking root in society for a couple of years, and I think it's going to be bad.

Jessika: It makes sense. The nineties jeans are back. I mean, I know bring it with it, the media, I suppose. Not that I'm a fan that, but yeah... 

Mike: We're overdue for the Jeanco Jeans to come back. 

Jessika: Yeah, we are. 

Mike: You remember those? 

Jessika: Yeah, I sure do. They were heavy as fuck. I was more of a flare girl myself. Although I had to figure out how to find ones that weren't so low Cut, that they went under my gut.

My little gut roll. You know, there was a very, very specific type of size zero high school student who can even pull that off. And after that point, you're either still that skinny and good for you. And you still look like you're in high school at that point, or you just do not fit into them properly. And you are just the laughing stock of the neighborhood... probably not quite because everyone had them. Oof.

Mike: I don't know how to end this up.

Jessika: Well, maybe I'll end it then. 

Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. This episode was hosted by Jessica Frazier and Mike Thompson, written by Mike Thompson, and edited by Jessica Frazier. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound. Our credits music is "Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from premium beat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank. 

Mike: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us how we got something wrong. Please head over to tencenttakes dot com or shoot an email to tencenttakes at gmail dot com. You can also find us on Twitter. The official podcast account is tencenttakes. Jessica is jessikawithak and Jessica has a K in it as well. And I am vansau: V A N S A U. 

Jessika: You stay safe out there. 

Mike: And support your local comic shop.