#013 - 2025 Year-In-Review (Capt. America: BNW, Thunderbolts*, F4:FS, Superman, Alien: Earth, Ironheart, Andor, Stranger Things, and more)

0:04 Greetings humans and aliens. This is Todd the editor, starting off with a little bit of an explanation and apology. First, I'm sorry for the gap of time between episodes in January 2026. We've got several episodes recorded, so trust me, we're not done and there's more to come. I guess I came out of the holidays being a little lazy and my normal procrastination kicked in. So for the first half the delay between episodes, I confess I don't have a good excuse. Then I had a slightly busier week of work than usual, and just when that was calming down, my mom went to the hospital.

0:34 She passed away four days later. Then starting the day after the funeral, I spent several nights at my dad's house during the ice apocalypse and again right now during the subsequent snowpocalypse of January 2026. And my parents house has crappy Internet service, so January 2026 has not been normal. This episode is a 2025 year in review and was long enough to be a 2 parter, 1 for movies, one for TV. But being behind on editing, it was quicker and easier to just power through on the second-half and have it as one long episode.

1:08 And if I had looked for more clips to insert into the reviews and or to make a fancy intro montage, it would have taken even longer. So I apologize for both the lateness of the episode and its bare bones nature. I hope to get back on track in February. And now on with the episode. Greetings, humans and newcomers, and welcome back to Alienating Ourselves, the podcast where we examine sci-fi entertainment with a focus on aliens and the humans they celebrate the new year with. I am one of your hosts, Todd.

1:39 I hope everyone had an excellent holiday season and a happy New year. And in keeping with that timing, we decided to do another impromptu detour to review the year of 2025. And joining me, as always, is a guy who became a podcaster in 2025. It's Nick. Nick, how's it going? It is going really well, Todd. And this was 2025 was a huge year for Nick. There were definite negatives, but I'm going to forget all that tonight and just focus on the fact that I became the podcasting version of a published author this year, which is just dynamic.

2:13 Mostly I just wanted something in my resume. So now I have con cred when I go in and like, say, yeah, I got a podcast too. So you guys aren't special. I'm special too. But for night, we will be looking at the year in review and kind of focusing on a handful of the movies and a handful of the TV shows that we both watched this year. We may go on some detours and talk about some stuff we don't both have in common, but we're going to kind of go over some of the big names and sci-fi and maybe other movies and TV.

2:45 So to start it off, we'll look at 4 movies. They're kind of tentpole films and big deals. A lot of anticipation. And the first one of those is going to be Captain America, Brave New World. That was a huge thing coming out. And just generally, what was your response overview of that movie? Todd, how do you feel about Brave New World? I think I had an unusually positive response to that movie. As far as I'm concerned, it is underrated. Yeah, I, I know that a lot of people were kind of nitpicking it when it first came out, at least on the YouTube channels and podcasts that I, that I watch or listen to.

3:28 I actually thought it was OK. Now, it wasn't stellar. I could definitely see some problems with it. But yeah, overall I thought it was underrated. So how about you? Well, I guess I had some concerns going in, and I'm pretty easy to please on a lot of things, so if you hit your Marks and do most of the stuff you're supposed to do, I'm happy. I really wanted this movie to be good. I wanted Sam to have an outstanding experience at the box office and everything. I wanted America to be able to move past Steve Rogers.

4:03 We're all going to have to be able to let go of some of these beloved portrayals. So I had high hopes. I actually got my wife and kid to go with me to this one, and I ran out to the restroom right for the moment. We might mention at the very end that everybody was waiting to have.

4:22 That was really funny. So I I went back to the theater and watched it a second time. But I liked it very much. I liked it very much. I even liked it more the second time. I don't think it was a home run, but I think it was definitely a good movie. So yeah. Yeah, I thought the the IT had very good characters. So obviously Sam Wilson is he's, you know, maybe not one of the standout stellar characters of the MCU, but he's a good support person and I think deserving of, you know, look, being elevated to one of the major players.

5:00 Then we also have Joaquin Torres as the Falcon, kind of taking over Sam Wilson's old role, and I think he makes a good sidekick. I think they have some good chemistry together. And also, we revisit somebody that was in the TV show Falcon in The Winter Soldier, and that is Isaiah Bradley, played by Carl Lumley. And he plays a very sympathetic character. You know, he's kind of starts off the movie having something to celebrate and having a good time and kind of feeling better about things. And then stuff kind of goes sideways.

5:36 And it's kind of the sympathy for his character and how he kind of gets screwed over in the first part of the movie. That is kind of the driving force for the characters. And I think to a certain extent us the audience. So would you agree with that or have a different take? Yeah, I I really enjoyed Falcon and The Winter Soldier, and I think it wasn't my favorite of the Marvel series just because it was so serious. There was some heavy stuff in there and Nick is an escapist, but it was very well done.

6:07 But I think the the strength and center of the show was that they accidentally are on purpose decided, discovered that there was this wonderful chemistry between Anthony Mackie and, oh, Gee, Sebastian Stan as Bucky. This movie might have been so much better if we had had. Yeah. Yeah. So. So it's kind of like, I think everything I say about this movie is not going to be a harsh criticism. It's it's going to be one of those movies that I think its biggest detractor is what it could have been. Maybe so yeah, like you mentioned our new Falcon and he does great.

6:49 And Carl Lumley, who plays Isaiah Bradley, he's just wonderful. He's giving an Oscar performance in this very small part in this movie. And I mean, I Harrison Ford, I think the media tried to tease him a little bit about what he had to do in the movie and he, Harrison Ford does not care. He gives 0 damns about it. He's like, he did the part, he went all the way with it. He did everything he could. So I I didn't have any technical problems with it. I have listened to other people and their critiques of it.

7:22 And I think on the second viewing I understood a little bit better what they were talking about. But yeah, what you're saying with the casting, I think it was very good. I think Sam, if you look at every Captain America movie, every Captain America movie up till now has really been about Steve. And a chunk of it is about his relationship with Bucky, and he kind of grows and struggles. Sam doesn't get a lot of opportunity to grow and struggle in this. He's kind of a straight man who's doing his job and kicking butt.

7:55 He wants to help people, but it's not really a story about him very much. It's like he's the good guy trying to solve this story that's more about what's going on with President Ross and a side character from a previous movie. So yes, I thought he did great. I think he probably needed more of a He needs another turn at bat, frankly. Yeah. And as far as Harrison Ford's performance, it, if I remember correctly, I think it's the very first moment of the film when he is given some kind of speech and he has to deliver some lines about, I think what Celestial Island and something about adamantine or something or, yeah, vibranium or something like that.

8:36 You know, he has to say these weird comic book words and, you know, Harrison Ford could be a little bit of a grump and and stuff like that. And that very first scene where he was saying all these comic booky words, something in me kind of triggered and I was like, Oh no, is he not going to take this seriously? Is he going to be like, I can't believe I'm saying all these stupid words and and not take it seriously? And that didn't happen. He did not phone it in for the rest of time. So yeah, I agree with you that I like his performance.

9:06 I really don't. Oh, OK, I'm going through the cast list. OK, This was not the actress fault, I don't think, but Tim Blake Nelson as Samuel Stearns, which I think he's got like a comic book name, like the Brainy, not Brainiac, but you know, something Brain related. His makeup was not done very well and his character was a little weird and I don't know if we totally needed him. So that was a little bit of a dark mark on the movie. Also Giancarlo Esposito's character Seth Volker, and it looks like he has a code name of Sidewinder.

9:43 He might have been like a little bit kind of shoehorned in a little bit. And that kind of brings me to one of the problems with the movie is that I did hear some behind the scenes news about how there might have been some editing issues and some rewrites and stuff like that. One of the things I noticed was that there is kind of like a new character. I don't know if he or she is in the comics or not, but at one point in the movie this character is wearing what almost looks like a superhero type costume under a jacket or something or like battle armor.

10:18 But then we do not see that character in action at all. And so I can't help but wonder if there were scenes shot with this character being kind of like a comic bookie type character, and then those got cut and then that character was just more of a grounded character just having normal stuff to do. So I think there were little tiny issues like that in the movie that maybe held it back from being better. Did you notice anything like that or was it just me? It all went past me on the 1st viewing. I saw everything on the surface level and as a completionist who watched all of these movies, the fact that spoiler everybody, I mean that, you know, we bring back a side character that was hinted at back in I think 2008 from the The Incredible Hulk movie with Ed Norton.

11:06 And that is Tim Blake Nelson, the weird superhero name you were thinking of for him as leader. He's just leader, but that's easy to forget. He did break one of my main rules of superhero movies is you can't make the villain too unpleasant to look at. Yeah, See also Green Lantern, where you have someone kind of breaking down like Jeff Goldblum and the Fly. So Sterns is mutated, and that's fine. You know, you mutate in the comics. He's real. He's really hard to make comic accurate because the character just has a huge brain.

11:42 And I'll be honest with you guys, if you make somebody in a movie accurately with just a huge brain, they're going to look stupid. That's very hard to realize in real life. So instead they made him mutated with just kind of a bizarre cranial situation and some other stuff going on. I like the idea that he was a sort of evil genius. I like some of those plot lines and stories. But I didn't notice what you were talking about until it was pointed out to me. And then when I went back and watched it again, I realized it.

12:11 It adds up. So if you're not sure what's going on with the movie and you do watch it a second time, listeners, the suggestion is that this movie was supposed to be a fairly different movie where it's like Captain America versus the Serpent Society led by Sidewinder and Giancarlo Esposito would have been kind of a big deal. Or whoever they had before they cast him to try and sort of save the script. And instead what they did was take a Incredible Hulk sequel script from 2010 or 2011, dust it off and push Captain America into it.

12:50 And once someone tells you that and you watch the movie again, it may not be true. I don't know what the truth is, but it really feels true. So yes, yes, it does feel like a an Incredible Hulk movie that was given a facelift and some substitutions made. I don't think that that's necessarily, it didn't destroy the movie, but it did add some confusion and stuff. So that's why you come out of it, You know, not sure exactly about who the bad guy is. And I mean, Giancarlo Esposito is a pretty significant bad guy, but he's very sidelined in this, sidewinded in this.

13:30 Yeah. Well, since we do have other movies and TV shows and depending on time, maybe a little bit of other stuff to to talk about. Might need to wrap this up. Is there anything really big that you need to mention about this one before we do wind it down? I think it's easy to make a Hulk not look great, and I think they did a really good job. I think Anthony Mackie has a lot of personality and I wasn't sure what was lacking. But I thought back to my other great Marvel heroes and this may come up in the other ones we talked about.

14:03 And it's really not fair to blame Mackie and not that you did or anything, but for the movie not excelling because if you look at all the others, you know, Star Lord Thor, they have comedy backing, they have help, they have other characters that are really interesting. Iron Man may be the exception. We all just love Robert Downey Junior Logan. Wolverine's a pretty big lead, but for the most part, we need sidekicks and comedy support and or buddies or something that liven it up. And Sam, he did not have rocket or group or nebula or something.

14:44 He and Torres are like pretty serious, they're doing their best and they're just like soldiers. My son's favorite part was when Bucky shows up for 5 minutes, he's like yes, that was it. OK, they saved the movie. He just really wanted more Bucky time. Which is a good segue to Thunderbolts. Yeah, well, all right, so let's wrap up Brave New World real quick. So you mentioned the the cameo. I did like the cameo. It also shows a nice progression in their relationship because I remember when those two first crossed paths, they kind of hit each other in the TV show.

15:19 They were working through those issues and now they're actually kind of glad to see each other and kind of supporting each other. I think they might have even hugged and if our murder, if maybe even said I love you man to each other. I think. So. So yeah, they've come a long way. Sam Wilson should have taken the Super Soldiers serum, but at least he's smart enough to admit that too. I I think the movie had good overall acting and good action. I know there's going to be a really weird nitpick. I'm probably way in the minority.

15:52 I do think the movie had a little too much profanity. None of it was extremely, It's not like they they dropped F word or anything. It was mild profanity, just a little too frequent. So I know I'm probably a little bit of a prude for saying that. That's confirmed. And overall, I give the movie AB and I apologize ahead of time, I did not see a whole lot of movies this year and none of them were that stellar. So oddly enough, this is like my second highest movie of the year, even at B. So I might be in the minority for for liking it, but what's the last little bit that you want to say about this one before we move on?

16:32 A major character in this movie is Thunderbolt Ross, and this bothers me immensely because in Civil War they introduce another character named Ross, played by Martin Freeman. He's not related, completely not related, and he's in the same movie, Ross. Thunderbolt Ross is in that movie as well. Also, Thunderbolt Ross, unrelated in Marvel to the Thunderbolts we're about to talk about. He is a giant walking paradox. We have a Thunderbolt Ross that's not connected to Ross or the Thunderbolts in this universe.

17:11 Drives me crazy. Thank you. All right, so now we'll move on to the Thunderbolts. And I don't know, technically this movie has another title and the Marvel and Disney did not do a great job of holding that back. So I don't think it's a spoiler, but I'll I'll leave it to you and say what the alternate title is. I would say I like these characters, but I don't love them. The movie overall was good, but

17:48 I don't know I I don't know if it has a whole lot of repeat power. Yeah, I honestly don't have too really much to say about it. So do you have any leading thoughts about Thunderbolts? I really, really dug this movie and Todd and I haven't rated Marvel movies together before, but Marvel movies, I think most of them actually get like a pretty high grade from me. I don't want to throw around the idea of an A, but it's like you have a few that are home runs that are just grand slams that I will tell my wife.

18:26 She has to go see this one, even if she's feeling jaded or like she doesn't know what's going on. Guardians of the Galaxy are just they're home runs and Iron Man and The Avengers movies just amazing. But then B tier Marvel is like still pretty good for me. So I guess this is AB, but that for me that's that's in company with just about every Marvel movie that people say they like. It just means it's not a home run. The C tiers are things like Quantum Mania and Love and Thunder that I think are not that bad.

19:08 I'd probably say you know, B minus or something and people are like, I heard it. The only thing I give a failing grade to in Marvel so far is Secret Invasion. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. But it's it just, and that took a lot. I'm so generous with my grades, but I really do like all of these. So I'd watch a bunch of them again. But Thunderbolts was, I don't consider it a home run. I haven't made people watch it yet, but it's like I think they did some really cool stuff with the people. So I had a lot of I I give it a non home run.

19:43 AI just dug it. It did have some great moments. The problem is those moments didn't quite stick with me because when I was going through my notes, I couldn't really think of some of the best moments, and it's not like it didn't have them. And like I said, I really don't have a whole lot of notes for this one. And sadly, some of the notes I do have, or really all the notes I have, are negative, despite the fact that I still love it overall. Todd misspoke. He meant to say like it, not love it. So like one of the issues I had was at the end had too much psycho Babble.

20:15 I think I might have mentioned that in a previous episode, probably one of our episodes of the two par that we did on Star Trek. I probably mentioned how I don't like psycho Babble in that one. And yeah, I kind of felt like that's what this one was where, you know, the the big conflict at the end is the you enter somebody's dreamscape or their inner mind or something. And I don't like that kind of thing. Another thing I didn't like is I hate it when movies suck the color out. And this is a movie that did kind of have some color grading to it.

20:48 There are some scenes that are almost grayscale in nature. And so that kind of bugs me. And then something that you've already kind of hit on a little bit is that this is supposed to be like the one of the next big Marvel teams. And I don't really buy these characters as being the next big Marvel team. Now, on the good side, the movie itself makes fun of that same fact or that same opinion because they are kind of a joke. Like one of the things I will say that I did enjoy was the credits when you see like the thing, the articles, the newspaper articles and the newsreels and stuff that are kind of making fun of them as being the B team.

21:31 I think there was one thing that was like Avengers, more like B Avengers. I love that, that little snippet during the the closing credits. So I do like that even the movie realizes, yeah, these are not our best characters, but we're but that's intentional and we're making fun of that. But then there was a post credits scene that implied that they had been A-Team, a valid team working together apparently pretty well for, I can't remember if it was 18 months or nine months or maybe 12 months, but anyway, approximately a year or more.

22:08 So they are technically The Avengers for some long term period. And so I kind of have mixed feelings about all that. And that's really all I have to say about it other than my grades. So do you have any thoughts? You need to get out there before we finish that one up. Yeah, this movie, it bet big on Florence Pugh. This is kind of her movie. It's not sold as she's the star. Like it's not a White Widow movie or something, but it's she is like at the beginning of the main trailer. But she carries a lot of the action, the emotional weight, the resolution.

22:51 She leads them through a lot of that. And I think that she pulled it off. And what I said about Anthony Mackie, I mean, Florence Pugh has several unique characters to interact with. So if you just gave her Bucky and he was quiet and serious most of the time, it would not have as much to bounce around. But just her interactions with David Harbour as the Red Guardian. And she knows he's not her real dad and she has all this damage and she resents him sometimes, but then she'll kind of break down and she needs him to be her dad.

23:25 And he like understands that. And he's he's kind of a crap dad. He's not a horrible one, but he he reminds us all of a dad who drops the ball and knows he's dropping the ball. So he does his best gosh darn it. But those things, I loved the emotional weight. So I think that was really good. I know what you're talking about with the psycho Babble because we did, we got into it some with the Doctor Who dream crabs. But when you aren't grounded and you just do everything abstract or the Star Trek episodes where it's like, is it all a dream?

24:00 You know, is it all a hallucination? And but they took a chance. And I think Sentry, the character that turns out to kind of be like the big bad guy or obstacle. That's, I think those are pretty comic accurate things they did with some of his powers and they made the big bad guy in the movie sort of clinical depression, which is difficult, but they addressed it and got into it. And I was in an audience for a sneak preview for this movie. I saw it twice opening week. We have a Marvel movie group in Atlanta that would do big openings and there were people in costume and stuff.

24:47 But when I think they save a little girl and Red Guardian reaches toward her and she's dusted like like a shadow at Hiroshima, which was a really obvious and visual indicator, the whole audience just gasped. They were like shaken, like we were all knocked over. And it's it's things like that where you feel like everybody's in it. So, yeah, what you're talking about is a struggle for the movie. It's like it ends and they are the new Avengers at the end. And you spent this whole time convincing us they were the the Thunderbolts and actually kind of started liking them as the Thunderbolts.

25:31 But I think that's why Bucky was moved from Captain America over to this movie is I think Marvel is kind of betting big on positioning these guys for whatever happens next. And yeah, that bit is kind of awkward and weird. We're not sure about how it ends, so I can understand people criticizing that part, but I did. I like the emotional weight, I like the action, I like the characters. I don't think I had any big problems with any of it like that. But yeah, yeah, this is a, it's a fun one to watch, but I think I've only watched it 2 1/2 Times Now, which is not that much for me.

26:15 Yeah. And so just to follow up on a few things, you said the the scene where the little girl got, I don't know what you want to call it, but shadowed. Yeah. Yeah. That was one of those most where, like you said, the people in the theater gasp. And so it's at that point where you're like, OK, either they need to defeat this guy twice or this needs to get undone. And of course, one of those two things happens. And then you were also talking about Florence Pugh, as would her code name be White Widow.

26:44 I just made that up, man. I mean, it's one of the things that people say when you're a a Black Widow and then you know something else. But who knows? But but anyway, her character, I'm not that thrilled about her character. I don't have anything majorly against it. It's just she doesn't stand out out as much as Black Widow did. However, she did have that great scene where she was kind of complaining to her dad about how her life wasn't going that well and he said some very dad things to support her.

27:12 I lost my sister again, but forever. And you disappeared. I'm sorry. I didn't think you wanted me. I did. I see that I'm late, but I'm I'm here now, Daddy, I'm so alone. All I do is sit and look at my phone and think of all the terrible things that I've done. And then I go to work and then I drink and then I come home to no one and I sit and I think about all the terrible things I've done again and again. We all have things that we regret. There's so many. You're stuck, you're alone. You look only at the bed.

27:49 When I look at you, I don't see your mistakes. That's why we need each other. Yeah, sometimes that kind of tugs at me a little bit whenever I hear that one little snippet. So that way is one of the better moments of the movie. And overall I give the movie AB minus. Anything more you want to say about it before we move on? No, this is another non home run high, high grade marvel for me. I'd put this up there with just about everything that isn't a Guardians of the Galaxy end game Infinity War kind of absolutely amazing blockbuster.

28:28 I just, I thought it was very, very fun. So yeah. All right and sticking with the MCU yes, three out of four of our movies are MCU and the fourth one is still comic book movie. So at least we're consistent tonight. The third one is Fantastic Four First Steps, and this one was fine. I felt similar to Thunderbolts. There was nothing hugely wrong with it, but not a whole lot to get enthused about either. In fact, I would say I still technically like Thunderbolts a little bit better than this one. And it's not even necessarily this movie's fault.

29:07 I've never been super impressed with Fantastic Four, not in their previous movies. Which, Grant, that's not saying much because, yeah, those other movies were not great. But also when I went through a phase where I actually collected comics a few years ago, I couldn't get into them anytime they made like, a guest appearance or like I tried to collect their title for one or two issues. I've just never been that much in a Fantastic Four, and this movie did not totally help with that. So do you have a more positive view of either this movie or the Fantastic Four overall?

29:39 Well, I'm the odd person that you'll hear from that has nice things to say about most Fantastic Four movies. I haven't seen the famous Hidden One that never got released. That's trash. I think I can say confidently. But the Chris Evans Human Torch ones, yes, they're dated. Yes, they're they have almost an 80s feel even though they were in the 2000s. But I had fun with some of them. There's some cool stuff in there. You go back and watch those Silver Surfer bits, yes, they completely tore apart like what Doctor Doom's even supposed to be like.

30:18 But kind of to go with what you were saying before. In my humble opinion, listeners, the Fantastic Four are a bizarre superhero team. Ben Grimm is awesome. He's a tank. He's like the Hulk. Everybody gets that. Human Torch is awesome. He flies, he shoots fire. He is fire. That's that makes sense. So Storm can turn invisible. I know there's force fields, Mr. Fantastic stretches, and what I said about the Leader a few minutes ago. Movie makers struggle with how to make invisibility and stretchiness both useful in a plot and look any kind of good on screen.

31:01 You cast a beautiful woman as the invisible woman and then you make her not there. There's problems with that just in a narrative capacity and they do you watch this movie and I swear they do two things really, really well. And one of them is they don't spend very much time at all on her ability to turn invisible or his ability to stretch. In fact, when he does stretch, if he had done everything he did but like jumping really far or something, they just, they don't highlight it at all. I think because they're figuring out it looks really strange in live action and that's nobody's fault.

31:38 It's just, in my opinion, the fantastic forward function best as like a annoyingly awesome family of superheroes over to the side that everybody likes as a foil to a different superhero set in the foreground. So that having been said in an overview way, what I liked about this movie was how much I like the people. I liked Pedro Pascal's job as Reed. I liked Vanessa Kirby as Sue. I thought Ben had wonderful personality and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm. I just I liked him. I like the family very, very much.

32:15 And my big thing honestly for this movie is just for some reason, y'all, the mole man absolutely cracks me up. Paul Walter Hauser plays Harvey and I don't know, maybe it's just because he's unashamedly mole man, but he shows up and every scene he's in, I just think he's awesome. He doesn't do that much. He just, oh, there's Mole Mannequin. I love him. So yes, I think the movie was a big success for me. Another high passing grade. I just wanted it to be OK and for people not to hate it because they're so negative about some stuff.

32:52 And I think it did that all right. But it was, again, Marvel really wants a home run right now. And it wasn't that. So unfortunate. Yeah, I mean, when I get my final grade, you'll see that I do still technically like this movie, barely. I am on the positive side of it, but you wouldn't know it because I can't really pinpoint a whole lot of positive stuff when I can pinpoint some negative stuff. So before I do get negative, let me say that one of the things they the movie does do very well is portraying an alternate universe that is a mix of future science and retro tech.

33:27 You know, it kind of, they can have advanced stuff, but everything looks old and it has a little bit of a different look and feel to our world. And so, yeah, it it's obvious that is an alternate universe. So they did do that. Well, really, everything else I could kind of agree with you is like, yeah, the acting is good and the casting is good, but it's like nothing is stellar. So before I get into the negatives and maybe you might even have something -2 any more positives? Galactus could have looked really, really stupid, and I feel like they did a pretty good job with it.

34:04 Yeah, I don't know. You have a big guy in big boots walking through a city. It's just when I first saw his shadow falling over the city in the advertisement, I was like, oh, I hope that doesn't look terrible because it's just. It's so easy to make it look bad. But I feel like they pulled that off pretty well. There was a lot of hatred anytime they gender swap anybody. America is so sensitive to anything like that now that people blew up and other people said, well, no, there is, you know, Sha Labal is a comic character, you know, and there's there's a second Silver Surfer character that, but it didn't really matter.

34:42 The haters were already upset. I thought that she did very, very well. My defense of that whole thing is just that at the end of the movie, we have a good reason to never see this particular version of Silver Surfer again without Galactus showing up again, because she should be on the other side of the universe. So, you know, it should make everybody happy. But those things, I think just as a general positive, they could have been questionable and I think they pulled them off pretty well. Yeah, I would agree.

35:14 Galactus did look pretty good. And I think they're getting braver with that type of thing with showing, you know, oversized things or comic accurate costumes and stuff like that. You know, back in the day they didn't do that. That's why the X-Men movies, the early ones had black leather and why the first time they tried to do Galactus, he was a big cloud and everything. And so they're getting braver and able to do, you know, the big giant guy in a purple helmet and, and, and also make it not ridiculous.

35:46 So maybe they couldn't have pulled it off a few years ago and they can now. As far as some of the negatives I've already mentioned a little bit, I think the characters are kind of bland. I don't totally buy the whole team family chemistry. In fact, you were talking about some of the older movies. One of the redeeming qualities in those is the back and forth banter between The Thing and Johnny Storm and I felt like that was kind of missing in this movie. Also The Thing had that relationship with I can't remember what her name was but he kind of had a girlfriend off of huh?

36:19 Rachel, Natasha Lyonne. OK, yeah. But he he kind of had like a girlfriend off to the side in the previous movies. And in this one, there was kind of like a hint of that, but it never really went anywhere. So I just felt like these characters were just kind of, they just didn't really go anywhere for me. Also, overall, I felt like the movie was a little bit slow and boring in parts. I even fell asleep during a moment where some important information was being conveyed because I woke up and I was like, wait, wait, what, what, what, what, what did I miss?

36:54 And then I feel like the really big overall problem and is actually Preston my coast over on discerning geeks portal who got this out of me because we went to go see it together and he was kind of pressing me when we went out to dinner afterwards, he was like, well, was this the problem? Was that the problem? It's like, no, that wasn't it. That wasn't it. And finally he kind of pinpointed it and it didn't seek him what he was saying right away. It was like a day or two layers like, oh wait, I get his point now.

37:21 That was the problem. And that is that this felt like it should have been the second or third movie in a Fantastic Four trilogy, not the first. Because if I understand correctly, Galactus is their biggest enemy and they're fighting him in their first movie. It's like they should have saved that for later. Also, I want to get to know the Fantastic Four characters themselves. But then already Sue and and Marie from blanking on his name. Reed. Reed and Sue are already having a baby. I don't think that's a huge spoiler because I think they put that in some of the previews.

37:56 They're already having a baby. And I know that baby is, you know, grows up to be a big deal in the Fantastic Four. And so they're already, you know, forming the Fantastic Five. And it's like all of that stuff is just too soon. And they're jumping ahead. They're making these big leaps. And so, yeah, that was that was kind of my biggest problem with the movie is that it they just jumped ahead too soon. Greetings, humans and aliens. This is Todd, the editor cutting in briefly during the review. There was one thing I forgot to mention.

38:25 Nick talked about it being hard for movies to illustrate the special powers of Reed and Sue Richards. I can see that to a certain extent. But if you're going to do the Fantastic Four, we need to see their special powers at work, preferably a lot and in creative ways. And I felt like we did not see enough of Reed Richards stretchy powers, while the same could possibly be said of Sue's invisibility and or force fields. The part about the stretchy powers that annoyed me specifically is that Miss Marvel, AKA Kamala Khan, one of my favorite Marvel Comics characters, also has stretchy powers.

38:57 In the comics, her stretchy powers also border on shape shifting ability because she also has the ability to change her appearance. But in Miss Marvel's TV show, her powers had changed to a hard light ability, with her able to make temporarily solid shapes out of energy projections. OK, weird. And it's been assumed by many fans that they changed her powers in the MCU so that they wouldn't seem so similar to Reed Richard's abilities. Once he was introduced, that made a little bit of sense. But now he is introduced and we still don't get to see a lot of his stretchy powers anyway.

39:30 It makes Miss Marvel's lack of stretchy powers feel like a waste and a missed opportunity. In Miss Marvel's TV show, there was a slight hint that she could also be a mutant, and I think they might have made that retcon in the comics too, that she's a mutant instead of in a human. Or maybe somehow both. So hopefully stretchy powers are still to come in the MCU as a mutation of hers, but who knows because where is Miss Marvel? The only time we've seen her since her TV show was in the movie The Marvels, including the post credits scene which was the best part of the movie.

40:02 Spoiler ahead if you haven't seen that. But Kamala Khan goes to recruit Kate Bishop, the new Hawkeye, into a new team that could turn into Young Avengers or the name. I hope they go by Champions. When I saw that I literally sat up straight and put my fist in the air with exciting. Right man. Yes, folks, I do sometimes. Like stuff. Really rarely. Rarely. Unbelievable. Inconceivable. Are you sure? When exactly did this happen? Still debatable. But what happened to that? Where is Miss Marvel? I don't think Iman Vilani was announced as a cast member of Avengers Doomsday.

40:34 So where are the Young Avengers slash champions? I never read Young Avengers but I love the Champions comics title in the late 20 tens. If you want to call them Young Avengers, fine, but if you wait too long, the Young Avengers are going to be Old Avengers. MCU what are you doing, God? I can feel your anger. OK, sorry I went on a tangent. Sideways rant and original nitpick both over back to the recording. So the only thing I have left is a grade, but is there anything you have left especially in the negative category?

41:09 Well, what you're saying, I agree with some of that because we have what I was just describing where you need to have characters interact with different people in order to expand on that character. And if you limit who they interact with, it limits them and how much we get to know them. So they had this idea to have Ben Grimm go down to the street level and walk around and kind of want to be a normal guy in this old neighborhood and run into a nice lady named Rachel. And they seem to kind of connect.

41:36 It was Natasha Lyonne. Like the other thing is I think they cast somebody a little bit too big for that part and then made the part smaller. So if they had had a person I didn't recognize is Rachel, I might not have paid so much attention to her and it wouldn't have mattered as much. But I'm like, what is Natasha Leon doing here? Does she have secret powers? Is she going to be as love interest? You calm down, Nick. All right? He's just talking to a nice girl. It's not that big. Yeah, but it's Natasha.

42:03 So yes, some of that. I was told that there were other reasons why they might have not had Alicia Masters, the character Kerry Washington played in the previous movies, who is one of his major love interest, show up and why they might have created this new character, Rachel. I apologize, comics fans, if she is an established comic character. I haven't heard that. But like that there could be a sort of rights thing where they don't have to pay somebody if they don't use Alicia Masters or Kerry Washington or something.

42:33 But yeah, that bit seemed extra. I think everything else I was pretty fine with. What you said about going too big too fast, that's a theme I have with lots of movies where if you save the entire planet in your first adventure, you don't have anywhere to go. Yeah, yeah. And that's, you know, who does Iron Man fight first? You know, he fights the Ironmonger and they blow up a building. You know, Captain America ends up fighting the Red Skull on a plane that crashes. Thor fights a big robot thing in a small town.

43:07 We start a little bit smaller than the entire planet, and we kind of build up. Sure, the Guardian saved the whole planet, but it was a different planet, you know? I don't know. And it felt like local. So anyway, yeah, I'm with you on that. So probably not a big surprise from the way I've described it, but my grade is AC plus. That's kind of the bottom end of me liking something because overall I do feel like it was well made, it just didn't blow me away in any particular category. So it sounds like overall you would recommend it to.

43:37 Yeah, Marvel BA Tier 2, good all around. Not a home run. If someone is interested in seeing it, I think they'll have a good time. If someone is not sure about seeing it, you don't have to drag them. All right. So moving on to our last one that we have in common and that is Superman. I think it was originally supposed to be called Superman Legacy or something like that, but then they just changed the name to Superman. I did like this movie. I liked it just a little bit better than Captain America Brave New World.

44:11 I felt like overall they did capture a better tone for Superman both visually and narratively. In fact, I'll just say the best thing about this movie was they bring color and brightness back to both the picture and the tone of the characters. I hated that in the DC EU when Superman was, you know, super dark in both tone and you know, the the color of just about everything that those were a few movies that where they really did kind of over color correct stuff and just ZAP the color out. I like in this movie, blue was blue, red was red, yellow was yellow, the sky was blue, the sun was out.

44:52 So I love that. So what was your first impression of Superman? Well, I was going into this one like the other two. We agreed. We talked about where my goal for the movie is for it to be OK for them to be able to build DC on this. This was like the much lauded first attempt by our guy coming in to try and run DC and get it course corrected and start everything over. And there were concerns because we do have a completely new guy. And I'll be honest with you, even people like Todd and me who feel like the other Superman movies recently were depressing and they were so gritty that they were like a bummer.

45:30 We still seem to love Henry Caville. He's just a all around amazing sounding dude in person and in character. I think he was given really rough scripts, so we weren't sure if somebody could step in and replace Henry Cavill, even if we didn't want stuff. And my initial take is that it's amazing how good a job David Cornsworth did. He's like, I think he brought everything that you could hope for from the other side of Superman, not the tortured side that Zack Snyder and Chris Nolan would say. You know, The Dark Knight movies did really well with brooding.

46:07 So we need to make Superman brood too, because that worked for Batman. It's like, well, if we decide to go the other way and we are going to have a Superman who is actually happy sometimes. If James Gunn wants to have a colorful positive in some ways likes helping people Superman, are we going to have that charm and that boyish quality and that smile and the the, you know, can do almost naive attitude? And I think he brings all of that. He seems really genuine and he seems really sweet. And I bought into all of that.

46:41 So yes, I like the movie very much just because of how good a job they did with Superman. There are other things in it that are great, but that was that was all I was hoping for was that it was passable and it exceeded that clearly, not just with me, but I guess with a lot of people. So what are some of your? What are some of your points about this one? All right, so my positives are it had great casting performances and special effects. They made good use of crypto. He was a little bit annoying in his extreme bad behavior, but it was kind of cool to have a dog in there.

47:17 You know, they haven't done that before. And he did kind of help brighten up the whole movie. There was good chemistry between Clark and Lois, plus the other support characters like his parents. The Justice Gang is an interesting sandbox to play with before establishing the Justice League or Justice Society, which I assume they'll get around to eventually. But before, you know, messing with that kind of Canon stuff, just kind of making up something new and just saying, yeah, we're just going to throw a few people together and call them the Justice Gang was kind of a a neat thing to to play around with.

47:51 The only thing is, is 3 people really a gang? But other than that, I did like. So what were some of your positives? Well I mean you brought up crypto and crypto half stole the movie I think. And people like pets. I mean, if we are suckers for something cute, it's the whole secret behind the Mandalorian. He kicks ass, but then you've got Baby Yoda to balance the ass kicking. If you just have straight ass kicking, it can get old, But then you have this sort of cute other thing going on and Americans just melt.

48:25 So Crypto, he was a mess. And I think there are a lot of pet owners that they love their animals and they complain about their animals and the idea that you created a Superman. You created a Superman who was like not losing his mind because he's just saving Lois, but he is turning himself over to the bad guys just so he can find where the dog is. It's like, Oh my gosh, way to connect with American audiences. So I just, I think that was amazing. I think it's clever that they brought in Guy Gardner as a Green Lantern, and they did a pretty good job of showing just how dickish Guy Gardner is.

49:04 I don't know that much about comics. I would give myself AC Plus as a comic book fan, but I know what Guy Gardner is like him and his haircut and he's. Yeah, yeah. The only, the only inaccurate things were he could have been a little bit less handsome with not so deep and rich a voice.

49:32 But the hairstyle and the obnoxious attitude were on point. I think some of the side characters were a lot and they kind of get swallowed up in the plot. So like the engineer was silly and over the top. But that's OK because it's a comic book movie. And I I tend to agree with James Gunn that you can have weird, silly, over the top characters and not make a big deal out. I don't know, I feel like there's others where it's just hot girl is kind of swallowed up in the narrative. It's not her story.

50:03 She's a side character in this. So did she do OK? Yeah. I mean, she. Yeah, she's fine, but it's not about her. So yeah. You didn't mention the other huge positive. Were you saving that for me? You want to say it? Oh, that was all my positives. I might agree with you, but I don't have it in my notes. Yeah, that's the surprise backbone of the movie for me is Eddie Geffeggy as Mr. Terrific. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is just, Oh my gosh. And if you know this guy's career a little bit, so he got to be an X-Men for 5 minutes in first class playing Darwin, a secret fan favorite character that I didn't know that who's you know, you can say a lot of things about Darwin, but one thing you can say is that he survives.

50:48 That's his ultimate superpower is he's even more unkillable than Deadpool probably. And they killed him.

50:58 So it really bothered fans. So Eddie Gethiggy got this one turn and it's really awesome that he came back and they gave him this awesome character. So he plays Mr. Terrific, who I know from a couple of cartoons and man. Oh, and the, the, you know, Flash and Arrow verse on The CW, Mr. Terrific showed up and I was like, who is this? So he got to do a really a really cool part. Some of it might have felt a little bit like Guardians of the Galaxy with Yondu in his arrow. It was pretty obvious, but that didn't mean it wasn't fun.

51:34 I really, I think between Crypto and Mr. Terrific, the show, the whole movie had like a lot of support. So like I said in my intro, I was pleased with it just because of them sticking the landing with corn sweat doing Superman. But with the addition of those two characters, it was pretty great. I do have some negatives though, so if you get into some negatives I think it can bring some negatives. Yeah, yeah. So I'll speed through mine. Let me see. My main problem is I did not like one particular sci-fi aspect brought on by Lex Luthor.

52:12 If anybody seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. I just felt like that went too far and kind of similar to the Fantastic Four movie. I felt like the the thing he created, the science fiction thing he created, what felt more like a second or third movie Mecca nation than it did a first movie Mecca nation. That really should have been something that was saved. It just felt like too far for one person to accomplish. Also, I do have in my notes, I say the action scenes were a little too over the top, but let me clarify what I mean by that.

52:43 It's mostly connected to that first negative I was talking about the stuff where it's tearing up the city. I thought all of that was too much. Some of the fight scenes between Superman and two villains at once, Some of that was all over the top. Other things that were good were things like the big monster that attacked downtown. What else? Oh, when Superman and Lois were having a conversation in one of their apartments and you see the Justice gang fighting some kind of weird giant eye floating eyeball off in the distance, That was awesome.

53:20 That that was amazing. And there were one or two other action scenes that were good also. I do like the little snippets they put in of Superman saving kid, a dog, a squirrel, you know, is showing that Superman, you know, loves all life forms and everything. So I like all that. But there were a few action scenes that I think did go too far as mostly near the end, Jimmy Olsen and Eve Tessmacher I think felt like they might have been in a different movie. Maybe not quite as much Jimmy Olsen, but especially Eve Tessmacher.

53:51 I mean, she was just a little bit too over the top where other things felt a little bit more grounded. Last two things we didn't see enough of Clark as a reporter. In fact, barely any. We basically see him like show up to work one day and sit at his desk and then that's it. He doesn't actually do any reporter stuff. And then another nitpick, similar to earlier, I think there is a little too much profanity in the movie. And I know that might sound extra prudish of me to say because it's not even like there was that much.

54:20 It's just that for a Superman movie, I think almost any profanity feels like too much profanity. So yeah, those are my negatives. So how about you? Yeah, I mean, some of the things you're saying, I can see where you're coming from. I was fine with the Jimmy Olsen, Eve Tessmacher thing. It was a weird mechanic. But they tried something new. And James Gunn hypothesized that he could do sort of a flashy parade of characters and effects and fights and that people would buy into it, not just be overloaded.

54:52 And for the most part, he was right. What you said about grounded before, I mean, when there is no ground and everything is confusing and that maybe there's other dimensions or maybe you're just being swallowed by the earth or everything at once, that could get lost. But then they might bring the dog in and it's kind of fun. So I was mostly OK with all of that. My beef that I have to mention here today, it's not just this movie. I don't understand why comic book movie makers are so interested in doing things with Daily Planet editor Perry White.

55:30 I mean, the character has been around since the beginning. I respect that he's part of the story, I get that. But they struggle to find something for this man to do. In Man of Steel, you had Laurence Fishburne climbing over rubble because we had to see what Perry White was doing as the city was falling apart in this one. No hate to Wendell Pierce, Sir. You are a capital actor. I like the cigar. Great work. But they had to come up with something where Perry White and his team are flying around trying to do news stories during the events.

56:07 And I'm just like, this is wonderful. If if it was even remotely important, but it didn't matter to me at all. I think if you edited all of those out, I would, you know, if I was Wendell's friend, I would be very sad for him. But I think the movie would have worked fine without much Perry White in it. So I'm I'm glad they're trying to be comic accurate with that, but I don't see the point. I do think the interactions you mentioned, Clark and Lois having this conversation, their conversations behind closed doors felt very authentic.

56:39 They did a really good job. I don't know how much they practiced, if they practice like doing a play, but they seem to really connect. And those bits where she's interviewing him toward the beginning felt very, very real. It was cool. And it introduced us to the character well, and he was already flawed. And they do something similar where we have Clark talking to his dad, who looks like a completely different version of POC hint than we've ever seen. But it felt really, really cool. It felt grounding and nice.

57:11 So yeah, I liked all of that stuff. If anything, I liked more of it. But yes, that's about all I got to say about the Superman movie. OK, Yep. And so the last thing I'll say on that is my grade for that one is AB similar to Captain America, Brave New World, Maybe just a slightly higher B, not quite B Plus. And sadly because I only saw 6 movies at the theater and two of them were not as good, Superman by default, by lackluster default, ends up being my best movie of the year at only AB. Yeah. So not a great year for movies for me.

57:51 Yeah, grading it, If you've ever had a kid in class that needed to be graded on a curve because they were just never going to get there, I feel for DC Comics, and I feel like they do not. My Marvel scale is based on the idea of home runs existing, and DC doesn't have them. If they did have them, it might be like the first Wonder Woman movie for me. And gosh, everything else is like AC for me since I don't know, I like The Batman very much, but it's like I don't have that scale. So this is going to sound crazy, but so far, ladies and gentlemen, live action for this generation, this is ADCA.

58:35 It doesn't make sense, I know. But if you watch this compared to all of the other DC movies of the last 10 years, it's pretty much Wonder Woman is better than this. But is anything else DC has made it's live action, you know I don't. Know and those are the four movies that we had in common. Like I said, I only saw two other movies at the theater. So I also looked and we're at almost an hour for just movies and we still have to do TV. So speeding through this trying to do this as quickly as possible.

59:06 Maybe going into very little if any detail I I can mention my two others. Do you have any two either honorable or dishonorable mentions or or one of both? Yeah, OK, I will say Wicked for Good was amazing, and I'm not just saying that because it's popular to say it, but I don't know what it is. Cynthia Revo is really fun to watch as that character. The songs that are based on the musical originally are still wonderful. The new songs they added, I could kind of take her leave, but she's like, you know, you'll see a sort of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow or something where you really like seeing someone play a particular character.

59:45 And she was sort of wonderful in that. So I've seen that twice in the theater within the same week and really, really enjoyed it. And I have a friend who hasn't seen it yet. And I'm like, I can get you there. I'll take you again because it was very fun. And the other one I saw this year that's not on our list is Tron Aries that I kind of wanted to mention because it also gets trashed and it's better the more I think about it. I just think all of the Tron movies are bizarre misfires, beautiful stylistic, creative misfires with interesting music and effect.

1:00:20 So this is more of that. But if you take the last Tron movie. And you say, you know, legacy. And you say, hey, let's do that again. Except people really liked Olivia Wilde. Get rid of her and put in Jared Leto. That's pretty much what you have. So you can imagine how audiences reacted. Jared Leto is a good actor, but he is not. You'll never hear anybody say, I've got to see that new Jared Leto movie. We don't say it as Americans. He's not a draw. And I don't know why Disney bet big on Jared Leto.

1:00:53 He does amazing in it. Y'all, he does a really good job. But it is a big weird misfire like all Tron movies. That having been said, they're big, weird, splashy misfire. And this is starting to grow on me. I think I might need to watch it again. So if you haven't seen it and you're interested, you liked Legacy, I would encourage you to give it a shot because it's yes, it's bizarre, but I mean, you, you're, you're watching Tron movies. What do you expect? That's it for me. For additional, what do you got?

1:01:23 OK so Demon Slayer Infinity Castle. This was something that was recommended to me by Preston, my Co host over on Discerning Geeks Portal. Went into it cold having watched nothing but a trailer for the movie. It is anime, it's based on a TV show, and in fact I think this might be the second big screen movie for the TV show. I'm not positive about that. And it split into three stories. I really liked the first story, except maybe for how it ended. The middle story was in the middle. And in the last story was way too long, way too slow.

1:01:56 It was like a redemption art where I did not feel that much sympathy for that, that character. I didn't care if that character got redeemed. I was starting to wonder, OK, do I live in this theater now? Should I have packed the bag? Am I going to be here forever? I mean it just totally slowed the movie down when we reviewed it on discerning each portal. I was really kind to it at the time and gave it AC Plus because since then I was like you know that third story dragged it down so much. I have now lowered it to AC.

1:02:26 Also with the grade of AC is Mission Impossible Final Reckoning and I feel bad about that because I've had mixed feelings about the mission Mission Impossible franchise. I did not like the first 2 movies so it took me a long time to ever get around to the middle movies, but I actually ended up kind of liking them. I think I would say like 3 through 7 I liked okay, but this one, the 8th movie was not a win for me. I gave it a C yes, I know there's some mind blowing stunts and everything, but there were some other things that the movie did wrong, mostly separating the Tom Cruise character from the rest of his team.

1:03:07 So that kind of took out the team aspect. Tom Cruise was shirtless like two or three times in this movie. So it made me wonder, OK, is this like a like a, what is it Scientology propaganda thing to get his next wife or something? It just overall it just didn't work for me. Again, kind of a pacing problem with that movie. So yeah, sadly, that one a sea. I would just like to say about the Mission Impossible franchise. I've seen two. I've seen the original when it came out and I was upset that they started by killing the entire Mission Impossible team and not inviting Peter Graves to be in it.

1:03:42 Girl, you know that's right. And then I didn't watch another one until friends invited me to the second to last one. And I just, I've decided since then that James Bond and Mission Impossible are pretty fun if you see them in a theater, like they're kind of a festival. There's lots of cool stuff to see. It was fun. I had a good time. But I I wasn't really drawn to see this one. No one invited me and I wasn't, like, going to run out and see it. So yeah, yeah. I'm not sure what's next for Tom, but yeah, I'm not surprised by anything you're saying.

1:04:13 Yeah, that that franchise has never done great with the team aspect. And every time it feels like they're building a team, then one or two characters go away and it's like, oh, and and so eventually the team is just like a core of three people. It's basically even Hunt and the two hackers, and it's just it's not enough, but they do well enough in other ways that I kind of like the middle movies. But yeah, that last one was not a home run. OK, so switching to TV. Our first one is going to be Alien Earth.

1:04:42 What was your general response to that, Todd? So yeah, I've got this. One's a kind of a split of positives and negatives, but ultimately it kind of faltered for me. I feel like it had excellent production quality. It successfully mixes the feel of alien encounters that usually happen on ships and other worlds with the familiar locale of Earth. The characters, including ones that are, I can't remember if they're called androids or hybrids, but those kind of characters, they start off being intriguing and sympathetic characters.

1:05:18 Doesn't quite stay that way though, and it does an excellent job introducing new species into the alien universe. So it isn't just our Xenomorph, it's some other aliens then. I think I've got one more positive and a few negatives, but what was your impression? Faltered is a good word because it kind of implies that you lose your footing or something. So this show won me over right at the beginning because it did a lot of extra work to match up to the aesthetic of the original movie. And Oh my gosh, that just like that's AI don't know heroin.

1:05:55 What did you say? It's like a shot of heroin or something. Drugs are bad. You shouldn't do drugs. Oh, good. The initial thing when every episode starts is like a green cursor on the screen, which matches up the show. They matched sound effects and tones, and then they built a ship that was very, very similar to the one we see in the first movie, which to me, if you match to a previous aesthetic, you're really taking a shortcut to authenticity. By lifting up that old movie, you make your own movie more real for me and a lot of viewers.

1:06:27 And it did that. So I bought into it and I loved it like they won meal. OK, let's talk about LSD. That having been said, I feel like the show was designed to have a terrifying one season story and it built and scrambled and moved around and in the last few episodes I feel like they got greenlit for a season 2. And the guy wasn't. I mean he didn't just make stuff up. This is not like Lost Season 2. Drugs are bad because if you do drugs, you're a hippie and hippie sick. He had ideas. So it's it's not, it doesn't feel completely manufactured.

1:07:03 But it started to lose me then. So that's why I like the phrase faltered in the last bit. I was very, very much less interested. It seemed less tight. It seemed to be wandering off into the woods as opposed to going somewhere. So yes, season 2 might be interesting, but I was really really they hyped me with those first few episodes. Like it was very powerful and well plotted. Yeah, I totally agree with you. It did start off well. And in my notes I do say that between the chaos of alien breakouts and Android hybrid rebellion, the whole plot kind of gets convoluted there at the end.

1:07:40 And to be honest, I forgot where the story left off, so I did. Maybe it will be good in Season 2. They're going to have to give me a little bit of a training wheels on on what happened because I kind of forgot already and a couple other negatives. I kind of feel like some good characters kind of went down some bad or weird paths and it ends up in a place where I'm wondering who is the good guy in this show? Who is the protagonist? I'm, I'm not sure that there is a hero of the show. There might be 1 character, but they're not as many as I was hoping for.

1:08:16 And then while the idea of seeing some of the people behind the major corporations starts off kind of interesting, they also end up basically being the embodiments of corporate greed. And that's not totally unrealistic, it's relevant and relatable, but it's also kind of blatant and annoying. And so after a while, they just kind of end up being straight up villains with little or no depth. And who knows, maybe they're not supposed to have any. But So those are my negatives. But steering back to the one positive I have, and it's similar to what it might be, similar to what you may have said, is that some scenes were shot and edited in such a way that it does build some tense moments.

1:08:55 Even if sometimes some of those moments are a little bit predictable, they're still pretty, pretty tense. So yeah. And my overall grade for this one is AC. It did not start off that low, but it gradually sunk down to that. I would say B, maybe B Plus, the Alien franchise has struggled with what to give audiences. You could make a comparison to something like Star Wars, where some people want it to be exactly what they've already seen, and some people demand that you show them something new and no one is happy.

1:09:28 And I think the creatives you think about, like Ridley Scott, he says, oh, I'm going to give you guys a new Alien movie. I'll do what I did when the original show you things you've never seen and terrify you and everybody. He did not realize how much we love the Xenomorph. Like we just really wanted to see some more Xenomorph. So he's very frustrated. So in his second movie, he gives us a whole bunch of Xenomorph and it kind of feels like a slasher. And we weren't really thrilled with that either.

1:09:55 So this this show kind of splits the difference. It gives you a full Xenomorph in a few seconds and then it kind of parcels it out and it gives you these other creatures and stuff that really do, Oh my gosh, just freaky. So kind of trying to play it both ways. And I respected that. The whole thing with hybrids where you're like putting a child's brain metaphorically into a robot, not literally. And are they really alive or are they just transferred data is interesting. And it didn't seem to mess up this, the alien continuity for me.

1:10:30 So I was, I was very curious about that. And I like Sydney Chandler a lot as Wendy. She was great. But I do see what you're saying where it's like she feels like our hero protagonist at the beginning, but not to give it away by the third, from the last episode, maybe the second to last, she really pretty clearly doesn't care about human life at all. And I think she's pretty straightforward about that. And it's hard to root for somebody who is horrified that you have damaged A synthetic who only tore a person apart.

1:11:07 You're like, oh, maybe you're not on my side. Like, narratively, I don't think that's our fault as the viewer to say. I don't think you're on my side. She's not. So yeah, I I have problems with shows that don't have a clear protagonist. They don't have somebody to root for. Instead, it's sort of like, you're just seeing what everybody's going to do. And it's a lot of private interests. But there were a lot of cool pieces in here, and they really did introduce some new creatures, especially, of course, the eyeball, which was the surprise secondary star.

1:11:40 You know, they showed us new things while bringing us along with things we were familiar with. So I think BB for Nick Oh Ironheart is next. Yeah, So Ironheart, to me, it had excellent production quality, good performances. It finally incorporated a villain that people have been anticipating for a while. And so overall it was good, but not that good because I do have some negatives. But what was your first impression of it? I did not like this show very much. OK, I Well, so RiRi Williams is a really cool and interesting character.

1:12:21 She is kind of like what you get if you have a genius Tony Stark, grow up on the streets, self-made person. They have all the ability, but they do not have the money and the backing and stuff. So if you give them, you know, air conditioner parts, unlike comics, they really can't turn that into a robot, but they can turn it into cool stuff and that's her. So I think as a character she has a lot of promise. But this show, man, they, I don't feel like they let her win very much. Like, if you think about the first Iron Man movie, he he did, he was sloppy and he got knocked down and he, you know, shot himself into a wall.

1:13:00 And it was kind of funny at times and he struggled, but he also got to kick so much butt. And I don't feel like in the entire series, RiRi really got to confidently kick butt for more than half a second. It's like every time she punched, well, she took two hits in return. Her choices were all rough. It was just I wanted her, I guess I wanted more for Dominique Thorne. I wanted her to get more of a kick ass opportunity. So it it frustrated me. RiRi makes a lot of bad decisions all the time and you're just like, no girl, please don't do that.

1:13:36 So yeah, I was frustrated with this series. I'm not sure if I'll rewatch it. I just think there were some good parts when you do watch people criticize Marvel and they'll say things like this is what the graphics used to look like. This is what graphics look like now. And they try and trash Marvel. You will notice they don't show any scenes from Iron Heart because if they didn't bring a script that I like, they brought excellent effects to her costume and her mechanics. It looks really, really good.

1:14:06 So you know, there's there's some great stuff in there. She has listeners. If you haven't seen it yet, spoilers, She's uploading an AI and she accidentally sort of does something like putting her dead friend's soul into her AI. So like Tony has different people like Friday that he talks to in a suit or Jarvis. She has Natalie, who is her dead friend Natalie, and it's really messing with her, but it's kind of like, it really is this girl and they mess with that. I thought that was very, very clever, but I don't know if we got to go to great places with that.

1:14:42 It was just sort of another odd thing going on. You want to say more before I say more? Yeah, because you've already mentioned something I would kind of agree with. When I collected comics a few years ago, I think this was actually pre pandemic, I went through a phase where I collected comics for about two or three years. And RiRi Williams was actually one of my favorite characters that I was reading at the time. And so I really like that character. And when they introduced her in the second Black Panther movie, I was like, I don't know if that's really what I imagined her being like, but I was like, OK, I guess I just have to go with it.

1:15:17 She continued to not be what I imagined the character to be. They did kind of go a different direction with her Weird thing where she kind of hooked up with a group that would kind of steal stuff. I mean, it just did. It didn't feel right. And some of the support characters are annoying, or at least that's what I have in my notes. I was trying to think, OK, who might I would be referring to? And I'm think I'm probably mostly referring to that group that she hooked up with. I did not like them at all.

1:15:46 And then I also hate, and I'll try to be vague on this so it's not sport, but I hate how it ends with the main character showing bad decision making. So it makes me wonder, OK, do I even want to see a season 2? And if so, it really needs to involve a correction of what happened at the end of Season 1. Yeah, we need to see RiRi make a series of good choices and be rewarded for that because she hasn't done that once yet. She has made terrible decisions and then tried to fix those consequences and that's it.

1:16:19 So yeah, that's not really. That's not great. She ultimately, like, I don't know, she creates additional super villains. That's not that's not a good ratio. I did like what Alden Ehrenreich did. This is young Han Solo. I'm playing Ezekiel and he's a nice guy and he's a good actor and he plays the character well. But because of bad decision making, that plot line seems to go badly. I don't know. They bring in the Red Hood and we kind of the Red Hood, I'm sorry, the hood, they bring in the hood, which is we saw that character a little bit in What if as an introduction.

1:16:58 But yeah, it's I'm not giving away the thing. You didn't give it away as well, but some of that was OK. It just did not blow me away and I wanted more. I did like that she has a friend named Zelma who turns out to have like sorceress skills. That was fun. I would say there are a few like treats hidden in this show if you can get through all of the stuff. But I don't know. I I judge teens pretty harshly as a grumpy old guy, and I like it when you show teens being heroes and making good choices. When we saw the Hawkeye series, Kate Bishop, she doesn't beat everybody.

1:17:38 She's not as strong as some people, but she's consistently awesome in almost the entire show. Almost every choice she makes, even if it's not a great choice, she's awesome. And I don't feel like RiRi got to do that. So yeah, I want to see some of that. If they do a Season 2, I hope they do. I hope they do just so they can do course correction. Yeah, I don't know if we're going to see a season 2. There are not a lot of these shows that get a season 2. Some of them probably weren't intended to, so I don't know this this might have been one shot, which kind of annoys me.

1:18:09 I wish some of these shows actually would continue because I just don't feel like we get enough. But but anyway for iron heart I give it AC plus. I guess I'm around there with you. I think you might actually be generous on this one. OK, so our next one is Andor. Andor, we're going to hear some some interesting takes on this. Ladies and gentlemen. Let me let me do some of my overview first here and then you sweep in on this. So Andor, if any of you don't know, is an incredibly popular spin off of Star Wars based on the Rogue One series and Cassian Andor really, really cool character that came out of that prequel.

1:18:50 And it's popular because of how it shows political intrigue and the slow building of a rebellion that would be shown in the original Star Wars movies. Diego Luna does a really good job. There are several quality actors in here, like Stellan Skarsgard, who gives a famous speech that yeah, I'll admit it, the show has some clever writing in it, especially a couple of speeches, his and Genevieve O'reilly's as Mon Mothma. I don't like it very much because I'm a Star Wars fan from my childhood and Star Wars kind of taught me to like good versus evil and moral dichotomy and space Wizards and roguish smugglers and good guys winning.

1:19:37 That's that's on me. That's not to say there's right and wrong, but this show is it is a slow burn, political intrigue spy thriller set in the Star Wars Galaxy. So if you watch the scene from the original Star Wars A New Hope where they're sitting around the Death Star talking before Darth Vader comes in, or you see any of the scenes in the prequel trilogy when they're in the Senate talking about legislation and you say. I want to show that's all of that with no swords and lightsabers and and magic powers.

1:20:12 That's largely what Andor is, which isn't to say bad. They they do a really good job with some of it and I have some positives I can do. But Todd, what's your take on this show? OK, so you're saying you didn't like it? It's not for Nick, OK. OK, thank goodness I'm not alone because I didn't like it either. And I wasn't, I wasn't not that fond of season 1 either. And I think I'm in the minority on both because there are some people that I follow on YouTube or in podcasts or elsewhere that say that this is the best Star Wars has been, if not ever, then at least since the original trilogy.

1:20:49 And I don't get it. So do you want me to do positives first or negatives first? No wrong answers man, go with it. OK, so since we're already a little bit negative, let's come back to positive. So let me, yeah, explain my negatives a little bit. So similar to the first season is often too slow and or too boring. You mentioned something about a planet named Gorman where there's a bit of a rebellion going on. There's one scene there where people are chanting and singing and I get the purpose of hell.

1:21:23 It just goes on forever and ever. And I'm like, I get it. And there are just other scenes, inner first with that of just people just walking around, just walking from here to there and from here. And another person goes from here to there and it's like they're all positioning themselves. And I get like, I get it, Just get on with it. So the whole show feels like it moves at half speed. Some of the story is convoluted, even outright confusing, especially the parts about the stolen fighter in the first few segments.

1:21:51 And that fighter never appears again. And so I'm not even sure what the purpose of that whole storyline at the at the very beginning about the stolen fighter. I don't know what that was supposed to be for then. Let me see. Wait, let me let me respond to that one because I had the same question. And it was explained to me that we see him go on this fetch quest. And the purpose narratively of the fetch quest, I was told is when he crashes and eventually escapes from the planet without actually accomplishing anything.

1:22:23 And they could have got that entire scene. The purpose was to show him encountering early bits of what would become the rebellion and how disjointed they were so that they could be compared later with a more tightly controlled connected rebellion. But it was frustrating to. Watch. Yeah, because I kind of got that because I think I was already losing interest like that early that I wasn't paying enough attention and have a feeling if I had paid more attention and maybe it would have been more clear who those people were.

1:22:55 But I got the impression that everybody involved was on the same side, but they weren't communicating well enough that they didn't know they were all on the same side. Is that kind of what you're saying? Yeah, but you and I are on the same page. So there are people who enjoy the show a lot and they're not necessarily fans of it because those people really were all doofuses in the woods. Nobody like, likes them. So yeah, it's not a pleasant scene for anybody. It's just you and I don't see much of the value and other people do.

1:23:24 Yeah, yeah. And then a couple of the other bad things. Let me see at least one character that we followed since Season 1 continues to be boring. And to me, he's close to being pointless. And I think I'm in the minority on that, too. I think I've heard some people say, oh, it's it's interesting seeing his his path. And I'm like, I do not care. I never understood the purpose of that character. Let me see, some climactic moments aren't as exciting as they're supposed to be. One of the main examples being Mon Mothma's speech.

1:23:55 I'm not saying it's a bad speech. It's just there's a whole lot of anticipation for it. And then it's given it and it's like, it's it's good, but it's not great. And then there's the whole chase scene afterward to like get her out of there and everything. And it's just not quite as exciting as I think it's supposed to be. So those are kind of my big overall negatives, and maybe it was good to get those out of the way at first. We can kind of salvage it with some positives next. Do you have any more negatives or positives?

1:24:25 Yeah, just briefly off the top of my head. Like I said, there are things that you may want from Star Wars, and if you watch a Star Wars that doesn't have what you want, you're going to be more frustrated. So if you watch the original trilogy and you're like, I like this, but I wish it was all on one planet with like teddy bears fighting the Ewok adventure is for you. And if you're frustrated by a like lack of lightsabers, you may not enjoy the Ewok adventure and the battle for and some people don't think that's great.

1:24:55 Star Wars. If you watch Star Wars and you really, really like like some of it, but you kind of wish it was a variety show, the Star Wars Holiday special might be for you. And some of us are like, I don't want a variety show. So for those of us who don't especially want a slow burn political intrigue spy thriller, this was very difficult to watch. But for those of you who are like all I want from Star Wars is spy political thriller. I'm sick of lightsabers and space Wizards and clear right and wrong.

1:25:25 I want to see the struggle of people on the ground without God like entities controlling their every decision and stuff. You know, some people really appreciate it. The only thing I resent is that I feel like some people feel like they feel like I'm saying my Star Wars is right and then they don't realize that they say the same thing back. So if you think that space swords are childish and intrigue is grown up and the only way as a grown up you can continue to enjoy Star Wars is if it grows up with you and leaves behind teddy bears and lightsabers.

1:26:04 It frustrates those of us who feel like we can grow up and still enjoy what it used to be and and is sometimes still. So I would argue that we all need to let each other enjoy things. I do think Todd and I talked briefly about some other franchises and how they struggle with trying to be gritty and realistic and others try and have fun and what's right and wrong and fan service. So one of the most popular moments in Andor season 2. That is not a speech is when K2, SO the awesome robot from Rogue One, gets to do something and he walks into the building and absolutely kicks ass and it's awesome.

1:26:47 Big surprise, it's awesome. And like the hallway scene in Rogue One, it's a big departure from what the rest of the show is like. But people seem to really enjoy it. So I would argue that you'll see that in a lot of different shows where they will sneak in a little bit of something that is that other format. And that's, you know, I think that we can have it both ways. But the other, yeah, yeah, I have positives, but I think that's plenty of negative. I think there's good things about the show, but there are some things that frustrate me just because of my taste.

1:27:23 So what are some of your negatives of positives, Todd? OK, so this has unbelievably off the charts production quality on a scale of 1 to 10, the production quality about a 15 or 20. Part of that is some amazing real life scenery and shooting locations, some things that you would see and you would think surely that architecture has to be fake. Surely they're using, you know, either the volume or some kind of other special effects. But then I looked and there are actually some places, I think there's a place in Spain that has that really interesting architecture.

1:27:56 And now that I think about, I think I've seen it in other movies or TV shows before and they use that and other, you know, real places and it just looks awesome. From again to end, basically visually, everything in both seasons 2 and one are visually flawless. Great performances. You know me, I like a little bit of structure. I like the format of the four, three episode segments with a year in between each segment. I like that. I just, like I said, I felt like it went too slow. So each one of those segments really should have been 2 episodes instead of three.

1:28:30 And usually I like more episodes, but I like more episodes that are filled with stuff. I felt like these were stretched. But anyway, I do like the structure, just not the pacing that goes along with it. And even though I've done a little bit of griping about the story, the character's pacing, and excitement, I will admit that all of that did gradually improve toward the end. It just was enough to save it overall. And if it's any consolation, yes, I said I didn't like it, but I also didn't hate it.

1:28:59 And so I do give this AC which is the top end of my Not Like it category. OK, so positives when I watched season 1 and I was very, very frustrated and I but I do try and round everything up and focus on the positive and what I really liked in season 1, as you mentioned, the production value is top tier that I was still getting to wander around in the Star Wars Galaxy and sightsee. You know, it's just like a museum and in a world in a universe that I really enjoy. If you make a soap opera set in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, but I still get to see flu powder and witches in Diagon Alley, I may watch the soap opera.

1:29:45 So it's like I I got to see cool settings and places and robots and ships, and I was trying to really focus on that. So some of the culture really spoke to me in that sense. I like bits with Mon Mothma and her husband. I think Per Per and Furtha that they they do some things. They're Chandrillin. And I remember when they did a toast in season 1 and they say Sigrona and then you say back Sigrona Tima. And I'm like, wow, U.S. star Wars fans, for the first time we have an official toast. I haven't heard it all.

1:30:24 A lot of other people do it, but I loved it. And apparently the writers, including Tony Gilroy, felt the same way because in season 2, there is this wedding toast that Paran Fertha gives. And this is the best part of the whole show to me, just because it's it's beautiful. It's a beautiful wedding toast. I would use it at a wedding tomorrow. Like it. It translates really well. It it's about joy and pain and how you struggle as a couple and looking for the good moments and appreciating them and not just it's wonderful and beautiful.

1:30:58 And I think they wrote some of that culture very well. That is my biggest positive. My other positives are just probably some of the work done by the actors. When we talked about Doctor Who for our Christmas episode, we mentioned Faye Marseille and she, she's in this, but she's just such a chameleon, getting to play these other characters. But she's Velsartha in this, and she's very serious and a very different person. Bix is pretty great, but I think just even more than the good guys, you have this evil couple and it's it's a Deidre Miro and Cyril and Cyril and Deidre are just so interesting to watch.

1:31:44 They're not my favorite thing, but if I had to sit down and watch this show, just their weird interactions. These are two very odd people and they are not on the good guys side. They're committed to what they're doing. So I thought both actors were kind of amazing. If you see them backstage or talking about making the show, they're really interesting people and the characters they create are really great. So I bought into all of that. I wasn't outside of the drama. I part of Gaz the the way that things are set up and when Chronic shows up and how he interacts with them, I thought that was all done really, really well.

1:32:20 I do appreciate some of the writing and I I get some of the acclaim. It's just, yeah, a different set of tastes. I think that's it for my possums. Who were those characters again? Well, the two. Characters and Deidre are the evil ones that are the couple, the awkward couple. Yeah, the office guy and the and then the other woman and they kind of pretended to be a. Couple there, evil office guy and evil office woman. Well they are. I think they're about as in love as Imperials could be at that high level where you just use everybody and constantly think about public appearance.

1:32:58 And she tells off his mom in this really manipulative, controlling way that's kind of good. Like she's not a bad guy at that moment. She's like the things that you're doing are unacceptable and this is how it's going to be moving forward. And she might as well have been a non neurotypical good guy in that scene. She was an interesting character, so it was played really well. But there are lots of characters and choices like that part of Gas is their superior for a lot of it. And he's a very good actor doing a good job.

1:33:27 Lutheran Rail, Stellan, Skarsgard. His speech was good that everyone raved about in Season 1. But I don't know, like the character didn't knock me over as much as probably Clea. And I feel like they tried to suggest in Season 2 that Clea ended up being the center and that we all kind of felt like it was Lutheran all the time, but she was really doing so much of the connection and planning and things that she was the brain behind a lot of it. But that was just, there were things like that to make us question stuff.

1:34:04 So I I respected these actors and what they were doing work wise. It just that the storytelling style didn't connect with me as much. But like, there's a robot called B2 EMO, you know, I didn't know his name. I had to look it up. I think they call him B for a lot of it, because this is not a Droid story. It's not that kind of Star Wars. Yeah, yeah, you're right about all the acting. The acting is fine. No issue with any of the actors. But those two characters I was asking about, they were complete waste of time for me.

1:34:37 I did not understand their purpose. The yeah, they were just too much of a diversion. Well, so Cyril has both of them have very poignant ends and that that meant a lot to me. So I think that's the the time that I felt most what fans of the show were talking about. And to defend Tony Gilroy and his craftsmanship, he really does like Gorman. When you brought up Gorman, he did do his homework and he dug into the lore and there really were events already in the timeline that he built the story around.

1:35:15 And he asked himself, you know, what can I do with these characters? What kind of Arc can I put them through and where do they end up? So I don't even know if I want to give that away because maybe one of y'all listening have watched the show and enjoy it and the things that are so good that I like them a lot. You should stick through to that. So I really felt a lot of poignancy and how serial story ends and how Deidre story ends. I thought that was done very, very well. And what, I keep forgetting her name, Clea Elizabeth de Lau.

1:35:47 She has this scene in the hospital. It's almost played for comedy at moments. It's a terribly serious scene, but she's kind of Wheeling an ET around this ET grandmother. And yeah, it's it's interesting choices. So yes, there were some good things in there that I enjoyed. My my grade is, I don't even know if I have a grade for this show. It's an A for some people and you know, not a book I would not reread for Nick. So I I appreciate y'all appreciating it. I may look at the speech every now and then and that's about it.

1:36:23 The wedding toast, but that's it. Moving on. Yeah, another. TV show, Our last TV show. We were going to just touch a little bit on Stranger Things, which just ended. So this segment, listeners, it will probably contain a little bit of spoilers. So if you got this far and you haven't watched Stranger Things Season 5 yet, the grand finale, the entire show, there's so many goodies in there. So please pause this episode, come back to us later. But we've both watched it and we're going to get into what happens in the whole show and like what we think of it for this year.

1:36:58 So Todd, what was your general response to Stranger Things Season 5? It was definitely good. There were some bumps in the road along the way, but there all were also some things that impressed me, especially about the very last episode. So I do feel good about it. Just to kind of set the stage a little bit, I've never been huge on Stranger Things. I have always watched it and had just enough enthusiasm to, you know, binge watch it as soon as it comes out. But I'm not one of those people who's ever been a super fan of it.

1:37:30 And so this season to me, it's ups and downs weren't that different from other seasons ups and downs. And so it was nice to see the conclusion of the story and to have it contain some closure. But at the same time, it's not like I was absolutely blown away by anything, nor did I feel like anything was garbage like some people on on TikTok and and YouTube might have claimed. So how about you? I've heard a couple of people complain or point out things that they didn't like or didn't resonate with them.

1:38:04 And I think everything in Season 5 was targeted directly at me. So I appreciated all of it. I liked all of it. I think the weird bits for other people were like, I was the guy that is just like raving about it. And I guess I kind of hear what you're saying. So like, the second-half of the last episode is more about resolution than conflict. And some people wanted more conflict. They wanted the action to keep going. And instead they ended the entire series, the finale finale, with resolution for all of the characters as much as they could in that time.

1:38:43 And I've heard two different sources say that this was some kind of a let down for them. But I was just eating it up with a spoon. I thought it was absolutely great their writing and how it was done, and I have also seen people online point out my new details and just things that they incorporated from previous seasons and references and callbacks that I would have missed. So I think there was a lot of thought that went into it. So yes, I'm a big fan of the series. I've rewatched all of it until season 5 at least twice, and I'm assuming that we'll probably go through a bunch of it a bunch more times.

1:39:22 I'm kind of trivia for Stranger Things, but this was, this was a great conclusion. So yeah. Yeah. And as far as my positives, I would say again, mind blowing production quality, very different kind of production quality. You know, obviously a lot of fake locations because of it being in you, you know, a fantastical world and everything, but just a lot of visual effects being used. Also the D aging of Will in that very first scene that was kind of a flashback to when he was young longer. All of the flashbacks that they had to edit in just all the special effects, just oh, and all of the both real life full body makeup and also special effects used for Vecna and other monsters and everything.

1:40:04 I mean just mind blowing production quality. You can really tell if they threw a whole lot of money at the screen. Mostly good acting. There might be a tiny exception and I'm not even sure I'm right about that. I'll get to that in the negatives. And then I've already kind of implied it, but some very nice nostalgia and bookending in the series finale, those are some of the techniques I really like where they kind of take a look back at how far they've come since the first episode and they do get a little nostalgic.

1:40:32 And you said some people really wanted more action. I'm one of those people where it's like, if the entire last episode had been nothing, like they had already wrapped all that up in the last episode was nothing but just saying, what was all this for? Again, among so many other reasons, that's one of the reasons Babylon 5 is still my favorite TV show of all time is because J Michael Straczynski knew to wrap up all the big stuff before you get to the finale. And then when you get to the finale, all you have to do is say goodbye for an hour.

1:41:02 Whenever a series finale comes on, I'm always watching the clock saying, OK, how much more time do they have? And I was doing that during this. I was like, OK, I think they're almost wrapped up with the action stuff. Oh, good. They're going to have something like 40 minutes to just do Thealzia and saying how far they've come. And sure enough, they did. And also think that the final scene, what our main characters were doing, that final scene was a great way of bookending, you know, compared to the one of the first scenes, if not the first scene from the first episode of the whole show.

1:41:37 I thought that was a great way of kind of bringing things full circle. So yeah, those are my positives. Yeah, yeah. And I'm just did this with Alien Earth. But you want to try and have something familiar while also having something new. And you want to keep the previous lore and honor it and use it and grow it in cool ways, but also grow the lore. And in season 5, they expand the universe of Stranger Things and the dynamics of it and very creative ways that I felt landed. It was there was already plenty there, but they added more.

1:42:19 They had like a whole nother level, literally. So I felt like that was good. The only complaints I have I think are things that I felt like they could do with even more seasons just because I enjoy the show so much. Everything that I've heard people criticize, I think I've bought into in the extreme. What you said about bookending. I mean, you have a group of kids, and it's centered around a group of kids at the beginning, like little kids, Will's friends and 11:00. And then you have sort of this, you got a couple of rambly adults, Hopper and Joyce, mostly running around.

1:42:53 And the group of kids grows. Max shows up in Season 2. And you also have more and more adults like Murray showing up and bit by bit. But we get to the end and we've got a pile of kids and a pile of adults and they're all running around doing stuff and I felt like they found a lot for all of them to do. There was 1 moment where Joyce showed up and I genuinely didn't know she was there because I hadn't seen her. Just editing wise, I'm like, oh hey, what did Joyce get here? You know, I knew there were like 8 people there or something, but I hadn't seen all their faces.

1:43:29 But everybody seemed to have things to do. I like that. I like that they had what you're talking about where you have a sort of bookended closure for the kids and then you have another bookended closure for the adults. And you have this group of young adults, older kids that have grown along the way. Steve Harrington's age group with Nancy and how she keeps juggling boys all the way through the series and each of their journeys. And you kind of have them together and we've grown that group as well.

1:44:01 So I, I loved all of those closure bits. I thought that that was really, really cool. And I think, you know, if you have the whole series be about kids not having normal and then you show them having some semblance of normal at the end, I thought that was amazing. It's kind of like the epilogue in the last Harry Potter movie where it's like, how do you really give a character a happy ending when it feels like every six months something terrible happens? Well, you've got to show the future a little bit further than six months and show that the next terrible thing didn't happen and they seem to be just doing OK and they did that.

1:44:40 So that was great. Yeah, So we might actually disagree on a couple things here because one of my negatives is that overall the show, especially after a huge gap between seasons, got more complicated when it should have gotten simpler. And so I felt like they added a whole lot of new locations. And there again, well, maybe not new locations, but there were too many locations. And in fact, you know, they were talking about how old this is dimension X and this is this other thing. It has been so long since Stranger Things has been on T or since season 4 that I just thought there was Hawkins and the Upside Down and I had forgotten about the rest of it.

1:45:21 So that when they talk, start talking about Dimension X and one other thing beyond dimension X, and then they add this new thing to say how they're all connected, but they're upside down from each other. I was like, OK, they've they've lost me. And especially when they try to make it sound science fictiony when this is really fantasy or horror. In fact, I kind of hate it when Stranger Things get slumped in with science fiction say, and people say, oh, this is one of the best science fiction TV shows ever.

1:45:47 I was like, it's it's not science fiction. But anyway, you mentioned the characters. Yes, there were a whole lot of characters. I do feel like there were too many characters and that not enough of them were useful all the time. Usually I love it when shows have a sprawling cast of both main characters and support characters. It's one of the reasons I love Deep Space 9 and Stargate Universe is they have all these extra characters, but all of those extra characters have their own little thing to do.

1:46:18 I feel like sometimes Stranger Things was just filling up the screen with Warm bodies, and they didn't necessarily each have a unique purpose. So I did feel like there were too many people, too many locations, too much new stuff in the final season. And I've still got a little bit more negatives, but I'll let you take a turn. Well I like it when you argue about genre because you had mentioned before. I'm re listening to our Christmas episode about Doctor Who and listeners. Todd makes a distinction between Doctor Who and being science fiction versus being possibly like, what did you say?

1:46:55 You said horror maybe, or a part of horror, possibly fantasy. Yeah, and sometimes fantasy, sometimes horror like. Yeah, and honestly some of y'all may find arguments like that pedantic, but I find them kind of hilarious because if you care about content, the specific designations can matter a lot. So, for example, I do not like horror and I don't, I mean, I literally don't like being scared. And if you turn all the lights on and you show me the creature effects, I think I have a wonderful time because I like monsters and fantasy.

1:47:26 But I don't want the thing to jump out and grab me by the ankle and I scream and get dragged into the bed and there's a splatter of blood. That doesn't appeal to me as much. But my friends point out that I consume all of this horror content, and my argument is not that it's not horror. Some of it is definitely horror, but in my mind, if there are monsters, if there are creatures, and most of all you think about Dracula or the Wolfman or or a bunch of things, even the Xenomorph, there's a mythology.

1:47:57 There's lore and lore and mythology and preachers appeal to me. So I would argue I'd be wrong. I admit it, but I would argue that some of the stuff that's called horror Nick sees as dark fantasy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm like. Dark fantasy, I still don't want the person to slowly be stabbed in the eyeball, you know, especially when they scream and and things like that. And season 4 at the beginning. I mean when the 1st girl gets killed it's so brutal and I'm like whoa, I don't know if kids should be watching this.

1:48:36 That is much closer to horror. Each of these seasons brings in different movie like inspirations. I think you pretty much have a guy like the Terminator running around in Season 3 and that's pretty fun. But Season 4 at the beginning I'm like, OK, we're doing Freddy Krueger and we're doing a little bit of Hellraiser. OK, not for everybody, but there are aspects of it I like. So yes, I kind of see where you're coming from. My definition of science fiction is where you incorporate clever scientific ideas and scientifically fantastical notions and try and build a narrative around that.

1:49:15 So when you have things like wormholes or piercing an alternate dimension or experiments on people or things like that, yeah, it's all muddled for me. And I, I don't draw the same distinction. But yeah, I think I enjoy that more. I went, I want people to, you know, it's like, oops, you got chocolate in my peanut butter. Oops, you got peanut butter in my chocolate. If I have my fantasy with dashes of science and my horror with dashes of fantasy and you mix them all together, oh, my gosh, that's just great for Nick.

1:49:46 So yeah, I'm just a confused person. I will say what you said before. We have talked about things being grounded and not grounded. And in Season 4, I realized that we had created a third dimension where we have Hawkins and we had the Upside Down and Vegna introduced a dream dimension where people were like in Trances and then they were in his little Freddy Krueger dream boiler. Room kind of war. And I'll be honest with you, it started to get kind of confusing because they had to fight him in in two different places in Season 4.

1:50:26 And even that narratively I held on and I was OK. But this one, he was in two places again and possibly 3, and he would jump from one to the other. And it's like, oh, well, he's not there anymore because he's back over here. You know, normally Freddy Krueger doesn't escape you by jumping into your world, running down the street, you know? But it's kind of like he Vetna could do that. So there was some confusion with the narrative there. I was mostly OK, I followed, all right. But I could tell that narratively there are people in the audience who didn't get that at all and just rolled with it probably.

1:51:03 But yeah, it's like, wait, so how many worlds are there? Because technically this one had at least 4. And that's a lot for an area. They helped it a little bit in Season 5 by frankly not doing much of the upside down or making the upside down kind of like the, The Dirty end of town. Like because the, the, our world, the upside down, we're so connected by Season 5 that you can kind of drive from one to the other back and forth. So it's sort of like a big fence. It's like, well, we're over here in the upside down side and we're back over here and you know, it's, it's a lot more connected.

1:51:37 So try to bring that back down to feeling like two or three worlds, but it was still a lot of worlds. Yeah, because there was the upside down, the place where everything was red. There was the desert inside the desert. He couldn't go in The Cave. It's just yeah, there. Yeah, that was dream world, but but there's also, there's a red dream world with water on the ground and stalagmites, and that's the dream world we saw mostly in season 4. And then you have dream world. That's his consciousness. You're right.

1:52:07 You just convinced me. We are up to at least 5 dimensions and that's that's a lot of dimensions. And then there was the house and the park and it just just too, too many places. It's a. Lot and when, when Elle goes in, she's in a 6th place because it's all wet and black and that's her mind and not his. Yeah. So it's like that's a lot for a viewer to keep track of. And she they do explain it to us, the audience, because a character says like, wait, are we in this place? And Ella's like, no, we're in this place.

1:52:36 So they they are aware. But it it was fine for me narratively, but it was complicated. And then let me see, so already talked about too many locations and too many characters, but more specifically when it comes to the characters. Also, some characters were added a little late in the game and that were pretty important for being added late in the game. And I'm I'm thinking mostly about Holly now. I've seen a lot of people online really compliment that young actresses acting and they are right. She is awesome.

1:53:03 No complaints whatsoever about the performance. Where did that character come from? I know that Mike always had a a sister, but she was always younger and they had to age her U. So I think this is a brand new actress laying the role and to make her important all of a sudden in the very last season. And then to also have this other subplot with her and the other kids. And the kids keep coming and going and it's like they almost get rescued, but they're not quite. And they keep getting put back in the thing with the tubes going in their mouth over and over again.

1:53:33 It's like that was too much again in the final season. The show should have been getting simpler instead of more complicated. And so as much as she did a great job, it was just like an added complication that I can't help but wonder, did it really need to be there? Especially the whole thing with like, collecting the kids. Because in the end, that didn't matter because the final battle was basically just everybody against Vecna and a giant spider. So the kids were basically just there to be rescued.

1:54:00 And that that's it. Also, a few other plot points were left dangling. And if you go out there on the Internet, you're going to find plenty of people on either TikTok or YouTube who will point them out. Two that stand out in my mind, What happened to all the pregnant women that were introduced to at 1:00 point who are supposed to be growing new versions of 11 and eight? I guess they got totally screwed over when the upside down got destroyed. And then also there was a whole lot of shooting, especially by Nancy of American soldiers.

1:54:32 Were there any consequences for shooting American soldiers? I mean, yes, they might have technically been on the bad side and I guess you could chalk it up to self-defense, but still, they were killing American soldiers. And after the the Upside down is totally wiped out, then we go to like 18 months later and nobody is in jail and nobody's been on trial and everybody is just totally free. And so, and I'm not the only one to point that out. So that's a plot hold that other people have mentioned too.

1:55:01 He's not a long. Last and then lastly about the acting, I mentioned there was one possible exception and it has to do with Millie Bobby Brown. And I'm not saying she's a bad actress. She's been, she's been great. And you know, I have nothing against her or anything, but some people have pointed out that her facial features don't move as much in this season. And some people have theorized that she might have Botox. And I'm honestly not enough a big enough expert on Botox or any other plastic surgery to know whether there's any truth to it or not.

1:55:33 But subconsciously, I did kind of notice that there was something going on with her face or maybe not enough going on with her face, and it just did just seem like, I don't know. I don't know if it was the right choice to like slick her hair back. Maybe there was maybe it wasn't like a like a problem with her face, like any muscles or nerves or anything like that. Maybe it was a makeup problem or a hair problem, or maybe it was a me problem or maybe it was an Internet problem. Maybe I never would have noticed it until I came across some people saying it.

1:56:05 And then it got stuck in my brain and then I was seeing things that maybe I never would have seen before. But I couldn't help but notice something where it's just like, yeah, she is a good actress and she is emoting, but it's not coming through on her face as much as I would expect. And then they also kind of intercut some flashbacks of her as a younger kid. And I was, like, trying to compare, you know, what was her facial features, you know, moving? Was she really acting with her eyes and her forehead and stuff more when she was younger?

1:56:36 And I'm not sure she was. So maybe it is our imagination and we're just looking for something wrong. But still, regardless of whether it was right, wrong, accurate, a misconception, it was a distraction if nothing else. OK, so just to to restate mansplain what you might be saying, like there's a chance that Millie Bobby Brown has played Eleven with a sort of flattened affect and not using a lot of the muscles in her forehead and stuff consistently. And this is how she portrays this character. But the Internet might be promoting the idea that there's other reasons for it.

1:57:12 And then that can get in your head. Yeah, as one possible explanation, right. Yeah, so maybe she's had no Botox and no plastic surgery whatsoever, and maybe it's total crap. Somehow the crap got into my head by accident, so I apologize. Your head was thoroughly full of crap to start with. No, that's OK. It's, and I mean the the actors have changed and grown a bit. But yeah, she is. She's had the biggest blow up off stage that we've seen in a lot of interviews and stuff. I swear Finn Wolfhard looks largely the same.

1:57:44 I like that they let him be Mike be a little bit less of a jerk in the season because he's often very frustrating to me. But yeah, I agree with you about Nell Fisher. Holly Wheeler, this little girl who played Holly Wheeler in the previous seasons. I I wish they hadn't had to recast her. But this other actress apparently is just a professional little kid actress who stopped acting after she wasn't a little kid. So Nell is, she did step in and do a pretty good job with that. I think I was fine with everything else you said, but yeah, I did.

1:58:14 The pregnant women did occur to me and they went out of their way to say that. This is also a memory that Callie had from a while back when she got loose. We don't know how long ago. It could have been the day before or like a year before. But she said at the time that they were all dying. I think that was an intentional writing choice to suggest that if they they might have already been dead, that experiment might have already been terminated. Or when they did die in the cataclysm at the end, they were already mostly dead, but it was just supposed to be a driving force not to do more.

1:58:47 But you are right, there was a lot of collateral damage. There were a lot of lines crossed in this. It didn't bother me narratively, but I can totally see her. And then there's actually one more negative that I forgot that I don't have in my notes, and that is that there were a lot of scenes that kind of came to a screeching halt by too much talking. And don't get me wrong, when I know when I complain about pacing, I probably make it sound like I just want everything to just be neck brake pace all the time.

1:59:12 No, there are moments for fast pace or moments for slow pace. I just feel like there were some moments where it's like, OK, we've got a plan. We got to get going, we got to get going. And it's like, let's slow down to talk about something for half an hour. And I just felt like there was nothing wrong with those scenes and there's nothing wrong with talking and interacting. That's where you get your character development and character interaction. It's just I always felt like they were. Sometimes I'll timed and went on too long and it's just, I just feel like they just need to hit the gas a little bit more often.

1:59:43 And I know I gave a whole bunch of negatives, but they really are small negatives. They really are just nitpicks. What this show does well, it does very well. So overall I actually do give it AB minus. I guess I'm in the A+ plus range. I I think my only negative about season 5 is that we really didn't have any Demogorgans. Like they dragged a dead one over and used it well, no, no Season 5 Part 2 I got to stand corrected. We had plenty of plenty of them in season 5 Part 1. The show is largely about Demogorgans for the first three seasons.

2:00:18 There's a lot first two seasons. So yeah, I just, I think I love the creature, just like I said about the xenomorph. But oh, my goodness. I went to the theater to see this last episode on New Year's Day. I waited a day because of holiday stuff, but was not spoiled for me. And we were all worried about who was going to die and who wasn't going to die. And there's a moment in the finale when we think a character's going to die. And I swear to you all, there was a lady in the audience who yelled at all of us.

2:00:47 I am going to leave right now.

2:00:51 Y'all don't do character's name like that. And she meant it. And we were all like, we loved it. So that I mean, that's why you go to the theater. But yes, I I liked how all of it turned out. So that's pretty good. There were loose ends like you talked about. And we have Doctor K played by the amazing Linda Hamilton to bring some gravitas. And you know, as far as we know, she's still running around. She doesn't have like comeuppance and the series will often have the bad guy get it in the end. The same way with the bullies who beat the ever living crap out of Dustin.

2:01:24 You know, season one or two, something would have to happen to them or they have to learn some kind of lesson. But in this, the characters kind of tell Dustin that he's picking these fights like it's a lot of it is his fault, which is brutal because the guy's injured. He looks he got the crap beat out of him. So but yes, that was those were interesting choices and I was fine with it. But bad guy in season 4, he dies brutally. It takes half a second. So you might have blinked and missed it. But yeah, usually jerks get what's coming to.

2:01:53 And I did not like the moment where the the fake out happened because I think the fake out was a little too blatant. I mean, when you literally cut to black, so you're basically stalling, it's like, oh, is he going to make it or not? And let's actually black out the screen. So we're at literally showing you nothing, just letting you just we're just stalling. I I didn't like that. It's one thing to kind of like fake people out or or whatever, but to actually just cut the black, that's a step too far for me.

2:02:25 It works. That that's their way of saying no, we we're just, we're literally messing with you and even letting you know we're messing with you. Yeah, there were a few moments when I really thought this character, that character was about to, you know, the rumors going around. So any of you listeners who may not be in the Atlanta or Georgia area, we have a lot of filming locations here and we actually have a place that I think they're called Hawkins HQ South of Atlanta where they have a lot of sets.

2:02:53 I think it's the Main Street with Melvald's store and stuff. They have the storefronts up so you can tour locations and stuff. And they had, I think on the second they had a candlelight vigil. They said it was to recognize the impact of the show. They tried to say in the advertisement, we're not saying we know anything, but almost all of us knew going into the last last episode. We expected we were just trying to figure out who was not going to make it like we're putting bets on who was a goner.

2:03:26 And it's like we were all we're all tense and grasping for our favorites. So yes, that was I love that they had a pre emptive planned candlelight vigil that I think was very on the nose. Yeah, because it's whoever dies, it's tomorrow. But yes, yes, lots of stuff. Yeah, I did see, I think a TikTok video or a YouTube video about what you're talking about, about that that street where they have some of those locations. And in an earlier season, there was a time when I when I was coming home from Dragon Con, I stopped at the mall that served as Star Court Mall.

2:04:05 So I took a picture the outside of it and they had one section kind of walled off, but you could kind of like peek in a crack and see where they had redecorated this one area to make it look like the 80s Star Court Mall. And it probably was not very hard to do that because I think that's one of those malls that was near death itself. I don't even know if it's still there or. Not, yeah, Gwinnett Place Mall is there and I've shopped there and is. We did not get as locals to tour it while it was all set up.

2:04:37 Pretty, but I don't think. But yeah, we all knew that was going on and we saw lots of pictures as it was happening and stuff. But yeah, you can still go into that mall and stuff. It's just no longer pastified. But yeah, cool stuff. Final thoughts on STRANGER Things? Well, just overall a a good show, but just not one of my favorites. So I do respect what they pulled off for five seasons. I think they had some things going against him like the pandemic and then the strikes. And so I know that it was probably never their intention to stretch out a five year story into 10 years.

2:05:14 And so all the jokes we make about the kids looking older, you know, I know that probably all of that was never intended. And if they had it their way, they would have done five years in five years. So I try not to hold that against them, but at the same time, because there were these great big gaps, I think they should have put some training wheels in that last season because like I said, I went in thinking, what is this location? What is that location? Who is this character in that character? And there were just so many things I forgot.

2:05:43 I felt like they didn't help out with that any. They went full steam ahead and maybe they should have, but for for those of us that didn't rewatch anything, I was maybe trying to play catch up a little bit and it still ended up making just enough sense. But like I said, there were so many things going on, it was a little convoluted. So that's why it kind of ends up being in the middle for me at B minus. I will say as my final big compliment for the show, it's it's hard to maintain tone over that many seasons and years.

2:06:12 And even though the show is not typical and it did not follow our mythology and patterns from a lot of the shows that came before, it did seem to stick to its original tone. Everybody knows that there are retcons and that the Duffer Brothers did not plan the entire Vecna arc from the beginning. In fact, I have my own theories about how it was originally supposed to go, but that's for another day. But if you know that, and they say it in interviews, that they came up with a lot of this stuff later as they were going.

2:06:43 They just needed to find cool ways to grow it. I think that they did it really well. So like, there are things in each season as it grows and as you bring in the demo dogs and the Mind Flayer and Papa and all the things that they're doing and other experiment kids and finally Henry Creole and things like that. It's done well. Like the universe has expanded successfully in a way that doesn't mostly contradict what came before. So I think they did a pretty good job on that. None of it's perfect, but yeah, I do recommend it has a rewatchable show to most of you fans.

2:07:18 It is great for the evenings and stuff. You turn off all the lights and you revisit any one of the seasons but totally restart season 1. And it is, it is very there are parts you've all forgotten that are really, really fun just in season 1. The worst part about season 1 is how much I like Steve Harrington and he's just an 80s jerk in 99% of season 1. So that's other than that, it's great stuff. Love Stranger Things, very impressed with what they accomplished. So I think that's it. Yeah, I think so.

2:07:50 I was hoping we might have time to maybe work in a little bit that's not movies or TV or maybe do some honorable mentions for TV. But we're also 11 hours. Yeah, if you end up dividing this into we, we split between movies and TV at about the halfway point. So we'll see what you do with that. Yeah, if you want to mention your two, I don't think I had another show that I really needed to get out. Like I wanted to mention Tron Aries or something. So you can do some highlights if you want. OK, so yeah, I've got two big lists, but everything is really spread out between D plus and A. But for the sake of time, I will just give the A's.

2:08:29 I've got three. That would be the Pit, the medical drama that some people say is the most realistic medical drama on TV, at least currently, if not of all time. High Potential is one of my favorite shows that's on ABC and Hulu. Technically, the A goes to the second-half of season 1 from the first part of 2025. The first half of season 2, I give it a minus, is still good, maybe not quite as good, but I mean just barely. It is still one of my favorite shows going right now. And then of course, another show that people are really talking about that I give an A to is Pluribus.

2:09:10 Yes, it has a terrible pacing at times and the main character can be abrasive. I hate abrasive people. And again, a little too much profanity, You're a friend print. But it's also got multi layers of very philosophical storytelling, a lot of topics like individuality, self identity, groupthink, plus a little bit of culture, creativity, grief, loneliness, and love mixed in. There are even some undertones that deal with either AI or religion. It's kind of a unique take on the post apocalyptic sub genre of science fiction.

2:09:49 And the performances are amazing. I think the main actress has already won a critics choice award. I just saw that earlier today and it's still sparking a whole lot of philosophical discussions online. And there's going to be plenty of time to discuss it because unfortunately, even though this has already been renewed for season 2, I think it's not coming until 2027 or maybe even 2028. So we've got two or three years to discuss 9 little episodes, but I am impressed how much those 9 episodes have in them to discuss.

2:10:23 Oh and I just noticed all three of my big ones are P words, the pit, High potential, and Pluribus. You hear that producers think heavily. So yeah, 9 episodes is watchable. That sounds doable. So we will look to the future listeners coming up next time on Alienating ourselves. Nick and Todd return to Alienation and explore episode 12, The Red Room. Someone has broken into a behavior lab. That's where next to where Kathy works. This makes it personal for Matt, sort of. And there's an apparently unrelated string of murders giving George mysterious deja vu.

2:11:04 Could it all be connected again? Find out next week, probably. As Todd and I continue alienating ourselves, I continue to be Nick. I'm Todd. Thank you for joining us. We'd love to see some reviews wherever you listen to podcasts. If you love us, like us, or can barely tolerate us, please give us five stars. If you really hate us, please give us four stars. If you give us three stars or lower, you'll be cursed to never stop writing 2025 on your checks. As always, may all your milk be as fresh or as sour as you prefer it to be and have an amazing 2026.

2:11:39 Good night everybody.