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A New Season of Forgotten Superheroes! - Supergirl (1984) vs. Steel (1997) · Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films

• 0:09
  Tonight on Meet Your Double Feature, when the jewel that
• 0:13
  protects her home falls into their own hands, Cara Zor El
• 0:16
  must travel to Earth to get it back.
• 0:19
  Helen Slater stars in Supergirl. Then when robbers begin
• 0:24
  terrorizing his neighborhood with high tech weapons, former
• 0:27
  soldier John Henry Irons must suit up to bring them down.
• 0:31
  Shaquille O'Neal stars in Steal. It's a super heroic double
• 0:35
  feature, and it starts right now.
• 0:44
  Hello and welcome to Meet Your Double Feature, a double-blind
• 0:48
  movie review podcast. My name is Thomas, joined as
• 0:50
  always by my brother Frank. Frank, how's it going?
• 0:53
  I'm excited. I'm excited for Season 2, brand
• 0:56
  new season. Brand new season here on the
• 0:57
  pod. If you're just joining us for
• 0:59
  the first time, you've picked a great episode to start with.
• 1:01
  We are resetting the board and starting a new competition of
• 1:04
  blind movie recommendations. And Frank, why don't you let us
• 1:07
  know what is our theme for this brand new season here on the
• 1:10
  show? We're going to do forgotten
• 1:14
  superhero films, I think. I hope that's the theme because
• 1:17
  that's what I picked so. That's what he picked, so
• 1:19
  imagine if it was something else.
• 1:21
  No, yes, we are doing forgotten superhero movies, which came
• 1:24
  about because you and I used to watch a lot of superhero films
• 1:28
  and TV that predate it becoming like the most mainstream film
• 1:32
  content on Earth with all the Marvel stuff in the 20 tens.
• 1:36
  And there's just so many weird, interesting films from before
• 1:40
  that point that were usually just standalone stories about
• 1:43
  either very popular superhero characters or, as we'll get into
• 1:46
  today, even very obscure superhero characters.
• 1:49
  And I think that it'll be really interesting to go back and look
• 1:52
  at whether any of them are frankly any good at all.
• 1:56
  I, I think there's, there's hopefully going to be some gems
• 1:59
  in there. I, I think some people have a
• 2:03
  nostalgia for that like pre MCU, even like Marvel films, 'cause I
• 2:08
  think it was the most recent Deadpool film that had that like
• 2:11
  montage at the end of like all the Fox studio superhero
• 2:16
  franchises. And that was a lot of fun
• 2:18
  actually. I I appreciated that that they
• 2:20
  did that. I think that the idea of like,
• 2:23
  connecting all of your superhero stories to make it reflect how
• 2:27
  superhero comics are written is a good idea.
• 2:29
  Obviously it's had a huge payoff for Marvel, but when the stories
• 2:34
  are stand alone and are put together by different teams of
• 2:37
  creatives, it's just more of like a mixed bag of ideas and
• 2:40
  concepts. So it's more like you don't know
• 2:42
  what you're going to get. Whereas with Marvel now you know
• 2:45
  what a Marvel movie is. It doesn't really matter who's
• 2:47
  in it. You kind of know what it is and
• 2:49
  you've been watching them for like 20 years.
• 2:51
  So I'm curious to go back and look at what, you know, mostly
• 2:54
  like the 80s, nineties, and like first half of the 2000s has to
• 2:59
  offer in order to better explain the premise, just in case this
• 3:03
  is anybody's first episode. The way we do things here at
• 3:06
  Meet U double Feature is that for each episode, I recommend a
• 3:09
  movie to Frank to watch, and he recommends a movie for me to
• 3:11
  watch. And we review those two films on
• 3:13
  the show and give them each a score out of 10.
• 3:15
  The trick is that neither of us has ever seen either of the
• 3:18
  movies that we're talking about. So we're sort of giving a blind
• 3:21
  pick for a movie that we think the other host will like, but we
• 3:24
  don't actually know until they come back and report on what
• 3:26
  they saw. Yeah, yeah.
• 3:29
  Sometimes I pick movies that I I hope you'll like in an ironic
• 3:32
  way, which I think might be the case today.
• 3:35
  Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying we always pick
• 3:37
  movies with good reviews. I think the average Rotten
• 3:39
  Tomatoes between the two for this episode is like 10%.
• 3:44
  It's not. It's not looking good, not good.
• 3:46
  But I think it'll be fun to talk about.
• 3:48
  Frank. I think we'll go ahead and start
• 3:49
  with the movie I asked you to watch.
• 3:51
  Now, a lot of folks will know that there is a Supergirl movie
• 3:54
  coming out, I think later this year, 2026, that is a direct
• 3:58
  follow up to the James Gunn Superman film.
• 4:01
  But did you know that there's a Supergirl film from the 1980s?
• 4:05
  Because I'll be honest, despite seeing a lot of movies like this
• 4:07
  in the past, I had no idea that they did a Supergirl spin off at
• 4:10
  that time. And it kind of blew my mind.
• 4:12
  And so when I saw that heading into this first season, I was
• 4:14
  like, well, I got to have somebody watch this, but not me
• 4:17
  because it looks like it might not be very good.
• 4:20
  Well, you know what? I actually liked this movie.
• 4:24
  I'll say right off the bat. I'm going to win Season 2.
• 4:27
  For anybody who doesn't know, I won the first season of the show
• 4:29
  points wise, overall, I'm back on top.
• 4:32
  I can feel it. He did.
• 4:34
  He did. Well, we'll see.
• 4:35
  We'll see. All right, slow down, buddy.
• 4:38
  Sorry, sorry. I'm excited.
• 4:39
  It's a new season. Yeah, hey, that's my thing.
• 4:41
  I'm excited. So yeah, no.
• 4:45
  All right, tell us about Supergirl.
• 4:47
  Sorry. No, it's OK.
• 4:48
  This is like, like you said, it does have bad reviews.
• 4:53
  And I'm not going to go so far as to say those reviews aren't
• 4:57
  totally warranted, but I did enjoy it.
• 5:01
  Like, yeah, yeah, it's it's fun. And, and kind of like you were
• 5:05
  mentioning just a few minutes ago, like this movie feels like
• 5:12
  a extremely direct adaptation of a comic book, if if that makes
• 5:16
  any sense, like. Yeah, of course.
• 5:19
  And I and I, it's it. It is a sort of direct spin off
• 5:23
  of the Christopher Reeve Superman films.
• 5:25
  Oh, OK. I was wondering that because I
• 5:27
  knew that at the time there was like 4 or five of those
• 5:30
  Christopher Reeve Superman's, which is where the famous
• 5:32
  Superman music comes from that they still use in like every
• 5:35
  adaptation since. But yeah, I was curious if
• 5:37
  there's a connecting to it there.
• 5:39
  Yeah, totally, totally. And they don't play the
• 5:42
  traditional. I think there might be a hint of
• 5:44
  it in there because Super Girl has has her own theme, but for
• 5:48
  anyone who may not be, you know, let's just play.
• 5:50
  We're just going to play 5 minutes of.
• 5:52
  We're just going to play copyright.
• 5:54
  Yeah. John Williams Music.
• 5:56
  Mr. Williams, if you're listening, is that OK?
• 5:59
  Yeah. So we'll just sit back and and
• 6:01
  you guys just listen to that. Tell us what you think.
• 6:03
  All right, all right, now we're back and just got off the film
• 6:07
  with our lawyers. They said that's a no go.
• 6:10
  That's not good. You can't do that.
• 6:12
  OK. All right.
• 6:13
  So just go and listen to it on your own time and I guess.
• 6:17
  Yeah, but come back though, come back.
• 6:18
  Come back, tell us what you thought.
• 6:21
  No, this was, I think Jerry Goldsmith was the composer for
• 6:24
  this one. And Supergirl's theme is fine.
• 6:26
  It's it does. It's it's not as iconic as as
• 6:30
  the original Superman one. But yeah, like I was saying
• 6:33
  this, this ties in directly to those films.
• 6:36
  I believe Christopher Reeve was going to have a cameo at some
• 6:41
  point in this movie but wasn't able to for like scheduling
• 6:45
  reasons. There is a a picture of him as
• 6:49
  Superman in the movie and the actor playing Jimmy Olsen is in
• 6:56
  this as well as Jimmy Olsen. So I was gonna say as as Lex
• 7:01
  Luthor, as Superman. No, you look familiar.
• 7:06
  I think I've seen this guy before.
• 7:07
  The cast, by the way, we got to get into the cast here.
• 7:10
  Like, listen to to some of the people in this movie.
• 7:13
  All right? We got Faye Dunaway.
• 7:15
  Yeah, you have to. You don't have a choice.
• 7:20
  OK. Faye Dunaway, You got Mia
• 7:23
  Farrow. Peter O'Toole is in this.
• 7:28
  Oh, I love him. I love Peter O'Toole.
• 7:29
  That's that's Lawrence of Arabia for film school people.
• 7:33
  Yeah, exactly. And all those people irrelevant.
• 7:35
  OK, Because the real star here. Irrelevant.
• 7:43
  Doesn't matter, right? I was like oh that's nice.
• 7:45
  But then I got really excited watching the movie because Super
• 7:49
  Girls love interest in this movie is played by I can't
• 7:54
  pronounce this. I'm not sure how to pronounce
• 7:55
  his last name. It's Hart Bochner, I believe,
• 7:58
  who I mean is. I'll just give you a line and
• 8:03
  you tell me who it is, OK? OK, a line from Super Girl or a
• 8:07
  line from? Just a line from this actor that
• 8:10
  you will recognize and you tell me who it.
• 8:13
  Is going to make him an offer he can't refuse.
• 8:18
  This Hans what am IA method actor?
• 8:23
  This is radio, not television. Put the gun away.
• 8:26
  Whoa, wait, So the Ellis from Die Hard?
• 8:30
  Yes. OK, that's crazy.
• 8:33
  That's a poll. I've never seen him in anything
• 8:35
  else. Me neither I.
• 8:37
  Was so excited. So that was a surprisingly
• 8:39
  accurate line. Read of that line of Die Hard.
• 8:41
  That would thank you. Perfect.
• 8:43
  Thank you. Thank you.
• 8:44
  I was, I was preparing it, but yeah, that was like I was
• 8:48
  watching it and like, I was like, there's something really
• 8:51
  familiar about this guy. He looks a bit different.
• 8:53
  He doesn't have that like sleazy Ellis beard and his hair is, and
• 8:56
  he's just playing a different type of character.
• 8:58
  Yeah, but but then I saw him like take a drink of something
• 9:01
  and he opened his mouth all wide and I'm like, that's freaking
• 9:03
  Ellis from Die Hard in this movie.
• 9:07
  OK, that is also a miraculous pull.
• 9:10
  You know, I first knew it was you by the way you drink it.
• 9:13
  Just you remember that scene where he's drinking the Coke and
• 9:16
  Die Hard and yeah. It's right before he gets shot.
• 9:18
  Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 9:21
  OK, that's amazing. I now I understand how you could
• 9:25
  have the gall to say that Peter O'Toole is irrelevant.
• 9:27
  I'm on board. Exactly.
• 9:28
  Get him out of here. We don't need him.
• 9:29
  We got Ellis. Get out of here.
• 9:31
  Lawrence of Who? Move on.
• 9:34
  Peter O'Toole is is actually great in this movie.
• 9:37
  He has a very limited appearance, but they make the
• 9:42
  most of having Peter O'Toole. He made me laugh right at the
• 9:45
  beginning because just to to get into the setup here.
• 9:50
  This movie, as I said, is so it's like so comic book
• 9:54
  storytelling. It hurts.
• 9:55
  It's like just like, but in a way that's like, not bad, you
• 9:59
  know, in a way that like, I feel like some modern superhero films
• 10:04
  have gotten really far away from, they're almost like afraid
• 10:07
  to like make a movie that tells a story in the way that a comic
• 10:12
  book originally would have, especially like an older comic
• 10:15
  book. And the setup for this movie is
• 10:20
  it just kind of jumps right into it doesn't do a lot of
• 10:23
  explaining. There's not even like a text
• 10:26
  scroll at the beginning to really explain where we are at
• 10:30
  the beginning of the film, which is kind of surprising actually.
• 10:33
  But I, I was, it was refreshing too, because it just, we're just
• 10:36
  on this other planet where like these Kryptonian people are
• 10:40
  living. And like, if you're familiar
• 10:42
  with like the Superman lore, it's kind of like, I thought
• 10:44
  they were all dead, but I guess not.
• 10:46
  Superman just has a cousin that lives on this other planet.
• 10:49
  I guess that. Is weird.
• 10:50
  That's like the one thing we know about Superman.
• 10:52
  Like the last Son of Krypton other than your cousin.
• 10:55
  Other than your cousin and all those other people she lives
• 10:57
  with on this all. Those other people, But Superman
• 10:59
  doesn't really talk to them because they're boring.
• 11:02
  So he's the last son of Cortana? There's this is jumping ahead a
• 11:06
  little bit, but the way that they say that Superman isn't in
• 11:10
  this movie is so funny like because it's it's it's like you
• 11:13
  hear it over like the radio and they're like, oh, Superman is
• 11:17
  away on like a a a peace treaty mission or something.
• 11:22
  And they're like it says that the planet he's at is several
• 11:26
  100 trillion light years away. So just in case a. 100 trillion
• 11:33
  yes in. Case anyone was wondering if
• 11:35
  Superman was going to be showing up?
• 11:37
  He's really far away, so he won't be.
• 11:39
  Here, really, really, they're like, listen, just to put it
• 11:42
  into numbers, let's say he starts flying back here at full
• 11:44
  speed. He would not get here until at
• 11:46
  least the movie is over. Post post credits if you will.
• 11:52
  You just post. Credits.
• 11:53
  He's at least like 15 parsecs away.
• 11:58
  You won't see him. Don't wait around.
• 11:59
  Don't wait up. You're.
• 12:00
  Not. Comic So anyway, he's that far
• 12:06
  away. He's also, he's still not
• 12:07
  talking to his cousin though, because they're on this other
• 12:09
  planet with Peter O'Toole. And I guess what you gather from
• 12:15
  the dialogue is that Peter O'Toole is like a scientist of
• 12:17
  some kind or magician or something and some combination
• 12:23
  of those things. And he like made this planet
• 12:27
  that they're on habitable for them because he has this like,
• 12:31
  special orb. And it's like a small orb that
• 12:34
  like fits in the palm of your head.
• 12:36
  And he's talking to Supergirl. Her name is Cara.
• 12:40
  And he's kind of explaining to her what this thing is.
• 12:44
  And then he gives it to her and she's like playing with it.
• 12:47
  And it like, somehow like, flies out into space by like ripping
• 12:55
  through this like, plastic sheet almost that covers their whole
• 12:59
  planet. And that's like the only thing
• 13:02
  protecting them from the vacuum of space.
• 13:04
  I guess. It's this like thin plastic
• 13:07
  sheet? It broke the ozone.
• 13:10
  I guess so. The ozone is very visible and
• 13:13
  within reach, but she breaks it and she's like, oh, oh, darn,
• 13:20
  we're all going to die now. They're like, this planet is
• 13:24
  doomed actually. And this where Peter O'Toole
• 13:27
  made me laugh because it's just like his dialogue is he's like,
• 13:30
  well, I guess I got to go to the Phantom Zone now.
• 13:32
  He just like sentences himself to the Phantom Zone.
• 13:37
  Like nobody says like, you got to go do this.
• 13:40
  He's like, no, I, I, I'm, I'm going to go.
• 13:43
  I'm just he. Just goes straight for the like,
• 13:45
  all right, I'm a head out because he doesn't want to fix
• 13:46
  the other. 1. Yeah, they're like, Are you sure
• 13:48
  you don't want to stick with me? Like no, Phantom Phantom.
• 13:51
  I think Phantom Zone for this one.
• 13:53
  Phantom Zone's calling to me, Which I I, I guess maybe if
• 13:57
  people haven't seen the old Superman's.
• 13:59
  Phantom Zone is like, just like purgatory.
• 14:02
  It's where they sentence criminals sometimes.
• 14:04
  On Krypton, yes. Yes, exactly.
• 14:06
  It's where you get put into like a spinning glass plate is how
• 14:11
  it's visualized in the movies. But then you're in like, some
• 14:13
  other world. So, like, you sure you don't
• 14:15
  want to stick around and help you?
• 14:16
  Sorry, I can't hear you. Phantom Zone got to go.
• 14:19
  Phantom Zone is culling. I have a three o'clock in the
• 14:22
  phantom zone so that's my reaction to problems too.
• 14:28
  When you just are like, I'm on break.
• 14:31
  Breaking the Phantom Zone. So then Supergirl takes it upon
• 14:36
  herself. She's like, all right, well, I
• 14:38
  guess I got to go get that orb that flew out into space and she
• 14:43
  gets into like they call it something else, but I'm going to
• 14:47
  call it a boom tube. It's basically a boom tube that
• 14:50
  which is a that. Is proper DC lore.
• 14:52
  Yeah, that's just like their teleporters in a lot of the TV
• 14:54
  shows. Yeah, so she just like boom
• 14:57
  tubes to Earth to to because that's where it lands.
• 14:59
  It goes coincidentally. There's a lot, a lot of
• 15:02
  coincidences in this movie, but it coincidentally flew to Earth,
• 15:07
  where her cousin lives. But it's not there.
• 15:10
  He's several 100 trillion light years away.
• 15:12
  Several 100 trillion Farther than any man could travel in the
• 15:16
  length of a film. And yeah, you, what do you got
• 15:18
  like 2 hours? There's no way.
• 15:20
  There's no way. This could be a Snyder Cut
• 15:23
  Supergirl and you couldn't make it back.
• 15:25
  It's that far. Yeah, yeah, there there was
• 15:30
  actually I, I was looking at the trivia.
• 15:32
  Apparently there was like some footage found from this film,
• 15:36
  like way later at the studio is filmed at, there was just like
• 15:41
  in a film canister that just was labeled do not use and nice.
• 15:48
  And yeah. And so I don't know if that's
• 15:50
  the version I saw, 'cause I guess they restored that footage
• 15:53
  and then included it in like an anniversary Blu-ray release of
• 15:56
  the movie. So I don't know.
• 15:58
  I watched this on HBO streaming service 'cause you know this is
• 16:02
  a this is ADC Warner Brothers property which by the time this
• 16:07
  recording comes out will probably be called Net Warner
• 16:12
  Paramount flicks or something. But nailed it, really nailed
• 16:17
  that band. People will get it.
• 16:22
  Watch the news. People will get it.
• 16:23
  Watch the news. The right news.
• 16:30
  The Krypton news. Yeah, it's Krypton news leading
• 16:34
  scientist exile self to Phantom. Question mark so anyway, the
• 16:42
  coincidences of this movie The orb thing, magic science orb
• 16:47
  thing goes to earth and this is where we're introduced to our
• 16:50
  bad guy characters who is our main villain is is Faye Dunaway.
• 16:57
  She's like a witch, which again, this is just, you just discover
• 17:01
  this through the dialogue, which is fun.
• 17:03
  She's just like talking about like one of the first things she
• 17:07
  says is like, basically, I'm a witch and I want to take over
• 17:10
  the world. And they're just like.
• 17:13
  Manifest that. Exactly, exactly.
• 17:17
  And they're just out having a picnic and the orb thing just
• 17:19
  like lands in her soup and she's like, oh, OK, well this is good.
• 17:23
  I'll. Just do this.
• 17:25
  The fission board thing really works, huh?
• 17:29
  Yeah. Exactly.
• 17:31
  Just puts that away. Wow, very cartoony.
• 17:36
  Exactly. It's super cartoony.
• 17:38
  This felt very like Saturday morning cartoon or just like
• 17:42
  like old campy comic book storytelling, which I was fine
• 17:45
  with. You know, it was almost like
• 17:48
  played intentionally, comedically, and that's
• 17:51
  essentially the tone of the whole film.
• 17:53
  Good. That's fairly in line with the
• 17:55
  80s Superman as well. There's a lot of like campiness
• 17:58
  to the whole thing. Yeah, exactly.
• 18:01
  This is almost more so I would say like I appreciate
• 18:06
  Christopher Reeve's performance as Superman.
• 18:08
  I, I, I, I think if we're talking Superman actors, he's
• 18:12
  one of the better, if not the best ones in terms of on screen.
• 18:17
  Yeah, as always, the best Superman portrayal is is from
• 18:20
  the DC animated universe. That's that's the best Superman,
• 18:23
  but. Oh, OK, welcome back to our show
• 18:25
  where we rank Superman. Well, I'm just if you were
• 18:28
  talking like portrayal of DC characters, my favorite thing
• 18:32
  just in all of comic books even is everything that's come out of
• 18:36
  the the DC animated universe that like.
• 18:39
  That's true. Especially that run in like the
• 18:41
  2000s where it was like the Justice League show and then the
• 18:43
  Justice League Unlimited show. That was good stuff.
• 18:45
  It was amazing, yeah. And like I said, genuinely
• 18:48
  probably one of the best on screen portrayals of all of
• 18:51
  those characters. Yeah, no, he's great.
• 18:53
  But I will also give you that. Yeah, Christopher Reeve.
• 18:55
  As far as like live action movie Superman, I think he's far and
• 18:58
  away the best one. Yes, but that being said, those
• 19:01
  those films are are pretty boring They.
• 19:04
  Hold on. They, I mean, it's telling.
• 19:07
  Me that when he throws nuclear bombs into the sun in order to
• 19:11
  solve war and makes nuclear man and fights nuclear man on the
• 19:14
  moon that you were not. Entertained.
• 19:17
  That was when I was the most entertained.
• 19:18
  You can't just. Jump to the to the.
• 19:20
  Peak all right, that's Superman 4 Quest for peace all right I'm
• 19:22
  talking to like Superman's one and two here like.
• 19:25
  Well, like Quest for Peak, yeah. Yeah, there you go.
• 19:29
  We're back. Season 2, everybody.
• 19:33
  We're back. Comedy on this show a little a
• 19:37
  little. Nobody said it had to be funny,
• 19:38
  but we do do it. No, we do it anyway, Supergirl.
• 19:42
  Supergirl I would say maybe this is a recency bias, but I'm like,
• 19:46
  I think I like this more than than those Christopher Reeve
• 19:48
  Superman movies. Oh shoot, that's like actual
• 19:51
  praise. Hold on.
• 19:53
  Yeah, it's just because, like I, I have to give a lot of credit.
• 19:57
  It's the actress's name. Playing Supergirl is Helen
• 20:01
  Slater, and I think this was her first feature film performance
• 20:06
  and she's great. It's a very different take on
• 20:09
  the character than. What people are going to see
• 20:12
  from this new version of Supergirl in in the the new
• 20:16
  movie that's coming out where she's sort of a drunk party girl
• 20:20
  almost is the vibe you're going for it.
• 20:23
  This portrayal of Supergirl is just like this wide eyed,
• 20:27
  innocent character, but it's fun because she's just kind of
• 20:32
  different from the the, you know, origin story of, of
• 20:36
  Superman that you got, you know, where he was like raised on
• 20:40
  Earth to like live among humans. She's just, she was, she's from
• 20:45
  space, you know, and she just like has all of this like
• 20:51
  knowledge of things outside of Earth, you know, So she's not
• 20:55
  like discovering things in the same way that that he was.
• 20:59
  And she also has this sort of like narrative momentum of she
• 21:05
  has to find this orb, which I don't.
• 21:06
  I feel like those other Superman films, that was something that
• 21:09
  they kind of lacked almost as like, oh, Superman's got to
• 21:12
  stop. Lex Luthor is very like reactive
• 21:15
  almost. And so those sometimes lacks
• 21:18
  that narrative momentum, momentum.
• 21:20
  Excuse me? That's true.
• 21:21
  I feel like he he was more of a standby superhero.
• 21:25
  He was like, you come to me and it's like, all right, what was
• 21:28
  that quest for peace then, Superman?
• 21:30
  You didn't go anywhere. Yeah.
• 21:33
  Again, Quest for Peace is the best one.
• 21:35
  That's the Canon fast one I. Think yeah.
• 21:40
  But yeah, so I like that. I like that she has like, and
• 21:43
  the, and the villain in this, you know, Faye Dunaway's
• 21:47
  characters is also extremely campy.
• 21:49
  She like, lives in like an abandoned amusement park that
• 21:54
  they've, like, dressed up to look like this, like witchy
• 21:57
  lair. And I'm like, this is fun.
• 22:00
  This is like goofy fun and her fake Dunaway's like love
• 22:07
  interest slash sidekick slash nemesis character that she's
• 22:11
  with is just this guy who like really wants to be with her.
• 22:16
  And she's seemingly using him because he knows more about
• 22:21
  magic than she does. And she's trying to like use her
• 22:24
  like magic powers to take over the world.
• 22:26
  It's never said why. She just, you know, like you
• 22:29
  said, vision board. She just wants to.
• 22:31
  Just really want that. She just, she just does.
• 22:34
  She just really wants that she. Wants a Nissan Altima and she
• 22:38
  wants to take over the world, Right?
• 22:41
  Exactly. And they're like Miss Dunaway,
• 22:44
  the Altima was not on the road yet at this time.
• 22:46
  It's 1984. And she's like, that's why I
• 22:48
  want it. That's why I you're not getting
• 22:51
  this, pay attention. OK, this is good.
• 22:55
  I feel like there's, like you said, narrative momentum.
• 22:58
  Immediately differentiate Super Girl from Superman and send
• 23:02
  Superman at least several movies away from here.
• 23:05
  Several movies. He'll be back by Superman 4,
• 23:07
  don't worry. But not this movie.
• 23:11
  OK, well that's fun. Yeah, exactly.
• 23:13
  So we got a good set up again, the the coincidences of the
• 23:17
  story continue because that character that's hanging out
• 23:21
  with Faye Dunaway. Well, I guess I guess I'll get
• 23:24
  I'll I'll rewind a little bit and and get to where Super go
• 23:27
  When she lands on Earth, she lands like near a softball
• 23:32
  field. She sees these girls playing
• 23:34
  softball at some kind of like all girls school and she decides
• 23:39
  to try and fit in by like attending the school.
• 23:43
  And that villain character that's hanging out with Faye
• 23:47
  Dunaway just happens to also be a teacher at that school.
• 23:50
  So I'm just like, OK, so it's just we're all, we're all looped
• 23:54
  in here. Just a series of like narrative
• 23:56
  coincidences keeping all of these characters together.
• 23:59
  If you lean into it then it's not, then it's fine.
• 24:02
  Exactly, it's like it's not just one thing, it's just like this
• 24:05
  is just the the world of the film that we're inhabiting.
• 24:08
  Also fun fact. So Superman, right?
• 24:12
  Lives in Metropolis. I'm.
• 24:15
  Sorry, I thought that was the end of that thing.
• 24:17
  They're like Superman, right? Right, crazy you.
• 24:23
  Can fly? I don't think so.
• 24:26
  What's the real news? Watch the real news.
• 24:29
  I'm not the Daily Planet. Yeah, he just jumps really far.
• 24:32
  OK. There's strings or something.
• 24:34
  There's got to be daily. Planet, those hacks at the Daily
• 24:39
  Planet like they're loser reporters like Shmark, Ken or
• 24:42
  whatever. So it's a Daily Planet,
• 24:46
  Metropolis, fake city, Batman lives in Gotham City, whatever,
• 24:49
  right? Where do you think Supergirl
• 24:51
  lives? Just off the.
• 24:52
  Top of your head. Oh, what's like the fake city
• 24:54
  where Supergirl's from Wichita? Yeah, exactly.
• 25:00
  It's Chicago. So Supergirl lives in Chicago.
• 25:03
  Nice Windy City superhero, the only one.
• 25:07
  Yes, yeah. I was like, wait a minute, she
• 25:09
  doesn't get a made-up city. She just lives in a real city.
• 25:12
  She. Lives in the real city that is
• 25:14
  like the main inspiration for Gotham City, but is not Gotham
• 25:18
  City. Yeah, yeah.
• 25:21
  So anyways so Super Girl goes to this school where the bad guy
• 25:25
  also happens to be the teacher and then she meets her roommate
• 25:29
  who is Lucy Lane which is a a a new Lane sister or cousin I'm
• 25:38
  not familiar with. Probably cousin, given the theme
• 25:41
  of the movie. Yeah, 'cause there's Lois Lane.
• 25:43
  That's Superman's friend. OK.
• 25:50
  Yep, like he doesn't want to define the relationship anyway.
• 25:53
  And then there's Lana. Lana Lane is usually I think in
• 25:58
  these 80s movies. She just went to high school
• 26:01
  with Superman. She was like in Smallville.
• 26:04
  Yes, she was the main character in the TV show Smallville,
• 26:06
  right? You said this is Lucy.
• 26:08
  This is Lucy Lane. And for some reason Supergirl
• 26:11
  herself, despite her real name being Cara, which is a normal
• 26:16
  human Earth name, she her alter ego that she takes on is Linda
• 26:22
  Lee. So if they're just they have
• 26:25
  this whole like word play conversation with like all these
• 26:29
  like illiterate L names where it's like Linda Lee talking to
• 26:32
  Lucy Lane about Lois Lane. Like I'm like, all right,
• 26:36
  whatever. Yeah, go nuts.
• 26:39
  Good. Good for her.
• 26:41
  Good for you. But that was yeah, that was that
• 26:44
  was a new Lane character. I was maybe the comic book nerds
• 26:48
  out there will be like, of course, OK, Chicago, Lucy Lane,
• 26:51
  you don't know this the. Comic book the comic book nerds
• 26:54
  are going to be screeching at this entire conversation because
• 26:57
  we're like we know comic books who's super girl right right
• 27:02
  exactly and speak speaking. Of comic books.
• 27:05
  When she meets Lucy Lane, she's reading a comic book, but it's
• 27:10
  an Incredible Hulk comic book. And I'm like, wait a minute,
• 27:13
  that's not right. You can't do that.
• 27:15
  You. Can't do that.
• 27:17
  That's illegal. Yeah, but I mean, whatever I
• 27:22
  guess. That's a fun nod.
• 27:24
  Yes, and then to keep the connections going, Lucy Lane is
• 27:27
  dating Jimmy Olsen. So that's how he becomes part of
• 27:32
  the story. OK, how do we get Ellis from Die
• 27:35
  Hard in here? So he is a gardener.
• 27:42
  What else do you need to know? Yeah.
• 27:44
  That's fine. I just feel like I'm I'm
• 27:46
  intrigued that theoretically A Supergirl movie is people in
• 27:51
  some marketing room who are like girls don't want to watch
• 27:54
  Superman. They want to see Supergirl.
• 27:56
  And so this one was the classic case of taking like what they
• 28:00
  thought was a quote like boy product and trying to make like
• 28:03
  a girl version. And it seems like part of the
• 28:05
  way they did that was they gave everybody like a love interest.
• 28:08
  The fact that even the villain has one.
• 28:10
  Yeah, no, exactly. And well, and that's the thing.
• 28:12
  It becomes sort of a love triangle because Faye Dunaway is
• 28:16
  just using the other guy like he wants to be with her, but she's
• 28:22
  just using him for his knowledge of, like, dark magic, basically,
• 28:27
  which, again, is not explained. They're just like, this is just
• 28:29
  a thing that exists in this world.
• 28:31
  Deal with it. Yeah, of course I'm like that's
• 28:34
  great. Don't like Yeah, I don't need
• 28:36
  you to I. Don't need I The last thing I
• 28:38
  need is lore. I'm sick of lore.
• 28:40
  I don't need it. I need contextual information.
• 28:43
  Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, yes, I'm with
• 28:46
  it, thank you. But she Faye Dunaway, that is
• 28:52
  her character's name is Selena, but we just keep calling her
• 28:55
  Faye not. Going to remember that it's Faye
• 28:56
  Dunaway. She sees Ellis and like, it's
• 29:02
  just like, well, I have to have him.
• 29:04
  And she puts like an evil spell on him so that he will fall in
• 29:12
  love with the first person he sees at which she intends to be
• 29:16
  her. And you can of course guess this
• 29:19
  goes wrong and he winds up seeing Supergirl first and falls
• 29:23
  in love with her immediately. And then that kind of becomes
• 29:30
  the conflict. That's really what gets
• 29:33
  Supergirl involved with Faye Dunaway's character at all.
• 29:36
  Is 0. Like, so.
• 29:40
  OK, so Supergirl is a superhero and Faye Dunaway is here to take
• 29:44
  over the world, but the thing that actually puts them at odds
• 29:47
  with each other is a man. Yeah, Yeah, duh.
• 29:54
  Of course. That's fine.
• 29:56
  That's good. Yes.
• 29:59
  Yes. Yeah.
• 30:01
  And the whole thing is like Ellis's character.
• 30:05
  He's, you know, he's under a spell, so he immediately meets
• 30:07
  Supergirl and he's like, yeah, I'm in love with you.
• 30:09
  And she's like, what? That's crazy.
• 30:11
  But OK, I guess that's fine. Yeah, we can do.
• 30:13
  That yeah like that works for me.
• 30:19
  So. But then again, coincidentally,
• 30:20
  Faye Dunaway has the orb that the Supergirl is looking for
• 30:24
  that she presumably needs to boom to back to her planet so
• 30:28
  they don't all die. I don't know.
• 30:29
  We never see them again. We.
• 30:31
  Never see them again. Wait what?
• 30:33
  Does she ever go back and fix it?
• 30:35
  She does spoilers, that's the end of the movie.
• 30:38
  Is she? Just.
• 30:39
  Yeah, like Super Girl does in fact save the day.
• 30:42
  We do see Peter O'Toole again, which is great because he he
• 30:47
  banished himself out of 90% of the movie.
• 30:50
  But then he is there near the end when Faye Dunaway sends
• 30:56
  Supergirl to the Phantom Zone and then he has to help her get
• 31:00
  out and she finds him there. He's mostly been getting drunk
• 31:04
  the whole time, which I think is maybe why he wanted to go there
• 31:06
  in the first place. I knew this Phantom Zone thing
• 31:08
  was a cramp. He's like, no, it's so bad, so
• 31:11
  bad in here. You can't.
• 31:12
  It's the worst Phantoms ever. Ever you've seen the scene with
• 31:17
  the match or whatever is pretty? Good, I ended World War One.
• 31:21
  They're like, all right, time to go to bed, Peter O'doul.
• 31:26
  And the crazy thing is, he improved all of that.
• 31:30
  He did. He made it all up on the spot.
• 31:33
  He showed up to set one day with script notes that said, I go to
• 31:36
  the Phantom Zone and they're like, you're supposed to be in
• 31:38
  the movie Mr. O'doul. And he's like.
• 31:40
  You were supposed to be in the movie.
• 31:44
  I'm Peter O'doul. This is my first movie.
• 31:47
  And they're like, no, it's not. It's.
• 31:49
  Not buddy, you're wrong, actually.
• 31:53
  He puts a of every movie he's ever been in his introducing
• 31:59
  because he thinks it'll get people to be like, wow, that's
• 32:01
  pretty good for his. That's pretty good for his first
• 32:03
  time in the Phantom. Zone introducing Academy Award
• 32:09
  nominee. How does he do it?
• 32:14
  How? Does he do that?
• 32:15
  Phantom Zone? Probably.
• 32:16
  Yeah. Oh, man, I'm I had man.
• 32:19
  I was worried that this movie would be like super
• 32:22
  uninteresting. I picked it because I was like
• 32:25
  hoping it would be something like this and because it was
• 32:27
  trendy because there's a new Supergirl.
• 32:29
  But I'm on board. I want to see this one now.
• 32:32
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not fantastic, but
• 32:36
  if you just go in and accept that, it's like, especially
• 32:42
  because you and I are not super into comic books.
• 32:45
  I think there was a time where at least I read some older comic
• 32:50
  books, you know, pick them up from the local library.
• 32:52
  That's exactly what. I was going to say, we used to
• 32:54
  get the like big anthology collections of like 90s Spider
• 32:58
  Man or X-Men or something. Even earlier I remember reading
• 33:01
  like 60s like original run Oh. Shit, Yeah, no, you're right.
• 33:05
  It was like really old a lot of the time.
• 33:07
  Yeah. And so this feels like if you
• 33:10
  took that and translated it so not X-Men, if you took Supergirl
• 33:15
  or Superman and and translated it directly to screen.
• 33:19
  And I liked it for that reason. Like it wasn't trying to like
• 33:26
  take this and make it like a dark, gritty, real world version
• 33:30
  of that, which I feel like is the trend that a lot of
• 33:33
  superhero films have gone down and it mostly in an attempt to
• 33:36
  imitate like Batman projects. Yeah, Batman's the one case
• 33:40
  where that worked. And I think everything else has
• 33:42
  been varying degrees of like. Yeah, but even if even like the
• 33:47
  way like the film depicts her, like using her heat vision or
• 33:51
  her like super hearing or X-ray vision, it's like the same way
• 33:55
  that they would, like, animate it in the comic strips.
• 33:57
  And I'm like, this is good. Actually.
• 33:59
  This is like for the time this film was made for the material
• 34:02
  it was adapting, this is a fun live action adaptation honestly.
• 34:09
  And so it was it was fun it was it was campy fun honestly.
• 34:13
  Again, not amazing but like there was other cool stuff in
• 34:16
  there like cool like I said cool set design cool like creature
• 34:20
  effects like you know cuz Faye Dunaway is using this magic to
• 34:24
  like summon monsters and stuff sometimes and.
• 34:28
  Oh, OK, that's fun. What are we?
• 34:30
  What are some creatures that we get to see?
• 34:32
  Well, there's there's one funny scene where like the first
• 34:37
  creature that she sends after Supergirl is like invisible.
• 34:42
  So the first half of the action sequence is like Supergirl
• 34:47
  getting like hit around by this creature you don't see.
• 34:49
  So it's just like them like pulling her on like stunt wires,
• 34:52
  like into things, which is fun. But then her solution to that
• 34:59
  conflict is she like, rips like a like a lamppost out of the
• 35:03
  ground and like, flies up into a thunderstorm and like charges it
• 35:07
  with lightning and then like comes back down and like blasts
• 35:10
  the invisible creature with lightning.
• 35:12
  And then you see him 'cause he's like this, like Demogorgon
• 35:16
  looking monster. And.
• 35:19
  He gets like electrocuted and that's how she defeats him.
• 35:22
  And I'm like, oh, that was fun. Like that's.
• 35:24
  Very comic booky. Yeah, Yeah.
• 35:26
  Exactly. And then there's a similar thing
• 35:28
  at the end where when Faye Dunaway is, you know, sort of in
• 35:32
  control in the third act, and she has the full power of this
• 35:36
  orb, and she summons like a giant creature that kind of
• 35:39
  looks like the thing from Ghostbusters.
• 35:42
  Wait, which thing from Ghostbusters?
• 35:44
  I can't remember what it's called actually the.
• 35:47
  Is it the the thing on the roof? Not not the stay puff Marshall
• 35:51
  mellow man. Yes, the thing on the roof
• 35:53
  Gozer. Yes, Gozer.
• 35:55
  Thank you. Yeah, it's a Gozer looking
• 35:57
  creature. And I just honestly thought that
• 36:00
  was, again, in terms of making this interesting, I thought that
• 36:04
  like making Faye Dunaway's character be a witch and have
• 36:09
  like magic powers actually made her an interesting foil for
• 36:12
  Supergirl. Because I think that's a common
• 36:15
  thing in stories about like Superman and related characters
• 36:20
  is that he's just like, they're just invincible.
• 36:23
  You know, they're it's like, how do you create stakes for this
• 36:26
  character other than Kryptonite, which is really boring.
• 36:29
  But I think I don't know how long this has been around in the
• 36:31
  comics, but I've I've heard that that another weakness for like
• 36:35
  Superman and Supergirl is, is magic.
• 36:37
  And so it actually gives them something to contend with, you
• 36:41
  know? Yeah.
• 36:42
  So I thought that was a good choice because then it it put
• 36:44
  her in these situations where she was actually able to use her
• 36:49
  powers, you know, in order to to and not just like stop people,
• 36:54
  like catch people falling out of buildings.
• 36:56
  You know, which I'm trying to think about it now, like the
• 36:59
  first two Superman movies, he's not really fighting like the 80s
• 37:04
  Superman movies. He's he's just fighting like an
• 37:07
  evil scheming man. And then I think he fights like
• 37:10
  evil Superman and then he fights Nuclear man, who's everybody's
• 37:14
  favorite. But for the most part, it was
• 37:17
  not like Superman fighting monsters, which I feel like this
• 37:22
  immediately gives a fun angle to Supergirl that it's a little bit
• 37:25
  more just straightforward. Like it's gives her something to
• 37:27
  punch or electrocute at least, right?
• 37:30
  Exactly. Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 37:32
  Like, So that's why, I mean, I know it's maybe sounds like a
• 37:36
  bold claim, but I, I was like, I kind of like this more.
• 37:40
  And it it was just like, I liked it more for a few reasons.
• 37:42
  Because she was different from Superman.
• 37:45
  They were telling a Superman story, but with a new character
• 37:49
  and the things that made her different made her more
• 37:51
  interesting. Watching this because there's
• 37:53
  been so much Superman, you know, there's been tons of films and
• 37:58
  and adaptations of that character.
• 38:00
  So it was just fun that it was just like somebody was like,
• 38:04
  hey, you know, like Super Superman, right?
• 38:07
  Like, what if there was like the other one, a girl, a Supergirl?
• 38:12
  What's the opposite of that? Yeah, no, that totally makes
• 38:16
  sense. I think that sometimes when
• 38:17
  you're doing spin offs of something, it can feel very like
• 38:22
  unnecessary or derivative. But a good spinoff can be
• 38:26
  successful just by being intentionally different from the
• 38:29
  original thing in as many ways as possible.
• 38:31
  Like without the existence of the Superman movies, this one
• 38:35
  might not stand out as much. But when you've seen Clark Kent
• 38:38
  Superman in a very set formula and then you intentionally
• 38:40
  disrupt that formula with a similar, but, you know, new
• 38:43
  enough character, that's interesting.
• 38:46
  Like I'm sure if you went back and watched the original 80s
• 38:48
  Superman, you'd be like, all right, this is more sound as a
• 38:51
  film overall. But for someone who's seen
• 38:53
  those, this is like a fun one. It's like a good just way to
• 38:56
  kind of mix things up. Yeah, exactly.
• 38:58
  And I mean, she still does. You know, there's still, there's
• 39:00
  a sequence that's kind of fun, actually, where like, at one
• 39:04
  point when so after Ellis has been given the love potion, he's
• 39:07
  kind of like, stumbling around and Faye Dunaway is trying to
• 39:10
  get him back. She like like takes control like
• 39:14
  remotely with her magic of like a not a bulldozer.
• 39:19
  What's the one that like has like the crane arm that like
• 39:23
  grabs stuff and picks it up? Oh, a bulldozer.
• 39:28
  Yeah, sure. So a bulldozer.
• 39:32
  I don't know Crane if you just call it a crane.
• 39:34
  Yeah, whatever. Crane, bulldozer, heavy
• 39:37
  machinery, she scoops him up and has him trapped in there and
• 39:40
  she's like driving it through the city and like knocking stuff
• 39:43
  over and hitting cars and stuff. And, you know, Supergirl has to
• 39:47
  like save him and like fix that situation.
• 39:50
  And that's all very classic. Like especially like Christopher
• 39:53
  Reeve style Superman stuff where like there's a fire, so she like
• 39:56
  flies through like a water tower to like put the fire out.
• 39:59
  And then she has to like, catch the crane and like use her super
• 40:02
  strength to like, you know, take the arm off and.
• 40:04
  So it has. All that too.
• 40:05
  So it has all those things you're familiar with and would
• 40:08
  be expecting from a Superman movie.
• 40:12
  I feel like that's actually a really key part of what makes
• 40:15
  classic superhero action fun is it's like taking recognizable
• 40:22
  adult spaces in the world and then using them as like a
• 40:25
  child's playset. Like what could you do?
• 40:29
  Like I there's a lot of times as a kid where you'll be like in
• 40:32
  the back of a car and you'll be like looking over the roof.
• 40:33
  I feel like it's like a common thing where people like imagine
• 40:36
  someone like running along the roof like a superhero or a
• 40:40
  Captain Falcon or something. Just kind of like like that's a
• 40:43
  common thing. It's like just kids imagining
• 40:46
  stuff while they're bored and like looking out at this world
• 40:48
  that's like not for them yet. And just kind of imagining all
• 40:51
  the different fun things you could do if it didn't have any
• 40:53
  consequence in which just to like, play with the structure of
• 40:57
  it all. And I feel like that's what a
• 40:58
  lot of the most interesting, like, superhero action stuff is.
• 41:01
  And that's what that sounds like to me.
• 41:03
  Like I can imagine a kid seeing a bulldozer and not knowing what
• 41:07
  it's called and just kind of imagining a sequence like that.
• 41:10
  And then to put that on screen, I imagine it's just like good,
• 41:14
  good for you. Yeah, That's good for you.
• 41:16
  Yeah. So that's that's a really good
• 41:19
  way to put it, actually. I mean, I still do that now.
• 41:20
  I think that's why it's fun for adults and kids, honestly.
• 41:23
  Like that's. Why?
• 41:23
  I know like you said, it's like. Yeah, it's like, well, this is,
• 41:27
  you know, a playground. It's like even as an adult, you
• 41:29
  want to go out and play. And that's kind of what this
• 41:32
  film is, you know, vicariously giving the opportunity to do so.
• 41:36
  Yeah. So it's like it's fun that it
• 41:38
  that it had that stuff in there as well.
• 41:40
  And honestly, yeah, that's, I just, I, I appreciated it for
• 41:45
  what it was like. And you know, like I said, I
• 41:48
  give big props to Helen Slater, who's, who's playing Supergirl.
• 41:52
  I looked up her filmography. She's appeared in, in other DC
• 41:55
  projects since then too. She, she was a, a guest
• 41:59
  character on a few episodes of Smallville, which I thought was
• 42:01
  cool. Oh, that's awesome.
• 42:02
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 42:03
  And she's like voiced other DC characters in like animated
• 42:06
  projects. So I'm glad that she's also kind
• 42:08
  of 'cause, you know, again, this film, I never hear anybody talk
• 42:12
  about it. It's a very, that's what I mean.
• 42:14
  How is nobody brought up that there's an 80s Supergirl movie
• 42:18
  even now when there's a new one coming out, I've just, it has
• 42:21
  not been mentioned to my knowledge.
• 42:23
  Once and again there's people who are like, I've been talking
• 42:25
  about Supergirl 8460 years, yeah.
• 42:29
  Wait a minute. Ever since it introduced us to
• 42:34
  Peter O'Toole. Who but yeah, but yeah, I, I did
• 42:43
  see I read that it was supposed to launch a more of a film
• 42:47
  franchise. It was supposed to be a film
• 42:49
  spin off franchise. There was going to be more
• 42:51
  Supergirl movies, but it just did really poorly at the box
• 42:54
  office and critically, which I honestly wholeheartedly disagree
• 42:58
  with the with the critical reception to this movie.
• 43:00
  I, I don't know like what people were even expecting.
• 43:05
  I mean, honestly, I was watching this and there's a clearly a lot
• 43:10
  of things you could fault it for.
• 43:11
  I mean, a lot of the effects look extremely hokey and dated
• 43:15
  and and the performances are cheesy, whatever.
• 43:17
  But those are the things I like about it.
• 43:18
  But it was the weirdness of it, you know, like the weird things
• 43:22
  that it did where I was like modern movies, could never
• 43:25
  current Supergirl that's about to come out, could never do this
• 43:28
  weird stuff that this movie is doing.
• 43:31
  Yeah, it'll be limited by people's expectations for these
• 43:36
  tentpole superhero movies to kind of just be everything for
• 43:39
  everyone instead of 1 specific thing done well.
• 43:44
  Yes, exactly. Somebody had ideas that they
• 43:48
  wanted to put in here and they did.
• 43:51
  Well, that's hype. Yeah, Yeah, it is.
• 43:53
  Go Supergirl. Go Supergirl, girls.
• 43:57
  Get it done. It's just first cut that.
• 44:00
  Cut that all out. Cut that all out.
• 44:02
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So our first forgotten superhero
• 44:06
  movie for the season. Generally positive thoughts.
• 44:09
  I'm happy to hear that. Wow, who'd who'd have thought?
• 44:13
  OK, great. Well, we're going to head into
• 44:14
  our intermission, and then when we come back, Frank, we'll talk
• 44:17
  about the movie you asked me to watch, 1997's Steel.
• 44:21
  And in the meantime, I, I I got to go to the Phantom Zone.
• 44:24
  I don't know about you. Yeah, we'll just play the
• 44:26
  Superman music while you're gone.
• 44:28
  We'll play the. Superman music for a few more
• 44:29
  minutes and then when we get back I'm sure the lawyers will
• 44:31
  have nothing but good, good news.
• 44:42
  OK, and we're back on the other side of the break.
• 44:45
  Frank just heard back from the lawyers.
• 44:46
  They still do not want us playing the entire John Williams
• 44:49
  Superman song, turns out. Why not I?
• 44:52
  Don't know. You know, it's like they're
• 44:54
  being really weird about it and frankly, a little mean.
• 44:57
  Yeah. We're back, all right.
• 45:06
  We're moving now into Frank, the first forgotten superhero film
• 45:09
  that you asked me to watch. This one I've never heard of in
• 45:14
  my life either. The.
• 45:15
  Or. The character it's based on this
• 45:18
  is 1997's Steel, starring NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal.
• 45:24
  What, what, what? What is this?
• 45:29
  You tell me. That was all I knew and that was
• 45:31
  all I needed to know to recommend it.
• 45:32
  I was like Shaq steel. Let's go.
• 45:35
  It's like, OK, when did Space Jam come out?
• 45:38
  That was Michael Jordan making a movie in the midst of his
• 45:40
  basketball career. But wasn't that like not long
• 45:42
  before this? I could be wrong.
• 45:44
  I want to say Space Jam was 95. OK, so theoretically somebody
• 45:48
  saw that Space Jam was like a box office success, I imagine
• 45:52
  and was like, let's do Shaquille O'Neal.
• 45:55
  Like I even in reading about the production history behind this
• 45:58
  movie, it's not completely clear why they started talking to him
• 46:01
  in the 1st place. A lot of the notes were more so
• 46:03
  just like what they approached him with initially and like the
• 46:06
  kind of negotiations for getting Shaq to be able to do this movie
• 46:10
  because at the time in the NBA was in the offseason when the
• 46:14
  movie was being filmed, but he was competing on the Team USA at
• 46:16
  the 1996 Olympics. So like.
• 46:19
  Shaq was busy. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:22
  I mean, it makes sense though. Like, you sell a movie OnStar
• 46:27
  power and Shaq, especially at that time, was a huge star.
• 46:31
  I mean, he was on the 96 Olympics team.
• 46:34
  Exactly. Also unbelievably tall man.
• 46:38
  I don't think I'd ever really like contextualized it.
• 46:41
  The man's like 7 feet tall. He looks absurd in this movie,
• 46:44
  next to every other character in the movie, to the point where
• 46:50
  there's people in the story who are like, who's this masked man
• 46:52
  that's 7 feet tall? There's only one guy in town
• 46:56
  that's 7 feet tall. I mean, I get, but that also
• 47:02
  makes sense as as to why you're like, OK, we need somebody who's
• 47:06
  a star and is also enormous to play our superhero.
• 47:09
  Like it's just who else could it be?
• 47:11
  Butt Shack. It's interesting.
• 47:13
  It's definitely the main selling point for the movie.
• 47:16
  The thing that I got into and trying to like organize my
• 47:19
  thoughts is by the time the movie was done, I was like, OK,
• 47:22
  I need to figure out who this comic book character is.
• 47:25
  And also other context about the character because there's just
• 47:28
  things in here that are not fully explained and I don't
• 47:30
  understand without like looking it up.
• 47:32
  So the character Steel is once again ADC comics superhero, and
• 47:37
  he's actually a direct associate of Superman to the point where
• 47:41
  in this movie they're calling Shaq the Man of Steel.
• 47:44
  Whoa. OK, we did a very unintentional
• 47:47
  Superman double feature then this.
• 47:49
  Yeah, this is like a Superman Friends double feature, because
• 47:53
  in the comic series, this is not what the movie does.
• 47:56
  But in the comic books, there's a very famous story arc called
• 47:59
  The Death of Superman, which was adapted multiple times.
• 48:02
  I think it is part of that, like Justice League movie that Zack
• 48:06
  Snyder made. Superman dies, he comes back to
• 48:08
  life. He Jesus, you get it, You get
• 48:11
  it, you get it. Three days or something.
• 48:13
  Easter. That's Superman, Laura.
• 48:17
  Yeah, that's. Superman.
• 48:18
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the comic books, one
• 48:22
  Superman Is Dead. This guy, just a human man who
• 48:26
  used to work for Lex Luthor as an engineer, decides that Lex
• 48:29
  Luthor is bad, good for him, and makes himself like a suit of
• 48:33
  armor that gives him superhuman like strength and the ability to
• 48:37
  fly. And he basically becomes a stand
• 48:39
  in for Superman because he, Superman at that point is dead.
• 48:42
  And so Steel is like taking over as like a protector for
• 48:46
  Metropolis. And so he even has in his
• 48:48
  original design the Superman S like on his chest and he has
• 48:52
  like a Cape. So he's very much replacement
• 48:54
  Superman. And then Superman comes back
• 48:56
  Easter Sunday, Easter Bunny. And then Steel, I don't know
• 49:00
  what he does after that. What?
• 49:03
  And is this all seen in this movie?
• 49:06
  Or is this the original interpretation of the character?
• 49:09
  So. That's the comic book iteration
• 49:11
  of the character. He then make sparse appearances
• 49:14
  in other DC media for a superhero character.
• 49:17
  The fact that his Wikipedia page is not like 40,000 football
• 49:21
  fields long is very telling. Like he does not have a long
• 49:24
  history of appearances, although he does show up in the DC
• 49:28
  animated universe. I think he was in like the 90s
• 49:32
  animated Superman show Steel was, and in that one he was
• 49:35
  voiced by Michael Dorn who is Wharf from Star Trek.
• 49:39
  Yes, I love whenever we can get a Star Trek connection in here.
• 49:42
  I know you would like the Star Trek connection, so that was one
• 49:44
  of the earlier versions of Steel in the film context in the 90s.
• 49:49
  Again, I did not have time to find out the full context here
• 49:52
  because I would have had to pick up a book and read about it,
• 49:54
  which never we don't. Do that on this show, yeah.
• 49:57
  We do not read things. You can't make me.
• 49:59
  Essentially, it is heavily rumored or maybe confirmed that
• 50:03
  when this movie with Shaq was being originally developed, it
• 50:06
  was supposed to be a spinoff from a movie about Superman that
• 50:10
  covered the death of Superman storyline.
• 50:12
  So they were going to make a film in the 90s about that and
• 50:16
  then have Steele maybe appear in it and then have his own spinoff
• 50:19
  movie that like tied into it somehow.
• 50:21
  And I think based on the timing, that later canned Superman
• 50:25
  project might have been the one where it was going to be Nicolas
• 50:27
  Cage at Superman. Whoa, so they were going to kill
• 50:31
  Nick Cage Superman. I think maybe at some point that
• 50:35
  was like the storyline they were going to cover in this movie and
• 50:38
  then Steel's production was going to have some ties to it.
• 50:41
  But because that Superman project fell through even before
• 50:45
  Shaquille O'Neal got involved, this Steel movie became like a
• 50:47
  stand alone project that has no in universe connection to any
• 50:53
  other DC stuff. In fact, in the movie Steel that
• 50:56
  you have me watch, they actually make several jokes about DC
• 50:59
  superheroes as like comic book characters.
• 51:02
  Like they're not real people in the context of Steel.
• 51:05
  I see. OK, well, that's fine.
• 51:08
  I'm cool with that. Yeah.
• 51:09
  So instead we get like kind of that thing we were joking about
• 51:12
  before where it's like a somewhat more grounded iteration
• 51:15
  of that story. So Steel in this movie is Shaq.
• 51:17
  He doesn't have a Cape. He doesn't have the Superman S
• 51:20
  He does get the Superman S tattooed on his arm and they say
• 51:23
  like hey look at you, you're the Man of Steel.
• 51:25
  And they think they even at one point say something about like a
• 51:27
  bat cave. But it's all like super lame
• 51:30
  tongue in cheek jokes. So in the movie he's just a Man
• 51:33
  of Steel and Superman exists but is a fictional character.
• 51:39
  Yeah, that's so interesting. I I'm trying to like rationalize
• 51:45
  why so many superhero projects kind of went that route where
• 51:50
  they would, it was all very tongue in cheek, like they were
• 51:52
  almost making fun of the material they were adapting.
• 51:55
  Like, like look at what we're doing.
• 51:57
  But like comics are for nerds though, am I right?
• 51:59
  Like. Yes, that was the whole tone of
• 52:01
  superhero movies for the longest time was like the people who
• 52:05
  would get assigned to write them and direct them seemed like
• 52:08
  agitated to be tied to a superhero product because they
• 52:11
  were like, that's for babies. I'm not doing that.
• 52:13
  But then it was like, will you want money?
• 52:15
  And they're like, all right, fine, I'll do it.
• 52:16
  But I'm going to have to tell you that I don't like it.
• 52:20
  And now we've we're on the completely opposite side of that
• 52:22
  spectrum, where it's like, if you mess up one tiny detail in a
• 52:26
  modern superhero film, the Internet will just be like,
• 52:28
  well, you shouldn't be allowed to live anymore, obviously.
• 52:31
  Like that guy, believe it or not, straight to the Phantom
• 52:34
  Zone. Get him in there, Peter.
• 52:39
  Peter Yep. Mr. O'Toole You got room for
• 52:42
  Zack Snyder in there. So yeah, Steele is weird in that
• 52:47
  regard. It's still mid 90s were well
• 52:50
  before the like modern crop of superhero films, but it sort of
• 52:53
  fits right in and that it tells like a basic superhero origin
• 52:56
  story that's completely grounded in vaguely real world context.
• 53:00
  In the movie, we get a whole new origin for the character.
• 53:04
  The guy that Shaquille O'Neal is playing is named John Henry
• 53:08
  Irons, which itself actually has, I don't want to say lower
• 53:12
  implications because it's more so just history.
• 53:16
  The name John Henry is a reference to like an American
• 53:19
  folk tale hero and itself is based on a real guy.
• 53:22
  You might have vaguely heard of this.
• 53:23
  I know it kind of rung a bell for me.
• 53:25
  It was a guy who in these, like, famous songs and stuff, kind of
• 53:30
  competed in this like man versus machine race where he was using
• 53:34
  a hammer to like, chisel into a mountain.
• 53:36
  And he was trying to race against like a steam powered
• 53:39
  machine. Oh yeah, yes, right.
• 53:42
  And so John Henry wins the race, but he dies from exhaustion,
• 53:46
  like still holding the hammer in his hand.
• 53:49
  And it was like a whole thing where there is some real
• 53:52
  historical person who they think is John Henry.
• 53:54
  But the whole thing is just mythos that has been used in a
• 53:57
  lot of like stuff since then. It was used in like World War
• 54:01
  2US propagandas like Go America. It was used during like, the
• 54:04
  civil rights movement because the character has a lot of ties
• 54:07
  to both human endurance, but also like the history of like,
• 54:10
  labor and exploitation in America.
• 54:14
  So like, it's a very loaded bit of folk history that in both the
• 54:18
  comic book and in this movie is like the inspiration behind
• 54:22
  Steel having a hammer. Oh, you know what?
• 54:25
  I'm on board. That's great, right?
• 54:27
  There's. A lot going for this already.
• 54:29
  I was like this movie started and like we talked about both
• 54:32
  our movies today have very, very bad critical receptions.
• 54:35
  But Steel kicks off and I'm like, OK, Steel is a cheap
• 54:38
  looking movie, but it's not like a giant mess or anything.
• 54:42
  It's a fairly competent superhero origin movie that just
• 54:46
  strips away the more direct like comic book inspirations and goes
• 54:49
  for just kind of like what if a guy in a metal suit.
• 54:52
  Fought crime. Yeah.
• 54:54
  Yeah, exactly. I mean, Supergirl is kind of the
• 54:56
  same way where it didn't look, you know, especially by today's
• 54:59
  standards, a lot of it looked cheesy, but that's like what you
• 55:03
  want almost. It's like you can see the the
• 55:06
  seams of the filmmaking going on there.
• 55:09
  Exactly. So I was on board with that
• 55:11
  right away. Some of those details don't come
• 55:12
  out until later in the story where they start making direct
• 55:14
  reference. And it caused me to go back and
• 55:16
  Google like what is this John Henry thing?
• 55:18
  I know that's familiar, but I did like those elements behind
• 55:22
  the actual DC character. The movie itself retells the
• 55:27
  origin story as Shaq, who I know is named John Henry Irons, but
• 55:31
  I'm probably just going to keep calling him Shaquille O'Neal.
• 55:35
  Shaq is in the military and he develops advanced weaponry for
• 55:40
  the US military. And there's a scene at the
• 55:42
  beginning that very appropriately opens with a shot
• 55:44
  of like, nature, just like the woods.
• 55:47
  And then like a tank, like a rolls over into frame and like
• 55:50
  crushes all the plants and stuff.
• 55:52
  And it's like, OK, natural world versus the, you know, dangerous
• 55:56
  man made machines and weapons of war.
• 55:58
  I get it. And then we go to the scene
• 56:00
  that's them testing out new weaponry on like, a testing
• 56:02
  range. And Shaq built all this stuff
• 56:05
  with his best friend Sparky, who's this lady in the Navy, and
• 56:07
  they're good buds, and they make weapons together because it's
• 56:09
  fun, I guess. But during the weapons test, the
• 56:14
  villain, played by Judd Nelson, shows up.
• 56:17
  Oh, OK. Mr. Bender from The Breakfast
• 56:21
  Club comes in, and we find out on this intro scene that he has
• 56:24
  been toying with all of the weapons that they're making to
• 56:28
  make them more powerful and more destructive.
• 56:31
  So like the first thing they're testing out, which is used a lot
• 56:34
  throughout the movie, it's like a Sonic wave gun that shoots
• 56:39
  like, you know, it can like, push stuff around.
• 56:41
  It's not like a gun that would shoot something, but it can be
• 56:43
  used to, like, knock things over or move them.
• 56:46
  And Shaquille O'Neal built a very nice pacifistic shockwave
• 56:49
  gun. But Judd Nelson is like, I
• 56:52
  modified your design and I'm going to turn it up to 11, and
• 56:55
  now it's going to blow up a building.
• 56:57
  And believe it or not, he tries to show them how that works and
• 56:59
  it blows up a building and it gets several people killed.
• 57:03
  You see, it did work. Which I understand, it's very
• 57:07
  like childlike storytelling, just like this bad man made the
• 57:11
  notch go up too high. But the whole time I'm like, you
• 57:14
  literally have one of this. This isn't like a blueprint you
• 57:18
  made to make a weapon. You made, like one test weapon.
• 57:20
  And Shaquille O'Neal, I guess, left it somewhere.
• 57:22
  The Jed Nelson walked over and, like, fiddled with it.
• 57:25
  It's so sparse on detail that it comes across really funny.
• 57:28
  Like there's no context for what he did.
• 57:32
  He's just like, I made the power notch go higher.
• 57:35
  And then he's like, you can't do that.
• 57:36
  And he's like, I just did. And then it's like, OK, come on,
• 57:38
  guys, Is this the first try I just did?
• 57:43
  It's so like it's so egregiously simple in its in its
• 57:48
  explanation, even though it's supposed to be about like
• 57:50
  futuristic high-powered weapons, that that part is very silly.
• 57:54
  But it's very effective for what they're going for because it
• 57:57
  helps explain the foil for Shaquille O'Neal.
• 58:00
  He uses advanced weaponry for good I guess, but the bad guy
• 58:06
  makes them too dangerous. And Shaquille O'Neal wants all
• 58:08
  these to be non lethal weapons and the other guy doesn't
• 58:10
  because of the accident that Judd Nelson causes, Shaquille
• 58:13
  O'Neal testifies against him and gets him like, thrown out of the
• 58:16
  army. And Joe Nelson vows revenge and
• 58:18
  he's just like, I'll get you Gadget or whatever.
• 58:21
  And then because of that same event, Shaquille O'Neal becomes
• 58:25
  disillusioned because his best friend Sparky gets severely
• 58:28
  injured in that accident and loses the ability to walk.
• 58:31
  And he's so devastated about all of this and his role in it that
• 58:34
  he also quits the army. Oh, so Sparky becomes like his
• 58:38
  Oracle like was back. Is literally just Oracle.
• 58:42
  Yeah. She is the brains of the
• 58:45
  operation alongside Shaq. She has to, you know, use a
• 58:48
  wheelchair because she injured her spine in the accident.
• 58:51
  And there's a whole secondary narrative for her throughout the
• 58:54
  story of the movie of her coming to terms with her disability and
• 58:57
  kind of like, regaining her confidence, which is both kind
• 59:01
  of, like, tenderly shown but also at times really, really
• 59:05
  unintentionally funny. Like, uh oh.
• 59:10
  Like, OK, let's focus in on Sparky because she comes in and
• 59:12
  out of the movie throughout the first half, but the overall
• 59:16
  story for her character is insane.
• 59:18
  She's in the army. She gets injured in the
• 59:20
  accident, right? She can no longer walk.
• 59:22
  Shaquille O'Neal goes to visit her in the hospital.
• 59:25
  And I guess, like, nobody's told her yet that it's, like, not
• 59:27
  something she can recover from. So at first, she's like, I'm
• 59:30
  going to get back on my feet. And Shaq knows that she's not,
• 59:32
  but he, like, placates her about it.
• 59:35
  And then later in the story, he goes to visit her at, like, the
• 59:37
  VA hospital. And at this point, she's, like,
• 59:40
  understands now that she can't walk anymore and is just super
• 59:44
  miserable about it. And there's a scene where Shaq
• 59:47
  is trying to motivate her. And it's really, really strange.
• 59:51
  What does he do? So he goes over to her and, you
• 59:55
  know, it's Shaquille O'Neal. He's not a trained actor, so
• 59:57
  he's not really showing a lot of range without any of this.
• 59:59
  And he's enormous, just comically large man delivering
• 1:00:01
  these lines. And he's just talking to her.
• 1:00:03
  Like, come on, Sparky. Like you still still have a lot
• 1:00:06
  to offer. You can do it.
• 1:00:08
  And she's just miserable. And so he in order to, like,
• 1:00:12
  wind her up, he just, like, slams open a window that she's
• 1:00:17
  sitting behind to try to, you know, kind of be this imagery of
• 1:00:20
  like, let the fresh air in like, it's a new day.
• 1:00:23
  But he, like, slams the windows so hard that they just, like,
• 1:00:26
  break. And so the windows are off the
• 1:00:28
  hinges. And he's like, look outside.
• 1:00:31
  And then I guess that kind of works.
• 1:00:33
  And she's like, ah, Shaq, I don't know what I'm going to do.
• 1:00:35
  And then he scoops her up out of the wheelchair and just walks
• 1:00:39
  her out of this VA hospital where she's still being treated.
• 1:00:42
  And all of the other patients at the hospital applaud this.
• 1:00:45
  I knew they were going to clap, just knew that's where it was
• 1:00:49
  going. What?
• 1:00:51
  This man just kidnapped some lady from the hospital.
• 1:00:54
  And and this is. Not a cloudy Yeah, he broke the
• 1:00:57
  building and then left and everyone's just like, good for
• 1:01:00
  you. Oh, that's great.
• 1:01:04
  No. Yeah.
• 1:01:05
  What What were you expecting? I mean, what else?
• 1:01:06
  What are you? So that part weird.
• 1:01:09
  The next thing you get with them because she becomes like, I
• 1:01:12
  think a, a trope that people have now identified is like guy
• 1:01:14
  in the chair, you know, like person behind the wheel who's
• 1:01:17
  like giving him information while they go out on their
• 1:01:19
  missions. But there's a scene where she
• 1:01:20
  like is kind of in that like preparatory phase where they're
• 1:01:23
  making the steel suit for Shaq and she like falls out of the
• 1:01:27
  chair and somebody goes to help her and Shaq's like, no.
• 1:01:29
  And it's all done without words. He's like clearly intimating,
• 1:01:33
  like, let her do this herself. And that's so she has a moment
• 1:01:35
  where she feels helpless, but then she like struggles and she
• 1:01:37
  gets herself back up into the chair and they kind of get like
• 1:01:41
  a nice moment. And I was like, you know what?
• 1:01:43
  That's good. That is some very sound 90s like
• 1:01:46
  after school special storytelling about disability
• 1:01:49
  narratives and I'm surprised they handled that part as well
• 1:01:52
  as they did. Well, and also that part does it
• 1:01:55
  in a way that covers up Shaq's lack of acting ability too.
• 1:02:00
  If they if they're just visually showing that scene instead of
• 1:02:05
  him trying to give his motivational speech as a giant
• 1:02:09
  and. Then.
• 1:02:09
  Like carrying her out of the building.
• 1:02:11
  While everybody claps, it's a, it's, it's sounds like that's
• 1:02:14
  his retelling of the story. And he's like, and then
• 1:02:16
  everybody clapped and they're like, no, they didn't check.
• 1:02:17
  That's what people say when they're making up a fake story.
• 1:02:21
  So that part was good. But then later, even later in
• 1:02:25
  the story, there's a montage of them like finishing the steel
• 1:02:30
  suit. And it's this, it's like this
• 1:02:32
  choir music. It sounds almost like gospel
• 1:02:35
  music, just kind of like very clap heavy.
• 1:02:37
  And it's kind of got this like churchy quality to it.
• 1:02:40
  But the main lyric in the song, which is mostly supposed to be
• 1:02:43
  about Shaq at this point, is the singer just keeps going stand
• 1:02:46
  up. And we're just looking at all
• 1:02:48
  these shots of this woman bound to a wheelchair while the while
• 1:02:51
  the song in the background just keeps yelling stand up.
• 1:02:54
  And it's like she can't. That's no.
• 1:02:56
  No, no, no, no. That's the point.
• 1:03:01
  You've got to pick a different song.
• 1:03:05
  She's sparky just like, turn that off, Shaq.
• 1:03:08
  That was really, really unintentionally funny because
• 1:03:10
  it's supposed to be about Shaq, like standing up for what's
• 1:03:12
  ripe. You can't cut to someone whose
• 1:03:15
  whole narrative is that they used to be able to do that, now
• 1:03:17
  they can't and just be yelling it at them like that.
• 1:03:20
  That's so rude. That's so rude.
• 1:03:23
  Extremely rude. The only real pay off you get is
• 1:03:25
  that at the end of the movie, because she's so high tech, she
• 1:03:28
  does modify her wheelchair so it can turn into one of those like
• 1:03:32
  standing versions, you know, where like it kind of moves like
• 1:03:36
  a transformer, like pushes her upright so she can kind of wheel
• 1:03:39
  around from a standing posture. And in that moment it actually
• 1:03:42
  does play the stand up song again.
• 1:03:44
  So I was like, oh, OK, so it. Was it was intentional?
• 1:03:48
  There was some intentionality behind it.
• 1:03:50
  It just feels a lot more like it felt like different people
• 1:03:53
  handled every scene was sparky in it because like the first
• 1:03:56
  one, it's like, that's not very good storytelling for this.
• 1:03:58
  And then the second one was like, no, that's great.
• 1:04:00
  That's exactly what you want to depict.
• 1:04:01
  And then somebody came in and was like, you know, that new
• 1:04:04
  sound you'd be looking for? Yeah, I mean, honestly, I feel
• 1:04:08
  like it almost doesn't need that part at the like you could have
• 1:04:11
  stopped at the second one. It's like, OK, now like you've
• 1:04:14
  told a good story. That's that's a disability
• 1:04:18
  narrative that, you know, puts the power back in this
• 1:04:21
  character's hands. You don't need to then have her
• 1:04:24
  make a robot suit that she can walk in.
• 1:04:26
  You know, like that almost undercuts what you're trying to
• 1:04:29
  say it. Wasn't like a full like
• 1:04:30
  exoskeleton suit. It was just like a chair that
• 1:04:34
  could be like kind of transform into being more like a backboard
• 1:04:38
  so that she could just be upright and like wheel around
• 1:04:40
  instead. Very, very strange.
• 1:04:42
  There's also a bit in the third act where she shoots missiles
• 1:04:44
  out of the chair, but we're not going to talk about that yet.
• 1:04:46
  I mean, you need that, you need the missiles.
• 1:04:50
  So that's the, that's the like Sparky side of the story.
• 1:04:54
  She's like a supporting cast member.
• 1:04:56
  Shaq's story, obviously there's more to it.
• 1:04:58
  He leaves the Army and he goes back home to California, to his
• 1:05:03
  like home neighborhood. And he's got a little brother
• 1:05:06
  who still lives in town. And then there's a woman that
• 1:05:08
  they both call Grandma, who I guess that's who they live with.
• 1:05:11
  And this, again, is where the story starts to add interesting
• 1:05:14
  context for me because they go out of their way to explain that
• 1:05:17
  there's like, a lot of gang activity in this neighborhood.
• 1:05:20
  And even Shaq's little brother, who's just this cute little kid
• 1:05:23
  that grandma says very flatly, like, I'm trying my best, but
• 1:05:26
  it's hard to keep him from joining one of these gangs.
• 1:05:29
  Like, which is a very, like, real thing to say in the middle
• 1:05:32
  of this very hokey kids movie. Like, you know, these people
• 1:05:36
  live in poverty and gang activity is everywhere.
• 1:05:39
  And it's like a really kind of sad reflection on like, the kind
• 1:05:42
  of areas that a lot of people genuinely grow up in.
• 1:05:45
  And I was like, whoa, pretty real, Pretty real here, Mr.
• 1:05:48
  Steele. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:51
  And I also liked that part because it knowing that the John
• 1:05:55
  Henry folk hero story is used in many cases in relation to like
• 1:05:59
  civil rights and like just stuff about like black history in
• 1:06:02
  America. I was like, OK, this is like an
• 1:06:04
  interesting angle. We have this like white militant
• 1:06:07
  bad guy. And then we have Shaq trying to
• 1:06:09
  like protect the neighborhood using his his own ingenuity and
• 1:06:13
  the stuff that he can make. But they don't really like
• 1:06:15
  capitalize on that in any way. I think they just throw it in in
• 1:06:18
  the first act to like ground things a bit and then kind of
• 1:06:20
  just like fade that idea as it goes on.
• 1:06:22
  So that was a missed opportunity that could have really like
• 1:06:24
  grounded the rest of the story. Whereas once he's in the steel
• 1:06:28
  suit, he's just like, ah, I'm fighting crime.
• 1:06:30
  Oh yeah, See, that's, I wonder if that's comes from the origin
• 1:06:34
  of the character or if that was something that was introduced in
• 1:06:37
  this movie. But yeah, that seems like a
• 1:06:40
  pretty big thing thematically that would guide the story from
• 1:06:45
  that point forward. Not something you just kind of
• 1:06:47
  sprinkle in there. I know and that's what made me
• 1:06:50
  bummed out because overall Steele has pretty solid like
• 1:06:54
  story structure and pacing. Like it hits all of the usual
• 1:06:57
  beats of a superhero origin movie.
• 1:06:59
  You even get like after he builds the steel suit in the
• 1:07:03
  second act, you have the, like, first day on the job scene where
• 1:07:06
  he goes out for the first time and tries to just prevent some
• 1:07:08
  petty crimes. And he's still getting used to
• 1:07:10
  how his, like, equipment works and some of it malfunctions.
• 1:07:13
  Just classic 90s superhero stuff.
• 1:07:16
  And then that part of it felt like the biggest dropped thread
• 1:07:20
  because there's a follow up in that Shaq's little brother gets
• 1:07:23
  enticed to go work for the bad guy who is fronting as the owner
• 1:07:28
  of like a company in town. And that bad guy, Jed Nelson, is
• 1:07:32
  employing a lot of the gangs in the area.
• 1:07:34
  And so one of those kids, like, gets Shaq's brother involved
• 1:07:36
  unknowingly. And even there, I'm like, OK, we
• 1:07:39
  have something. Shaq's little brother is going
• 1:07:41
  to have to, like, go against the grain and make a choice at some
• 1:07:44
  point to, like, escape this cycle of bad decisions.
• 1:07:48
  And then he doesn't. He just becomes like, a hostage
• 1:07:50
  at the end. And then Shaq saves him.
• 1:07:52
  Oh, and then they don't circle back around on that at all.
• 1:07:55
  No, it just Peters out. The story gets too focused on
• 1:07:58
  the like just the combat and like the the scheming and
• 1:08:02
  fighting John Nelson and and never properly pays off that
• 1:08:06
  dynamic about the literal ex military man moving into this
• 1:08:11
  predominantly black neighborhood and taking advantage of all
• 1:08:13
  these people to like build weapons and rob banks.
• 1:08:17
  It feels so pointed. And then the movie is so like
• 1:08:21
  hokey and cheesy overall that I think they were like, that's too
• 1:08:25
  serious. You know, like, you know, let's,
• 1:08:27
  let's not, let's let that speak for itself instead of actually
• 1:08:29
  making it part of the conclusion of the story.
• 1:08:32
  That's interesting. I almost feel like this is the
• 1:08:36
  type of character and type of movie that actually might
• 1:08:39
  benefit from being like rebooted and and the story told in a
• 1:08:43
  different way. You know, like I feel like
• 1:08:45
  that's not, obviously we have a lot of that and it's not often
• 1:08:50
  necessary and you see a lot of the same stuff, but this feels
• 1:08:53
  like a different character which has an interesting story
• 1:08:57
  underneath and you could tell interesting stories through the
• 1:09:01
  lens of this world. And it's a story that the movie
• 1:09:04
  sort of invented. Like that's not the background
• 1:09:06
  of the comic book character. So it felt like they had
• 1:09:10
  something and they just didn't commit to it.
• 1:09:12
  Or just didn't know how to execute on it.
• 1:09:14
  Or, you know, where they were just trying to make a different
• 1:09:16
  movie and they wanted to throw those elements in there 'cause,
• 1:09:19
  you know, it kind of had to be this like kids sci-fi action
• 1:09:23
  movie based on a comic book character.
• 1:09:25
  You know, I don't know. But that that's all very
• 1:09:27
  interesting. And the fact that it is such a
• 1:09:30
  lesser known character, I feel like is what actually gives it
• 1:09:33
  that opportunity where if you were to like revisit this, you
• 1:09:36
  could tell almost any new version of the story that you
• 1:09:41
  want because there's not a lot of established lore for this
• 1:09:43
  character. Yeah, seemingly not.
• 1:09:45
  At least not like very visible stuff.
• 1:09:48
  I think the most recent appearance of Steel was the 2021
• 1:09:53
  like Superman and Lois TV show, which I've never seen.
• 1:09:57
  I've never seen a frame of that, so I don't know what it is.
• 1:09:59
  Me neither. Wow, how does that show exist
• 1:10:01
  and nobody's ever seen it? It's weird.
• 1:10:02
  No, right. It was on the air for like, it
• 1:10:04
  might still be going. I think it's had several
• 1:10:06
  seasons, but Steele appears in that show.
• 1:10:10
  Oh, he does. Yeah.
• 1:10:13
  I was going to say we got a show on the air in the Phantom Zone.
• 1:10:16
  Yeah. I think a lot of the movies
• 1:10:20
  we're going to cover this season are from the Phantom Zone and
• 1:10:22
  that people don't know what they are and they didn't do anything
• 1:10:27
  wrong and they're just there for some reason.
• 1:10:30
  So that was like the biggest thing for Steele, where I want
• 1:10:33
  to give it credit for what it introduced from it, like,
• 1:10:36
  storytelling perspective, but also note that, like, it didn't
• 1:10:38
  pay that off. And that makes the ending of the
• 1:10:40
  movie feel very weak. What if probably not properly
• 1:10:43
  underscored yet, is how hokey and cheesy this whole thing is.
• 1:10:47
  Like, those elements stand out in part because Shaquille O'Neal
• 1:10:50
  is just a big dumb doofus as Steele.
• 1:10:52
  Like, I can't even properly put it into words.
• 1:10:57
  But he's just not a good actor. And they don't really ask him to
• 1:11:01
  show a lot of range. But even when they do, like, you
• 1:11:06
  know, have you ever seen someone who's, like, not a trained
• 1:11:08
  actor? And you can kind of see them
• 1:11:12
  with, like, their next line on the tip of their mouth?
• 1:11:14
  And they're just like waiting to blurt it out when as soon as
• 1:11:17
  it's their turn to speak instead of waiting even a half a second
• 1:11:21
  as if they're processing what someone else said.
• 1:11:23
  Oh, absolutely. I mean, I feel like you see this
• 1:11:25
  the most with athletes turned actors because again, from a,
• 1:11:32
  from a production marketing standpoint, it's like people
• 1:11:36
  obviously know who who these guys are, you know, and, and,
• 1:11:40
  and often times it's people who are very charismatic in real
• 1:11:42
  life, like Shaquille, Shaquille O'Neal is very charismatic.
• 1:11:46
  But when you put them in front of a camera and they have to
• 1:11:50
  read specific lines, it's like all of that immediately goes out
• 1:11:54
  the window and they look like a scared robot trying.
• 1:11:58
  To like. Recite these things that's.
• 1:12:01
  Exactly what it is like Shaq is giving Michael Jordan in Space
• 1:12:06
  Jam, in that he's charming but not even remotely convincing.
• 1:12:10
  And my favorite iteration of that is that I don't know if
• 1:12:13
  it's the same scene where Sparky falls down and has to get
• 1:12:15
  herself back up. But around that point in the
• 1:12:18
  movie, they're hanging out with this character they just call,
• 1:12:20
  like, Uncle Joe, who owns like, a junkyard that they use as
• 1:12:23
  their base of operations to build the suit because it's, you
• 1:12:26
  know, remote and people won't see what they're doing.
• 1:12:28
  And Uncle Joe goes up to Shaq, and he's just like, so what's
• 1:12:31
  the story with the lady? And Shaq just a millisecond
• 1:12:35
  later, just goes, her father's dead.
• 1:12:36
  It just made me laugh so hard. It's like, that's not.
• 1:12:41
  You don't just have that on the tip of your tongue when someone
• 1:12:44
  says so who's she? He was ready, he had his script
• 1:12:48
  in his hand and he knew what he had to say.
• 1:12:51
  My. Favorite scene in the movie?
• 1:12:52
  Because it's so awkward and abrupt.
• 1:12:54
  It's like that is the proper response of like, does she have
• 1:12:57
  any family? He's like, no, her parents both
• 1:12:59
  died and like, she joined the army, yadda yadda.
• 1:13:02
  But the rhythm of like, so what's her story?
• 1:13:04
  Her father's dead. It's really funny.
• 1:13:08
  Yeah, this reminded me of like, have you seen those, like
• 1:13:11
  Gronkowski commercials? Like he's doing some like
• 1:13:15
  insurance company, I think it's like AARP or something.
• 1:13:19
  And I mean, again, it's a similar thing where that guy,
• 1:13:22
  he's really charismatic in interviews and just in real
• 1:13:25
  life, but he is abysmally bad at acting and just reading these
• 1:13:29
  even like commercial lines. And that's all that's coming to
• 1:13:32
  mind with this Like Shaq performance.
• 1:13:36
  Yeah, it's not irritating. It's not like it slows the movie
• 1:13:40
  down because the movie kind of like slows itself down to meet
• 1:13:43
  his speed instead, but it is still pretty funny that he just
• 1:13:46
  cannot get any of these lines out.
• 1:13:48
  He doesn't even show. He's just pleasant throughout
• 1:13:51
  the whole story. Like he undergoes some sad
• 1:13:53
  things, but he never really gets mad or sad or even all that
• 1:13:57
  happy. He's just check.
• 1:14:00
  Yeah, it's funny you mentioned Space Jam too, because I feel
• 1:14:02
  like I obviously never thought this as a kid, but I've never
• 1:14:06
  really thought of like Michael Jordan giving a bad performance
• 1:14:10
  per SE in Space Jam. I mean, I'm sure he definitely.
• 1:14:13
  Does but like it's he. Has a natural charisma that I
• 1:14:17
  think does carry through in that film, especially when you
• 1:14:21
  compare the original Space Jam to the LeBron Space Jam, which
• 1:14:25
  was just a just an awful movie all around.
• 1:14:27
  I did not see the LeBron Space Jam.
• 1:14:29
  I bet that's much, much worse. Jack is serviceable for the kind
• 1:14:34
  of movie that they wanted to make for Steel.
• 1:14:37
  I imagine LeBron James is abysmal.
• 1:14:39
  It's not even just him, it's like that whole movie is
• 1:14:42
  basically just like a commercial, like more so than
• 1:14:44
  any other movie I've ever seen. It just felt like a 2 hour ad
• 1:14:48
  for like any Warner Brothers property they could shove in
• 1:14:51
  there. I think that was one of my notes
• 1:14:53
  in watching Steel in general. It's like it's kind of just a
• 1:14:57
  bad movie. Like it's not doing anything
• 1:15:00
  egregiously bad in anyone area, but it suffers from being fairly
• 1:15:04
  dull. But I feel like a bad movie in
• 1:15:07
  the 90s or a bad movie in like the analog filmmaking age is so
• 1:15:12
  much easier to follow than a bad movie made now.
• 1:15:15
  Because we we talk a lot about how nowadays with filmmaking,
• 1:15:18
  there's so many decisions creatively that are made after
• 1:15:20
  the movie has been shot. Where like you could be in post
• 1:15:24
  production still deciding whether a scene that you already
• 1:15:26
  filmed happens in the middle of the day or the middle of the
• 1:15:29
  night. And it leads to all of these
• 1:15:31
  like strange disjointed final products.
• 1:15:33
  Whereas for Steel, it's a fairly slow, kind of boring superhero
• 1:15:38
  movie. But every shot is intentional
• 1:15:40
  and the scenes connect in a very obvious way.
• 1:15:42
  It feels like they actually adapted the script that they
• 1:15:45
  wrote. So it's very easy to watch in a
• 1:15:48
  way that a lot of newer bad movies are not.
• 1:15:49
  Oh. IA 100% agree that I mean,
• 1:15:51
  that's that's the point I was trying to bring up about
• 1:15:53
  Supergirl earlier too. It's like modern films could
• 1:15:57
  never do what this movie does and what Steele is doing too,
• 1:16:01
  where it's it is its own thing. It's a unique piece of media
• 1:16:06
  that, even if it's bad, has intentionality behind it.
• 1:16:09
  And also visually to like, they make it.
• 1:16:14
  Somebody makes a joke in Supergirl, you know, 'cause they
• 1:16:16
  don't know that she's Superman's cousin.
• 1:16:18
  They're like, oh, why are you wearing that, like costume?
• 1:16:21
  And that line stood out to me, 'cause I watch like, I think
• 1:16:25
  this is just the first thing that comes to mind, but I see it
• 1:16:27
  all the time. I saw like the teaser for the
• 1:16:29
  new Street Fighter movie. Yep.
• 1:16:31
  And Oh my gosh, I'm like, those costumes look like bad cosplay.
• 1:16:37
  Like I've seen cosplayers at conventions with more convincing
• 1:16:41
  versions of those characters than what we're putting on
• 1:16:44
  these. Like, and I'm sure that's a very
• 1:16:46
  expensive movie, and I'm sure a lot of work went into that
• 1:16:48
  costuming for it to look awful. But then you look at like this
• 1:16:52
  movie, like Steel and Supergirl, and it's just like they're
• 1:16:56
  costuming just looks visually consistent with the world that
• 1:16:59
  they're in. It doesn't look like they're
• 1:17:01
  like playing dress up, you know? And, and I feel like that's
• 1:17:04
  something that'll probably come up a lot in in this season with
• 1:17:06
  these movies we're going to talk about.
• 1:17:08
  That's a great way to put it. They tried to blend the thing
• 1:17:13
  they were adapting with whatever environment they were placing
• 1:17:17
  them in. You do sometimes get the
• 1:17:20
  opposite, which I find very annoying.
• 1:17:22
  It's probably my least favorite trope in modern superhero
• 1:17:25
  storytelling is the gag where through some arbitrary
• 1:17:29
  circumstance, the character ends up dressed in a much more
• 1:17:32
  literal way, like their original comic book design, and somebody
• 1:17:35
  makes a joke about how it looks stupid.
• 1:17:37
  Like, that's in everything, every show or movie where it's
• 1:17:40
  like, oh, look, he put on the original Loki helmet.
• 1:17:43
  And then somebody went, that's dumb, you know what I mean?
• 1:17:46
  Just like, yeah. But now I feel like.
• 1:17:49
  Now we are veering more in that direction where it's like people
• 1:17:53
  are like, no, now they have to actually wear it or we won't
• 1:17:56
  accept this. Or the fanboys will get mad and
• 1:17:59
  we can't disappoint the fanboys who will come see the movie
• 1:18:01
  regardless. You're right.
• 1:18:03
  Exactly. Like I just who are we even
• 1:18:06
  catering to anymore? Fanboy word of mouth is so
• 1:18:10
  ethereal. Like if the fanboys say it
• 1:18:12
  stinks everyone will go watch it anyway to be like oh I wonder
• 1:18:15
  how bad it is. Or if they say it's good,
• 1:18:16
  they're like, OK, I was going to go see it anyway because nothing
• 1:18:18
  else hits theaters anymore. Yeah, it's pointless.
• 1:18:23
  It doesn't matter. It's just to generate this,
• 1:18:26
  which is which. I mean, I think that ties into
• 1:18:28
  the point that you're making, which is why I think this season
• 1:18:31
  will be interesting too, 'cause it's like modern, this was
• 1:18:35
  always the case, but especially so with like modern superhero
• 1:18:39
  films. They're way more.
• 1:18:41
  They're just like, like I said, that's Space Jam movie too.
• 1:18:43
  They're products more than films.
• 1:18:46
  Like we've tipped the scale way too far in that direction where
• 1:18:50
  like you said, it doesn't even matter.
• 1:18:52
  Just throw the name Supergirl on there and then people will go
• 1:18:55
  see it. It doesn't matter what the film
• 1:18:57
  actually is, the content of it, as long as it you can cut enough
• 1:19:01
  into a trailer to make it look like a real movie.
• 1:19:04
  And yet for some reason there's people working night and day to
• 1:19:07
  add 100,000 Easter eggs that people can draw red circles
• 1:19:11
  around in YouTube video thumbnails and it's like who is
• 1:19:14
  this for? Is it for the most die hard
• 1:19:16
  people or is it for like everyone at once?
• 1:19:19
  That's, I mean, that's the sadly ironic thing about it is I
• 1:19:22
  personally know several people who work on those types of films
• 1:19:26
  and they're working very hard. There are tons of people who are
• 1:19:30
  putting a lot of effort in and working very hard on those films
• 1:19:34
  in, you know, every department. But it's just the overall final
• 1:19:39
  product is just like you mentioned earlier, it's very
• 1:19:43
  it's so non committal. They start filming before they
• 1:19:47
  even have a finished script. There's just it just lacks that
• 1:19:50
  intentionality off jump so that you have no idea even what
• 1:19:55
  you've made by the end. Yeah, which is upsetting,
• 1:19:59
  especially, you know, for the people that did put years of
• 1:20:01
  their life into trying to make this the best version of it.
• 1:20:04
  It could be. It's not like there's not people
• 1:20:06
  who aren't putting effort and creativity in, but it's just it
• 1:20:12
  in these older movies. Especially if this genre, even
• 1:20:16
  if they were bad quote, UN quote, it didn't feel that way
• 1:20:19
  that it it's, you know, it was just they were the production
• 1:20:23
  pipeline was very different. Yeah, it's just a forgotten
• 1:20:27
  aspect of a lot of movies you would watch around this time and
• 1:20:30
  say like, wow, this is awful. Where if you showed somebody's
• 1:20:33
  steal now I think they just, like, rate it higher because it
• 1:20:36
  makes sense. Like this story has the
• 1:20:38
  beginning, middle and end and the characters stay the same
• 1:20:41
  throughout and they don't bog it down with scenes of somebody
• 1:20:45
  rolling out next to the steel sidekick suit and going next
• 1:20:48
  time baby and then running away. Like right, right.
• 1:20:52
  There's no sequel baiting and steel.
• 1:20:53
  There's no post credit scenes. There's no Steel will return in
• 1:20:57
  Superman and Lois 30 years from now.
• 1:21:00
  When it's still on the air. Yeah, it's competent.
• 1:21:04
  It's boring, it's bad, hard to watch, and it made the movie for
• 1:21:10
  me going back, a lot more charming than probably anything
• 1:21:13
  on the air right now. That's like a superhero show or
• 1:21:16
  movie. Yeah, which is, yeah, which is
• 1:21:18
  true and upsetting, but. It's true.
• 1:21:22
  I do want to make sure to mention going into Steel I was
• 1:21:25
  like, OK, stunt casting Shaquille O'Neal still active
• 1:21:29
  NBA guy. At the time I assumed there'd be
• 1:21:31
  tongue in cheek superhero references.
• 1:21:33
  How far do you think they went with referencing Shaquille
• 1:21:36
  O'Neal himself? Oh, I'm going to say no less
• 1:21:41
  than two or three references to him being a basketball player of
• 1:21:45
  some kind. That's exactly right.
• 1:21:48
  It is crucial to the plot. When he gets to LA, he leaves
• 1:21:53
  the army. After the opening sequence where
• 1:21:55
  the big explosion happens and some people die, he leaves the
• 1:21:57
  army. He goes back home and he walks
• 1:21:59
  past a group of kids playing basketball on like a street side
• 1:22:02
  court. And the ball rolls over to his
• 1:22:05
  foot and he stops and picks it up.
• 1:22:07
  And the kid kind of gestures like, why don't you take the
• 1:22:08
  shot? And he misses because the
• 1:22:11
  character in the movie is not good at basketball.
• 1:22:15
  And then there's a second instance of this later where
• 1:22:18
  they're just in their like, junkyard cave and he tries to
• 1:22:20
  throw something in a basket from like, vaguely free throw
• 1:22:23
  distance and misses and then says, like, I could never make
• 1:22:26
  those. Which, if you don't know, that's
• 1:22:30
  the joke about Shaquille O'Neal is that he was a very good
• 1:22:32
  basketball player, but people say he can't make free throws.
• 1:22:36
  Yep, and he's laughing at himself.
• 1:22:38
  Yep. And then in the climax of the
• 1:22:41
  film, there's like a shootout inside of a warehouse because
• 1:22:45
  Judd Nelson has made all these super weapons and Steele is
• 1:22:48
  there to stop him. And Steele gets trapped inside a
• 1:22:51
  small room with his little brother and Judd Nelson throws a
• 1:22:54
  grenade in there, a live grenade.
• 1:22:56
  And the brother is like, Shaq, look, there's a hole in the
• 1:23:00
  grate in the ceiling. You just need to throw the
• 1:23:02
  grenade through the opening and we won't die.
• 1:23:06
  And he's like, but I never make these.
• 1:23:08
  And he's like, but you can make a free throw, Shaq.
• 1:23:11
  You can do it. It's weird that he called him
• 1:23:13
  Shaq in the scene, but yeah. Leave it in.
• 1:23:17
  Leave it in, yeah. And then he does.
• 1:23:20
  He makes a free throw with a live grenade and he saves
• 1:23:24
  himself. I hate it now.
• 1:23:26
  Just leave. I like the second one.
• 1:23:28
  Leave the second one in there. Like he he tries to throw
• 1:23:30
  something in the trash can, says he can't make free throws.
• 1:23:32
  That's funny. Leave it in the other ones, cut
• 1:23:36
  them, take them out. Don't need that.
• 1:23:37
  That stuff stinks. All the references to the DC
• 1:23:39
  characters are lame. Like, by the time they leave at
• 1:23:42
  the end, the little brothers, like, oh, I could go out on the
• 1:23:44
  street with you. I could be your Robin.
• 1:23:46
  And like, what does that mean? Like, what are superheroes in a
• 1:23:50
  world where there's a real one? Like, it doesn't make sense.
• 1:23:52
  You should just pretend they don't exist.
• 1:23:54
  Yeah. Otherwise, it's too odd.
• 1:23:57
  It's like, why are you dressed up as a guy from a comic book
• 1:24:00
  and not like, who is this Man of Steel?
• 1:24:02
  I don't know. I don't like it.
• 1:24:03
  I thought those references were lame and none of them were
• 1:24:05
  funny. The one about the bat cave was
• 1:24:07
  super lame. Like the he's driving away from
• 1:24:09
  the police because he's a vigilante and he escapes into
• 1:24:12
  his junkyard hideout through a very like bat cave style
• 1:24:15
  sequence of returning home. And the cops are like, where'd
• 1:24:18
  he go? And the other one kind of like
• 1:24:19
  smirks and is like the bat cave. And it's like, what the heck?
• 1:24:23
  Yes, literally, in this case, he went to a giant.
• 1:24:27
  It doesn't make sense. I don't know.
• 1:24:29
  That's where we were in the 90s. That's the level we have.
• 1:24:34
  Well, I mean, it continues because I was like Shaq, you
• 1:24:37
  know, doing the basketball in the movie.
• 1:24:39
  It reminds me of when the Rock like literally did a rock bottom
• 1:24:44
  in one of the Fast and Furious movies.
• 1:24:46
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. After spending years being like,
• 1:24:48
  I'm not the wrestler guy anymore, I'm an actor.
• 1:24:50
  Then he comes back around and it's just like he might as well
• 1:24:52
  just start cutting promos as The Rock in the middle of the movie.
• 1:24:55
  Yeah, well, and that's what like changed the trajectory of his
• 1:24:58
  career, honestly, was when he went back to like what if he
• 1:25:02
  should have done from the first place.
• 1:25:03
  Is is just leaning into that persona?
• 1:25:06
  It's. It's a concept in wrestling, the
• 1:25:08
  idea of like cheap pops, like things that will make the crowd
• 1:25:11
  cheer but are very like vapid and have a low return on
• 1:25:14
  investment because eventually people get sick of it.
• 1:25:16
  And that's what Steele is unfortunately chock full of.
• 1:25:19
  And I think if they had leaned just a bit harder into the,
• 1:25:22
  like, real world context that they tried to place this
• 1:25:25
  character in, you'd have a much better version of this movie.
• 1:25:30
  I don't need to go through the whole story.
• 1:25:32
  It's a superhero movie. You get it.
• 1:25:34
  I think the only other point I wanted to make is that the
• 1:25:36
  action is not very good. Like he has a giant hammer, but
• 1:25:40
  he mostly uses the hammer as a gun.
• 1:25:44
  It's a gun also. Yeah, I actually wrote down a
• 1:25:47
  list of all of Steele's powers in the context of the movie
• 1:25:51
  because as a comic book character, he mostly is designed
• 1:25:54
  to model Superman. So like he flies and he has like
• 1:25:57
  super strength. But in the movie Steel, he's
• 1:26:00
  just a guy in a metal suit who has like advanced weaponry.
• 1:26:03
  He's more like, this is maybe a deeper cut.
• 1:26:06
  But in Batman Beyond, the sci-fi future Batman, there's a
• 1:26:10
  character called Armory who just had like every weapon ever made
• 1:26:15
  at his disposal. He just had a giant arsenal of
• 1:26:17
  like, complicated guns and grenades and rocket launchers
• 1:26:20
  and stuff, and he, Steele, felt more like that in this movie
• 1:26:22
  than he did like steel. Oh well I mean that's honestly
• 1:26:26
  fine. Like I I think that's this is
• 1:26:29
  their interpretation which is fine by me.
• 1:26:32
  I think the basic premise is guy puts on high tech suit.
• 1:26:37
  It's a high tech suit movie and he's got a lady in the chair
• 1:26:41
  reading, you know, directions and instructions.
• 1:26:43
  It's just a way to create a rhythm when he's out on his
• 1:26:45
  missions. He does have, in addition to a
• 1:26:48
  hammer, that is a gun. Let's just look at his powers
• 1:26:51
  real quick while we're here. He's got the Sonic blaster gun,
• 1:26:54
  which knocks things over. He's got a laser gun, which
• 1:26:57
  fires a very, very tiny, unimpressive laser beam.
• 1:27:01
  He can turn his entire body into a powerful magnet, which comes
• 1:27:05
  up more than you would expect. It's.
• 1:27:08
  Useful I guess. Yep, he has front and rear view
• 1:27:13
  cameras in his head. In his head, is he?
• 1:27:18
  Wearing a helmet, Yeah, yeah, he's got a helmet on, kind of
• 1:27:22
  because. None.
• 1:27:23
  None of the posters has the oh actually never mind I I see one
• 1:27:26
  image where he has a helmet on. It's just a funny beat in his,
• 1:27:29
  like, first night out as a superhero where these guys try
• 1:27:32
  to sneak up behind him and Sparky in the chair is like
• 1:27:35
  behind you because there's a camera that they have hooked up
• 1:27:37
  to show what's behind his head. And then he turns around and the
• 1:27:40
  guy, in order to sell this very poorly executed bit, goes like
• 1:27:43
  it's like he's got eyes in the back of his head.
• 1:27:45
  It's like that's one of his powers.
• 1:27:48
  He's got a rear view camera. Is 4 wheel drive on this list
• 1:27:51
  too? What is it?
• 1:27:54
  Yeah, he's got traction. Traction.
• 1:27:56
  Control and then that's pretty much it.
• 1:27:58
  He does have a motorcycle and I'd say the most complicated
• 1:28:02
  thing he does is he mounts the hammer gun on the front of the
• 1:28:05
  motorcycle and then can shoot the lasers off of the off of the
• 1:28:08
  bike. These all seem like things to
• 1:28:10
  limit just like visually how much they would have to ask Shaq
• 1:28:15
  to do like physically like all you got to do is stand there
• 1:28:19
  point your laser gun like you don't need to go around and like
• 1:28:23
  move. He just.
• 1:28:25
  Lightly kind of butts people away with the hammer, but
• 1:28:28
  there's very little like swing the hammer kind of motion.
• 1:28:32
  And it's like, given the John Henry connection, I'm surprised
• 1:28:34
  that's not part of it. If anything, it's like, what if
• 1:28:38
  you're going to invoke that character, which they do by
• 1:28:40
  name. They reference the John Henry
• 1:28:42
  myth in the story of this movie. And yet, even though the bad
• 1:28:45
  guys are represented as having, like, advanced technology, Shaq
• 1:28:50
  is battling them with advanced technology.
• 1:28:52
  Like, you know, you see how there's like not really clear
• 1:28:55
  allegory there. Yeah, there's supposed to be an
• 1:28:58
  irony to it. And like, or is he supposed to,
• 1:29:01
  I don't know, like feel bad about using this technology.
• 1:29:06
  I, I there's something there maybe, but there's.
• 1:29:09
  Something there. That's my review of steel.
• 1:29:11
  There's something there. That's it.
• 1:29:15
  There is something there that is correct, yeah.
• 1:29:22
  Right, Frank? That brings us into wrap up and
• 1:29:25
  final scores here on the first episode of Season 2 of the pod.
• 1:29:29
  How do you think this went? I think I'm excited.
• 1:29:31
  I didn't know how forgotten superhero season would feel.
• 1:29:34
  It's pretty fun. Stop stealing my line.
• 1:29:37
  I'm sorry I had to score Scott. We had to score these movies.
• 1:29:43
  Yeah. We don't.
• 1:29:44
  We never did scores before the podcast started, but it's kind
• 1:29:47
  of like the comedic conceit of the whole thing is like, how
• 1:29:51
  did. If you want to know our
• 1:29:52
  thoughts, listen to the last hour and a half.
• 1:29:54
  If you want to score out of 10, skip to the end.
• 1:29:58
  Yeah, yeah. So am I.
• 1:30:00
  Am I going first with my score for Supergirl?
• 1:30:03
  Yes, yes, because you did the first review, I will let you
• 1:30:06
  give your final thoughts on Supergirl and then I'll talk
• 1:30:07
  about Steel again. I, like I said, I really enjoyed
• 1:30:13
  Supergirl. It surprised me.
• 1:30:17
  Like I I went in with low expectations and I got something
• 1:30:23
  I wasn't looking for in the sense of like I said, it was the
• 1:30:29
  most like literal 1 to 1 screen adaptation of a comic book I
• 1:30:36
  think I've ever seen. You know, like it felt like this
• 1:30:38
  is the in a way, like the purest way to translate this material.
• 1:30:43
  And I liked for that. I liked the cast.
• 1:30:47
  I liked the on screen special effects, the visual effects
• 1:30:53
  where where it got a little, you know, hokey, but there's, you
• 1:30:57
  know, even her flying around, which I didn't mention in the
• 1:31:00
  review. There's a lot of like stunt wire
• 1:31:03
  work that actually looked really good because the lead actress
• 1:31:07
  like practiced for like a long time, like leading up to the
• 1:31:11
  filming of the movie to kind of do this like stunt work
• 1:31:16
  essentially herself. And so there's a scene early on
• 1:31:19
  where she's, like, learning about her powers when she first
• 1:31:22
  lands on Earth. And she's kind of like flying
• 1:31:25
  through the trees. And I'm like, this actually
• 1:31:27
  looks really good, You know, like, this looks like
• 1:31:29
  convincing. And then it goes from there to
• 1:31:32
  the classic Christopher Reeve, like flying in front of a blue
• 1:31:34
  screen, you know? Which is fine.
• 1:31:36
  That's like iconography for the series at that point.
• 1:31:39
  Totally, totally. So, yeah.
• 1:31:42
  And of course, Ellis being there was a huge.
• 1:31:45
  Pop Die Hard bubby. We're going to sound insane to
• 1:31:52
  someone who has not seen Die Hard.
• 1:31:55
  Yeah, which go watch that if you haven't.
• 1:31:59
  Yeah. So I don't know.
• 1:32:00
  I mean kind of like you just said with with steel.
• 1:32:04
  It's not good in most senses of the word.
• 1:32:09
  It's not a good in the in the way of being good versus bad.
• 1:32:13
  Yeah, so hard to score. I'm going to score it based on
• 1:32:18
  just like my appreciation for it.
• 1:32:21
  It feels like a six. I'm going to say 6 out of 10
• 1:32:24
  feels. Sort of for Supergirl, I think
• 1:32:26
  that's important to restate since we're kicking off a new
• 1:32:29
  competition here. We generally use the ratings out
• 1:32:32
  of 10 to be like, is this the best version of this movie?
• 1:32:36
  We could have gotten some things on paper, like there's no
• 1:32:40
  version of Supergirl 1984 that's going to crack the AFI Top 100.
• 1:32:45
  That doesn't mean it can't get a high score if it, like, hits its
• 1:32:49
  target. And so I think it sticks out.
• 1:32:51
  Its head is totally fair. It was aiming to be a fun
• 1:32:54
  superhero romp in the style of Christopher Reeve Superman and
• 1:32:58
  somewhat succeeded. You know, it's nothing crazy.
• 1:33:00
  You're not going to go out of your way to see it, but it
• 1:33:03
  sounds like it was a fun time. Yeah.
• 1:33:05
  But that being said, I would recommend it.
• 1:33:06
  I mean, honestly, if you're interested, especially with that
• 1:33:09
  new superhero movie coming out, like I think you specifically
• 1:33:12
  would like it if you watched it. So I like Supergirl.
• 1:33:15
  I think that you're going to see, if not already, a lot of
• 1:33:19
  like attention on this movie because the new ones coming out,
• 1:33:22
  I'm sure we are not the first or only people to think like let's
• 1:33:25
  talk about the old Supergirl, but we're just going to assume
• 1:33:28
  we did it the best. Yeah, probably.
• 1:33:31
  I mean, probably. Arguably, yeah, because.
• 1:33:33
  We're not nerds about it. Don't be weird.
• 1:33:37
  But like, yeah, no, we're the best, yeah.
• 1:33:39
  Yeah, yeah, because we're cool, you know, so cool.
• 1:33:42
  Don't you want to hear what too cool guys think about Supergirl?
• 1:33:45
  Just a couple of cool guys talking about movies.
• 1:33:50
  All right. 6 out of 10 any anything else as part of that
• 1:33:53
  wrap up or do you feel good about it?
• 1:33:55
  No, yeah, I feel good about it. I I it was a positive
• 1:33:58
  experience. It was a good one for the first
• 1:34:00
  episode of this new season, I think.
• 1:34:02
  I think it feels feels right. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:34:05
  I think it's very funny that we never know what the other person
• 1:34:08
  is going to pick and yet we often find like an odd, oddly
• 1:34:12
  obvious connecting threat. Like the fact that we both
• 1:34:14
  picked Superman adjacent characters for episode one.
• 1:34:17
  Who is the most like well known superhero of all?
• 1:34:20
  That's awesome. I don't know.
• 1:34:21
  I'm just that's kind of serendipitous how that turned
• 1:34:23
  out. Yeah, yeah, it is cool.
• 1:34:25
  Just a couple of cool guys, man. Just a couple.
• 1:34:27
  Of cool guys watching movies, etcetera.
• 1:34:34
  Anyway, over to Steel. Steel was fine.
• 1:34:38
  Steel is probably based on how you've described it, not as good
• 1:34:42
  as Supergirl, not as much of A like.
• 1:34:45
  Definitely watch Steel because in the end it is kind of slow.
• 1:34:48
  I didn't get into it a lot, but like the action scenes are very
• 1:34:52
  long and drawn out and nothing really happens.
• 1:34:54
  There's like a 10 minute scene of Steel chasing a guy through
• 1:34:59
  like a train yard while the like trains are like kind of coming
• 1:35:03
  in to be like reconnected. So there's just these like
• 1:35:06
  really slow moving train cars and they keep trying to like
• 1:35:10
  ramp up the tension by being like look out.
• 1:35:12
  And then he just like, gently gets out of the way.
• 1:35:16
  That's the pace. That's the pace of steel overall
• 1:35:19
  is like, what could we physically get Shaq to do?
• 1:35:22
  That's the that's the ceiling for the movie.
• 1:35:25
  And the man was training for the Olympics.
• 1:35:27
  So on one hand he's like a superhuman athlete, and on the
• 1:35:30
  other he can barely dodge a train.
• 1:35:33
  Oh, that was probably part of it, though.
• 1:35:35
  Like why they specifically like gave him those gadgets and
• 1:35:39
  filmed it in a way to limit his mobility.
• 1:35:41
  They're like, we can't endanger this man.
• 1:35:43
  We can't let him. Like no possibility of him
• 1:35:45
  getting hurt while he's making this movie because he has to go
• 1:35:47
  perform in the Olympics. That's.
• 1:35:48
  True, I know that the USA dream team for basketball was the 92
• 1:35:53
  Olympics. I want to say I don't know how
• 1:35:54
  USA did in 96 but if they lost I think we can blame Shaq and
• 1:35:58
  therefore steal. Yeah, yeah, I already did.
• 1:36:01
  Honestly already did it back. Then I blamed them.
• 1:36:05
  Yeah. I was 5 and I was like Nah.
• 1:36:06
  Nah, that's not good. Try again, buddy.
• 1:36:11
  That's what I said, yeah. It was pretty cool back then.
• 1:36:14
  Too. Yeah, just a cool guy watching
• 1:36:18
  Steel in theaters going not my style.
• 1:36:21
  Not for me, don't like it? Yeah.
• 1:36:24
  So steel is aggressively OK. And for that reason, I think I
• 1:36:27
  would rate it like a four out of 10.
• 1:36:29
  It had potential to be better than that, but it kind of
• 1:36:33
  whiffed it in the third act by just having a really uninspired
• 1:36:37
  conclusion. I mean, even the way he beats
• 1:36:39
  Judd Nelson at the end is so boring.
• 1:36:43
  Like Judd Nelson's whole thing is he's like, I'm making these
• 1:36:46
  dangerous weapons that are more powerful because they're like,
• 1:36:49
  unsafe to use. And so he points a gun at check
• 1:36:53
  that's like another Sonic Boom gun or something.
• 1:36:55
  And he's like, not even you can stand up to this.
• 1:36:57
  And then he fires it at him and it ricochets off of Shaq and
• 1:37:00
  just hits him and he dies. And it's like Shaq didn't do
• 1:37:03
  anything. Shaq's just very lucky that Jed
• 1:37:06
  Nelson was wrong about that. Yeah, yeah, that's the best kind
• 1:37:10
  of victory where you just don't even try really your.
• 1:37:12
  Opponent just ring outs themselves and you're like, I
• 1:37:14
  guess I won. Cool, cool.
• 1:37:18
  Just make another boring Batman reference and then we'll close
• 1:37:20
  out the movie. Took that.
• 1:37:23
  Off the list, so yeah. Steele almost just called the
• 1:37:26
  movie Shaq Steele starring Shaq as a four out of 10.
• 1:37:29
  Nothing wrong with it. I think if you're interested in
• 1:37:31
  that character and are really in the weeds and wanting to watch
• 1:37:34
  some older superhero stuff, I wouldn't say like you're going
• 1:37:36
  to have a bad time, but it's very skippable.
• 1:37:38
  Or Supergirl sounds like a little bit more of a little bit
• 1:37:41
  more of a jab between the two. Yeah, sure.
• 1:37:44
  I would agree to that. OK, well that brings us to the
• 1:37:47
  end of first episode of our Forgotten Superheroes season.
• 1:37:50
  The way things work is that we have banked those scores.
• 1:37:53
  So I recommended Supergirl. So I get 6 points because that's
• 1:37:56
  what Frank gave it as a score. Frank, you get 4 points for
• 1:37:59
  recommending steal. So I win today's episode.
• 1:38:02
  Hooray. But also we're going to keep
• 1:38:08
  track of cumulative point totals across this entire season, which
• 1:38:12
  will be shorter than our last one.
• 1:38:13
  I think we're eyeing maybe a six episode season, so by the end
• 1:38:16
  whoever's movies have gotten a cumulative higher ranking,
• 1:38:19
  they'll be like the season 2 champion, which I'll be honest,
• 1:38:23
  I'm envisioning a A2 peat. What do they call it when you
• 1:38:26
  win twice? A repeat?
• 1:38:27
  I guess they. Call it not not going to happen
• 1:38:30
  is what they. Call it Mr. Repeat.
• 1:38:32
  Yeah. So we'll see if I can win Season
• 1:38:34
  2 or if Frank is going to is going to pull it back.
• 1:38:36
  It's very close and all of season 1 is very close as well.
• 1:38:39
  So still a lot of time. The only other thing we have
• 1:38:41
  left to do for today, Frank, is we have to pick our two movies
• 1:38:44
  for into the next episode. I guess because I went first or
• 1:38:47
  no sorry because I won episode 1.
• 1:38:49
  I will give the first recommendation for next time and
• 1:38:51
  then you can pick one for me. Yeah, right.
• 1:38:53
  Fine. My list on my phone, it closed
• 1:38:57
  on me. I got to pull it back up.
• 1:39:01
  Pick one at random. Iron Man 2 No, you are going to
• 1:39:06
  watch for next time, 1992's The Shadow starring Alec Baldwin.
• 1:39:14
  Oh, you know what? I think I had this written down
• 1:39:16
  on my list too. The.
• 1:39:18
  Shadow is in the story tradition of like hope, action heroes.
• 1:39:23
  These were people who were part of like 1930s serial films and
• 1:39:29
  TV spots and stuff like shorthand kind of Lone Ranger
• 1:39:33
  type characters. And there was a several movies
• 1:39:36
  in the 90s that brought back these guys.
• 1:39:38
  But we've seen a couple of them. Like, I know you and I both saw
• 1:39:42
  The Rocketeer. That's a good one.
• 1:39:44
  That's a fun movie, yeah. The Shadow, I think, is in the
• 1:39:47
  same vague category as something like the Phantom or the
• 1:39:50
  Rocketeer, if you've seen those, but I don't think either of us
• 1:39:52
  have seen it, right? No, I I've not seen it.
• 1:39:55
  Awesome, 1992 is the shadow. That'll be your movie to review
• 1:39:59
  next time. Cool.
• 1:40:00
  Alec Baldwin? Nothing contentious there at
• 1:40:02
  all. Nothing.
• 1:40:03
  Contentious about Mr. Baldwin. Great guy, I guess.
• 1:40:08
  Yeah. Looking forward to it.
• 1:40:13
  No, that'll be fine. I I am interested.
• 1:40:15
  Like I said, I had I had that one jotted down too.
• 1:40:17
  So that's a that's a good pick. Thank you.
• 1:40:20
  And it looks like we're what is this season 1?
• 1:40:23
  I also have a 90s movie. So what is this, season 1?
• 1:40:30
  That's a joke for the long time fans.
• 1:40:34
  Remember the last episode? Yeah, that one.
• 1:40:35
  Remember the one right before? This Yeah, I have for you 1993's
• 1:40:43
  The Meteor Man, which is a film that is produced, written,
• 1:40:51
  directed and starring Robert Townsend, who, fun fact, I've
• 1:40:57
  met, actually. OK, I worked on his documentary
• 1:41:05
  film a few years ago, The Making of the Five Heartbeats, which
• 1:41:10
  was a documentary about the making of the Five Heartbeats,
• 1:41:13
  which is the previous. Stand up actress, what's the
• 1:41:22
  deal? Heartbeat.
• 1:41:29
  But yeah, I just thought that was interesting.
• 1:41:30
  This is this is like a sort of like cult superhero comedy film,
• 1:41:36
  I believe. I've of course never seen it,
• 1:41:39
  but it's maybe the thing he's most well known for.
• 1:41:43
  And I know he briefly had a sitcom series as well.
• 1:41:48
  So he just seems like just a a cool filmmaker.
• 1:41:53
  And this was like a passion project of his that I think has
• 1:41:57
  since fallen under ownership of Marvel.
• 1:41:59
  So I think Meteor Man is like officially a Marvel character
• 1:42:01
  now too. Oh interesting.
• 1:42:03
  I don't know about the shadow. They might also be under DC or
• 1:42:07
  Marvel. Or maybe it's independent.
• 1:42:08
  But that sounds interesting. I like the idea of changing up
• 1:42:11
  genres, going more like comedy. Yeah.
• 1:42:14
  No, I think this will be hopefully good.
• 1:42:16
  I don't know. Hopefully good.
• 1:42:18
  That's the point of the show. It's called double feature.
• 1:42:22
  I get it now. Well, that about does it for
• 1:42:38
  episode 1, Frank, I guess before we go, we can quickly plug
• 1:42:42
  socials and if any, any updates about your movie if we have
• 1:42:46
  them. So if you want to follow Meet
• 1:42:48
  Your double feature, we release episodes every two weeks on
• 1:42:51
  alternating Thursdays on all major podcast platforms as well
• 1:42:54
  as on YouTube. You can follow our socials on
• 1:42:56
  Instagram at Meet Your Double feature Blue Sky at mydf pod, or
• 1:43:03
  you can visit our website meetyourdoublefeature.com, which
• 1:43:06
  has all of our episodes as well as a couple of like written blog
• 1:43:10
  reviews and additional content that we're uploading over time.
• 1:43:13
  So that's where you can find us. Really just search Meet Your
• 1:43:16
  Double Feature anywhere and you'll find it.
• 1:43:18
  But Frank, I don't know if there is any news right now, but
• 1:43:20
  Frank's actually in the process of releasing his first
• 1:43:23
  independent film himself. It's called Meteor Man.
• 1:43:26
  It's pretty good. Pretty good.
• 1:43:30
  But no, just Frank, just in case we have any new listeners, do
• 1:43:32
  you want to just generally plug the movie that you're working
• 1:43:34
  on? Yeah, so if you want to check
• 1:43:37
  out the feature film that I produced and was also the
• 1:43:42
  cinematographer for called Nate Mariah in Venice.
• 1:43:46
  It just finished its festival run late last year and is going
• 1:43:50
  to be available for streaming online early this year.
• 1:43:53
  So if you want to keep up to date with that, you can find us
• 1:43:56
  on Instagram at Sardonic Motion Pictures and on our website at
• 1:44:01
  Sardonic mp.com. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:44:04
  Once we have more firm details about the streaming release for
• 1:44:07
  Nate and Mariah and Venice, you can be sure we'll be telling you
• 1:44:10
  about that as often as we can. But for now, just stay tuned and
• 1:44:13
  please rejoin us in two weeks for the next episode of Meet
• 1:44:16
  Your Double Feature. Bye.
• 1:44:19
  I knew he was bringing it back. He's doing it again.
• 1:44:22
  We're back. We're back.
• 1:44:34
  Coming up next. It's.
• 1:44:36
  The Meteor Man followed by the Shadow on Meet Your double
• 1:44:40
  feature.