EPISODE 270: Deadpool & Wolverine
“You’re paying to participate in the destruction of the thing you used to enjoy”, so says Gareth Higgins in this surprising emotional installment of The Film Talk, that delves into, however slightly, the death of what we used to call "the movies". Along the way John Huston’s The Dead is recommended, Blazing Saddles is lauded and Jett Loe sheds a tear talking about the astonishing performance of Glenn Ford in Richard Donner’s Superman. Hope you like it.
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The Film Talk is brought to you by you folks who listen and help out. Just go to patreon.com/thefilmtalk for details. Now on with the show.
Well, folks, I never thought it happened.
We've gotten to episode 270. It's a milestone, just like Deadpool and Wolverine is a milestone in cinema. We're going to get into it.
welcome to The Film Talk. I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins. The conversation never ends. And indeed, we are here, dear listener, to speak of things hitherto unspoken, of, thereof, thereto, and thereon.
Sure. And that is, of course, two films crashing into each other. And only one can survive, Deadpool and Wolverine, which at the very top of the show, I'm going to say two things.
First of all, I'm grateful to you for watching it because you did watch it, my behest. Not so much, I wouldn't say my beck and call, but at least my request.
I was not going to see it, not because we're cinema stubs, dear listeners, but like I'm sure many of you out there listening, we're very busy, so we have to be selective in the films that we talk about, because I consider our time precious, Gareth.
We're talking sacred. Sometimes we don't have the time. If you go to our Patreon page or maybe you're subscribing through Apple Podcasts, you'll see our last episode was a rerun.
That was our wonderful interview with director Francis Ford Coppola. So Gareth and I have not had a chance to talk recently, but I am excited to talk to you about Deadpool and Wolverine, Gareth.
Yeah, you graciously went to Deadpool and Wolverine. I'm grateful for that. That's the first thing.
The second thing is that in this collision of two films, Deadpool and Wolverine, it needs to be said at the outset that this is not a Wolverine film, this is a Deadpool film. I believe we have a clip.
We do have a clip. In this clip, there's some Deadpool and there's some Wolverine. Let's listen it.
And you may think, wait a minute, does that mean you haven't actually selected the clip before recording? No, no, dear listeners. No, no, we are nothing.
Professionals.
Oh, no, we're not professionals. I don't know if we're professionals.
What does that even mean?
We're vocation. You keep saying we get paid. And I'm interested in what the data is, from which you derive that statement.
Not that I wouldn't do this for love. I do do it for love. But we can talk off air about this paid thing.
Dear listeners, if you want to see Gareth Bade, don't forget, go to our Patreon page, your patreon.com/thefilmtalk.
You can also buy the episodes through Apple Podcasts that were on Spotify and what have you. But hey, let's listen to a clip. This is Wolverine and Deadpool getting up to some wacky hijinks.
Just give me one more drink and then I'll leave.
That's not how it works. It does now. Leave the bottle.
I know you both. Nope, but I know you. Look, lady, I'm not interested.
Really getting into your cuffs here. Why would I go with you? Because, unfortunately, I need you, and even more unfortunately, my entire world needs you.
And that was Deadpool and Wolverine, a new film that has set a record for an R-rated opening weekend, and I think something like the sixth biggest opening weekend in history. So it's been seen by lots and lots and lots of people.
It does behoove me to say that that whole thing about, you know, biggest opening weekends in history, there was a flaw in the way that gets reported because, of course, those are just for inflation and it means something, but it may not mean
everything. It's a very popular film. That's the main thing to say. I went to see it on a Sunday afternoon.
The audience was having a great time. There were a couple of people behind me clearly know a lot about the comics and they were just enjoying themselves.
And so the first thing to say here is if Deadpool is your thing, this is probably a great thing for you. The second thing to say is far be it from us to disparage movies based on comic books. That's a cheap way to respond to films.
I know there are people who think that superhero movies and comic book movies can't possibly have anything meaningful to say or be films of substance. That's not a factual statement. It often has more to do with simple taste.
I get it. There's some people who don't like comic book movies. There's some people who adore them.
Then there's me who I am trying to keep an open mind and judge a film based on what it's trying to do, not so much how it compares with another film.
We're not going to contrast Deadpool and Wolverine with a film like Perfect Days from Vendors, a film set in Tokyo, that we both agreed was one of the best films of last year. That's just kind of childish.
It is worth, however, comparing this comic book movie with other comic book movies. I'm just going to cite three. That's Ang Lee's Hulk, Patty Jenkins's Wonder Woman 1984.
The easy one to mention, because it always gets mentioned as the good one, the substantial one.
It's going to be Donner, isn't it?
It's going to be Donner. That would be Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.
No love for Mr. Versa Militude, Richard Donner's.
Underneath all that is indeed Richard Donner, Superman, the slightly longer part of the original Superman for that very reason, Versa Militude.
It feels like you can believe not only a man could fly, but you could believe a man could work in the Daily Planet's office. You could believe that this kid could grow up on the farm in Kansas.
You believe that Glenn Ford could raise him and die tragically. That's a beautifully made film.
Can we talk? I hate to. We're not going to do a derail about Richard Donner's wonderful, wonderful Superman.
When Glenn Ford, well-known American actor, never the height, never as big as like, you're John Wayne or what have you, but Charlton Heston. When Glenn Ford is working out on the farm, he starts to have a heart attack.
He grabs his arm, feels his pulse.
Oh, no, he says, oh, no.
He says, oh, no, in those two words, not because he knows he's not sad for himself. He communicates that he is sad for his family because his family is going to miss him. It is a wonderful performance.
Dear listeners, I am tearing up. I am tearing up as I'm saying this. If you have not seen Richard Donner's Superman, and Colin, the movie You'll Believe a Man Can Fly, which Gareth says the famous ad line for it, go see it.
For me, my pick of comic book movies, of course, would be John Philip Law in Danger, Diabolique. This is a film in which our protagonist apparently destroys most of Italian bureaucracy, the ones that collect taxes and it's fine.
It's nobody, nobody, nobody cares. Nobody, nobody cares. Back to Deadpool and Wolverine.
And one more thing about Superman, Glenn Ford, Phyllis Thaxter, who plays Martha Kent, Glenn's playing Jonathan Kent, and Jeff East who plays young Clark Kent.
Well, he kind of plays them because his voice is dubbed.
Yeah, some sympathy for an actor like that gets to play a role in a big movie and may have kind of had big dreams about a career.
Who knows what he feels about his own life.
And then he goes to the premiere and his voice is dubbed by Chris Turley. It's like Alexander North, the composer.
He and Alex North had a support.
Alex North, dear listeners, Alex North, famous, very well known composer. I mean, did he do Spartacus? Maybe he did.
I don't recall. But he's a big time Hollywood composer. He gets the call.
Stanley Kubrick, he gets the check, possibly. Do the score for 2001, goes to the premiere with his wife in Britain. Very exciting.
Film starts. Oh, okay. Well, we got the spaget there through my piece.
That's fine. It'll sit through the whole movie. Nothing of his was used.
None of his music.
None of his music.
Let's talk about Deadpool and Wolverine.
Well, it may be. I just want to mention Jeff East's name again, playing Young Park Kent. We appreciate you, Jeff.
Thank you for your work there. And maybe this is the time to acknowledge that there has actually been a third co-host of The Film Talk, but we've edited out everything that he's said over the last 18 years.
All the insights.
If it was good enough for Alex North. So of course, it doesn't make sense to compare Deadpool and Wolverine just with Hulk, Wonder Woman, Dark Knight and Superman because those are quote unquote serious comic book movies.
This film is intended as a satire as well. And I think that the film, it would most want to be compared with. Although I don't think.
Hell's a poppin.
I don't think it's worthy of the comparison.
Well, maybe a hell's a poppin or it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world type film. But that's not what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of Blazing Saddles, because this film wants to be a satire of the real world.
And I understand that. And who knows about the sincerity or the good faith or the intentions of the people making it? I don't think it bears comparison with Blazing Saddles, because here's the problem with Deadpool versus Wolverine.
I think that's Deadpool and Wolverine.
Deadpool and Wolverine.
You know, I just realized they should make a sequel and they should call it Wolverine and Deadpool.
That would be great.
What a great idea. Here's the problem. Deadpool, the reason Deadpool doesn't compare well with Blazing Saddles.
Well, one of the primary reasons is that Blazing Saddles is punching up. Blazing Saddles is punching up racist power structures and that anti-Semitic power structures and tropes.
And it is co-written by Richard Pryor, a black man, and Mel Brooks, a Jewish man. And they have earned the right to punch up in that way. I'm not sure earned the right is the right way to say that.
But and while it has major homophobic blind spots and Blazing Saddles, not a not a perfect film, a film I find quite offensive when it comes to the homophobia. What it's trying to take on in terms of power is stuff that needs to be taken on.
The difference with Deadpool and Wolverine is it's just punching everything. It's punching everything. Where it's best is when it's self-deprecating, which is rare, or when it's punching out what I think you're going to want to talk about.
And I'd like to hear what you have to say about it.
When it's punching the or piercing the self-importance of Hollywood, and challenging the way that studios take themselves far too seriously, and also lamenting some of what might be worth keeping that seems to be dying.
There's a lot more to say, but I'd like to hear what you have to say before I say anymore. Jett, tell us about Deadpool and Wolverine.
Okay. By the way, you just said Wolverine earlier. I think it's awesome.
I'd go see Deadpool and Wolverine. Wolverine sounds like some sort of, you know...
Something you do to your car.
Well, no, it's an exotic fruit. Do you have the... Are the Wolverines good here?
Do you know the best way, how you squeeze them, the Wolverines, to tell if it's right?
Are they prickly?
I don't know what you're referring to. Let's talk about Deadpool. Let's talk about Wolverine and Deadpool.
You know, this... It does... For me, it does answer that immortal question.
We've always asked about cinema. What if we made Cannonball run, but we had a larger budget? Or, oh, wait, I got another one.
What if we made Ready Player One, but it was good? Hot take. Coming in hot.
Coming in. And if you love Ready Player One, that more power to you.
I thought you liked Ready Player One.
I did not.
We have this gap. We have this... Here's the thing.
Just as, you know, just as a footnote, we have a gap. There is that 10 year gap in which... This 10 year gap in which we didn't talk about movies.
So I don't actually know what you thought about any film between 2014 and early 2024.
Yeah, sort of a memory hole. I guess we didn't talk about Ready Player One. I mean, any film that references Excalibur, the great John Borman picture is I'm in for, but no.
But here's the thing, you're talking about lamenting. And for me, the thing that as someone who... I think I have a...
Do I have a degree in film history? That's something that happened in the 10 years we didn't do the show. I wouldn't have got a degree in film history.
I think it's great that you have to ask yourself if you have that degree.
Here's the thing.
Was it a Schrödinger degree?
Well, I moved and I was unpacking boxes that I had not seen for years to our listeners.
I was looking at various letters because we used to be paper-based, right? From when I first moved to, I guess I moved to London when I was 21 or 22.
I'm looking at different letters back home and the amount of different names that I've had over the years, I was like, oh, wow. So it's a valid question. Did I get a degree?
Well, somebody got a degree in film history. Here's the thing. The thing that's most interesting to me about this film is is sort of an end of cinema idea.
How about this? Let's not call it cinema. Let's say the end of the movies as they used to be in America, because we've talked about this before in the different incarnations of this show.
The movies have gone through many different stages, right? You had the old peep shows. You would turn the crank and you'd be able to watch moving pictures or watch somebody kiss, right?
And then you would have the silence. The movies were a time where you would watch, you'd get your news, you'd get your cartoons, you'd get your serials. It was a whole different thing.
Then TV came. Movies had to be reinvented. Big budget, wide screen films like Spartacus, score by Alex North, I understand.
Then, you know, you had the movies of the 70s. They're more for adults. As the TV took the childlike, wasteland aspect of the old movies.
And then now we're in this period of asking, like, what is a movie in a cinema? Because I saw it in a weekday and there's only two people. There's only two people in the cinema, right?
And I laughed out loud. There's a lot of funny bits, at least that I found funny. But part of the film's through line narrative is the death of movies as we knew them as a popular art form.
There's a whole sequence in which you see the ruins of the 20th Century Fox logo. Kind of in a mad... And it's in a Mad Max future world.
It's deliberately, they even mention, you know, Furiosa and they mention Mad Max. And interestingly enough, they mention Mad Max. They use the word IP, which is the sense, which is, you know, an acronym for intellectual property.
So this film exists in a world in which film fans are no longer... Folks, oh, I'm just interested in the movies. They're people that are interested in the business.
So that 50% of this movie is about the business of movies. And this movie is so popular because 50% of the discourse are embodied in all the discourse of popular cinema is the business of cinema. So it's sort of like a triumph of capitalism.
We think about the old days, you would have the parasocial relationships with film stars would be like fan clubs, fan magazines, right? You felt like you kind of knew the star. We think about Debbie Reynolds in Singing in the Rain.
She belongs to a fan club for the Gene Kelly character, right? And now you've got online discourse where people are dissecting and engaging and angry about or not angry about the studio systems and the machinations of the actual studio bosses.
And that's what this film is about. We think about, again, 20th Century Fox is in ruins because 20th Century Fox, the most famous film studios, what were they?
They were Paramount, Columbia a little bit less famous, but Paramount, Warner's 20th Century Fox, and now Disney bought them. And then Disney also owns, guess what?
The Muppets, and they bought Pixar, and they own those Star Wars things, and Indiana Jones, and they own Avatar, and they own Alien. And the audience knows this. And the audience is invested in arguing about this.
The audience gets the references that are strewn throughout Wolverine and Deadpool. Sorry, I can't get that out of my mind. Doctor, I've got a problem.
I think I've got Wolverine. It's, oh, it's the burning. They're strewn throughout.
And there is that parasocial relationship. When Ryan Reynolds is in the movie, he mentions his wife. He talks about Blake.
He talks about his wife. His wife is actually in the film, prominently, under a mask. And that's part of the fun of the movie.
But it also feels almost like the end of movies as we knew them. Because now one or two companies own everything. And there's a little bit of space to judge and satirize it.
And this film reminded me of those dystopian novels, right? In the future, which the state controls all. And they allow a little bit of dissent as a release valve.
Right? So it's okay, like 1984. You know, we're going to let you have a little bit, a little bit of dissent.
And maybe even the people leading a rebellion are working for us because that keeps the system stable. So for me, watching Deadpool and Wolverine, it felt like, oh, this is a necessary thing to keep the system stable.
Because we allow you to mock what has happened to the movies. And this allows this engine to keep going.
Yes, we allow you to have fun mocking the thing that's actually making your lives. Well, I don't want to say making your lives emptier, that seems patronizing.
But you're literally paying to participate in the destruction of the thing you used to enjoy. And I wonder, I was actually just thinking when you were saying there about like 50% of the film is about the business.
Yes.
And about people knowing about the business. It reminded me of an experience I had last year. I went to what at one level was simply the greatest live concert experience I've ever been to.
And I went with a friend who's deeply immersed in the music industry and has been to every concert you could imagine and frankly was often working backstage or in the sound desk for some massive stadium gigs.
And he said it was one of the five best gigs he'd ever been to.
And it was almost completely spoiled by the behavior of audience members who I think had been hooked the way you're talking about, the way some people are being hooked by a movie like Deadpool.
This was Peter Gabriel's performance in Dublin last year, a three hour concert. It was an initiatory experience on what was interrupting.
It was behind me, a couple of rows behind me, two guys who during every song for about the first 30 minutes, until we asked them to stop, were talking loudly about each song, while the song was playing.
And it was things like, oh yeah, he recorded that one in 1986. And Dylan Lowe was there.
Were they doing a podcast? Is it possible there, you were interrupting maybe Ireland's biggest podcast. Was the crowd calling for Genesis songs, like to Phil Collins?
Were they asking for In the Air Tonight?
I think, I mean, of course, of course, when we talk about art, every word is worth it. Gold and in fairness, in fairness to us, we tend not to do it while we're in a cinema watching a film.
Speak for yourself.
In a sense, these guys were experiencing some kind of pleasure by talking about the songs while the songs were playing. But of course, they couldn't hear the songs.
They certainly weren't listening to the songs and it was making it harder for everybody else to hear the songs. I was trying in this film to pay attention to what was really happening in terms of the story. The story is far too complicated.
There are multiple timelines and people jump in between different things. There's all these facsimiles of creativity. The use of like a prayer in a fight sequence.
There's no reason for them to use that particular song other than they could get the rights for it and it has a rhythm that they like.
There's no connection between the meaning of that song and the meaning of that sequence other than the fact that they could get the rights and the song has a beat and a rhythm that seems to work with that.
I would much rather have less well-known songs in it than just what seems like obvious choices. The other thing is that particular sequence is a homage to Oldboy.
Yes, it is.
A very famous scene where you're watching this horrendously violent sequence as the camera moves left, right, and just pans along from one side to the other. And yeah, I get it. Fine.
But it's already been homaged in other films. And it felt to me like they're doing everything extremely well to, let's call it a high degree of technical craft here. But none of it felt fresh.
None of it felt like I hadn't seen it before. And that's not my most, I don't know, the thing that irritated is the wrong word.
I was really troubled by something that I saw in it, which I'll get to in a minute because you have that look in your face.
Well, we should stream this on YouTube.
Do you know, for me, the sort of the Rosetta Stone for this film, and the reason why I mentioned jokingly as I do Cannonball Run earlier, is the end credits, because in the end credits, we see the actors we've been watching, we see them much younger
doing other superhero films for the now-defunct Fox, which doesn't exist, right, because it's bought by Disney. So, this film to me feels like a sort of a, almost a goodbye to the actors themselves.
They're making a film for themselves, which is the Cannonball Run.
The Cannonball Run is famous, like you're watching a bunch of stars, and it's really, and it's, you know, Burt Reynolds, wacky cameos, maybe the people weren't even there, they're badly shot, but you've got Roger Moore playing, Roger Moore playing,
James Bond, he's poking fun at his own career. And in the end credits has this montage of behind-the-scenes footage of like when Hugh Jackman was just a kid, and he's nervous having to play Wolverine, like, oh, this is really nerve-racking, like
nobody knows who I am, you know, he wasn't famous. He's a song and dance man, right, Curly in Oklahoma.
And for me, this feels like a fan film where the actors are themselves the fans, they're fans, they can't believe, can you believe this ride that we went on?
That we were young, didn't know anything and we got hired and we were in this superhero machine and wasn't that crazy.
So to me, that takes, I appreciate that you were irritated, but that ending illuminated, or I would say certainly enriched the rest of the film.
And it's in the film too because there's a whole sequence, the whole, maybe the last, what, last sort of the film references the forgotten superheroes. Do you remember these actors? Nothing happened to them.
Channing Tatum never got his own movie and he references that. He goes, well, was I born here in this void? Or he does it in his, in his Cajun, Cajun accent.
And then we have, I was so wonderful to see for me, Wesley Snipes, you know, as, as Blade. And there's this reference to, do you remember these guys?
And they were coming from films that didn't quite work or they're forgotten about or they're kind of crappy, what have you. And so the film becomes again about that art of making films at the end of the movies as we knew them.
And so for me that I had a happier time, it sounds like.
Sure, I wasn't, I wasn't.
This because of this.
I wasn't irritated by the funny, funny stuff. You know, and I, I had an experience that was mostly enjoyable.
What irritated me, and that's, that isn't a strong enough word, is that it's not impossible to make a funny action film that has something to say. And it's also not necessarily a bad thing to make a funny action film that has nothing to say.
But what's a problem is when you make a funny action film that pretends it has something to say, when most of the time it's just name checking, a list of things that it's not actually earning.
And I'm going to name three things where I feel that it does this. One is that Deadpool, the character of Deadpool is pansexual, but all of his, all the references to his attraction to guys are played for laughs or scatological humor.
His relationship with his girlfriend is clearly portrayed as superior, authentic and normative. All his gay stuff, put it that way, is a joke or worse.
Well, to me, that feels like it's adolescent. You could call this film Penetration, colon the movie.
It's about, it's dealing with young, like, I'm saying teenage male sexuality in which you are attracted to in some ways you don't understand, or have some sort of sexual grappling with your male friends.
And then there's that idea that you have to leave that behind when you become an adult. And that's when you settle down in a moment. It's sort of like the story of the West, right?
The Westerns, you're with your other cowboys.
Homephobic, triarchal, empire building story.
Yeah, but there's something, but there's a reason why that's archetypal. There's something there, right? It's an old story.
You're with the males. And then you must leave that behind and you must settle down. And then civilization starts.
And it may make some space for people to think, OK, it's better to have a bit of a laugh about this than it is to persecute people.
But I think they're trying to have their cake. And eat it by naming Deadpool as a pansexual character. He's not really pansexual if all his attraction to guys is just a joke.
Or coercive. And there are certainly jokes about borderline non-consensual stuff. And there is a character who's portrayed as gay, who's mocked in the movie.
If they make a Deadpool movie in which there is an honest same sex interaction between two men that isn't played for laughs, we can revisit this topic. The second thing, this is the more important thing.
This is the thing I thought you would actually have already brought up. We often talk about the myth of redemptive violence. We often talk about the way that villains are treated.
This movie does something that's absolutely incredible and then utterly negates it within minutes of it doing it. And that is one character is about to be neutralized by the good guys.
And then one of the good guys remembers what his mentor, who's either Dr.
Xavier or Patrick Stewart, I'm not sure if it's the character or the person of Patrick Stewart that he's thinking about at this point, who basically would say to him, Wolverine, don't kill people when you can restrain them by other means.
And so Wolverine decides not to kill this person. That person, played by Emma Corrin, they respond to Wolverine's actions by opening a portal to let Wolverine and Deadpool go. And for a moment it looks like, oh, here we are.
Exactly the very thing that I yearn for in storytelling. Honest portrayals of the possibility of mercy, compassion, something less than lethal, and of people actually changing. Yes.
I'm not naive enough to think that every time you do something kind for somebody, that they automatically change their ways.
But the film, not only in, like within, within one or two scenes, not only does it ignore that Emma Corrin's character, Cassandra Nova, I think is their character's name, that Cassandra Nova has experienced this mercy and has responded to the mercy
by deciding, okay, thank you. I'm let you go. But they continue on their villainous ways. And then, spoiler alert, they get annihilated at the end of the movie.
But worse than that, Wolverine and Deadpool forget what Dr. Xavier would have advised them to do. And they just slaughter dozens and dozens of people after this moment.
Now, so I know, dear listeners, some of you may be thinking, Gareth, you're taking this too seriously. To which I would respond, perhaps that's the case. And the film takes it seriously in the moment where they show mercy to Cassandra Nova.
And then it pulls the rug out from under us. It takes, it doesn't take its own seriousness seriously, even in those moments.
How great would have been to see Cassandra Nova at the party at the end? I know. That would have been great.
It's not impossible to come up with a creative solution to a villain that doesn't involve killing.
I thought they might do it because there is one gray line.
They ask her, Wolverine, and they will ask her, why you like this? And she goes, like, if she can't believe it, she goes, I don't know. And you could tell that the character is like, wow, I'm really screwed up and I don't know why.
And I thought, well, that's really interesting. Are they going to do something there with that? And they didn't.
I know this is a lament that we often get into. Yeah, it wouldn't be hard. It would have been great if she doesn't get killed.
And then she's at the part of the end. That would be wonderful. Oh, you know, I was enjoying this film, but now.
Yeah.
I'm going to make it worse. I'm going to make it worse. I'm going to make it worse.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. Going to make it worse. Only Gareth could make the film worse after you could see it.
I'm not saying that they have to be dourer and grey raincoated and bleak in order to have coherence and meaning.
You could still have just as much fun with this film if after Cassandra Nova's life has been spared, that they then become a better person or they then decide, you know what, I'm not going to get involved in this anymore.
I'm going to retire to my wasteland and sit under the 20s as refox monument.
She lives inside the head of Paul Rudd. I did laugh out loud at the Paul Rudd joke. It's an obvious one, but it was funny.
He finally aged.
Yeah.
He finally aged.
The third thing after this, what was I saying? Oh, yes, the queer bathing and the pretend mercy.
For a moment at the climax, it actually looks like not only Wolverine's archetypal identity as the one who suffers on our behalf, and that is Wolverine's identity.
He suffers on our behalf through all the Wolverine storylines, but the Deadpool is actually going to join Wolverine in that self-giving, sacrificial love.
He's called himself Marvel Jesus the whole way through the movie, and there is a moment where it looks like he's actually going to step into the archetypal behavior of the archetypal Jesus and give his life, not only to save Wolverine, but to save
the rest of us. At that point, I'm like, oh, this is quite interesting here. But they don't even wait for the next sequel to show that this was a costless death and a painless resurrection. It means nothing.
And I think up to that point, I was still feeling that this film was at its best was reminding me of a film that you love, a film that you hold in the highest regard.
Ken, I'll run. Eyes Wide Shut. I watch that film.
I watch Eyes Wide Shut every month, by the way, just for Alan Cumming.
It used to be every six months.
Well, I'm getting older. So what film do you do? How's my Wolverine?
Ah, Doctor.
What serious film do you think that you love that this reminded me of the most at its best?
What you got to give me, I love a lot of serious films and a lot of films that aren't serious. You have to give me-
So it's a serious film that's a serious attempt about shattering myths about both something in the real world that's really important and also movies about that thing in the real world that's really important. It's a film you like more than I do.
Boy, that film sounds great.
You like breathlessly called me up on the phone when you saw this. It was in TFT 1.0. It's a film about something that really happened and about the way that thing that really happened is portrayed in the movies.
And it attempts to shatter myths about war and war movies.
The thin red line? Is it the thin red line? I really want to see this film.
Is it Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge?
No, that's not a bad film.
I was just on a road trip with a young Cuban man, new to the United States, and boy, does he love Hacksaw Ridge. Once he found out I do the Film Talk, let me tell you, that man loves, that young man.
Well, Hacksaw Ridge is about, I mean, that's a powerful film about a man who didn't want to take up arms, but serve people during war.
This is a film about both the second World War and it's a film about second World War movies and it's a film about war movies generally, and it's a film about war generally, and it propelled a German television actor to stratospheric fame about 15
years ago. Okay. The last line of the film is Quentin Tarantino putting in the mouth of one of his actors, this might be my masterpiece, that is Inglourious Basterds.
And there are moments in Deadpool and Wolverine that maybe think about Inglourious Basterds because it's trying to make fun of how seriously many people take comic book movies.
And frankly, it's a bit of a genius to make fun of the audience and still make the audience like you, right? That's a bit of genius to kind of tell the audience, you're in on the joke with us.
The problem other than its aesthetic inconsistency is that it doesn't propose any alternatives to the worship of the business.
And when it does, particularly regarding the mercy that is shown and then forgotten about to Cassandra, it immediately forgets about the best things in it.
And I don't think that it's without any prejudice to all the good people involved in making this film and the sincere effort to make a thoroughly entertaining movie, which is clearly thoroughly entertaining a lot of people.
And sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes a funny movie is just a funny movie. I don't think it's with prejudice to them to say, do better, do better, an audience is deserved better.
And even though it may be impossible to recover what has been lost, I think cinema is still alive and going to a matinee that two people are at in the afternoon will eventually become tiresome to some of us and we will opt for something that's a
I think that's true.
I mean, think about it, if you have a phone, you're paying your monthly bill for the phone. So why go to the movies? You already have that entertainment on demand.
Anything that you need, really. That's what's happened here. And cinema has tried to combat that just like they went with widescreen.
I saw, I'm going to call it DNW. I saw it in a screen that has the, I think they call it the Screen X experience. I didn't know that when I went to see it.
That means on either side of the screen, dear listeners, they had other projectors and they're projecting more information in theory for the big action scenes. So when the film started, I'm like, what is the walls of the cinema?
But the thing is the walls of the cinema are, they're not painted with a super reflective paint. There's still the exit signs there and we can see illuminated. And I'm thinking, oh God, is the whole film going to be like this?
And then it stopped. I'm like, okay, that was distracting because there's the big lines where the walls hit the main screen. And then it went on again for another big action scene.
So I'm like, oh, okay, we're going to get this green X experience for every big action scene. But then no, it just went on sometimes. Randomly, it was a jumble.
It was a jumble that was not thought out. And it sounds to me that that's how you felt about this film. They could have done something more than it was a jumble.
They could have done something more and it wouldn't have been that hard to do it.
Also, that's green X thing. I saw Ford vs. Ferrari and The Flash in screen X and they were tremendous entertainments.
But here's my worry. You know what somebody's going to do?
Wait, hold on. Don't forget about Abel Gans's Napoleon did the same thing with the three screens.
Napoleon and The Flash.
But at the end.
Yes, tell me. What somebody's going to do is there may well be theaters in the future where what gets projected on the side of the screen during the movie will be advertisements.
Sure. Well, we just call that real life. That's how I'm feeling right now.
The Film Talk, folks, was brought to you by PepsiCo. PepsiCo, a fine family of products.
So I have a few last questions for you.
Yes, before we're wrapping up here.
I think we know what I felt about Deadpool versus Wolverine. There we go. I don't even know the title.
If Deadpool and Wolverine was an ampersand, not A&D, it's an ampersand. Yes, entertaining and interminable, interesting and irritating. And I might go to see it again just to think about it.
That's why I love you.
This film was a disgrace. I got tickets tonight to see it again.
I am Stadler.
You love the movies. That's what I love about you. You love the movies.
So what's your closing statement about Deadpool and Wolverine?
And what are better films with the word dead in the title? Because I got four. If you got to see a film with the word dead in the title, I got four for you.
I would say Deadpool, The Deadpool.
The Deadpool.
That's not a better film.
Is not one of those films. It's got Jim Carrey kind of playing an Axl Rose figure. The Deadpool.
And isn't Liam Neeson in it?
Liam Neeson plays a director.
Yeah, it's not a good film. So The Deadpool.
No, not a better film than Deadpool.
There's Dead Man, the Jim Jarmer's film. That is a better film.
Oh, I'd forgotten that. I have, it's a list of five then. It's a list of five.
What are your other four, sir?
You got your Dead Poet Society, which is actually a better film than a lot of people remember it being in a much kind of more mournful film.
You got your Dead Zone, which is one of the few films that David Cronenberg made as a director for hire.
Did it the same year as Videodrome. Amazing.
Look at that. Look at that great Howard Shore score, Christopher Walken's most memorable performance, and also a more unfulfilled film with a very meaningful question at the center. Another David Cronenberg film, Dead Ringers.
Sure. Dead Man that you've just mentioned and my favorite film.
Hold on. Does Dead Ringers count? Because originally it was shot and put together a producer in the name Twins.
But then the Danny DeVito Schwarzenegger film came in and they had to come up with something else and they came up with Dead, I'm just saying.
It counts. It counts. Interestingly enough, Jim Jarman, who is one of my favorite directors who made Dead Man, also made another film with the word Dead in the title that I didn't like at all.
So it's not in my list of top five dead films. The best film with Dead in the title. I don't know if you've seen this.
This is a film that everybody should go and see. As soon as you can. And that is John Huston's last film, based on the James Joyce novella called simply The Dead.
And all you need for your movie diet until we next talk, may well be satisfied by sampling The Dead. But what's your closing statement on? What's this film called Deadpool vs.
Deadpool? Why do you keep saying Deadpool vs. Deadpool and Wolverine?
Deadpool and Wolverine.
Originally, the idea was going to be called Deadpool and Friend, which is cute. The Dead is so, John Huston, I'm going to end by just agreeing with Gareth. You know, I don't know if cinema is alive or dead.
Can you say that again, please?
Can you say that again, please?
People can always rewind. You know, The Dead, the John Huston film, you can look at the behind the scene photographs in the making of it. And he's, you know, he's in a chair with an oxygen tank.
And he is making this beautiful film. Go see The Dead, dear listener. You can do that after you visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/thefilmtalk if you want to contribute.
Get our bonus episodes like our Francis Ford Coppola interview that we just released last week for the old archives. Don't forget, we're also on Facebook at facebook.com/thefilmtalk. I'm getting more serious.
My voice is lowered. Because I'm starting to think about John Huston's The Dead.
And the end of movies.
Well, these are linear static images shown quickly. Sometimes with audio and not. Those will always be around in some form.
Maybe going to movies will be different. But you know what? Right now, right here, Gareth and I exist.
We're talking to each other. Our friendship is real. Something may happen after the recording.
I'm up here in the mountains. I'm going to get in the car. Something may happen to me.
These could be my last words.
Someone may be listening to this hundreds of years in the future, inscribed on a platinum box that's been sent in a satellite into outer space.
We can only hope. I'm concerned that Gareth thinks that the film talk is the pinnacle of human achievement. They put on the gold disc for The Voyager.
Not the pinnacle, perhaps a pinnacle.
Up there was what was on that gold disc with Louis Armstrong, a great photograph of a handpicking grapes.
Folks I've enjoyed talking. I hope we continue and that I make it past this show. I've been Jett Loe.
I've been...
I've been...
I've been...
Wolverine.
I've been Jett's friend, Gareth Higginson.
We'll keep talking.