Venom Review

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Welcome to the Dynamic Duel Podcast.

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A weekly show where we review superhero films and debate the superiority between Marvel and DC by comparing their characters in stat-based Battle simulations. I'm Johnny DC and I'm his twin brother Marvelous Joe and in this episode We are reviewing venom which just came out last week It's kind of a controversial movie among for sure for sure among the general public maybe not necessarily fans I think for the most part fans really liked it. Yeah, but either way, I'm super excited to talk about it I did not

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hate it, surprisingly. I thought I would because of all the comparisons to like Catwoman and stuff like that. Oh, that was fucking bullshit. Yeah, Lady Gaga fans. I blame them. Screw whoever said that. But before we get into that, just a reminder, this is our 92nd episode. We are counting down to our 100th episode, which will happen in early December, I believe, and we have a big surprise. Can't talk about it yet, but only eight more episodes to go after this. Yep. It's going by fast.

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In this episode, we'll be breaking down the news from the past week. A lot of news. Yeah, a ton of news. Yeah, because of New York Comic-Con. Yeah, and a lot of them are videos. There's the Aquaman Extended video. There's the Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse Official Trailer 2. We're going to be talking about Rosie Perez being cast in Birds of Prey. I think that's like the one non-video news item. There's two trailers for Daredevil Season 3. A Titans final trailer. And then a Harley Quinn animated series first look. So...

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Yeah, a ton of stuff to go over and break down. The news itself could almost be the entire episode. But yeah, after that, we'll get into the Venom review. Just real quick. Usually we save this for the end of the episode, but right now we are trying to get to 200 ratings specifically on iTunes because Rotten Tomatoes has recently changed their standards for what qualifies as a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic, which includes podcasts now. All we need is 200 ratings and we meet all of the criteria.

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So we've been trying to get there and we have been getting ratings, but a few people have also been generous enough to give us reviews. So we just wanted to give them a quick shout out. Yeah, we super appreciate it. Thank you very much to Dnick290, Badewalker, JazzPee, LilChef118, and LarryNuki. I think that's how you pronounce that. Thanks to all of you for your generosity. Yeah, you guys say fantastic things. I don't deserve it, but you don't deserve it.

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I do. Neither do you. Thanks again. Yeah, if you guys could help us out with reaching 200 ratings on iTunes, please do so. And if you want to give a review as well, that would be fantastic. So this Thursday on Patreon, we will be releasing bonus content for our patrons in the form of our secret project that we've been working on for the past month that the general public doesn't have access to yet. But it'll be like the second episode of that.

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So patrons look forward to that this Thursday. If you want to join our Patreon, go ahead and go to patreon.com slash dynamic duel. And for just two bucks a month, you get access to weekly bonus content, which is awesome. So check that out for sure. One of our main goals for the Patreon account is to reach 25 patrons, at which point we will be printing out physical copies of the dynamic duel no prize that we award each week to a listener that gives our favorite answer to the question of the week. And speaking of no prizes, it's no prize time.

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So a No Prize is an award that Marvel used to give out up until the 90s to fans. Our version, the Dynamic Duel No Prize, is a digital award that we post on social media that I personally draw for those who we feel gave the best answer to our question of the week. Last week's question was, who would you have cast as Huntress and Black Canary? This of course stemming from the news that those two roles have been cast in Birds of Prey. Right. So this was a tough one. Yeah, a lot of great answers, a lot of great half answers, I guess. Yes.

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With almost every answer that we received, I really, really liked one of those answers and really kind of didn't really care for the other one. Ultimately, I awarded the no prize to two people who sort of gave my two favorite actresses for the individual roles. But yeah, for Black Canary and for Huntress. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honorable mention goes to Ariana Quadra for her answer of Diane Kruger as Black Canary and Rosario Dawson as Huntress, which was fantastic choices.

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Like, I totally loved Diane Kruger ever since Troy. And Rosario Dawson? Total badass. They may have been aged out of the parts by this point now, though. They're both in their early 40s, late 30s, I think. Yeah, it'd be hard to carry a franchise with them. But yeah, honorable mention also goes to Joel Seagrave, who gave the answer of Tatiana Maslany.

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She's the orphan black actress for Black Canary and Eliza Dushku as Huntress. Yeah, that was a great answer. I can see both of those actresses in those roles. I can see Tatiana Maslany playing Huntress as well as Black Canary. She could do so many roles. Yeah, I guess that's what she's known for. Yeah, another honorable mention goes to John and Adam Spies, who gave the answers of Natalie Dormer as Black Canary and Marie Evgaropoulos as Huntress. They actually gave this answer in their own podcast, Blast From Our Past podcast.

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which we guest starred on, when they sent us their answer, they were like, just the podcast is our answer. So we put it in this list. Yeah, that was a fun episode. In that episode, we talked about the Batman animated series 90s cartoon show, as well as the X-Men 90s cartoon show. So definitely check that out if you get a chance, if you're a fan of those shows, because their podcast is just awesome. It's a great podcast. Again, it's called The Blast from Our Past Podcast. Yeah, but to move on to the winners of the NOAH Prize, we are giving it to Jacob Bell.

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who gave the answer Blake Lively for Black Canary and Liv Tyler as Huntress. That's great right there. It is. Blake Lively as Black Canary, that was always my dream cast. Liv Tyler is probably a little bit too like- Well, she's like a decade older than Blake Lively. Yeah. And she's always been very low energy, very soft spoken. I don't quite see her as being like the fierce Helena Bertinelli from the comics. And then we're also giving the no prize to Mia Moraes.

06:24
who gave the answer Trisha Paytas as Black Canary. I don't know who that is. Which, but the answer of Lily Collins as Huntress was fantastic. I love Lily Collins. She's great. She would make a fantastic Huntress. Great answer. Yeah. So yeah, congrats to Jacob Bell and Mia Marius. You guys both get the Dynamic Duel No Prize for this week. If you wanna win a Dynamic Duel No Prize, go ahead and listen to later on this episode when we ask you guys another question of the week. With that out of the way, onto the news.

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So late last week Warner Brothers unveiled an extended video. It's five minutes long of Aquaman footage. Yeah, that was crazy when I saw that. I was like, wow, what's happening here? Yeah, this whole trailer literally, literally left me with tears in my eyes. It's so beautiful. Oh my God. So fantastic. The action looks amazing. That's the thing that blew me away. The action and just the cinematography is so bright, so colorful, so amazing. These set pieces.

07:26
I just want to go there. Right? Like I can't believe someone imagined some of these places, some of these like set designs. It's just phenomenal. It's great. For both of these trailers for Aquaman, I just am blown away by how expensive the movie feels. It feels huge. The production value on this must've been astronomical. Like a $300 movie. I mean, what? What? $300 million movie. Seriously, seriously, so much money, every frame. Yeah, it starts off with Jason Momoa, Arthur Curry, sort of like,

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talking about his origin, I guess, his parents. It's interesting, the first shot is actually of a snow globe of a lighthouse sitting on top of an H.P. Lovecraft book, which we know James Wan is a big horror fan and H.P. Lovecraft deals with underwater monsters and stuff like that, so that was a good call out. But we get to see, basically, it's the love story between his mom, Queen Atlanta, and his father, Tom Curry.

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they're in love, but she has to leave. And then, you know, we see Aquaman, you know, grown up and he's lifting us up a submarine. But then the extended video really gets into the meat of what it is. And it's really like two action set pieces. I don't even want to say action, because the first one is, it's more like an Indiana Jones exploratory kind of piece. They're in the desert. They find these lost remains of Atlantis, which is kind of cool. I'm guessing it's like one of the cities of Atlantis. And that's why the Atlanteans don't live there anymore. Or like the city moved at some point or something. Yeah, maybe, I mean.

08:48
Arthur Curry doesn't say that as they're walking up the sand dune. He's like, you know, there's no way Atlantis was this far inland. But yeah, just makes you wonder like what happened to Atlantis? What happened to the city? It's a strange line. It's a strange scene. It looks cool. It looks really, really cool, just like this ancient city. And even Jason Momoa can help himself just being Jason Momoa. It's badass. He's a little bombastic. He is. He is. It's it's not in keeping with the character of Arthur Curry that I know from the comics. Yeah.

09:17
Well, what is that character? He's a little more bland. He's a little more generic. He doesn't. He's not bombastic. I wouldn't describe him as that. It's true. But in that regard, I think that Jason Momoa is perhaps adding some depth to the character that didn't exist prior. You look at characters like Iron Man, who prior to the Iron Man movie was a little bit of the same, you know, he wasn't defined through his humor. Right. He wasn't like a smart ass. Right. He was heavily defined as a character by his alcoholism and a straightforward attitude.

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But it wasn't until Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal, which was at the time to me a little bit unfamiliar in regards to the character, but it totally came to define Tony Stark going forward from there, which I came to appreciate because it did add depth. Now we know Tony Stark as the eccentric billionaire. Yeah, Jason Momoa definitely isn't selling a regal Aquaman. He's definitely more of a guy who just grew up in the normal world. So I don't...

10:13
I don't mind it. Perhaps drinks heavily or something, you know. Yeah, he does. We know that from the Justice League film. But it will be interesting if he does eventually become closer to the Aquaman that we all know and love from the comics towards the end of the film, that will be his character arc. To go from this guy who is the opposite of royalty and go into a more mature character. Yeah, yeah. In this scene, they activate this Atlantean machine in kind of a funny way where she takes a sweat and he's like, we could have just peed on it.

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I laughed at that. But it's, you know, it's a good thing that her hand didn't like move south lower and just like extract the urine from his groin. There's probably a lot more there in his bladder. You probably maybe, yeah. But the machine activates like a hologram and it's I think it's King Atlin, the first King of Atlantis who actually sank Atlantis. And he's talking about his trident. So now we know sort of like the story they're looking for this trident. And we haven't really got that in previous trailers. Right.

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And they're trying to find it, I assume, before Orm can find it. Right, yeah, I think so. But as he's talking about Atlantis, we get these really great scenes just looking at ancient Atlantis and underwater Atlantis. Yeah, it's amazing. It almost looks like Asgard on steroids. Oh yeah. It's insane. It is insane. There's so much detail, so much detail in every frame. It's ridiculous. Once he starts talking about the Trident and it has the power of Atlantis.

11:39
Once that the hologram is done, she like breaks the key. And then he's like, shouldn't we have at least written the message down? It was kind of another funny scene. He's like, blah, blah, blah. Tried it. But then, you know, we get some more like quick cuts of different scenes, but it really leads into Black Manta and some like Atlantean soldiers against Mara and Arthur. Yeah. Which is pretty cool. Black Manta. Such a badass. He looks so flippin cool. Yeah, I'm glad we pit him against Black Panther.

12:08
I know, I know. In our duel episode. It was such a good matchup. I'm really glad we did it. Arthur, you know, he definitely seems to be holding his own, like, doing like this flip kick against Black Manta, which was kind of cool. He's a fighter. Yeah, definitely. Mera is on the run, running across the rooftops as these soldiers are just like tearing straight through walls. It's pretty cool. The camera work is pretty amazing. The camera work is the most impressive thing about this action scene. I've never seen camera work quite as kinetic as this.

12:34
where it's like darting through windows and stuff like that and really tracking along with the action in a way that's impossible to do physically, but somehow they pull it off. It's movie making magic. It is for sure, for sure. It's something that you can't do in comics, right? Right. And it just brings so much energy to the scene. But you know, that ends with one of the soldiers getting shot on Mara.

12:55
And then we get more action scenes throughout the rest of the video of Oram and Arthur Curry fighting underwater. That looks really cool. That's gonna be a highlight of the movie, I feel like. We also get a lot of the underwater battle scenes between the sharks versus the alligators versus the seahorses and stuff like that. Yeah, and Nicole Kidman being a badass with her trident. Yeah, I didn't know she was gonna have an action scene in this movie. No, I didn't know either. Looks like she's protecting her family. Maybe they find out that she's living with this family at some point. Yeah. And that's why she has to leave, I'm guessing. Yeah.

13:24
I think so. They definitely de-aged her for this. I'm wondering what role she's going to serve later on in the film. Not sure. But we get to see more of the trench and more of that really, really cool scene of him like carrying a flare down into the water. Those monsters look awesome. And then it ends with this pretty cool line of like Atlantis has always had a king. Mer is talking to Arthur. This was a great moment. Yeah. And she's like, we need something more. And Arthur's like, well, what's greater than a king? She's like a hero.

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And then it's the coolest shot ever. It's well timed with the music and the moment. It is super well timed. It's just like this powerful cathartic moment of Aquaman just like stepping out of this waterfall with the trident in his classic costume, hair's all wet, just pins his trident to the ground. So badass. Oh, so great. I'm wondering if the movie can actually live up to this moment from the trailer, because it's a lot of elements that work together to create this magical moment. It will, it absolutely will. Okay.

14:23
It will. I have so much faith in James Wan. I can't wait for this film. He should be commended for creating what looks to be just a magical movie that presents a lot of things that we have never seen before in film. In regards to the action, in regards to this world that he's creating, it looks on par with something like Avatar. Oh yeah. It's awesome. I think out of all of its competition for its opening weekend, it's going to come out with the top spot. It's facing fierce competition from Bumblebee, from Mary Poppins, from Sherlock.

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Homes and Watson. Homes and Watson, yeah. And then that entitled Deadpool Christmas special thing. Right. Yeah. We're not exactly sure if that's just a PG-13 of Deadpool 2 or not. I mean, I'm beginning to think it's not going to be just that. Right. That's probably the one I'm most concerned about. Uh huh. Um, this all kind of brings us to our question of the week.

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So of the four other major films opening in the same timeframe as Aquaman, including Bumblebee, Mary Poppins, Holmes and Watson, and the untitled Deadpool Christmas special, tell us why you think Aquaman has the best shot at winning the weekend box office, or why not? Yeah, it's a little nerve wracking. It is. With all those movies competing against each other. They're just gonna consume each other, and I hope that Aquaman's box office doesn't suffer as a result. Again, I do think it'll win the weekend, but if it doesn't,

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I'm kind of curious which one will take it over. Does this trailer make you nervous for Deadpool? No, I don't care if Deadpool makes money or not because we already have Deadpool 2. So it's kind of more like a joke Christmas special kind of thing, I think. So I don't think it was made necessarily to make money but more to facilitate the brand of Deadpool. I wish they weren't doing it, I hate them. But yeah, post your answer to our Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or email us at dyna

16:15
and we will pick our favorite answer and draw that person a dynamic dual no prize that we'll post to social media. Moving on from Aquaman into Spider-Man, we got the official second trailer for Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. And I think this is the best trailer for this movie by far. They've all been really impressive. But this one was a great way to sell the movie to general audiences who weren't still quite clear on what the concept is. Because it's Peter Parker that introduces the film and he kind of gives us narration.

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and you get short clips of animated scenes that resemble the Sam Raimi films where he's talking about like, you know who I am, I've saved the world, you know, and we see him stopping the train from Spider-Man 2 and just like the car through the window. Yeah, it's very familiar and I think that's a great lead in to what is going to be a more unfamiliar universe for most moviegoers. It seems kind of like a Deadpool version of Spider-Man and that like he's self-aware. He knows he's a comic book, you know, like he did a Christmas album.

17:12
Yeah, and the comic book and he has a cereal and a so-so popsicle. That was hilarious because I've had that popsicle and that's the one with like the gum eyes that are on it. They have other Marvel versions of it, but yeah, that was a shitty looking popsicle. It looked like it was photographed on like a plastic plate or something. It's funny. But yeah, it transitions from there into the Miles Morales Ultimate Universe and we get a rehash of the scene where he tells his dad, I love you, which pays off later on in this trailer where

17:40
He tells his dad he loves him again while in the Spider-Man costume. Right, and the dad's like, what? Wait, what? It looks like the Kingpin and some other supervillains are trying to open a dimensional gateway, and that's what brings Spider-Man through to this world. So that was the Kingpin. Yes. And it's voiced by Leif Schreiber. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. It's a pretty good Kingpin voice, I think. I like the character design on all these guys, but he looks particularly menacing here. But Kingpin does. He does. He does.

18:08
And so Spider-Man comes into the Ultimate Universe and basically tells Miles, like, I'm from this normal universe and you're from this like weird dinky universe using french fries as metaphors. But he trains Miles on how to be Spider-Man. And in the process, we introduced to all these other characters that are going to be in the movie. They're pretty cool at the introductions. Yeah, I like the introductions. Gwen Stacy with like the drums, I was like, yeah, it was like really getting into the trailer. Yeah, we've seen her in those Aspen trees before, but yeah, like.

18:37
Her universe is very pink. She's a musician in her universe. She plays the drums. She's in a band. This is the universe where Gwen Stacy was bit by the radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker. We also get introductions to Spider-Man War voiced by Nick Cage. It's a really quick introduction. Yeah, it's a really quick introduction. It looks pretty cool though. And we also see Spider who is Penny Parker who controls the spider robot. So that's pretty cool. I wasn't expecting to see her, but her art style, the art style in each of these characters.

19:05
is pretty spot on for the universe that they come from. Yeah. Like Penny Parker, she looks like an anime character. Right, right. And Peter Parker looks like a Looney Tunes character. He looks almost exactly like Porky Pig. And John Mulaney's voice is just fantastic. It's fantastic, it's great, yeah. I like how Peter Parker's like, this can't get any weirder. And he's like, it can get weirder. I have no idea why his hand is wet though, or his body is wet. Right. After that we get...

19:30
Just kinda like quick flashes about what the rest of the movie is about. It looks like Kingpin is teaming up with enemies like Tombstone and the Scorpion to fight the Spider-Man. It's a different take on Scorpion. Is that like the ultimate version? Yeah, it is. Green Goblin's in it too and it's the ultimate version of him as well. We see Prowler as well, I think. Yeah, Prowler. All great designs, I think. I still just love the animation of this whole thing. Is it like a little...

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choppy again so it looks like almost like it's stop motion or something like that. Yeah, lower frame rate. Right, exactly. It brings a lot of charm to it. Yeah, definitely. The last thing is Miles and Peter and Spider-Man Noir and Peter Porker and all those guys, they're I guess hiding in Miles' room where Gonky is, or Gonk, I don't know how to pronounce his name, but it's his best friend and he's reading a Spider-Man comic book it looks like and they're trying to remain hidden by sticking to the walls as like a singular spider. Right.

20:24
Spider-Hem blows the cover by saying, do animals talk in this universe? Cause I don't want to freak him out. That was hilarious. It was pretty good. I really liked that joke. And all, every time I see new marketing for this movie, I get more and more excited for it. Especially that final shot where like Miles Morales takes that opening scene and really makes it his own. Where Peter Parker was standing on that gargoyle looking over New York City.

20:47
This time it's Miles Morales and he kind of stamps his own mark on it. Yeah, he's literally putting his own mark on it. Yeah, it's- I mean, it's vandalism, but it's still badass. It's a bumper sticker. No one's- who's gonna complain? No one's gonna see it. I've been more excited for this than like any other Marvel movie, I think, in a really long time. Really? Yeah, I don't know why. Just because of its artistic style? I think so. Yeah, it's really cool. It's certainly more styled than other animated Marvel and DC films that have come out recently, such as like Lego Batman. Oh, yeah. Or Teen Titans Go or something like that. Yeah.

21:16
So in other news, Rosie Perez has been cast as Renee Montoya in the Birds of Prey film, which in one sense is kind of perfect casting. She's a little bit older. She is. That's the other sense. It was a definite surprise to me. I thought they would go for someone younger, for someone who, you know, could carry a franchise for many years to come. Right. Well, in the comics, the question is...

21:44
Victor Sage and he is the mentor to Renee Montoya who comes the second question. So it looks like in this Birds of Prey movie, they're kind of swapping that in that it seems like Renee Montoya is going to be the mentor character to perhaps some of these younger super heroines. I don't know honestly, if that's the case. She may just be a cop. She may just be a Gotham city police officer, which I could totally see her selling, you know? Oh, so you don't think we'll see her as the question?

22:12
I'm starting to have doubts because of this casting. If it was a younger casting, I think maybe you would have, you know, like a pretty solid journey from her being a detective to being the question. But I think this may be a smaller role than I initially thought. OK. Yeah. Because, you know, they need some kind of face for the police force in Gotham City in general. So why not have it be Renee Montoya? That makes the question may not factor into this at all.

22:41
Which is kind of a shame. I do like the character of the question. Yeah. I mean, it still leaves room for Victor Sage to be the question, but it kind of maybe puts the character of René Montoya in a position in the cinematic realm, at least of never being, never being the question. Yeah. It leaves both options open-ended. Yeah.

22:59
Yeah, it does. You know, I remember her from films like Do the Right Thing, White Men Can't Jump. I don't think I ever saw that full movie. She was in Planetable Express. It was the last thing I saw. She was. Yeah. She was a cop in that, wasn't she? Yeah, she was. Yeah. Maybe that's what I'm thinking. She's going to be a pretty badass detective. But yeah, again, it was it was just a big surprise to me. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it initially, but quite the diverse cast that they have going here now. Yeah, for sure. For sure. She's of course joining Journey Smollett Bell and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

23:27
and Margot Robbie in the film. We don't know who is going to play Black Mask yet. And we don't know who's going to play Cassandra Cain yet. That'll be interesting. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I'm looking forward to seeing what else they could do with this. I don't have 100% confidence in the project yet, I would say. But, you know, I'm just waiting for more information. We have rumors of what the story is going to be. And that sounds like a bad-ass story. Right. But hopefully Cathy Young can pull it off, the director. Right, right.

23:57
Alright, moving on to the first trailers for Daredevil Season 3. They're a little bit late coming considering that the third season actually debuts in just like a week actually. Right. Yeah. But I think that's why they gave us two right away. We got two Daredevil Season 3 trailers. The first one is more about Matt Murdock and we see him kind of out from under the rubble that he was stuck under from the Defenders television show. Yeah.

24:22
Can you believe that it's actually been that long since we've had a Daredevil season? Yeah, since like last year. Since season two, no, two years ago. What? Since season two, we've had two seasons of Luke Cage, two Iron Fist seasons, a Defenders and a Jessica Jones. That's true. Yeah, it's been a while. But it's good to have him back, especially with the Kingpin back. Heck yeah. In this trailer, we see that Kingpin strikes a deal and he's able to get released on parole, it looks like, from prison. And he's out to seek revenge against Matt Murdock and just...

24:52
make his life a living hell. So it seems to be at least partially adapting the Born Again storyline in which the Kingpin knows Daredevil's secret identity and you can listen to more about that in our Daredevil versus Nightwing dual episode that we did a few months ago. And I'm not missing anything right? Like Kingpin doesn't currently know Matt Murdock's identity. Like he'll learn it in this season. Well at the end of Daredevil season two it seemed like he was this close to figuring it all out. He was following a paper trail.

25:20
that would have revealed that Matt Murdock was Daredevil. Cause that was his kind of project while he was in prison, just passing time, was trying to figure out who this guy is. The action looks spectacular in this trailer. It looks like we have another hallway fight this time that takes place in the prison. And I heard that it's just amazing from people who have seen the first few episodes of the show so far. Both trailers are really intense. Yeah, they are. Really intense.

25:44
Matt's back to wearing his black outfit from the initial season one. I think the reason he's wearing the black costume is because as we see at the end of this trailer, there's a new guy who's wearing the Daredevil costume and he's being a villain basically. So I think in order to distinguish himself from that evil Daredevil, Matt has taken on his old costume so that he doesn't get confused by the authorities or from other people. I don't know if that's the case because he's wearing his black costume before he even meets

26:11
the new Daredevil. But we don't necessarily know the chronology of events here. It could be that this new Daredevil has been Daredevil for quite some time at this point. True, maybe. So it is cool though, I mean, they're heavily implying that this new Daredevil is Bullseye, just the way he's throwing things and how accurate he is at throwing and marksmanship and stuff like that. And he has a gun at the very end of the trailer. It's kind of like a callback to like the famous Daredevil comic book cover where he's like pointing a gun.

26:39
Oh, right. Yeah. It was like no more Mr. Nice Guy or something like that. Something like that. Yeah. Part of Frank Miller's run. It is very reminiscent of that. And Wilson Bethel looks pretty cool in the mask, I think. At one point, he was in the running to play Captain America. He was like in the top three contenders to play Captain America. Oh, really? Oh, I'm still glad that Chris Evans got the role because he's just he's just perfect as Cap. It's nice to also see that Wilson Bethel still got a chance to play in the Marvel universe. Yeah.

27:08
because he seems like a pretty badass actor, especially in the next trailer that we get, where we get to see more regarding the character of who they're calling Agent Poindexter. This is Bullseye, right? It is. I don't remember his name being Poindexter in our Bullseye vs. Deadshot episode. Yeah, his name was Lester. Yeah. They've never really revealed his name, so I'm wondering if the show is kind of taking liberty with that, or they're actually giving him a name. I guess there's enough mystery around the character where they can do something like that successfully. Right.

27:35
Like maybe his name is Lester Poindexter or Dexter Lester or something like that. That'd be a weird name. But yeah. And, and the end, it could turn out to all be an alias or something like that. So one never knows, but Kingpin is impressed with his skills as a corrupt FBI agent and hires him essentially to impersonate Daredevil. Yeah. The guy looks intense. Uh, he has a very intense look to him. His, his bone structure is like freaking gaunt as hell. Those are some sharp features, but

28:05
his voice is pretty spot on into what I would imagine Bullseye's voice would be as well. And just the things that he does where he's like shooting guys from far distances, nailing him with the headshot and you know throwing knives into chest and stuff like that. He looks pretty badass. Bullseye is pretty unstable. He's always been like a scary kind of villain. And that he's just like unpredictable and just so darn... Talented. Efficient and talented. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited for this season. I like one of the later shots where it looks like...

28:34
Bullseye is about to kill a guy by throwing a billy club through his head and at the very last moment Matt Murdock is able to catch it right before it hits the guy's face. Yeah, that was pretty cool. Yeah So really looking forward to this season. I don't have to wait long for it. Thank goodness comes out October 19th So yeah, we'll definitely have the review up by the end of this month when we binge all those episodes Yeah, yeah, it's coming up soon moving on to DC television We got our final trailer the official team up trailer for Titans which comes out also this month

29:04
I think next week actually. Oh really? Yeah, yeah. This debuted at New York Comic Con. It's not a long trailer. It's less than two minutes long. It's my favorite trailer so far that they've released. It's because of the song, isn't it? It's not just because of that cool cover song by Marilyn Manson of Cry Little Sister. It was the Lost Boys song. Yeah, the song from the Lost Boys movie. It's such a great cover and it fits so well with the visuals that we're seeing on the trailer. Yeah. But it also does a great job with showcasing each.

29:31
Superheroes powers. I think in a way that the previous trailers didn't they feel more like their respective characters in this than they have at any Previous point in the marketing. Yeah, this probably is also my favorite trailer better than like last week's Netflix trailer It makes me want to be Robin and have a collapsible bow staff that I can use to just like point outward and then like have it Extend and hit two guys on the sides of me. It's just so cool They are totally selling Robin like in a way that no live-action Robin. I mean, there's only been one I guess Yeah

30:01
Yeah, he's such a badass in this. He looks like he's a badass. Even Beast Boy is impressed. He's like, it's Robin. Yeah, yeah. His reaction was my reaction. Yeah, it was a great moment. But, you know, it sets up the story. It's definitely like a Rosemary's baby kind of thing. Raven's the daughter of Trigon and, you know, this cult is trying to bring him back through her. Right. We can see her use her powers in this too. She kind of like extends her soul self out of her body. Yeah. Attacks on people with it. It doesn't look.

30:28
quite like I thought it would. It doesn't look like a raven or anything. It looks like a swarm of ravens. Yeah, they kind of form like a tentacle kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if I'm the biggest fan. You know, this has been getting good reviews, but they're also saying like, it's not really the Titans that people know. They're saying the acting is really good and the story grows on you for sure. So I'm glad that it's getting good reviews because.

30:53
These trailers don't inspire the highest degree of confidence when it comes to faithful interpretations of the characters Uh-huh, but I'm still definitely gonna watch it for sure. We see Beast Boy turn into a tiger We see Starfire shoot her fire out Yeah Beast Boy like his introduction is like Raven stumbling in on him when he's like all bloody at the mouth and stuff like that It's like the cult has him maybe trapped in the same place that she's trapped in I don't know and she rescues him and then it also looks like Starfire rescues Raven as well

31:23
Yeah, and then they meet Robin and he's just being a badass taking fools out in the dark and shadow just being really cool What do you think of the news that we heard that the reason that robin is like branching away from batman in this series is Because he disagrees with batman's methodology in that he kills people in this universe Do you think that's true? Do you think it's been misinterpreted? I don't know I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case judging on how dark this is. Uh-huh. I'm not happy about it

31:53
But I don't know, it doesn't seem like Batman will be that big of a character in this show. So, I don't know. Hopefully they don't. Wait, fuck it up DC. I know. If they did that. If they did that. Apparently they didn't fuck it up though, because I keep hearing good things about it. There's some fascinating things in this trailer, like this guy just covered in blood and like the cult people like blinking lights in their head. It's pretty crazy. It looks pretty crazy. And of course we get that Avengers team up shot at the end where all of them are in frame and like, you know, Beast Boy is a tiger and...

32:23
Raven is in her white form. Yeah. I'm looking forward to next week just just to get a taste of it. Yeah Too bad. It doesn't all come out at one time. We did get the release schedule for the DC Universe shows Yes. Yep, and it looks like we're actually getting Doom Patrol earlier than we thought we would. Yeah, it's coming out next year Brendan Fraser was on stage and he made a goof. He was like, oh, yeah, it's coming out mid-december. That's that's not the case That's when Young Justice comes out. Yes. Yeah, and then Doom Patrol comes after that, right?

32:53
Another one of the shows for DC Universe that we got a sneak peek at was Harley Quinn. That's coming out next December. Right, like more than a year from now. That's insane. I'm surprised they gave us our first look so early. But along with the first look came the news that Kelly Cuoco of The Big Bang Theory is voicing Harley Quinn. Now when I first saw the sneak peek, which starts off in Arkham Asylum, actually it stays there. It's just her talking to the camera in her prison cell with Poison Ivy.

33:21
Yeah, breaking the fourth wall. Yeah, I went to the audience. I wasn't exactly thrilled with the voice initially until like, I don't know, halfway through when she's talking about extremely gratuitous violence. Then I'm like, this is a pretty good voice to me. She sold me on you're going to piss yourself. It is a funny trailer. I watched it like 50 times that I was just laughing every time. And my wife was like, what are you watching? So I had to show her. But yeah, I like the animation style.

33:50
I like the humor, I like the voice work, Lake Bell as Poison Ivy is fantastic. And then we even get a Batman cameo. And a dig at Deadpool. Nice Marvel dig right in there. Ugh. Yeah, I hated that. Because as we all know, Deadpool was to get an animated series as well, and it was supposed to be produced, and I think starring Donald Glover as Wade Wilson, and it fell through the cracks due to creative differences, allegedly. Right. But...

34:19
Yeah, this looks good. I think I do like Kaley Cuoco's voice It's surprising because her big bang theory cast mates Melissa Rush I think is how you pronounce her name. She was also Harley Quinn Yeah, in the Harley and Batman movie that came out earlier this year. I think yeah, yeah I didn't see the film. I saw the trailer though. Honestly. I didn't really care for the voice. I like this one much more Yeah, I wonder if they were competing for this role of Harley Quinn in this television show

34:47
I wouldn't be surprised, you know, along with Tara Strong and probably all the other voices wanted this role. But I'm kind of glad it went to Kelly Cuoco because she does have some nerd cred, some geek cred in there. A little bit. The cast, honestly, for this show, I don't know if you've seen the cast list, it's fantastic. Really? It has, you know, Lake Bell has Jason Alexander from Seinfeld. It's just so many voices. It's gonna be great. We don't know who everyone is gonna play yet. Uh. But the cast is phenomenal. And now we just have to wait a year to see it. A whole freaking year.

35:17
Yay. I guess they also give a dig to DC as well when they're talking about like, shouldn't it be like dark and bleak and depressing like other DC stuff? Yeah. I just love Harley's reaction. She's like, that is a wonderful way to make movies and television shows, but not my show. Just it's, it's, there's so many like very diplomatic kind of answer. There's a great energy to Kelly Cuoco's voice. And you know, she could hit the highs and she hits like

35:40
more serious notes. More serious notes. She does a great job. Yeah. And like the logo is great and she comments on that and they're like, ooh, this logo. Yeah. Yeah. Poison Ivy is like, they're going to hate it. It's very Suicide Squad, that logo, you know, very like neon blue and pink. Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah. But I think that brings us to the end of the news. Let's go ahead and get into our review of the Venom film. Let's do it.

36:18
Alright, so Venom, quite the polarizing movie I've found. I think we're gonna have listeners who are gonna hate this movie, I think we're gonna have listeners that absolutely love this movie, so what I don't want to have happen is you guys hate us for thinking that the movie was, you know, mostly good. Is there anyone who really loves this movie though? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Really? Yeah, there are people out there who really love this movie. Because, you know, it does have a lot going for it.

36:44
You know, despite everything that we say regarding the movie's flaws, which there are a lot, and we'll get into that, Venom surpasses a lot of that negativity through what it does really well, and that is, you know, the relationship between Venom and Eddie, and the characterization of Venom. I thought the film absolutely nailed the Venom character, especially in regards to the action, which, you know, is the primary appeal of any superhero movie. As moviegoers and comic fans, we want to see

37:13
these characters' personalities depicted accurately, and marvel at the spectacle of their powers. And I think in that regard, I think this movie succeeded. And just a forewarning to those who haven't seen the film, this is gonna be a spoiler review. So if you haven't seen the film yet, go ahead and turn the podcast off now. Don't listen to the review. Maybe go see the film if you want to, if you don't want to. I think I would recommend it. I would totally recommend it. Go see it. What are you doing? If you don't want to, what are you doing? Yeah, don't listen to what everyone else is saying.

37:43
Go see it for yourself, because you might enjoy it. The reaction that I get most often that I've heard is a lot better than I thought it was meant to be. Yeah, for sure. I think almost everybody I talked to has said that. So whatever you're thinking it's gonna be if you haven't seen it, it's gonna be better than that. Was it just the Lady Gaga fans who were like telling everyone it was just gonna be like the worst piece of shit ever? No, there were legit reviewers who were coming down on this movie pretty hard, and you know, overall, the film got like a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is much lower than what it should have gotten. Yeah, I agree.

38:11
But as you know, sometimes popular culture goes to a movie with somewhat of an agenda. I think a lot of people were turned off by the trailers for this film and therefore kind of wanted to see it fail. Maybe also because it wasn't part of the Spider-Man universe. It has nothing to do with Spider-Man. So there are reasons for people to wanna see this movie not do well, but it has been doing well. It broke box office records, made over 80 million, I think, if the numbers came in correctly.

38:39
and it was like over 200 million worldwide, I believe, like 213 or something. Oh, definitely. I mean, it did better than Ant-Man and the Wasp. It's going to get a sequel. And I think the best thing that could be said about this film is that knowing that it's gonna get a sequel now, I'm super excited for that. Yeah, it's a good starting point. It's a good launching pad. For the franchise. Yeah, yeah, definitely. What did you think of the action and the spectacle? I don't know if I would agree that the action was that great. To me, it's just like one step above Transformers.

39:06
Like the two big action scenes, like the one in the lobby, you know, it was full of smoke. It was kind of hard to see what was going on. And then the other one, you know, the final fight, Venom and Riot looked so similar. And I was afraid this was going to happen in the trailers, but, you know, it's just so much CG. It just makes my eyes bleed. That being said, like it was passable. It wasn't the worst action I've ever seen. It was just passable. I would have to disagree in that I...

39:34
Don't think I was ever confused by the action. I found it easy to follow in both of those major scenes. And I thought it was a highlight of the film. I thought they were really well done. The animation was on point, I think, for the character and how he moved and how his liquid biomass worked and everything like that. There was one cool action scene that I thought that worked. And that was, you know, before he emerged fully as Venom in Eddie Brock's apartment, and he was taking out the thugs. I thought that was a cool action scene. Just seeing the different ways he was using the Simba.

40:04
Like from there all the way to the motorcycle. It was extremely versatile. Yeah, I was like, oh I want a Symbiote, give me one. It could do a lot of different things for sure. Venom was so cool. I think one of the problems with the movie was that it did take half of the film's runtime to actually see the Venom character fully realized, which is pretty typical of origin story films. That's one of the problems with origin films is that you have to kind of get to know the character behind the mask before you care about the hero wearing it.

40:34
And I guess that's not a problem so much as it's kind of just old at this point. We've had so many superhero films throughout these past decades that the origin stories are pretty formulaic. You have this guy who discovers this incredible power, you know, learns how to use the power and then fights the bad guy. They find a good way to circumvent that lately in the Marvel cinematic universe with both Spider-Man and Black Panther, and that they established their characters in other films before giving them their solo films. So by the time they get their solo films, the characters already established. Yeah.

41:04
But yeah, in this case, that wasn't what happened. And it was 45 minutes of just Eddie Brock with no venom. But that's not necessarily even a bad thing too, because I definitely think that Tom Hardy gave a good performance here. Oh, definitely. I think it was a good performance. I found it intriguing. I'm not 100%, but I think. It was a good performance. Everything that you saw there, I guarantee you was intentional. You know, I read a lot of people saying that they laughed at many parts.

41:31
of this movie that were perhaps unintentionally hilarious. But I don't understand how you can question if the film's attempts at humor were intentional or not because the film obviously does not take itself 100% seriously. I found it to be very self-aware. It's trying to, you know, kind of send up the typical conventions of modern superhero films with its darker, unconventional subject matter. And it kind of takes a sort of schlocky monster movie tone in some parts.

42:00
But I mean, is there any doubt that this was on purpose, given the director is Ruben Fleischer, who directed Zombieland after all, which was a send up of zombie films. Everyone who's questioning whether or not they should laugh, the answer is yes. It's supposed to be a dark comedy mixed in with a superhero action film. There was a lot of comedy in it, more than I thought there was gonna be. And sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, sometimes I kinda felt like it was a little juvenile, like when Venom calls Eddie Brock a pussy.

42:29
I thought that was funny. No one in my theater laughed. Really? No one. I've seen the movie twice now and I think both times everyone in the theater chuckled at it. Really? I saw it with a pretty small crowd. Like I saw it like on a Sunday afternoon. Okay. There weren't many people in the screening I saw. So. The tone of the film, you know, it has humor. It is a little bit two dimensional and comic booky because of that monster movie tone.

42:54
And you compare that to the more three-dimensional fleshed out characters that we've been growing accustomed to seeing in the Marvel films, it felt kind of out of its time. Because the film didn't take itself so seriously, it did somewhat feel like some of the superhero films from the early part of the century, like Blade II. And that was another good film, also dark, also didn't take itself too seriously. I agree. You know, prior to Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, a lot of studios just didn't know how to tackle the subject matter.

43:24
in a credible manner and that was likely the main setback here with this movie I think and why some people even compared it to like Catwoman and Daredevil and things like that. Yeah I mean I don't really get those comparisons again. To me that's really really harsh actually, especially the Catwoman one. But uh have they not seen Catwoman recently because that movie is a fucking abomination. It is it is freaking Horocious. Is that a word Horocious? Sure you just made a word that's-

43:52
No. You don't want to? I don't want to. OK. It is fucking atrocious. Yeah. I think the reason Venom didn't come across like those other films so much to me with its tone and everything is because with a character like Venom, you can actually get away with that easier, that tone, because of the somewhat over the top nature of the character. You know, he's he's an outer space alien creature with a grossly exaggerated grin full of shark like teeth that bite people's heads off, you know.

44:20
It's a long ways away from a super soldier fighting Hitler in World War II. Yeah. I think what people want, what I certainly wanted was a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek element to the story to keep it from being a straight-up horror film. Though, you know, a horror film could have been interesting too. But in the comics, some of my favorite Venom moments are when he's acting weird or sweet, or something other than straight-up monstrous.

44:47
You know, it's those quirky moments that add depth to him. He's always been a different sort of Klyntar alien in the comics than, you know, his alien brethren. And I think they captured that really well here. They said he was a loser. Right, he admitted to being a loser. Yeah, which was interesting. I'm somewhat of a loser on my planet. One of my favorite memories of reading Venom in the comics were during his team up with Spider-Man when they first went up against Carnage. And while Venom was certainly sinister in that story,

45:16
where he's constantly telling Carnage that he's gonna kill him and things like that. There was a nice moment where they were swinging toward Madison Square Garden where Carnage was and Spider-Man's kind of internalizing how weird it is to be teaming up with Venom. And meanwhile, Venom is singing Strangers in the Night. It's just hilarious. That's kind of like the quirkiness of the character. Those are my favorite moments with him, I think. Yeah, I wasn't, like I'd never read a comic with Venom, I don't think, maybe I have.

45:45
I don't remember, but those moments, you know, where he's like telling Eddie Brock to like say you're sorry and stuff like that, it definitely did sort of like challenge my expectations of the character. When I think of Venom, I do think of it as just, you know, like this bad ass monster, not as someone who's kind of almost goofy in a way. Right, right. Love that guy, love that character. I think that the dark humor was well balanced with the sci-fi action. I think overall the film was

46:15
pretty well balanced and palatable for a mainstream audience. Though if it were rated R and it showed Venom actually eating his enemies and had more adult language and you know, stuff in the vein of Deadpool, it might've actually been a better film. I agree. But possibly only marginally so, I think. I'm surprised you can't show someone biting someone else's head off in a PG-13 film. I was like, what? As long as you don't show blood, right? I mean, dumb. But they were so subtle about it here that I wasn't even 100% sure.

46:44
during those moments if their heads were actually bitten off. It was like, did that just happen? Yeah. They really move the camera away from it quick. But in the end, I think I'd rather sacrifice the gore and keep the potential of a Venom Spider-Man team up. True. It may be wishful thinking, but it's not an impossibility. They're on opposite sides of the country, I mean. Right. And my guess is that maybe in a sequel to Venom, he's gonna fight Carnage, and maybe Carnage is going to go like across the country on a killing spree.

47:14
Venom is gonna chase him to New York because he feels responsible being that carnage is his offspring. And maybe like have a Spider-Man team up kind of moment where at one point maybe Eddie is knocked unconscious and the symbiote has to attach itself to Spider-Man for a while. I mean, that might be the best adaptation of symbiote Spidey that we get within this universe, within this franchise. Yeah. And you know, given how they treated the source material here, I mean, if that's the best that we could get, then I'll take it because I think we have a great

47:44
Realization of the character of venom within this film one that could be definitely carried forward in future films I think they were trying to go for something marvelous, and that's why they didn't go the rated-r route Well, I don't think the film itself was marvelous at all. I think it was an attempt to be marvelous I don't think it was you don't think no. I think it was a purposeful attempt to not be like Marvel I think the director has stated as such hmm actually And I think he did a good job of making the tone dark and edgy But also just on the borderline of possibly

48:14
being able to be included in the mainstream Marvel Cinematic Universe. Or the Spider-Man universe. Sony's Spider-Man, whatever the hell it's called. I think what primarily didn't work with this movie goes back to the self-aware tone of the film. Some of the dialogue and the character reactions and the characters themselves weren't real feeling. Some of the acting. Especially Carlton Drake, the cardboard cutout villain.

48:38
or Anne, the cardboard cutout ex-girlfriend. I think the only one that actually felt real here was Eddie Brock, and maybe actually Jenny Slade's character, Dr. Skirth, I think she felt nuanced enough to be real as well. Yeah, it was sad when she died. Yeah, but yeah, let's go into the character breakdown, and we'll start off with Eddie Brock. Eddie Brock and Venom are gonna be separate in this character breakdown, because they were very separate characters in the film.

49:03
As far as Eddie Brock goes, I think Tom Hardy's performance was intriguing as I said before. I think he elevated the material he was given by injecting just a metric ton of nuance, which made him feel believable. And it was only because of Brock's performance that I believed his relationship with Anne, especially in the scene when he visited her apartment and met her new boyfriend. That felt real. That was a good scene. She was like, why are you here, Eddie? Because I miss you.

49:29
It wasn't too long ago that we were going to get married. I was wondering if we might find our way back to that. That line, I thought, almost belonged in a different movie. It was the only time that I thought that these two actually had viable chemistry and a viable relationship at one point. That was one of my more favorite Eddie Brock character scenes. I mean, the first half of this film, when they're setting up the peril of Eddie Brock and just like how his choices have consequences and stuff like that and everything that stemmed from that.

49:57
I thought this was all fantastic setup. Yeah, it really was. In a way, like I think a lot of my problems don't really come about until he gets the symbiote. Because before that, it was a compelling film. Eddie Brock was a compelling character. Yeah, I think because of Tom Hardy's performance. He's such a great actor, he really makes you empathize with him. And on top of that, he's fun to watch. I thought his voice was gonna be grating based on the trailers, but I didn't mind it.

50:25
He sells his voices for sure. Yeah. Eddie Brock's character arc was strange though. Like he started out on top with his investigative reports on the Eddie Brock show. He started out giving a shit about his fellow man. You know, standing up for others seemed to be his life's purpose because he's a good guy, you know? But then he stooped low to steal a document from his girlfriend to support his agenda against Carlton Drake, then hit rock bottom losing his job, his relationship, and his home.

50:54
which somehow caused him to forgo his life's purpose and be done with giving a shit about his fellow man. Which is what he explicitly told Dr. Skirth. And it was weird because it seemed like he resented society for his own fuck-ups. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I kind of wish they would have set up Carlton Drake as more of a villain before Eddie was saying how much he didn't like him. Right. Because by that moment I was like, well, why? He seems like not a horrible guy. Even in the interview, like, Eddie Brock was the one being the asshole.

51:24
You know? Right. I didn't quite understand that. And, but you're right. He turned his back on society for, for his poor choice. And that was hard to relate to. Yeah. So he's, you know, he's a flawed character, which also makes him feel real. But yeah, again, hard to relate to. But on the Golden Gate bridge, which was a fantastic scene where it almost seems like he's contemplating suicide, which is in the comics. Oh, really? Yeah. That's why he went to the church was to ask for forgiveness for what he was about to do, and that's where he got the symbiote in the comics at the church.

51:54
But yeah, it was a great scene. It's where he had his change of heart and decides to investigate the Life Foundation and help others after all. I think it would have been a little bit more helpful if the movie had been more clear with how one makes the leap from taking down villains with investigative journalism to taking down villains with vigilanteism. Because I wasn't sure if he necessarily showed vigilante tendencies prior to getting the symbiote. Right. No, I mean, he didn't. He let that one guy extort the bodega owner. Right, yeah.

52:22
That would have been an interesting exploration even if briefly, but after his change of heart on the bridge, at that point, there wasn't much more character growth for Eddie Brock and the growth really shifted at that point to the symbiote Venom. Yeah. So let's talk about Venom, who was voiced by Tom Hardy. The character of Venom himself is really what saves this film and makes it as fun and enjoyable as it is. Well, it's what you went to see, you know, he's the titular character. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy how much joy I get.

52:53
out of just seeing that huge ass grin. And the voice, Tom Hardy nailed it. And though he was a blast to watch, it was hard to understand Venom's motivations, I think. Because let's follow his arc. So first Venom wants to get Drake's rocket, just like Riot, to reconnect with his brethren on the comet and invade Earth. Then all of a sudden, yeah, at some point, Venom rejects the idea and decides he's instead going to live on Earth because he likes it here and because of Eddie.

53:21
He says that explicitly he made the decision because of Eddie, but we don't know when that happened or why that happened Yeah, other than you know, he's like on my planet I'm kind of a loser and and that's kind of the most explanation we get as to his change of heart, right? Which to me like that was laughable. I was like what? Okay Like I'd rather hang out with you here than be with my loser siblings or whatever Yeah, that was that was a loser with my siblings, you know Yeah, that was a problem for me the symbiotes like motivations

53:51
We don't learn until far down the road in this film. Like initially, like the stakes of the film are that Eddie's gonna die. But it's not until like the final battle almost that it's like, hey, you know, the symbiotes are going to bring back an entire planet of symbiotes and take over our planet. They're like, oh, too little too late. Maybe not too little, but definitely a little bit too late. Yeah. Yeah. But overall with Venom, again, he's the star of the show. The reason why I get so much joy out of this movie and

54:20
why I liked it more than like say Ant-Man and the Wasp or something like that is because of the Eddie Brock Venom relationship. It's like a buddy movie. It is, it absolutely is a buddy movie. Yeah. One thing that confused me is like the knowledge that Venom had like right off the bat, like 60 gigahertz or something like that. Or the 60 gigahertz frequency? Yeah. 60 megahertz frequency? I don't know. And it's like, how long have you been on earth that you like, you know, know words like that? I guess just being inside of Eddie, but then.

54:48
But then he didn't know some things about Eddie that he maybe should have known. Exactly. So maybe he was just reading the wrong pages on Eddie's brain or something like that. I don't know. It's hard to know. Let's talk about Anne Wayne played by Michelle Williams. I thought she did a commendable job with the material she was given. I think a lot of those lines would have been a hard sell. Like, hospital, right now, or Eddie, I think I just ate a guy's head. Yeah.

55:15
But despite her being an overall like cliche girlfriend type, I thought she was likeable. I didn't really care for the performance honestly. Like at all. Really? Like at all. I think she did a horrible job. What? She did a horrible job. Really? Yeah. I don't know about that. I liked it. Her reactions did not seem believable in almost every way, I think.

55:38
Yeah, I would agree with that. I don't think her actions were believable. I think most of her reactions were kind of tug-and-cheek. I think her performance was a little bit tongue-in-cheek. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, that's what it felt like for sure. Like she knew she was in this movie that was beneath her or something like that. I don't know. But I liked that. I don't know. I guess it depends on what you enjoy as a moviegoer. Like to me, I appreciated the subtle tongue-in-cheek moments in this film. But, you know, if you take your superhero movies super seriously.

56:08
then you may not enjoy that. And I do, I do. I really like her turn as She-Venom. That was something that I was not expecting to see in this film. Is that from the comics? It is, yeah. Anne has taken on the Venom symbiote several times. And I kinda wanna see more of her, actually. Is that weird? Like I remember seeing She-Venom for the first time in the comics, and I was like, whoa, that freaky ass monster has a nice body.

56:35
I learned something about myself today. Oh jeez. She was super cool though. I liked the voice that she had where she's like, hello Eddie. And the kiss, that was, it was just such a bizarre fucking moment. It was. It was awkward. It was almost brilliant in its weirdness, I think. Let's move on to Carlton Drake, played by Riz Ahmed. I think I mentioned earlier that I thought he was pretty cardboard cut out, though I think Riz did the best he could given the material like Michelle Williams. I think he did a good acting job. Yeah.

57:04
I think he did a really good acting job. The character, he's a little bland. Very, very, you know, God complex character, generic God complex character, who just kind of hates humanity for what it is and- Or thinks he's above it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. He's supposed to be this unscrupulous, ambitious, super logical villain, but without any nuance, like Eddie Brock, he mainly just comes across as super generic. So I mean, like he did have those few interesting lines about being God or something.

57:32
but in the end it wasn't enough to save him from being described as mostly bland. Right. And he does make some weird choices and if I was working for him, I'd be like, I'm not working for this guy anymore. Jenny Slate totally had the right idea. It's like, fuck this guy, he's weird. Wouldn't want him as a boss. So that's it for the characters. I don't think there were any other standout characters to talk about, but let's get into these highlights from the film, the story highlights. So the movie starts off with the rocket crash on earth from the Life Foundation. Yeah.

58:02
and it felt very X-Files to me. Like I could've swore I was watching an episode of the X-Files. I agree. They had a nice little Easter egg in that first scene though with J. Jonah Jameson's son. Really? Yeah. Oh, he didn't make that connection. Yeah, cause in the comics, he's an astronaut. And actually, so what they did with this movie is they took the animated series origin, where in the 90s cartoon, Venom didn't come from the secret wars event. He came down with John Jameson.

58:31
from space and that's what they did here. Yeah. So while Venom's origin here is a radical departure from the comics and I think a lot of people maybe wanted to see the symbiote on Spider-Man first, you know, it wasn't entirely unfaithful to things that we've seen before that have been praised such as the animated series. Right. So that was kind of nice. Isn't his son like a werewolf? Yeah, in the comics, John Jameson is the wolf man or the man wolf, I forget what they call him.

59:01
But yeah, he's a werewolf and he gets that ability from his visit to the moon, which is kind of weird. From then, I don't think there were too many highlights of the film up until about the midpoints where we get the apartment fight, which we talked briefly about before. Really like the versatility that was shown here and this is when Venom really starts speaking to him. We get to know the character. Eddie beats these dudes up.

59:26
and Venom tells them to pile their bodies in the corner and bite their heads off and stuff. And it was like, what the fuck did he just say? Exactly, exactly. And then he jumps out the window and we think that Eddie's gonna die, but the symbiote saves him and swings him into this other building. That was cool. And then they start shooting at him, but Eddie's able to put up a shield. Put up a shield, that was cool. You just start seeing all these amazing moments in succession. I think one highlight before the action scene, if I may real quick. Yeah.

59:54
was when he first comes to his apartment after he's been infected and he's just like eating chicken from the trash can, he's just like feeling really terrible, like you really feel how bad he feels. It was like good camera work. Good acting too. Yeah, really good acting. When he puked, I thought, oh, I wonder if he actually puked. I know. I don't know, maybe the sound effects, maybe it was the lurch he did when he gagged, but it looked like real puking. But no, when he looked in the mirror and like Venom's eyes come up for the first time, you just hear him scream.

01:00:22
That was like my scream as well. I was like, ah! He just like falls onto the top. I thought that was funny. It was funny and scary. It was just a good moment. Yeah. After the apartment fight scene, we go into the motorcycle chase, which I thought was pretty cool. It was a little bit reminiscent of the San Francisco chase scene that we just saw in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Yeah. But I maybe actually liked this one a little bit more. I did, yeah.

01:00:48
There were a lot of different things that Symbiote was able to do. He was able to push cars aside, he was able to grab onto railings and jump over bridges and move steering wheels of the enemy cars. I think one of the coolest moments that he had kind of reminded me of the 89 Batman, where the Batmobile shot out this grappling hook that latched onto a street pole and made him turn a tight 90 degree turn, 180 degree turn. It was a really tight turn, yeah. It was almost the same thing, where the Symbiote latched out, grabbed onto a street pole.

01:01:19
and skid Eddie Brock onto his side, but was protecting him as like a cushion on the ground and then brought him back up after he made the turn. That was one of the more intriguing uses of the power that I've never seen in the comics or anything like that. But yeah, Venom can almost do anything in that regard. He was a shield, he was offensive, he was defensive. It was just such a cool power set. It is really cool. One thing that really bothered me during this scene though was just how destructive the

01:01:49
Like they just did not give a fuck. No. Like they were blowing shit up with these drones, which even then it's like, those have gotta be expensive drones, right? And also why you're trying to blow up the guy who has the symbiote, right? Exactly. Are you trying to kill your symbiote? They're like just like plowing into cars and stuff. How are they gonna explain that to the cops? I was thinking that the whole time. Like when this finishes and like the cops come for you, what are you gonna say? Right. It's gonna be one hell of an investigation. Exactly. I don't envy the police officer that has to do the paperwork for this.

01:02:18
sure. But no, like, you know, when it does end, we get the reveal of Venom, the full body, like, envelopment. Yeah. It's really cool. I thought that was really cool. And then he bites the dude's head off. Yes. That was great. Yeah. And right after that, you know, he like swims to that, to that buoy. And that's the first time we see like Venom's like head come out and like just start talking to Eddie. Yeah. Is that from the comics? Did you like that? Yes. Yeah. He's done that in the comics before. Okay. Um, yeah, he definitely has his own face and he's spoken to him like that before. I liked that scene. I especially like...

01:02:48
some of Venom's dialogue where Eddie was like, are you gonna eat more people? And Venom was like, most likely. I like that a lot. Such a great character, especially in one of the later scenes where Eddie goes to his old place of work, the network, and he and Venom climb up the building. And Venom gets to the top and it's just kind of like this iconic image where he's looking over San Francisco and like admiring the beauty of the city and everything. And he's like, it'll be a shame to see it all destroyed. And Eddie's like, what?

01:03:15
And then the plane flies by and shocks the symbiote off of him. And like never before in a movie have I ever felt so much like I was falling as that scene right now. That's like my worst nightmare. It was like well shot. Like he's sliding down the side of this building and he's pretty sure he's going to die because he's afraid of heights and everything like that. It was a good camera angle. Just like you see the feet. It's almost like a POV shot. You see his feet dangling and it's just like the ground is just coming up towards him and it's like, oh, shit. But luckily he gets rescued. And then from there.

01:03:43
he goes into the lobby fight downstairs. Yeah. And I really liked the effects there because, you know, so far we've seen Venom a lot in shadow and in darkness and things like that. We got a few really good money shots here, despite, you know, there being a lot of smoke and stuff like that. But when like the strobe effect would go off with the flashbangs and you see him react to that. And even in the thermal vision in the sniper's camera, I swear that was Venom straight lifted off of the comic book pages. I was so happy with that scene.

01:04:12
and how he was like so vicious, he was like picking guys up, jumping in the air and like spinning around and like throwing them away and things like that. It was just, it was awesome. Like leaping up onto the rafters and like ripping off beams and throwing them at people. Yeah. At that point I was like, I don't care what happens with the rest of this movie, I'm definitely satisfied with at least this moment. Hmm. It reminded me kind of like almost like Batman, like he was like a ninja, just like pulling guys out of the smoke and stuff like that. Right.

01:04:39
Yeah, that was pretty cool. There's something frightening about that. The attacker you can't see. Right. So later on, you know, he goes to the hospital and then and then he gets captured by the Life Foundation and then he gets rescued by she venom. I think we already spoke about that. I really thought it was going to be the dog in the forest, but I was really glad that it was she venom because that was such a fantastic Easter egg. I really like how protective venom at that point gets of Anne where like she wants to follow along and he's like, no, it's going to get ugly.

01:05:09
And Eddie's like, she can fight ugly. And she's like, yeah, I can fight ugly. And he was like, not today. And he like runs off and she's like, that's bullshit. I thought that was pretty funny. But also great character moment. I don't know if that was funny. It was funny. Why was Venom more concerned about her than Eddie? I don't know, that's a good question. Maybe because Eddie knows her better. And maybe he didn't wanna do it alone or something. I don't know. That is a good question, that's valid. Let's go to the final fight. The setup for the final fight was a little off, I think.

01:05:37
Like, can you just really throw together a last minute rocket launch without a crew or anything like that? Those things have to be like exactly timed. Right. Because there's a ton of math involved. Right, like is the Earth facing the right direction for when you launch off? Are you gonna be wasting fuel? Are you gonna be heading toward the comet itself, right? Or do you have enough fuel in case you need to make a correction like that or something? It was a little weird. But it was cool how Riot just kind of like took out the entire mission control with those giant...

01:06:04
like blades. I don't know, man. I'm sure one of those computers was really important for the mission. Yeah. You know, and uses one of those computers later on to activate the PA system, which startles the symbiotes later on during their fight. And then she has that horrible line, which is like, told you, I can fight ugly or something. So the fight itself was so cool. It started off on that bridge, connecting the launch pad to the station and Venom's chasing riot on there. And they have a fight where like Venom was like, he has shit.

01:06:33
you wouldn't believe or something like that. Yeah, shit you've never seen before. Yeah, and Wright really did. Like he busted out some sweet ass moves that I've never really imagined a symbiote could do. Like he had that swinging mace, and like there was a one part where he like shoved his spikes into the bridge below them and was like popping them up, trying to impale Venom. But Venom was like doing all these crazy cool back flips and like swinging off the bridge and back on and things like that. Yeah. It was just such a cool fight scene between those characters I thought. I really liked it.

01:07:00
Do you wish they would have gone with like a different symbiote, like the blue one or the yellow one? Yes, I do. While Riot did look cool, you know, that kind of like silver, gray, gunmetal finish kind of thing, I wish they would have gone somebody who is more easily discernible from Venom. Maybe somebody like Scream, who actually was, I would say, the primary member of those Life Foundation symbiotes, I think. Yeah. She was like the head of that group. Like the other four, they kind of actually, they merged into one symbiote called Hybrid. They were kind of a little bit expendable.

01:07:30
I think she had the unique look with the long hair and the fact that she was yellow and stuff like that. I think it would have been cool to see her as the villain. Or at least have the symbiote be yellow. Even if it wasn't Scream. Even if it was still Riot or whatever. I don't know. Just would have been cool. I think the other two symbiotes that the Life Foundation managed to capture, so they got four total. So they got Venom. We know that. One of them escaped, which was Riot. But the yellow one and the blue one, I think that was Scream. And the other one was Agony. Phage and Lasher were nowhere to be seen.

01:07:58
It would've been cool to see them here too, especially since they seemed so expendable. But back to the fight, after they finally get to the actual rocket and they're like trying to rip each other apart and stuff like that, there's a weird moment where Riot absorbs venom and they became like one being for like a second before Anne was able to separate them with the noise. Right. But he had the same look later on too, so I wasn't sure like if they were still combined or not. I don't know, that part was kind of confusing. Yeah, those like little tendrils that were coming off his back. Yeah.

01:08:26
So there are two bodies in one body? I'm not sure how the physics of that worked. I'm not sure how the physics of venom works to begin with. So because sometimes you see venom being ripped apart and Eddie Brock's face is around like venom's like chest area. And sometimes you see venom's face being ripped off and Eddie Brock's face is right beneath it. So it's hard to tell exactly where Eddie Brock is inside of venom at any given moment. I assume that when the two merged, Eddie and Drake were like just kind of like smashed up right against each other. It's a little awkward. It's like, hey.

01:08:55
But the fight that the two had when the symbiotes were off was pretty interesting. Like Eddie Brock had this like weird martial arts moment where he like slow motion spun around and punched Drake right in the face. Yeah, there was a lot of slow motion in this in this film. Yeah. But I like the way that Venom ultimately defeated Riot using the symbiotes weakness of fire, you know? Yeah. He destroyed the rocket's fuel tanks as it was flying up and the whole thing exploded and nearly killed Venom himself. Do you understand why Venom like told Anne earlier like all of his weaknesses?

01:09:25
That was weird. That was awkward in the car. I think it was more for the audience. There was a lot of like... But also I think he liked Anne. He even stated that much and that's why he told Eddie to get in the car. I think he had a soft spot for Anne. And it may have been grafted on from Eddie's memories of her or something like that. Oh, by that? That's a good explanation. So he was like super vulnerable and honest with her basically. Huh. And that takes us to one of the last highlights of the movie. When they're talking on the steps, I thought it was so fucking hilarious.

01:09:53
when all of a sudden Venom's voice pops back in and he's like, look at her, she doesn't even realize that we're going to get her back. He's like, we love you, Anne. It was so great. Uh, Venom playing Cupid is just awesome. But the very final scene, the mid credit scene of the movie is where we're introduced to Carnage or Cletus Kasady being played by Woody Harrelson. That scene felt a little bit off to me. It was.

01:10:19
It was bad. It was really bad. I don't know if it was Harrelson's acting or if it was his wig or if it was his dialogue. It was probably a combination of all three. They were trying to make it seem creepy, but it wasn't, like at all. It was tongue-in-cheek. Maybe. See, that I'm not sure on because Woody Harrelson did look fucking bat shit crazy out of his mind, but not entirely in a scary way. No. In somewhat a funny way, I think.

01:10:45
They could have done a much better job like setting the atmosphere for this. Uh-huh. Because it was almost comical the way the guard was talking with Eddie. And by the time you get to Cletus and he's like writing Eddie's name in blood and it's just like, you know, the things he's saying it's do you want me to turn on the serial killer? I could talk about like the Dada patterns of arterial spray. Uh-huh. And just like, who wrote this? I think they were going for silence the lambs and they got

01:11:14
more Suicide Squad than Silence of the Lambs, I think. Oh, okay. Low blow, wow. But that does it for the review. I think we hit everything. All the story highlights, talked about all the characters, and gave our overall thoughts. I give this movie three and a half stars. I liked it, it had its flaws, but overall I think it had more going for it than against it, because I came away from the theater noting that I had a really good time.

01:11:41
I agree, yeah. I mean, I think that's a good way of putting it. It did have more going for it than against it. I definitely didn't hate the film, but also wasn't, you know, like some of the greater comic book films that we've kind of become accustomed to recently. Yeah, not even close. But is it as close to being as good as a Venom film as you can get? Maybe. I agree that if it was rated R, they had more language, they had more violence, then it would have been. And maybe if it took somewhat more of a horror route, I think that would have been a little bit more compelling. Yeah, for sure.

01:12:10
But for what we got, I had a blast. What's your star rating? Also three and a half. All right, that does it for the review. Go ahead and let us know what you guys thought by reaching out to us via social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. We're on all those platforms and you can find us there quickly by visiting dynamicduel.com. Yeah, we have all of our links to our social media accounts as well as a link to our merchandise store, which we have various merchandise like T-shirts and mugs and pillows and wall hangings. Yeah.

01:12:38
A whole bunch of stuff. Phone covers, you could buy phone covers there. That's true. It has our no-prize art on all of that stuff, but also a few other illustrations that we've done. Yeah, it's good stuff. Check it out for sure. And as we've mentioned earlier in this episode, please don't forget to rate, review, share, and subscribe to our podcast, especially on iTunes, to help us get to that 200 mark for Rotten Tomatoes. It's a life goal to affect the tomato meter, guys. I know. Help us realize that goal, please.

01:13:06
Alright, in our next episode we will be reviewing a Constantine animated film that's coming out called City of Demons. Right. I think it was a web series that was coming out on CW Seed, but it's being compiled, I think, into a full-length feature film here. Yeah, and there's additional footage, there's like almost a half hour of additional footage that wasn't seen in the web series. Yeah. And then, you know, CW is doing some big thing with it later on in the month too. I think it's a way to kind of celebrate the fact that Matt Ryan is going to...

01:13:35
be joining the Legends of Tomorrow cast this season, which starts in a few weeks as well. Yeah. So this is like a big Constantine month. Yeah. So we're going to be reviewing that animated film and we're also going to be doing a dual episode with Constantine versus Brother Voodoo later on this month, so look forward to that. Yeah, and if Daredevil wasn't coming out, we also would have been reviewing the Keanu Reeves film, but I think we'll save that for another time. Yeah, probably next Halloween time. Yeah. So yeah, that does it for this episode. We'll talk to you guys in a week. Up, up, and away. True believers.