#9. Captain Marvel and Rusty Dishwashers
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Captain Marvel opens to $153 million domestic — Sonny took the over and collects — and then gets taken apart, with Sonny calling it by far the worst of the MCU's standalone origin movies: Brie Larson's voice is "affectless and weightless" next to Scarlett Johansson's or Gal Gadot's or Sigourney Weaver's, the action runs from boring to incomprehensible, he suspects the editors were cutting around her because she has no physicality, and the only thing that works is Ben Mendelsohn, the one person on screen having any fun. JVL agrees it's a bad movie, better than Iron Man 2 and Thor 2 but nowhere near Doctor Strange, and delivers the episode's real argument: Marvel already has two great feminist characters in Gamora and Natasha Romanoff, women with motivations and stories, whereas Carol Danvers exists only to make a statement, which reduces her to a prop just as surely as a bikini would. He's alarmed because this is the character meant to be the backbone of the post-Endgame Avengers. Vic is the lone defender at a Vic-score B-plus — it was fun, he loved the 90s soundtrack and seeing Nick Fury and Coulson again, he adores Annette Bening — though he cheerfully admits he skipped the energy-blast fight to use the bathroom, correctly guessing it would be the lamest scene. The opening is JVL's traumatized account of his in-laws' 27-year-old Whirlpool dishwasher, which he measured with a decibel meter at 85 spiking to 94 (lawnmower territory), its rusted tines snapped off into tetanus risks, requiring a mid-cycle vinegar dump to keep it from smelling like a sewer, plus Vic's mother who has used her dishwasher twice in twenty-five years, a long stretch on the college admissions scandal and the Stanford sailing coach's bake-sale defense, JVL genuinely not knowing what a drinking game is, and a closing dream about watch porn.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- The guys tackle Captain Marvel . Does Sonny think Wonder Woman is better? Vic takes a movie bathroom b...
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00So, Skrulls are the bad guys. And you're a Kree, a race of noble warriors. Heroes. Noble warrior heroes.
Vic00:00:27Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Sub-Beacon, sponsored by Calm, the number one app to help you reduce your anxiety and sleep better. I'm Victor Matus, along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you The Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at a podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what is going on? Or I should say, what is not going on in your life? Because it seems like a lot of crazy things are going on. It seems like a lot of crazy things are going on. How have things happened this past week for you?
JVL00:00:59Yes, I am here to share something traumatic that happened to me last weekend, and it's something that I feel as though I need to talk about with you both in order to be able to process it, move through it, move past it. I was up in Nueva Jersey at my in-law's house, and they turned on their 27-year-old Whirlpool dishwasher, and it sounded as though they had a problem. They had started the engines on a 737 in the kitchen. Now, I should say that this dishwasher is a horror show. The tines in the racks, dozens of the tines have snapped off, and the tines that remain there all have rust shooting out through them because somehow the interior steel has rusted. The expanding rust has punctured. It went through the little plastic covering over it. And so it is a tetanus risk. I would say any time you reach into this dishwasher, you are taking your life in your hand. You could just impale yourself on these things because they're sharp. And a bunch of them have, again, broken off. And so there are jagged edges. And yet it's still there. The dishwasher is still there. So what did you say? So my mother-in-law is a lovely woman. Lovely woman. When I'm not sending her cock doodles, she's just a lovely, lovely woman. Cock-a-doodle-doo. Cock-a-doodle-doo, Sonny. You don't have to bleep that. Turns it on. And as I said, the sound is... So I jump up from two rooms away. And I go running, running, running, Chav King Arthur style in there. And I whip out my decibel meter. Would you guys care to guess what decibel level this dishwasher is operating at?
Vic00:02:53Okay, remind me about the decibel level of your dishwasher. 39. Dishwasher's 39. 39.
JVL00:03:0055. Sonny. No guess. 55. So it hovered mostly around 85. And we spiked to 94 during one point on the wash cycle. The rinse cycle was a little bit lower. The rinse cycle kept around 88. To give you some comparison, 85 decibels is where the literature tells us the beginning of hearing damage begins. And earplugs should be worn if you're going to be in constant contact with an 85 decibel level. 88 decibels is the roughly average sound of a bulldozer. 94, where this spiked, is the equivalent of a lawnmower. If you go up just six more decibels to 100, that's what a snowmobile is. It is nearly as though they are running a lawnmower in their kitchen. And even better, even better, they have this system, this crazy system where midway through the rinse, they stop it. They just yank. They just yank the door open. Oh, and things are flying with the waters everywhere? And then they throw vinegar in with it because if you don't throw vinegar in with it, when it finishes, the thing smells like a sewer. Why does it smell like a sewer? Probably because it's 27 years old and they have a plastic tub interior, not a stainless steel tub inside. And I said to them, I said, okay, so tomorrow let's just go over to Lowe's and buy the first dishwasher that they can install this afternoon.
Vic00:04:30And I said, no, no, no, no, no. We can't do that.
JVL00:04:33I'll do anything.
Vic00:04:34For this, 94 decibels, I would go back to Lowe's.
JVL00:04:37Wow. That's how bad it was.
Sonny00:04:39Is Lowe's just like the closest one that they have?
JVL00:04:42I think the Lowe's is closer than the Home Depot. It was the most hard. Seeing the way that people live.
Vic00:04:50The way the people live out there.
JVL00:04:52You just think to yourself, how can, thank you, Sonny.
Vic00:04:55How can anybody live like that? Okay.
JVL00:04:59I have some thoughts. Yes. It, in some ways. The answer is, it's old people. Yeah, no, okay. Old people are just like, well, that's not so bad.
Vic00:05:07No matter what they have, they will defend it to the end. The hearing thing, they could probably say, I don't really notice it anymore.
JVL00:05:15My father-in-law doesn't. I said, if it's a dishwasher, it washes dishes the right way.
Vic00:05:18Yeah, no. Whirlpool's a winner. And of course. It's the Duke. How much.
JVL00:05:22I'm dishwashers.
Vic00:05:23How much, you know, I mean, how hard is it to throw vinegar in there? You know? The question is, okay, is it, are you questioning at the end of the cycle, the whole thing is done, you know, it beeps or whatever it does or buzzes and says, okay, your dishes are now ready. They're clean. And they, do you feel that they're sterilized? Probably.
JVL00:05:43I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't eat off of them. But you did. I'd let my kids eat off of them. You were there. You did. Yeah, I guess I did. You must have done this in the past too without realizing. Without knowing it.
Vic00:05:53Yeah.
JVL00:05:54It's horrifying. A 94 decibel dishwasher. How do people live? I mean, this isn't the third world.
Sonny00:06:00Sonny, without the tines up top, don't things just like slide around? Is there glass breakage?
JVL00:06:10In fact, my mother-in-law was explained to me that she has to wedge all of the glasses really tightly against one another because if they don't, they just flop around because there are no tines.
Vic00:06:25Did you explain, was there a fear about it? Was that like, oh, I can't imagine what the machines cost today? That kind of a thing?
JVL00:06:31There was a little bit of that.
Vic00:06:32Is there a technology intimidation?
JVL00:06:34When I asked her, I said, so when was this purchased? She said, well, I don't know. I mean, I could go get it. And so she brings out this cardboard box that is her box of all the receipts and manuals of everything they've ever owned. That's great. And in it was a warranty card and manual for their realistic hi-fi, realistic brand hi-fi
Vic00:06:55stereo with the warranty that said. Within one year of purchase, you can take this back to any Radio Shack in the country
JVL00:07:01if there's a problem with it. You can probably still do that. We're going through all these things and there's this receipt for like Joe Kozlowski or something. And what is Joe Kozlowski? So Shannon says, what is this receipt for? Who is Joe Kozlowski? Do you still need this? Oh, God rest his soul. He's been dead for years.
Sonny00:07:24It was just like a handwritten receipt? A handwritten.
JVL00:07:27A receipt from Joe who had performed some service on some appliance at some point in time. You know.
Vic00:07:34Well, you keep it for nostalgia. Far before his death. Yeah. And they still had it right there in the box.
JVL00:07:38I was like, I don't know. Do we need to get rid of this?
Vic00:07:40It's, I have the similar struggle with my mother because she refuses to this day to use, to even use a dishwashing machine. What? She does not, she's never used one. You never have? Do you have it?
JVL00:07:54It just sits there and there's like cobwebs inside it.
Vic00:07:57Worst or to, when they renovated the kitchen in the 90s, they said, well, you got to have a dishwasher machine. This house has been, this is, this house is like since 1965. They, my parents have lived in the house since 1975. So they put the dishwasher in. I think my mother used it a total of two times. How did you, what did, how does she do the dishes?
Sonny00:08:13By hand, of course. Every, every night.
Vic00:08:15It's hot enough. Oh, feel that water. It's, look, this sponge, this sponge is clean. I'll, I'll do it all. And she'll do it every Thanksgiving. No, not a problem. I'll do all the dishes. That's fine. See, it's clean now.
JVL00:08:27Like how often would you say she replaces the sponges?
Vic00:08:30Well, that's a question. I don't know. I don't, when it starts, when it starts to smell, when it starts to look gray, I don't know. It's a, you know, you squeeze it out. You can squeeze it out and you put in the microwave, put in the microwave. It's fine. Put in the microwave. And that, that, that, you know, and, and, but there's nothing I can do to convince her to get it, to use the machine that exists right there.
JVL00:08:48At this point, you don't want to, because those plastic, well, the plastic things in there, hoses in there are probably so brittle from not being used that you run that now.
Vic00:08:56So a couple of years. A couple of years ago, she's fine. I said, okay, fine. I'll use it. And then there was a, then there was leaking. A flood. And she said, see, I told you it was bad. I said, it's like, it's like the Beverly Hillbillies. I said, when you're going to use like the cement pond and then the pool table is like where you can serve the dishes. Okay. That's nuts. Yeah. No, there's nothing you will do. She's, is she going, what was the end though?
JVL00:09:16Did she decide? Okay. No, the end result was, no, we're going to, you know, we're going to renovate the whole kitchen. Someday. Someday. Someday. And we can do, we'll replace it then. I said, why do you have to live? You don't need to live like this. Yeah. Right. Dishwasher. We'll get a nice 74 decibel dishwasher. You won't even believe how great it is. And it'll cost you $250. Like, and I'll do it. I'll do it. Like, you don't have to do anything.
Vic00:09:41No, no, no, no matter what, is this nothing you could do? You know, that's yeah. When my, when, in fact, when I'm glad that you understand. And I can, when my parents visit, I have to remind my mother, just put the dishes in the, and she's already washing. And then the dishwashing machine becomes a dish rack. It's just a dish rack for clean dishes. And so to dry. Yeah. To dry. You just put it in there to dry. You just put it in there to dry.
JVL00:10:01And my father-in-law, who is, I would say a little bit hard of hearing his initial response when I said, come on. He goes, what?
Vic00:10:10They're brainwashed. The husbands are brainwashed. They know, they know the answer by there. The answer is yes. All you want is something new, but they're not going to say anything. They're not going to say anything. Sonny, how are you Santino? I'm fine. What's going on here? I've got nothing. You've got nothing? I've got nothing. There's nothing they can top this. Well, you were, you were worked up. You were worked up the other day about the college scandal. And this is something that I'm going to, I was going to talk about. I was going to talk mostly about this on Write and Writer next week.
Sonny00:10:34But I'm not going to get into the, but personally, we do need to discuss whether or not personally the fact that the doctor's son was able to sneak his way into Georgetown may have some
Vic00:10:48with a million dollars for my SATs. But when I saw the news, I immediately wanted to know who or what was the Georgetown connection. So it was the girl's tennis coach.
Sonny00:11:02And he had been fired already. He already left. Yeah.
Vic00:11:04For some other controversy. And he was already coaching at URI at Rhode Island. And I thought to myself, what would it take to risk possible imprisonment and racketeering charges in order to get a fake recruit so you can get her in that slot? And then she comes in and then I guess you say, well, it didn't work out. But you're already in the system. So you stay in the school. And the answer, I believe, was $2.75 million is what he took over several years. But the one candidate, I think, was like $900,000, something insane. And so that was him. The university, of course, is saying that they had no idea. My favorite part is the Stanford sailing coach.
JVL00:11:46Oh, I would have insisted that he never took a dime of that money. He put it all back into the program. And so what he was essentially doing is crying poverty for the Stanford sailing program. They just don't have enough funding. They don't anymore. It's not what it used to be.
Vic00:12:07For the yachting team. Yeah, for the regattas.
JVL00:12:10The yachting team needs a jib sheet. And so they held a bake sale. Oh, good. And they just didn't quite get enough from their magic bars and brownies. And so he had no idea. He had no choice but to go and accept these tens of thousands of dollars in order to help the team.
Sonny00:12:31The scandal is fascinating because it is a perfect opportunity for schadenfreude and also humble bragging. Simultaneous schadenfreude and humble bragging. It's a good thing that you're not on Twitter, JVL, because the entire week has just been people who have been talking about the schools they got into.
Vic00:12:51Yeah, a lot of that. There was a lot of, oh, I went to.
Sonny00:12:53Oh, you know, it doesn't really matter if you go to a great school. I'm sure I would have been fine if I hadn't gone to Harvard. You know, it's just a piece of paper. Like all of these people who are simultaneously bragging about where they went and then downplaying it and saying, it doesn't really matter where you go.
JVL00:13:09I just went to a small college up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I just went to a, you know, when I was at New Haven, a lot of that.
Vic00:13:18But there's also the flip side of people who were genuinely angry saying, had I. Been accepted there, my life would be different.
Sonny00:13:26If I hadn't been, if these people hadn't been cheating me out of my rightful position at University of Southern California.
Vic00:13:34Yeah, yeah.
JVL00:13:36JVO, had I gotten into Georgetown, my life would be different.
Vic00:13:39We'd still be here. We'd still be here. Look at us. We're still here now. Why would you want it to be any different? I went to Georgetown to hang out with you guys. My parents, you know, it's very funny because.
JVL00:13:49I love people who have to cheat to get into Wake Forest.
Vic00:13:52I was going to say San Diego. San Diego. Really? UCLA.
Sonny00:13:55Like you live in Los Angeles. But like USC and UCLA are good schools. They're like top 25 schools, right? Like Wake Forest. Wake Forest is like, it's a fine school, I'm sure. It's like if you really, really want to be in an ACC school for some reason.
Vic00:14:12Yeah, yeah. But again, and a lot of it is, we're going to talk about this later, but a lot of it is probably parents wanting their kids to go to a place so they could tell the other parents, my son or my daughter goes to this place. And then maybe. Maybe the kid doesn't care. But the other thing is, I'm pretty sure a lot of these kids knew. Well, so here's a question, though.
JVL00:14:30Is it the parents? Because the one data point I've seen is the YouTube girl, Olivia Wade, who is the daughter of Aunt Becky. She's Aunt Becky's daughter. And her point was, I just really want to go to these tailgate parties. And I'm not sure if I'm going to go to class on there. I'll talk to the deans when I get there. I've got to balance my business work. But she's already an Instagram influencer. She has a million followers on Instagram. She's an influencer.
Sonny00:14:56She has already achieved the pinnacle of status that our society can bestow upon her. She is an influencer. And why she would need to waste her time at a university is beyond me. The best part of the story, though, I'm sorry, last night it was reported that when Lori Loughlin's daughter learned about the scandal, she was on the yacht of the USC dean.
JVL00:15:22I'm sure. The dean got a yacht by totally normal means. That's just what they pay. For the record. I assume it's the school's yacht.
Vic00:15:32Yeah.
Sonny00:15:32You know, you can't have a university. You can't have a Southern California university without a yacht. It's awful.
Vic00:15:38For the record, my parents never donated a dime to Georgetown. If my mother knew that that might work, she would do it. But they didn't know. I'm sorry.
JVL00:15:45They didn't know. Were you not the valedictorian of your high school?
Vic00:15:49At the time I applied, I was, for the record. At the time.
JVL00:15:53What did you do? You didn't need any donations.
Vic00:15:55I didn't need no sticking donations. There was a theory about how that a way to get. I don't know if you heard about this, too, about a way to get into Georgetown. School of Nursing. Yes.
JVL00:16:08Which is a very terrible and a cynical thing because these nurses are great and they're important. Which majors?
Vic00:16:13Yes. But they were like, you could do it because the acceptance rate for the School of Nursing at Georgetown was like 50% or something or higher. I was warned against that. Yeah.
JVL00:16:20At Georgetown by admissions people. Like they were going to watch a lot of hockey. During one of my. My tours as a high school student because I went on, I went out and did the, was it the Gray Key Society? Blue and Gray. The Blue and Gray Society. I went and did one of those tours every damn year thinking they're like, oh, I'll make friends with the people in admissions and they'll help. Anyway, they're like, don't, don't do it. Do it. Because they can tell. They can tell. Whether or not you really want to be a nurse. And as a kid, I thought to myself, okay, so that's bad. I mean, I wouldn't, but how, how would they tell? Like, do I, do I have to present? A certain way to pretend? Like, is there a, is there a key? Could I pass? Yeah, no, no, no. I don't know. I, in my, in my four years. Is there a thing they're looking for?
Vic00:17:01I think I met at most. Patterns of speech mannerisms. Yeah. I don't know, but like, I could try to fake that. It, it, two, I think I met two students who were ex-nursing students. And of course, the entire time you're looking at them with suspicion, like, did you really just decide you didn't feel like, you know, changing, changing catheters or female. Female. Female. Yeah.
JVL00:17:24That's easier to do. But I wonder if it literally was, if you were, if you were a guy applying to the school of nursing, the answer was. Yeah. Is there a flag? Forget it.
Vic00:17:30They won't admit it, but there's a flag. Okay. Thank you.
JVL00:17:35How are you? Good.
Vic00:17:36I was going to say, I was going to say we could do a time for a Lenten update and you could do one of these Gregorian chants, like the one from, do you remember 1492, the movie? What if I just do the one from Monty Python and the Holy Grail? That works too. Lenten update. So, Father Harrison Eyre, I couldn't believe this sided with Sonny Bunch. Sonny on the doctor's orders and say, I know more about your religion than you do. It's sad. It's very sad. So I didn't, I didn't do that. I am losing weight. I am losing weight, but I have given up civilization. Have you thought about just maybe running over a gypsy? Wow. That's deep. That's deep.
Sonny00:18:12I mean, it's, it's, it's a great plan for about a month and then you're like, okay,
Vic00:18:18even for me after that, I can't, I just, then it's too much. Then you're too thin. The, um, uh, it's going well. And the time, no civilization, no civilization except for Sundays. And it's a rampage, you know, but it's a, and the time that I normally spend, uh, is now family time. And so what we've done is we're, we're playing cards, card games. And so the four of us are playing, we're playing a bull, but we just call it bull. I don't think you have to bleep that. It's a game. Isn't it Sonny? You're marking it down. Okay. We call it bull. And that's been a lot of fun. And, uh, I think after that, you've played that game, the drinking game. Well, there's no drinking involved. They do with Capri suns. Yeah. Yeah. There's no drinking involved. It's just, do you make, do you make a bull, right? You don't believe the person is down to five. Oh, no, no. I'm thinking, I'm thinking of a, a hole. Yes. Yeah. I was thinking that's going to be the next game we'll do is, was, is a hole, uh, which by the way, is an awful game to play. Uh, if, if any of your friends are turned out to be mean drunks.
Sonny00:19:20Oh yeah.
Vic00:19:21And then they compress you. Did you have this experience?
Sonny00:19:23Did you have this experience at college? Uh, well, I wasn't, I wasn't a mean drunk, but I was very good at cards. Oh, good. Yeah. So I would frequently win and like win multiple rounds. And it would just be like, it would just, I'd just be like making rules. I'd be like, all right, everybody, I don't know. Got to run around and drink. Uh, what?
Vic00:19:41It was benevolent, a benevolent dictator. No, I mean, in the, in the wrong hands. Yeah.
JVL00:19:46It's awful. What are you actually talking about?
Vic00:19:49You never played this in Hopkins? I've literally never played this.
Sonny00:19:53There's a, there's a, there's a drinking game called ****. It's a card game and you have to, uh, you, you just have to like, it, I could explain all the rules. It'd be very boring. I don't need to do that. But like the point is, the point is the person who wins is the president and the person who loses is the, is the ****.
JVL00:20:09I'm sorry. Back up. I don't actually want to ask about that. What is a drinking game?
Guest00:20:15Okay.
Vic00:20:16Thank you.
JVL00:20:17Are you? No, I'm serious. Like what, what is a drinking game? Well, you know, I mean, you're based on your winning and losing.
Vic00:20:23In a hole, if you're, if you're, you know, you could be commanded, you could be ordered by anyone above you, you know, is there a whole drink?
JVL00:20:30Is there a board? Are there dice? It's just a card. It's a card game.
Sonny00:20:3452 card game.
Vic00:20:3552 card game.
JVL00:20:36So you do. Oh, so you use a cards.
Sonny00:20:39And then, you know, so I've literally never heard. You've never heard of people playing games where they drink alcohol while playing cards and I've heard of the beer pong, the, the quarters.
JVL00:20:48What about quarters? I've heard of quarters. Yes.
Sonny00:20:50You've heard of devil's triangle. I've heard of.
Vic00:20:54You beat me to it.
Sonny00:20:55I've heard of quarters. But it's just, it's, I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure how to explain it to you. It's just a card game.
JVL00:21:01Are you, they do this for fun. Yeah.
Sonny00:21:03In college.
JVL00:21:04Oh yeah. Yeah. When they should be studying. Yeah. So they can get into medical school. Yes, JVL.
Vic00:21:09It's part of the college experience. It's part of the college experience. It's part of the, so are you, you're not a card, are you a card person at all? Do you play cards at all? I play a lot of cards.
JVL00:21:16What do you like? I'm mostly poker. Well, that's you. Poker variants. Love, love, love hearts.
Sonny00:21:21I love hearts. I love hearts. Hearts and spades.
JVL00:21:24I want to explain. Euchre. I've even learned a little bit of Euchre. Yes, I learned. I've never gotten into bridge though. I want to learn bridge. That's a whole other level.
Vic00:21:30Bridge, gin rummy.
JVL00:21:31Bridge, you also need somebody to play with.
Sonny00:21:33Right.
Vic00:21:35Spades I learned from Mike Sandler, my old freshman year.
JVL00:21:38So spades, so this is, so the progression goes hearts, spades, bridge. These are essentially, it's the difference between like.
Vic00:21:46So you're saying bridge is related to hearts and spades. Very much so.
JVL00:21:48It's the difference between. Like t-ball, coach pitch, and player pitch baseball.
Vic00:21:54Yeah. I love, I would love my kids like to do hearts, but it does require a lot. I mean, it's hard to explain to adults if you've never played because it's just a lot of, I mean, there's math involved and then I'm not even. The rules of the game.
Sonny00:22:07The rules of the game are very simple, but then there's like levels of strategy. That's right. That's right.
JVL00:22:12No, but I would say the key is if you want to teach your, teach your kids, you just play like, and like play five open face hands. That's right. Right.
Vic00:22:20And don't, and without explaining shooting the moon yet, just play, leave shooting the
JVL00:22:25moon out of it, just play normal. And then once they've mastered it normal, then explain shooting the moon.
Sonny00:22:30I've never played cribbage. That's the pegboard. Yeah. You know how to play that Sonny? Of course you do. I used to, when I was, when I was in high school, I used to play with my dad, but I like, I don't, I couldn't remember the rules now. I'm sure I could, I would pick it up again pretty quickly.
JVL00:22:44P-knuckle?
Vic00:22:45No.
JVL00:22:45Okay. No, we, we have a no games rule in our house. Because Flash is so competitive with his siblings that every single game ends badly. And so we just, we, we don't allow them to play games. It's demoralizing for the people who lose. I have on more than one occasion taken the Uno deck and thrown it in the trash because I was sick of hearing them fighting over Uno. And they were like, well, we'll just buy a good, fine, save your money and buy another Uno deck and you can use it for a week. And then I'll wind up throwing that one in the trash too, because I won't have it in my life anymore. I hate it. I hate it when you guys fight over games.
Vic00:23:20Okay, moving right along. How is your cheese powder fast going?
JVL00:23:25You know, I was actually looking up at the cheese, the cheese container this morning and just thinking about Christ hanging on the cross.
Vic00:23:33It really is for you. That's sort of a, it's like an addiction. I want it so bad. Really? That's good. It's like a powerful, a powerful heroin. Speaking of a powerful heroin over the weekend, Captain Marvel crushed the box office with $53 million, followed by How to Train Your Dragon, The Hidden World with $15 million. And in third place, Tyler Perry's A Madea Funeral with $12 million. Box office thoughts, we were predicting this. Is this, people had a projection, we had this discussion on text, Sonny and JVL, and is this higher than people were saying? I believe, what was the number I came in with?
Sonny00:24:14140? Between 125 and 150 or 120 and 140, something like that. Yeah, and I took the over. And I won. You took 180.
JVL00:24:21No, I said I take the over. When you said it's like they're looking at 140 or 145, I said I will take the over on
Sonny00:24:29No, I said they were looking at between 100, 120. I thought that was low. And I said either 120 and 140 or 125, 150. Whatever. It doesn't matter what. Point is, I took the over and I was right. Okay. Congratulations. I win again. Congratulations. You finally have won something on this show. Wow. Ouch. Ouch. Box office thoughts. I wrote a whole piece for the Washington Post about box office thoughts, and people can find that if they just Google me. Wait a minute. I hate these. Is it a subscription?
Vic00:25:00Don't send me a link. Don't send a link on Twitter, Sonny, if there's a subscription to Paywall. Don't do that. I know how you feel about that.
Sonny00:25:06People who whine about Paywall should be shot into the f***ing moon. Yes. I agree. So I have lots of thoughts on the box office. First thought is that this is obviously. In a massive, enormous hit, 153 million domestic, 450 million worldwide. It's already over 520 million, something like that, worldwide as of Tuesday. I don't have Wednesday numbers yet. We are taping Thursday morning. I don't have Wednesday numbers yet. So, I mean, look, it's going to be at after next weekend, after this forthcoming weekend, it will probably be over $750 million. I feel pretty comfortable saying that.
Vic00:25:47Yeah, I have to come up with another transition for next. Because I'm assuming it's going again.
Sonny00:25:52So, you know, the movie is a huge, huge hit. It is playing, it's interesting. It did about a $35,000 per screen average, which is solid for a, which is very good for a first one of these movies. You know, Iron Man, Captain America, that sort of. Right. It is obviously less than Black Panther. But Black Panther is a cultural phenomenon and people who are comparing them are doing, I think, both films kind of a disservice, frankly. It's also a good movie. Black Panther was also a good movie. We'll get to that later. But what is most interesting to me, and I don't know, you know, I haven't done a real breakdown on this first weekend to first weekend for all these films. But what's actually what's most interesting to me is that this is playing very much like a traditional blockbuster film. It did 66 percent of it so far has done 65.8 percent of its business overseas and 34.2 business here at home, which is very different from Wonder Woman, which was about 50-50 and very different from Black Panther, which was about 52-48 domestic, if I remember correctly, which suggests to me that it is it is it is not it suggests one of two things. Going to perform better overseas than some of these other films or worse at home than some of these other films. And I'm not I'm not 100 percent sure which one it is yet. But my theory on Black Panther and Wonder Woman has always been that its grosses, its total grosses were inflated by the domestic box office because people made it a cost celebrity. They had to go and show that they were with the cause. And as a result, they're they're one of the very few films that are in like the top 50 highest grossing worldwide films of all time that have a 50 50 split like that. So anyway, it's it's interesting. We'll see what we'll see what happens going forward. But I mean, the simple fact of the matter is, as anybody with half a brain will tell you, it is an enormous hit. And the controversies surrounding it and Brie Larson being kind of a jerk on the press tour. Really? What has she done? Well, I mean, aside from I don't want to see her own. So I I don't want to get into a whole thing to profile the red letter media's review of Captain Marvel, the whole first half of the thing they were talking about the controversies and it was boring. I don't want to get into that. I don't. Can you tell me a person who has no idea what the kind of 30 second thumbnail? She said that she isn't interested in the opinions of white men as critics and that they need to be quiet and make room for other more diverse people. All right. And then they ended up having to handpick the profiler, right? Yeah. This strikes me as not a huge deal. I feel like lots of celebrity profiles are done this way. The whole industry is corrupt.
JVL00:28:56No, but the difference is that she did it in such a way that it earned her applause and they were able to make that into a thing they bragged about, whereas most of the time it's done under the table because it's done out of that. People would think are ashamed. They would be ashamed to have publicly shown that this is what they've done.
Sonny00:29:16So anyway, big hit. Not a good movie, though.
Vic00:29:21Well, let's get into that. You saw the movie, JVL.
JVL00:29:24I saw the movie. Did you see this movie, Sonny?
Vic00:29:27And I saw the movie two nights ago. Did anyone else see it? Guess who's here? Two words for you. Ankle bracelet.
JVL00:29:42Gene!
Vic00:29:44Captain Marvel is an intergalactic tale about a woman exploring her innermost darkness. By coincidence, that was my review of Emanuel in Space 2. Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson as an alien soldier determined to find her roots. Speaking of roots, Larson reminded me of Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. Adorable and a wooden performance. I'm kidding. I love Brie Larson. Make room for her. A plane engine explosion almost melted Brie Larson. Melted Brie. But she survives and becomes the indomitable Captain Marvel. I give it four stars. It was marvelous. Do you want to give a real review, Sonny?
Sonny00:30:59Sure. Or not.
Vic00:31:02We could have Vic give the big boy review.
Sonny00:31:03Yeah, I mean, if we're all right with that.
Vic00:31:08Okay, I liked it. I give it the Vic score slash CinemaScore of B+. What did you like about it? B+. It was fun. It was fun. I love the rest of it. References. I love the 90s music. When was it set? When was this movie set?
JVL00:31:24It was the 1990s.
Vic00:31:27And I loved seeing all our old friends, Nick Fury and Agent Coulson. That's it. It worked for me.
Sonny00:31:38That sounds about right.
Vic00:31:39And who doesn't love Ben Mendelsohn?
Sonny00:31:42Ben Mendelsohn was actually good. You leave his name out of your mouth when you have this trash review.
Vic00:31:48That's not really a review. But I thought it was fun. I missed a part where she's fighting with Annette Bening. And I don't know how she defeated her because I had to use the bathroom because I'm old.
Sonny00:32:00This isn't even a long movie. It's like two hours.
Vic00:32:03I was drinking a lot of water in the office. Then I had to rush out to the theater. And I knew it was going to happen because it's two hours.
Sonny00:32:09Why didn't you go pee before the movie?
Vic00:32:11Hold on. I got to go right now. So anyway, Fisherman's Friend. I didn't have the Motorman's Friend. Motorman's Friend is a mint, I believe. Motorman's Friend is entirely. So Motorman's Friend. Yes, I didn't have it in the theater, unlike now in the studio. And that's why I never have to get up in the middle of the show. I thought it was fun. I mean, there's parts of it that are extremely, you know, beat you over the head about girl power and stuff. Okay, I get it. But it was, you know what I liked? Marvel has been doing this. They've been bringing back old female, old actresses who I loved. And you wonder. What are they doing now? And so it's great to see them now, right? Ant-Man and the Wasp. They had Michelle Pfeiffer. She was great. And I can't wait to see Meg Ryan in Avengers Endgame. So and I thought Annette Bening was great. I always think she's great.
JVL00:33:01She's going to be in Howard the Duck.
Vic00:33:03Oh, you know what? I want Leah Thompson. I haven't seen her in years. Leah Thompson. But I did have a lot of questions and concerns about the movie. And I think the best way to enjoy it is just not to ask questions. For example, I didn't think she had any. I don't think I think she's one of her powers. Invincible. She has energy beams because she's powered by the Tesseract. And the only thing that can stop her to breathe in space. Oh, yeah. Well, they have this suit that comes over them.
Sonny00:33:34I think it's like in Guardians of the Galaxy. She's not by the end. She's not using the suit. I think she is just in energy. Right. I think she was. Yeah.
Vic00:33:43So and I don't know what stops that because she was wearing the suit the whole time on Earth.
Sonny00:33:47She had the and it's alien.
Vic00:33:49You can always. You can always attribute that to alien technology. The way the alternative is the Robert Downey Jr. Tony Stark explanation, which is nano nanobots. Nanotechnology can create the Spider-Man suit and giant things come out of something the size that that's like 10 times the size of your suit or whatever it is. And like the Spider-Man suit is in space. OK, it's getting crazy. But this thing was, you know, for her, it's this energy. And the only thing I believe that can stop her, according to. Jude Law is herself. She is the only thing that can stop her. And the only way she can do that is by learning to control her powers. But JVL, I was thinking if you had any thoughts in any ways, she'd be able to keep calm.
JVL00:34:35Well, her before I get to. Oh, yeah, sure. I would say that her real power. I was asking a leading question. What are her powers? Her real power is her sense of self-worth. Would you agree, Sonny? Yeah. That's literally the point of the movie. Calm. It's time to return to my favorite of all of our sponsors that I love equally. Calm.com. C-A-L-M.com. It is an app for your phone with meditations and sleep stories and all sorts of ways to make your life happy. You go to Calm.com. You download the app and subscribe. You can get in the App Store or the Google Play Store. It is amazing. You've heard me say it before. We've used it in my family for years. We pay for it. We pay full freight. We would double. We would pay double, honestly, whatever the subscription price is. I will give you a preview of what is going to happen to me in my life tonight because I am journeying up to North Jersey with my girls tonight for a little weekend away. And I can tell you right now what's going to happen. We're going to leave around 7 o'clock after hopefully most of the traffic is gone. We're going to drive for four hours. We're going to get there at 11. They're going to be all keyed up from being in the car because none of my kids sleep in the car. And I'm going to tuck. I'm going to tuck them into their room, and I'm going to put on Tamara Leavitt's reading of The Little Mermaid. Of The Little Mermaid.
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JVL00:36:19And seven minutes later, the two of them will be knocked the F out. It's amazing. So they are constantly adding new stories. They have amazing readers with these just perfect voices. It's not just better than Benadryl. It's better than Lunesta. It's really, really great.
Vic00:36:40I get so scared of Lunesta, that butterfly. Close the window. The butterfly's coming in through the window. Close it.
JVL00:36:47I laid down with my girls last night. Because they both wanted to, they were like, they didn't want to go to sleep. They were keyed up, and I was not being a great parent last night. And so I said, okay, well, just come in. You can lie down in bed with me, and we'll put on a sleep story. I was gone 90 seconds later. Like, you know, 25 minutes later, I sort of like, you know, my eyes go up when it's shot. I'm like, where am I? What's happening? I had been put to sleep, and the girls are both, bam, sound asleep next to me. It's amazing. Anybody who has kids should do it. You should go and subscribe. Right now, they are going to give you 25% off of a premium subscription. You go to calm.com slash WFB. I think that's in service of the Washington Free Beacon. That is C-A-L-M dot com slash WFB. They give you unlimited access to all of their stuff. You get 25% off a subscription. It is 100,000% worth it. So go get on board with Calm and enjoy it. And put your children to sleep. Thank you, JVL. Is that all right, Victorino? That was lovely.
Vic00:37:56Okay. So I gave it a B+. JVL, what are your thoughts on Captain Marvel? I mean, it's a bad movie, right?
JVL00:38:05I mean, so this is, you know, so nothing really happens. But that's okay. I don't mind nothing happens if there are characters that are interesting and that you enjoy spending time with. This movie does not have, to my mind, a single character who is interesting on screen and worth doing. And I don't even know that I blame Brie Larson for it. It's a terribly written movie. I don't care anything about Carol Danvers. I don't care about her BFF Maria. I don't care about Jude Law. I don't even care about Nick Fury in this movie. It's such a weird portrait.
Vic00:38:39With the exception of the stinger, it's an origin movie, yes? We want to know, oh, who is she and where did she come from? That's the movie. But it's not.
JVL00:38:45They don't even really give you much of an origin, you know? So she's this, we are told, but not shown. The origin is rogue agenda soldier and looking to find out who she is. But then she finally finds out who she is and her response is, okay, I'm going to take off into space with the space Palestinians here and try to find them a home world. So I'm sorry, so you really weren't all that invested in finding out where you come from, were you? You know what I mean? Everything is undercut. Nobody has clear motivations. The conflicts are uninteresting.
Sonny00:39:16Where does her heroism come from? Exactly. She has no, like, motivation. No. She just is kind of like, yeah, I'm going to do these things. There's no reason for her to be doing anything she's doing in the movie.
JVL00:39:34Yes. And the same for everybody else. Her best friend Maria, who's a single mom, who at the end is roped into coming and becoming a co-pilot and into an incredibly dangerous mission. And this is something you don't get to do as a parent. If you do this, you're a bad parent. And the movie tries to sort of wipe this away by doing something that I'm sure you have heard friends do before. Say, well, actually, I know it looks selfish, but if I don't be selfish like this, then I'm setting a bad example for my child and I'm teaching her that I only exist to serve her and I'm not an independent person on my own. You know what that is? That is simply somebody talking themselves into something and making excuses so they can do something they want to do and hide from their actual responsibility to the human being they have created.
Vic00:40:23But she had to go for two reasons. One, to save the world because of the giant ballistic missiles that were going to rain down on them. And two, because the daughter wanted it. The daughter said it was okay. I want you to go up there, right? So it's okay.
JVL00:40:38Now, the child, clearly, what we all know is that 10-year-old children are the source of all good moral insights. The 10-year-old child says it's a good idea, so do it.
Vic00:40:48This is insanity. I don't want to do this.
JVL00:40:49I'm not going to get into it. Go ahead. None of this makes any sense. Why is Jude Law sent back to the Supreme Intelligence instead of just killed? I mean, this is a person who has killed people before. He is presumably going to kill people again once he heads back. Why does Captain Marvel do this? No reason. There's no reason. And it's, again, not just hard. Even Sam Jackson. So the whole idea of Nick Fury, Nick Fury's superpower, is that he's the guy who sees five moves ahead of everybody. In this movie, he's just sort of a sidekick along for the ride. You know, like he's kind of goofy. Look, he really loves cats. And so we're then supposed to believe that he goes from this character 12 years later to being the guy who has everything locked down and sees around every corner and is never... I don't buy that.
Vic00:41:40He grew in the job. He grew and then he started off like that and then he became... It took years.
JVL00:41:44But I would say that this view of it undermines the ongoing character of Nick Fury the character of Carol Danvers is, again, boring and interesting. And I'm... Do we want to talk about politics or no? Well, let's get to that in a minute. And finish with movie stuff.
Sonny00:42:04In order... Go. Here are the things that are bad about the movie. Bad thing number one is Brie Larson whose voice... And look, I'm not Charlton Heston over here. All right? I'm not like a great voice actor of our time. But her voice is... is affectless and weightless. She... This is not... And I tried to make this point in my actual written review by highlighting other women who are good at this because this is a gendered complaint, right? Zoe Saldana. Zoe Saldana's great. But you know who else is great? Scarlett Johansson. Scarlett Johansson is great. Scarlett Johansson has a great voice that resonates in the world. Great. You know who has a great voice? Gal Gadot. Gal Gadot has a great voice. You know who has a great voice? Sigourney Weaver. Sigourney Weaver has a great steely voice in the Alien movies.
JVL00:42:54This is the vocal equivalent of you just telling her to smile.
Sonny00:42:56But she doesn't... But the worst part with Brie Larson is that it's not even... There's not even something I can identify that's like, this is annoying and bad, right?
Vic00:43:04Sonny, I've never heard you make this complaint about a male actor.
Sonny00:43:08Well, it's entirely possible. But her voice is... It's not even like there's vocal fry that I could be like, oh, God, she sounds like a valley girl and it's annoying. I love vocal fry. But she just is like... It just floats off into the ether. There's just nothing there. There's nothing weighty or substantial about her. And that would be fine if the character was interesting, but the character's not interesting. It would be fine if the action was good. Here's my second big complaint. The action in this film is somewhere between boring and incomprehensible. The only good action sequence is the one right at the beginning with her and Jude Law, where they're going kind of back and forth and doing like... basic jiu-jitsu style stuff. And it's very intimate and physical and personal. The scene where she is on the planet and it's shrouded in darkness is almost impossible to make out. I mean, it just is... No idea what's going on. Just visually, it is hard to look at. And leaving aside all of the jittery editing, which is much more apparent in the escape on the spaceship, where the camera's just cutting back and forth, I think, I would guess, and I actually... I actually left this out of my review because I couldn't prove it, but it looked to me like they were cutting around her. They were cutting around her.
JVL00:44:29And if you see any of the scenes
Sonny00:44:32where she's running in the film, you might have an idea of why. She is not very physical, is she? Not physical at all. So that's another problem.
JVL00:44:41That actually... That really surprised me, actually. Watching her run, I wondered if this is just a costume problem. Yeah, maybe it's that.
Vic00:44:51And like I said, the first scene where it's her and Jim Law... Like the Batman outfit being too bulky kind of a thing.
JVL00:44:56Or just the... I mean, everything about her stride is like hitchy. She just doesn't... You know, she doesn't have any physicality about her on screen, which is fine in a period piece, is less fine in a superhero movie where you're the lead. You know who I never thought that about? Again, Gal Gadot. Yeah, no, Gal Gadot has none of those problems.
Sonny00:45:13So that's my other big problem. But the biggest problem with the action is that... I mean, obviously the film culminates in a kind of standard Marvel flying through the air and shooting lasers and lots of CGI, whatever. But the worst action scene was actually the bit with her and Annette Bening where they're just shooting energy blasts at each other, which you missed. I knew... I said, I'm going to pick one of these ridiculously boring fight scenes.
JVL00:45:41Is this inside the Supreme? This is inside the Supreme. I knew I picked the right scene to use the bathroom.
Sonny00:45:46They're just shooting energy blasts, and it looks like something... It looks like something out of an anime cartoon. Just these energy blasts that have no weight or power. And they're just like, they're yelling and they're like, and then one of the colors overtakes the other color. It's the worst thing. It's the worst thing. So, yeah, all of this stuff is bad. The film is written as if it was written by a blogger for the Mary Sue between the character who tells her to smile You should smile. No, it really is.
JVL00:46:23I don't need to prove my worth to you.
Sonny00:46:26I don't need, the mansplainer at the end who's like, now's the time when you have to show us that you can control your and fight me without your powers.
Vic00:46:34There's no love interest in this movie. There's no love in this movie. There's no sort of romance in this movie.
Sonny00:46:39Well, there's her lesbian friend. I mean, this is the show, but this is, no, but for real, the movie, if it wanted to do something interesting, it would have had them be in an actual relationship. Instead, it dances around it like it is a 1940s code production film. It's the equivalent of having a married couple sleep in separate beds. The way that they interact with each other and talk about each other, anti-Carol, you know, like the whole thing is like code word for them being in a same-sex relationship, and they're too scared to actually do it. I would have had more respect for them if they had just gone ahead and done it. But whatever. Well, no, but see, they couldn't because then she can't just, like, take off and leave Earth. Well, right, I mean, this is fair. So anyway, the only thing that's good about this movie is Ben Mendelsohn, who, even if you don't care too much about the Skrulls, which are treated very oddly in terms of the history of the Skrulls, the Skrulls have always been like evil shapeshifters who are coming to Earth to impersonate people and take over. And in this, they're like a poor, put-upon race of people
JVL00:47:49of peaceful people who are just trying to find a homeland, trying to play pinball with their kids,
Sonny00:47:54which is a very strange reading on the characters.
JVL00:47:59Not for the blue nationalists.
Sonny00:48:00But Ben Mendelsohn is great as the Skrull general. He is the only person who looks like he's actually having fun in the movie. And once again, you know what he has? He has a great voice. The moment I heard him, I was like, oh, that's Ben Mendelsohn. I didn't even know he was in this.
Vic00:48:17Even before you saw him.
Sonny00:48:19Before you see him, right. Because you know why? Because he has a voice that resonates and that stands out and you recognize when you hear it. Did I miss this question?
Vic00:48:27When he is now Ben Mendelsohn is himself and he's Nick Fury's boss. Yeah. Does that mean he killed the boss to become him?
Sonny00:48:36No, you don't have to kill a person to take over.
Vic00:48:38Where was the other one then? They don't explain it. I don't know. Okay. All right. And let's see here. I did ask about the weakness. Because I think she's invulnerable. Sure.
Sonny00:48:48I have no idea. I have no idea what her powers are. Well, part of the problem is that she doesn't have any idea what her powers are either. And the whole film is about her trying to discover the limits of them. As Jean explains. But you know what movie did this better? Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman did this better where she is told that she is actually a god or a demigod. And she has to learn what the extent of her powers are. And she kind of takes it step by step from like jumping to climbing to, you know, near invulnerability. And it works as a progression much better than pulling. Pulling something out of your neck. Did she not realize that the thing was there before? Now I'm super power. Yay. Lady laser fingers.
JVL00:49:28JVL. It's a bad movie. It's a bad movie. It's not. I would say it's better than Iron Man 2.
Vic00:49:38Oh, I was going to ask you in the hierarchy.
JVL00:49:41It's better than Iron Man 2. It's better than Thor 2. Okay. Well, there you go. It's not as good as like Doctor Strange. Oh, I love Doctor Strange. Or Guardians 2.
Sonny00:49:49Of all of the standalone origin movies, it is by far the worst.
JVL00:49:53It's not good. So this is the complaint I have, the political complaint I have about it. So this movie treats, it is a very self-consciously feminist movie, right? I mean, I think we can say that. But yet its view of feminism is so immature. And crippling that I think it becomes weirdly anti-feminist. So I would say Marvel has, so far in the MCU, two truly great feminist characters, right? And they are Gamora and Natasha Romanoff. And don't forget the Wasp. Well, I wouldn't put Janet Pym as truly great yet. But Gamora's feminism is all about what her character is and her story. She's grappling with this father who is a monster and has chosen, a life for her to be an assassin. She has wrapped up in this a rivalry with her sister, who is actually loyal to her dad and hates Gamora because the dad loves Gamora instead of her. And she's got to like navigate her way through this incredibly complicated world and be her own person. And it's great. And then they have Zoe Saldana, who's this astonishing actress, and she pulls it off. And even though she's in green paint all the time, she finds like this emotional core of it all and is fabulous, right? I mean, every time Zoe Saldana is on screen, it's great. And then you have Natasha Romanoff, whose entire character and central conflict, they wind up summing up and encapsulating in a single line in the first Avengers where she says, regimes fall every day. I tend not to weep over that. I'm Russian, or at least I used to be. And this tells you like everything in her character is packed into this, right? And then she's portrayed by, it's the writing and an interesting view of the character. And these are people. And they are real people, real women who have ideas behind them and stories and motivations. And the Carol Danvers we're giving here has no motivation other than, I am a character who exists here to make a statement to you about how toxic masculinity is bad. And when you do that, that is every bit as much using some, it's using the character as a prop, this time in service of one political point. That's all, not all that different than using a woman character as a prop to, like by putting her in a bikini and objectifying her and making her just a thing to maneuver the male lead around. It is taking a woman and reducing her to like some abstract idea instead of treating her as an actual person, an actual character.
Sonny00:52:40And this is, I don't know,
JVL00:52:42I just find this to be an impoverished view of feminism and ultimately bad. And yet, of course, the utterly dominant view, right? I mean, you can't say this out loud or you'd be a troglodytic person. Yeah. I don't know. I just, I look at this and I just think,
Sonny00:52:59is this really where like political culture is in America? And the answer is yes. I mean, look, the movie, it's a bad movie on its own terms as a piece of filmmaking. It is a, it is a boring story. I will say one thing that shines through in this film is the competence of the MCU at putting together plots that, uh, move people from place to place, right? Like I, there was never, there was never a moment in this where I was confused by what was happening, right? There was never a moment where I was like, why is this going on now? It was, it was, it was well done. Uh, it was just boring. It was, I mean, even like, even like the big reveal that she's on the Kree homeworld, I was like, eh, okay. There's nothing, there's no interesting design here. She's in a subway car. This should be like a creature cantina sort of thing, but it's just her and Jude Law talking. It's not, there's nothing, I thought all the Kree were blue.
Vic00:53:51I thought they were blue.
Sonny00:53:52I, I, eventually somebody's going to have to explain to me why the MCU hates the Kree so much. Um, were they, were they villains in the comic books? I thought they were more or less the, They're militaristic.
JVL00:54:05Good guys. No, the Nova types are the good guys. Okay. The Kree are more militaristic. It's, it's complicated. The Kree scroll, and I, I did, I, I would say, and this is me, this is a me problem, not an MCU problem. I have very little patience for all of the galactic Marvel stuff. The,
Sonny00:54:22the Kree scroll war,
JVL00:54:24the second Kree scroll war, the battle of the Shi'ar empire. I don't care at all about any of those things. And yet we're going to get them on screen. And there are a lot of people who do care. That's not, this is just me. I would say this. I, I mean, on the one hand, I think, so why do I care that capital Marvel kind of blows? And the answer is I don't like, you know, but it's a huge hit. Some people like it good for them. I mean, it doesn't do anything to me, but what I care, what I care about is that we're about to lose most of the good Avengers.
Vic00:54:52Yes.
JVL00:54:53And we are being introduced here to the people who are going to be the Avengers of the future. And Captain Marvel is going to be the backbone of the Avengers. And we're going to get this B team of the Scarlet Witch and Black Panther and War Machine and Ant-Man and Carol Danvers, Captain Marvel. Most of these characters really suck. But at least we have good, interesting actors. We have Don Cheadle. We have Chadwick Boseman, Paul Rudd. We have Paul Rudd. I don't really love the Olsen, the Olsen sister who does that, but she's, she's okay. You know, and, and then we have Brie Larson. And so it's like a bad character with a, an uninteresting actor in it. And I, I don't know,
Sonny00:55:36like we're going to have to go see all these movies anyway.
JVL00:55:38I would like to, this is when the death march starts. This is,
Sonny00:55:41this is when the, like, so I know a lot of critics and that's why I care. I know a lot of film critics and I know a lot of film critics who have been tired of the MC U for about eight years now, basically, or at least since the Avengers. I don't, they're like, why do we have to keep going seeing these dumb movies? And I'm, and I'm, I'm generally like, yeah, they're fine. I mean, they're, you know, they're entertaining. They're sometimes they're very good as in with black Panther. And sometimes they're mediocre as with Ant-Man too. Sometimes they don't quite work for me like infinity war, but like, I don't, I've never, I've never resented having to go see them, but the idea of a future in which Captain, Marvel is the like backbone of the Avengers and is the, is playing either the Captain America or the Iron Man role. This is another thing. It's hard to, it's hard to tell what affect they're going for exactly with her in this film. Is she kind of the roguish, a charming ne'er do well, or is she the, is she the upright backbone of the moral center? And, but they're trying to do both with her in this film and it doesn't work. Like she doesn't work for either of those, but she definitely doesn't work for both of them together. It just is. It's well,
Vic00:56:53I kind of fell in love with Brie Larson in this movie.
Sonny00:56:56You just love that nine inch nail shirt. She was wearing. I,
Vic00:56:58if I have only, I worked in wardrobe, a question. Was that really Stan Lee? Tell me that was taped and the film that before he died and not some CGI thing, because then he'll be there forever.
Sonny00:57:14I assume that was him. That's gotta be the last one.
Vic00:57:17That's it. That has to be the, the last one.
Sonny00:57:19I will say that when I saw that, it immediately took me out of the film because I started thinking, okay, well, did he die? Right? No, no, no, not, not that, but it took me out of the film thinking like, wait, okay, so this was set in 1995. Mallrats came out in 1995. When was it? So I like started immediately like doing the math in my head. I was like, could this possibly actually be right? I don't, he's reading a Mallrats script. That's his. Did you not? I didn't know.
Vic00:57:44Of course not. I didn't get that. That's great. All right, there you go. It works. B plus B plus B plus. Any other thoughts?
Sonny00:57:54You're way, you're way more into this movie than a B plus. You're, you're in a minus. I have a feeling it's going to,
Vic00:57:59I have a feeling it's going to slip the B when I don't use the bathroom. The next time I see it with my kids, you know, when I see the, but I knew that energy battle thing was going to be totally lame. I just saw it coming and I said, I've got to get out of here.
Sonny00:58:09Okay. Off-brand Goku. That's what Captain Marvel looks like. Corrective reference. You guys don't get because you're too old, too old. You didn't watch Dragon Ball Z. See, now it's my time to be nostalgic. Dragon Ball Z.
JVL00:58:22Were either of you, I found, I found the use of 90s music in the soundtrack to be oppressive. No, no, the just a girl garbage. Oh,
Sonny00:58:36that girl was all of it was so,
JVL00:58:40oh, it felt, but I felt the same way.
Sonny00:58:45You know what the problem was, is that it felt like it was put together, by somebody who was about 20 years old and has no idea what 90s music actually sounded like, except for what they hear on DC 101 during the 90s nooner. I mean, like that is, that's literally what it, what it felt like. There was nothing interesting. It's not like James Gunn's musical cues with Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which weren't deep cuts exactly, but they were, they were, they were at least, you know, kind of not so obvious and on the nose.
JVL00:59:14It was the cheapest form of nostalgia play.
Vic00:59:16I love the music. Go make me over. Okay. Corrections. Sonny, he's second. Corrections. I actually kind of like Hole.
JVL00:59:31I thought that was the best one in the end.
Vic00:59:33Me too.
Sonny00:59:33That's actually the only one. When I came out of the movie, I was like, all right, Vic's going to love this. This is, this is a perfectly. I did. Were you in the, were you in the theater when Annette Bening started playing Come As You Are? Yes. That's when I decided I'm going. I have a question. I have a question for you guys. Do you think she was playing Come As You Are, which I think was the first musical cue with a male lead singer in the film?
Vic00:59:58Oh,
Sonny00:59:59yeah.
JVL00:59:59Almost all of the musical.
Vic01:00:00Yeah, you're right. They're all like, but I,
Sonny01:00:02I don't want to say that. I don't want to say that for a hundred, but I'm pretty sure. Do you think that that was a specific choice to say like, well, did you look at the evil, the evil man?
JVL01:00:12Did you look at the credit sequence? So this movie has two credited directors. They chose a team. Why couldn't they just get a, a female director? Why did they have to get a male and female team? And they're a good team. Actually. I like them.
Sonny01:00:23Half Nelson, sugar, fine movies there, but they're small time directors. They're small time directors of indie films.
JVL01:00:29Or female writing credits, including a woman named Geneva Robinson Duare, who has exactly two writing credits, this and the Tomb Raider reboot. I mean, this was clearly a, the idea was we're going to have a, the whole project is going to be women driven. And like, we're worried about the outcome later. So great. Yeah. It opened on one 53, right? It's going to make, it's going to make, it's going to make a billion dollars.
Vic01:00:55Okay. Corrections, additions, spirit of the week. Oh, no, can't do that. I did two drink max. Remember to drink max per day, 60 drink max per month. I have one today. Allocate them. However you want. Oh, good. Like tickets. I want to give a shout out to Jedi mama, a listener, Jedi mama for reminding me, it was when I was talking about Mike Myers in disguise, it was the gong show over the summer. They re they brought out the gong show and he came out as the wacky British host, Tommy Maitland. That's what he is. And I'm like, of course it's Mike Myers. I love Jedi mama.
JVL01:01:33Yeah, she's great. And I just thought it was also a calm.com subscriber. Oh, she loves it. You go. She loves it.
Vic01:01:39Shout outs, extra shout outs for Jedi mama. And just looking back, it's just very obvious that Mike Myers would do this because he's game show. Crazy. Wow. Yeah. Uh, that's all the time. That's all the time we are giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Mattis at Sonny Bunch.
Sonny01:02:01And that's it.
Vic01:02:02Really? No takers. I'm out.
?01:02:04Wow.
Vic01:02:05Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google play. Just type in sub beacon under podcasts. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends until next time.
JVL01:02:18But I have something to share. Oh, please. So I don't, I don't ever talk about my dreams with you guys. Cause talking about your dreams is like talking about your children. Like nobody's interested except for you. I don't know about that. I had this amazing dream last week. Uh, and in the dream, my wife and I had left our children with, I assume her parents or something and gone to a hotel. And we get to the hotel and, uh, my, my lovely wife turns on the TV. And porn is on. Oh boy. Here we go. And it, but it's different porn because all the women in, in the porn are wearing like really high end men's watches. And as they, as they start like literal watch porn, as they start like really getting down into it. Oh my gosh. And like, I'm really going at it. And they're just, the camera starts slowly zooming in, in high def onto the watch. And so we get like these super, super duper closeups with like a Rolex Explorer and another one, an Amiga Seamaster. And then on a Grand Seiko Snowflake. But while you hear the women like, you know, just going crazy and that the culmination of the dream is then my wife turns to me and says, I don't know why, but I'm kind of into it. And that's when I woke up.
Vic01:03:37Can I say something? Yes. Aren't those like the worst sex dreams is the one that your wife is in the dream. Like I could dream of anybody and it's going to be, I see you. I see you already. And you again, you're in the, I can have anybody and it's, it's guilt-free. You can't, I said to my wife, I said, you know, I can't control who comes in my dreams. It's you. What are you doing here?
JVL01:03:56I'm sure it's fine.
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