Holy Fuck! Avengers: Endgame is finally here! I wanna say right up front that there will be absolutely NO SPOILERS in this article. However, we go into FULL SPOILERS in our deep dive review of Avengers: Endgame on this episode of The World’s Best Podcast! My Marvel Movie companion, Paul Sr. and I had a chance to see the movie a few days early, but we wanted to wait until at least some of our listeners had a chance to see the film, before we posted this SPOILER-RIFFIC review.
It so rare for movies to live up to the hype, but Endgame manages to surpass expectations. One of the many things fans love about comics, especially from DC and MARVEL, is the interconnected universes. You could be reading a Spider-Man comic and the X-Men or Iron Man or Daredevil would pop up. That was the ingredient that had been missing from superhero movies when the “Superhero Boom” began with movies like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Singer’s X-Men.
It seems so obvious, but it was still brilliant. I remember seeing Iron Man for the first time and being blown away that SHIELD was in the movie. It seems so small now, in retrospect, but that little addition made it feel like the Marvel Universe (It was also the first appearance of fan favorite character, Agent Phil Coulson). Then of course there’s the immortal post credits scene from the first Iron Man film, when Tony meets Nick Fury which I’ve posted here below:
The beginning…
Building off the incredible success of IronMan and then creating 22 films that make this beautiful tapestry of a story, is mind blowing. The fact that out of the 22 films released so far, there have been so few missteps is astonishing. Even their weakest movies, and there’s only 3 or 4 like Thor: The Dark World, are pretty good or not bad at their worst. Everything else is more less gold.
The Russo Brothers, who’ve directed Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and now Avengers: Endgame, absolutely stuck the landing with this movie, it’s a must see. The films directed by The Russo Brothers, Joe and Anthony, aired the 4 best films in The MCU. Who would’ve thought that guys who worked on TV shows like Community would go on to tell some of the most epic stories of our generation? For the record, I loved Community.
The Infinity Stones…
I think the real hero in all of this is Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios. He was not only a massive fan of the source material, but he’d seen what mistakes other Marvel superhero films had made in the past and learned from them. So when it was time for Marvel Studios to start producing their own films, he knew what he was doing and he got the right people involved to work with them. Another huge kudos goes out to Casting Director Sarah Finn, who’s worked on almost all of the films, if not all of them. With maybe one or two exceptions out of literally hundreds, each character was a flawlessly cast. We owe a lot to her work as the reason these films came out so well.
All right then, enough chitchat. You can check out our podcast on Avengers:Endgame right here or you can subscribe on Spotify, Stitcher or iTunes: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17766535
It’s finally here! The epic ending to “A Song Of Ice And Fire”! On this week’s episode of The World’s Best Podcast, Paul Sr. and I do a SPOILER filled, deep dive, breakdown of Episodes 1 & 2, “Winterfell” and “A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms”! From Game of Thrones: The Final Season! Listen here or subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17715325
We’re in the home stretch here people! Only FOUR. MORE. DAYS!!! UNTIL AVENGERS: ENDGAME! It’s the end of a legendary film era. The Infinity Saga. As the film approaches, some beautiful new posters for Endgame have shown up. When put together, they form one very cool larger poster. Check them out:
Pretty nice, right? These posters are only being shown in some European theaters, we get the photoshopped posters here in America. The other posters for Endgame actually aren’t that bad, but movies like Endgame are special and the posters the studio puts out should reflect that. When done well, (like the ones above) movie posters can be art. Who could forget the beautiful hand painted posters for Indiana Jones or the Star Wars films by Drew Struzan?
Amazing posters can even make terrible movies more interesting. Years ago, I remember seeing the teaser poster for Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes. The movie is fucking awful, but seeing the poster that teased the incredible make up effects and the designs that hinted at a whole new world and culture we’d be seeing in the film, captured my imagination. Sadly, the film didn’t live up to the promise and intrigue of that first poster I saw…
The movie is undeniably terrible, but that is an excellent movie poster. Don’t get me wrong The MCU has definitely had some great posters (Captain America: The First Avenger comes to mind…).
Now that Avengers: Endgame is finally here, it would be great if epic movies started getting epic posters again.
I fucking hate having spoilers ruin a movie for me.. So my heart goes out to the many unsuspecting and unfortunate fans, that had Avengers: Endgame spoiled for them.
Star Lord just heard about the leak
Apparently, during a recent screening of the film, a chunk of the movie was poorly captured on a blurry cell phone video. The video ended up online and even if you manage to avoid this video clip, there are detailed descriptions of footage floating around online that spoil major plot points and surprises from the film. We’re talking MAJOR stuff ! Moments that you want to see play out on the big screen opening night. So, unfortunately the fuckwit who took the video and the assholes who kept the descriptions and video drifting around the Internet, ruined the movie for a lot of people.
Cap is pretty pissed too
If that happened to me… Fuck, Hell hath no goddamn fury! If I had Avengers: Endgame spoiled, I would want to track these pricks down and fucking murder the people that pulled this bullshit (oh… and, um… I was totally, um, I was, uh… KIDDING! Haha yeah. I was definitely kidding about wanting to kill anyone who spoiled Endgame for me… yeah, um, kidding)
This is an accurate representation of my level of rage if Avengers Endgame was spoiled for me.
I know this is tough, but with the movie 7 days away, your safest move is to stay off the internet as much as possible until you see the movie. Especially social media, like Twitter and Reddit, which is some of the advice given in the video I posted below. The video below details the best ways to NOT have the movie ruined for you. Without spoiling anything at all, the people in this video give you the best tips on what to avoid until the movie comes out. Watch it here:
I also posted an open letter from The Russo Brothers, who directed Endgame, to the fans, asking people to not ruin the movie for others.
I just wanted to give my loyal readership a little warning, especially if you’re looking forward to this movie as much as I am. As always thanks for reading!
-Paul
P.S. keep a lookout for our long overdue podcast on the Season Premiere of Game of Thrones, which we’ll have up in the next 24 hours.
After decades of movies, books, TV shows, and comic books, we finally come to the beginning of the end. The first trailer for the final film in The Skywalker Saga is upon us. The film is officially called Star Wars Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker. Of course for an event this epic and monumental, I needed my resident Star Wars expert with me to get the job done, so I had the illustrious Mr. Ryan McDonald Esq. with me on this episode of The World’s Best Podcast.
C3PO (Anthony Daniels), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) in STAR WARS: EPISODE IX.
We sat down to break down the trailer for this new Star Wars film, the final film in this new trilogy. We offer up our theories, we speculate where the story is going, we offer up some inside and behind the scenes information, and discuss the changing landscape of franchise filmmaking that began all those years ago in 1977 with the first Star Wars film. We had a great time recording this episode, so we hope you enjoy listening to it! If you’d like to watch the trailer before listening to the podcast, we have it posted at the bottom of the page. Listen here or subscribe on Stitcher and iTunes: https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17636894
I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t the first trailer drop for the final film in a franchise Paul is obsessed with to an unhealthy degree? Why isn’t he on that like flies on shit!?” A very fair question. I’ll just say we have quite a bit on that in the very near future, so stay tuned…
Anyway, with just a few agonizing weeks until Avengers: Endgame hits theatres, it feels like the movie cant get here fast enough. In the meantime, I have some cool stuff to share to make the wait a little easier.
This fantastic poster was done exclusively for MARVEL by BossLogic
First off, Entertainment Weekly and their website EW.com always give fantastic coverage to genre entertainment. From Game of Thrones to Star Wars they always have some great content. The MCU is no exception, for their cover story this week they put out 6 exclusive covers featuring each of the founding Avengers. Check them out:
Another magazine, Empire, probably the best movie magazine in the world had this awesome cover of Thanos in full armor for this month’s issue:
Pretty cool right? We also had some light shed on some intriguing upcoming MCU projects. Marvel and Kevin Feige made some big announcements this week that made me VERY excited. Pretty much since I began reading comics, Hawkeye was always my favorite Avenger. In the Avengers comics, he’s a much more beloved character. To many comic book readers, Clint Barton is THE quintessential Avenger. Even more so than Cap or Iron Man.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Jeremy Renner is a great Hawkeye (Though I do think Jensen Ackles who passed on the role to continue playing Dean Winchester on Supernatural would be closer to the comic book interpretation). However, I do feel like audiences haven’t fallen in love with Hawkeye as much as other characters in the MCU. I don’t think this is Renner’s fault at all, I think he’s great with what he’s given. Any failures when it comes to Hawkeye lie with the writers and how they’ve chosen to use him in the stories.
I think Hawkeye really got his time to shine in Avengers: Age of Ultron. I know that’s one of the more divisive MCU films, but I love it. Hawkeye has some fantastic moments throughout the film, I’d even go so far as to say Hawkeye is the central Avenger in the movie. He even has a cool costume upgrade with a coat that harkened back to his classic comic book look.
A number of things stand out to show the audience his importance in the film: He has few great action sequences, I think they stepped up the archery tricks and showed off Hawkeye’s agility and acrobatic skills. More importantly, I loved the surprising look into his private life on his family’s farm, it’s the type of scene I adore in MCU movies. The Avengers. In one place. Together. Their chemistry is so real. I don’t care of it’s played for laughs or heavier dramatic scenes. I love seeing The Avengers put into situations where the chemistry between the characters shines and The Farm scenesfacilitate that. It’s sort of implied that he’s the rock on the team. He’s the guy who’s going to always show up and get the job done. Like Clint’s wife says “I see these guys, these… gods…” Clint replies “You don’t think they need me.” His wife says finally “I think they do, which is a lot scarier.”. The last thing I want to mention is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. At the beginning of The Ultron Offensive on Socaovia there this awesome scene/speech with Hawkeye and Wanda which you can watch here:
All of this has been a long winded way of saying that despite what some people think, Hawkeye is a great character. I always thought the ideal way to tell a fantastic Hawkeye story would be a TV series, like what they were doing on Netflix. Even though we’ve lost great characters like Daredevil to the Netflix purge, the good news is Jeremy Renner will be starring as Hawkeye in his own miniseries on Disney Plus. The more I hear about Disney Plus, the better it sounds. After all Disney does have all the good toys to play with. The Hawkeye series will be one of the first Marvel miniseries to launch with the new streaming service. The story will focus on Clint and his protege Kate Bishop. In the trailer for Endgame we see Hawkeye teaching a teenage girl archery. Is this his daughter? In the comics Kate Bishop isn’t related to Hawkeye. Will they change the character for this series and make Kate Bishop his daughter or will they introduce here as a completely new character? Time will tell.
This sounds like the series will be taking it’s cues from the fantastic Hawkeye comic book series written by Matt Fraction and artist David Aja. The entire series is avaiable in trade paperback with a hardcover omnibus containing the entire run. This is one of the best Marvel comic of the last decade, so I’ll be thrilled if the miniseries even partially adapts this comic book run. Which is pretty much what Marvel usually does anyway. Like Civil War and Planet Hulk, Marvel never directly adapts these stories, they take what they need from the story that will work within the context of the MCU. The first volume of this Hawkeye series is “My Life As A Weapon” and I strongly recommend giving it a read. You can pick up the book here on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hawkeye-Vol-Life-Weapon-Marvel/dp/0785165622/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3TSGCJUV1IWW4&keywords=hawkeye+my+life+as+a+weapon&qid=1555198699&s=gateway&sprefix=Hawkeye+my%2Caps%2C146&sr=8-1
Other miniseries announced for Disney Plus include Loki, a prequel taking place before his death at the hands of Thanos, this series will chronicle the trouble marking shenanigans and adventures of The God of Mischief over the several thousand years he’s been alive in the MCU. We also have a Vision & Scarlet Witch miniseries called WandaVision, which we know the least about right now.
Finally, we have The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, the team up series about Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes. This is speculation on my part, but one way or another I strongly believe Steve Rogers is not going to make it out of Endgame. I think he’ll probably die or at the very least, be taken off the board in some way. Considering that Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson have both carried the mantel of Captain America in the comic books in the past, I wouldn’t be surprised if this miniseries revolves around some kind of Who Wields The Shield concept. Who will be the next Captain America? Factoring in the two of them don’t like each other all that much, just makes it that much more interesting. It isn’t the best resolution, but we do have our first look a the logo for the miniseries, which I have posted below.
This is and Hawkeye are the Disney + shows I’m most looking forward too.
Along with The other MCU series I mentioned an animated What if? series is in the works. Like What if Peggy Carter beacame Captain America? or What of Loki was able to use Mjonir?
Disney + will be launching on November 12th for $6.99 per month or $69.99 for the year. In addition to the original content, 500 movies from the Disney library will be available along with 7,000 episodes of Disney TV shows. To put a cherry on top, The Mandelorian will premier on November 12th, available to watch the whole season as soon as the service launches. Disney + will also be the exclusive home to ALL EPISODES of The Simpsons, which is a big move from its current home on one of the FX apps. Fucking crazy, right? Below is photo of the homepage interface that will be broken up into 5 major categories: Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic.
Bottom line is that a SPECTACULAR as everything we’ve seen from The MCU so far, I think thes type of annoucements as well as Kevin Fiege confirming that though it’s great to have the X-Men back home, it would be a mistake to rush them onto the MCU. Fiege explained that a 5 years plan is in place for the films AFTEREndgame. Let the good times rolll! EXCELSIOR!
On this week’s episode of The World’s Best Podcast, I review the new DC superhero movie SHAZAM! starring Zachary Levi.Shazam may not be well known, but at one time his comic book series was outselling Superman. DC may not be knocking it out of the park with their movies like Marvel, but they’re on the right track. With missteps like Suicide Squad and Justice League out of the way, DC has built up a solid roster of stand alone movies with Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and now Shazam. SPOILERS are discussed in this episode, but I cover the characters history and some other interesting topics before breaking down the movie.
Listen to the episode here or subscribe on Stitcher and iTunes:
The Red Hood. The Pale Man. The Clown Prince of Crime… THE JOKER. Without a doubt the best villain in comic book history and one of the best characters in all of fiction.
Batman is the best superhero in comics, so his arch nemesis should reflect his greatness. All of Batman’s villains, the best rogues gallery in superhero fiction, reflect Batman in some way, some aspect of his psyche. Harvey Dent represents Batman’s struggle with duality, Ra’s Al Ghul represents Batman’s temptation to take his mission too far and commit to a darker way of trying to save society, The Penguin represents the idea of the wealth and privilege he was born with turning into something ugly, greedy, and gluttonous, and so on…
Then, there’s The Joker. Batman’s true, broken reflection. To paraphrase better writers than me, Batman is an engine of meaning. He turns tragedy into purpose. As The Dark Knight Detective himself once famously said “My parents taught me a different lesson, dying in the gutter for not reason at all. They taught me that the world only makes sense… when you force it to.” Everything Batman does is built upon the foundation of that idea. That his actions and his mission have meaning.
That’s why The Joker is Batman’s greatest antagonist. The Joker’s point to Batman is that nothing we do has meaning. It’s all pointless. The Joker is trying to prove to Batman that his mission, his ideology, is pathetic. It’s a joke. There is no greater meaning to life. Nothing you do matters. He’s inviting Batman to abandon his beliefs, to come with him and embrace how The Joker sees the world. In doing so, he’ll become truly transcendent and immortal, but most of all, free.
Which brings me to the upcoming film JOKER starring Joaquin Phoenix….
Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck the man who’ll become The Joker
Over the past several years DC has announced literally dozens of films. Many of which will never see the light of day. Remember that Flash movie that came out back in March 2018? Yeah, me neither, because they didn’t fucking make it. They’ve announced so many movies at this point it’s hard to take them seriously when they do. So when a stand alone film focusing on The Joker was announced I really thought it would never be made. DC seemed to be trying to build a coherent movie universe like Marvel and I didn’t see them realistically making a movie focusing on Jared Leto’s Joker, who was divisive at best.
Then I started to here that they were going in a different direction. That Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro were involved and my skepticism grew. No way was Martin Scorsese directing a DC film. Finally, it became clear that this was a stand alone movie existing OUTSIDE the established DC movie universe that Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and SHAZAM! exist in. Todd Phillips would be directing, whose credits include Road Trip, Old School, The Hangover Trilogy, and War Dogs. Martin Scorsese would produce the film, co-staring DeNiro, with Joaquin Phoenix as The Joker in an origin movie telling the story of the man who becomes The Clown Prince of Crime. This is the movie hitting theatres this October and you can check out the trailer below:
Looks pretty good, right? However, at no point have I had any interest in this project. Despite the fact that the trailer seems to show a genuinely good movie with what could be a great performance from Joaquin Phoenix, the only reaction I can have to this movie is ambivalence. The reason being that I think telling a straight up origin story for The Joker is kind of missing the point of a large part of the character. If this were “officially part of the DC movie universe”, I’d be genuinely pissed this movie is being made. However, because the movie is it’s own thing, a one off crime story that doesn’t involve Batman (even though we do see a young Bruce Wayne and Thomas Wayne is a major character) I can live with them telling their fucking Joker origin movie.
Oh, I almost forgot! Here’s a real fucking shocker the movie is drawing inspiration from comic book stories like… wait for it… THE KILLING JOKE! Brav-fucking-vo! How original!
Don’t give me wrong, the comics have hinted at possible origins for The Joker in the past. But that’s what they were: HINTS, possibilities, not a concrete origin. That was one of the reasons The Dark Knight was so brilliant, the story of how The Joker got his scars was different every time he told it, one of my favorite aspects of the film. They had no fucking idea who this guy was. He had no past, he came out of nowhere, he was like the fucking bogeyman. I’ve always said that The Joker is to the normal citizens of Gotham, what Batman is to it’s criminals: a terrifying, unexplainable nightmare.
The only reason DC is choosing to tell an origin story for The Joker is because everyone and their fucking grandmother knows who The Joker is. Even if you fucking hate comic books or comic book movies you know who The Joker is.
I think it’s kind of a shame that Joaquin Phoenix looks like he may be giving an excellent performance as The Joker. Wouldn’t it be so much more entertaining to see that performance in a real Batman film?
If he knocks it out of the park in the role, it would be kind of a shitty scenario because we always want to see Batman go up against a great Joker. As I wrote earlier in the article, Batman and The Joker have this very complex relationship that spans years. Yet we’ve only ever seen them face off against one another in one film in their different incarnations. In Tim Burton‘s Batman they killed the character off and the tragic death of Heath Ledger meant we wouldn’t see that character in Nolan’s Batman universe beyond The Dark Knight. One thing we genuinely haven’t seen from the Batman and Joker dynamic on film, is how that relationship plays out over years of twisted, violent confrontations.
Well, that’s my two cents anyway. I’m sure there’s a lot of you out there who will disagree with me and that’s fine. For now, I just needed to comment on this project, but this is not a film I’ll be rushing out to the theater to see.
Fuck I can’t wait for this movie. I’ve been going to these huge blockbuster movies all my life, movies like Star Wars and The Dark Knight, but I never saw the point of buying tickets weeks before a big movie comes out. In the past I never had trouble getting tickets the day before or even the night of a huge opening night movie, and that includes Star Wars The Force Awakens and Avengers Infinity War. So I thought it was bullshit when I heard tickets were selling out for opening night in droves. Thank God Paul Sr. pushed me on it and actually looked up the ticket times, because we bought tickets the day they went on sale and if we had waited any longer we wouldn’t of been able to go opening night. So I hope you guys have your tickets ready, this is The Empire Strikes Back of our generation. I. Can’t. Fucking. Wait.
In the meantime, check out this new featurette Marvel put out to sate our appetites until the movie finally comes out:
It took me awhile, but I finally got around to reviewing Jordan Peele’s new horror movie, “Us”. We I saw the creepy as fuck trailer for “Us” I knew it was going to be film to keep my eye on. It was easily one of my most anticipated movies of the year. As much as I love Star Wars and Marvel, it’s always exciting to see a new, original concept on the big screen. With the movie having been in theaters for a few weeks now, I wanted to make sure I posted my podcast review. This episode does have SPOILERS, but you can get my SPOILER FREE thoughts on the film at the beginning of the podcast. Without further ado, please enjoy the latest episode of “The World’s Best Podcast”! Listen here or subscribe on Stitcher and iTunes:
World’s Best Media 