Esau McCauley (2:07)

So how spoilery are we? Like, what kind of warning do we need to give to people?

Sky Jutani (2:10)

I think we're going to get spoilery.

Esau McCauley (2:12)

Okay, what's. Wait, when is. Nevermind. We can cut this part. I was gonna ask, when is the podcast?

Sky Jutani (2:16)

How much time this is gonna come out? Friday. The movie comes out Friday.

Esau McCauley (2:20)

But don't listen to the podcast after You've seen the movie. Cause we're gonna spoil it. Yeah, we're gonna spoil it. Okay.

Sky Jutani (2:26)

Okay. So I think we should each go around to begin with and just give a brief sentence or two summary of our take of this movie.

Esau McCauley (2:37)

Yes.

David French (2:37)

Okay.

Sky Jutani (2:38)

So, Esau, do you wanna begin?

Esau McCauley (2:40)

We had to rate it. And so last night, right after it, I think I gave it a six and a half, which is probably the lowest take in our group. I think after having slept on it a little bit, I might up it to like a seven. A seven and a half. So the movie is growing on me as I get distanced from it. So seven and a half. Maybe eight if I'm feeling very distant.

Sky Jutani (3:02)

But overall, that's a positive score.

Esau McCauley (3:03)

Overall, it's a positive score.

Sky Jutani (3:04)

You enjoyed the movie.

Esau McCauley (3:06)

If they announce a sequel, I'm going to the sequel.

Sky Jutani (3:08)

Okay. David?

David French (3:10)

I would say I'm going to give it. I'm going to say exactly as fun as I wanted it to be and exactly the change of pace that I wanted it to be. Because the Zack Snyder vision of Superman and Man of Steel and Batman versus Superman and the Snyder cut of Justice League was much. This was a. That was much darker. Much darker.

Esau McCauley (3:34)

Yeah.

David French (3:35)

Whereas this was a complete change of pace. Much more reminiscent of, say, Guardians of the Galaxy and the Marvel Universe, which Gunn did. And that's what I was hoping. I was hoping that Gunn would be James Gunn and he would not try to be Zack Snyder. And that's what I. I enjoyed the whole thing. And the more I thought about it, the more fun I had thinking about it. So I'm even happier than I was last night. And as you guys know, I was really happy last night.

Esau McCauley (4:03)

Yeah. Yeah.

Sky Jutani (4:04)

I thought you'd maybe taken something before we went into the theater.

Esau McCauley (4:10)

It was a side of you I'd never seen. I've never seen full nerd French. And so this is like a whole new thing. I've seen Political Analysis, but I've never seen Comic book French before. It was great for me.

Sky Jutani (4:21)

I've encountered it a couple times.

David French (4:22)

It's my true self. Yeah, it's my true self.

Sky Jutani (4:29)

Okay. For those of you who know me, I love Superman. I'm wearing Superman Superman hat right now. I've always. I've loved that character since I was a little kid. I have been looking forward to this movie for a long, long time. In fact, back in. Was it 2005 when the.

Esau McCauley (4:43)

The.

Sky Jutani (4:44)

The Brandon Routh Superman Returns was coming, I was so excited for that kind of reboot. And it was Massively disappointing to me. The Zack Snyder version with Henry Cavill, I was super excited. In fact, they were filming that not very far from here out in Aurora. And I was super excited about that one. I like that one, but it didn't thrill me because it was so dark and brooding and angsty. So this new one by James Gunn, I, again, was very hopeful that we were gonna. And for the most part, very happy. So here's my summary, is this was a great James Gunn movie and a good Superman movie.

Esau McCauley (5:20)

Oh, okay.

Sky Jutani (5:21)

So we can talk about ranking it among Superman movies later. But I really enjoyed it. I would see it again. I thought it was fun from beginning to end, but I felt like it was first and foremost a James Gunn movie.

Esau McCauley (5:36)

Yeah.

Sky Jutani (5:36)

And there's, you know, like, there's certain filmmakers in the first 60 seconds, you know, it's a Tarantino movie. Yeah, right. And the same thing with James Gunn.

David French (5:45)

Paul Thomas Anderson.

Sky Jutani (5:46)

Yes, exactly. And James Gunn's the same way. He does ensemble stories with lots of quirky characters. Yeah, that. That's here. He does a lot of silly humor. Yeah, he does that here. He does sort of acrobatic musical action scenes. He does that here. He does super highly stylized action and doesn't do tons of character development. Same thing here. And he makes you smile from beginning to end, but he doesn't really make you feel anything super deeply. And this movie, again, I enjoyed it, but.

Esau McCauley (6:17)

So I'm going to disagree. I'm going to disagree.

David French (6:22)

You went too far there, Sky.

Esau McCauley (6:23)

We'll go with the gun part, because as I was watching Guardians of the Galaxy, I found myself really invested in the raccoon. Like, I felt something for the raccoon.

Sky Jutani (6:33)

Which one? Which one?

Esau McCauley (6:34)

The third one. Is that one.

Sky Jutani (6:35)

The third. Well, the third one's all about rocking.

Esau McCauley (6:37)

I know what I'm saying. Like, well, if you could make me feel something for a raccoon, I'm not just smiling. I'm actually feeling something.

Sky Jutani (6:43)

Yeah, I felt like those movies. I thought he did a better job at tugging on the heartstrings than he did in this movie.

Esau McCauley (6:50)

And even so, we don't want to. Maybe we can talk a bit about having an analysis of James Gunn. I think that he is, at heart, whether or not he is a person, his movies aren't cynical.

Sky Jutani (7:06)

No, that's true.

Esau McCauley (7:06)

And there's a hopeful familial vibe that he does a really good job of writing and creating. And so for me, I guess I'll put it this way. And this is what I was Thinking about maybe saying it's a great James Gunn and a good Superman movie is accurate. There is a floor for a James Gunn movie that is pretty high for me. And so if it was a James Gunn movie written by him, directed by him or whatever. Or directed by him, it's basically gonna be like it starts at a B. Yeah. And I think that I was judging it by initially wanting to have a transcendent classic Superman movie that made me feel like while I was watching Christopher Reeve. And it didn't do that, but it was actually a very good.

Sky Jutani (7:46)

I feel exactly the same way. I don't think anything is going to touch the Richard donner Christopher Reeve 1978 Superman movie. It's just in a completely different league. But I went into this. You thought this was just as good.

Esau McCauley (7:59)

Go ahead.

Sky Jutani (8:00)

Again, I like this movie. I'm not criticizing.

Esau McCauley (8:02)

Let him cook. Okay, let's see what you got. Sorry.

David French (8:05)

Okay, so. So a couple things, like, I mean, number one on the. That was there, were there no feels here? Like, was there?

Esau McCauley (8:12)

No.

David French (8:13)

And I don't, I don't want to go all sky and spoil the whole thing, but I will say that if, as an adoptive father watching through to the end, I got some major feels, major feels at the very end. I thought that very end was very, very touching. I thought that, you know, that whole. And I don't want to spoil everything, but to me, the way in which the family story played out was super touching.

Sky Jutani (8:43)

Yes.

David French (8:45)

So to me it hit the feels there. But. Okay, here's my problem. When reflecting back to Superman I and ii, which I'm going to be with you, I loved immensely. Immensely. I also saw them when I was really young. And so it's like watching that first moment when you see Star Wars. Right. And how A New Hope, the very first Star wars, it's always gonna hit you in that particular space where you're kind of, when you watch it, it goes back to that 10 year old kid or however old you were when you first saw it. And so I think it's almost unfair to do that comparison because I don't know what a 56 year old version of myself would think if I saw Superman in 1978 or 79 or whenever that was. And so I think it's very hard to penetrate that youthful, that nostalgia wall. So I think it's kind of an apples and oranges thing. But I will say this. I felt like it connected with the spirit of that first film pretty darn well, because the spirit of that first film was Both like there was real emotion to it, but a lot of it was funny. The Lex Luthor character and his girlfriend. There was often. A lot of. A lot of that movie is funnier than you might remember, as I recall. So I felt like it connected with the spirit.

Sky Jutani (10:15)

I think that's a very good take on it. And one of the things I probably appreciate most about this new movie is I think kids are gonna love it.

Esau McCauley (10:23)

Yeah.

David French (10:23)

Yes.

Sky Jutani (10:24)

I think if you are a 10 year old kid today and you go see this movie, you're gonna hopefully fall in love with this character the way that we may have when we saw the Christopher Reeve versions when we were young. So I appreciate that, that James Gunn is taking this character back to a bright, hopeful, uplifting, positive vision, rather than the dark, brooding, angsty, Zack Snyder Superman kind of take. And the other thing I like is, if you remember, most people probably don't because it was terrible. And I left the theater in a rage when Superman Returns came out.

Esau McCauley (10:57)

Okay.

Sky Jutani (10:58)

That movie was very indebted to the original Richard Donner Christopher Reeve Superman. They tried to make it a continuation of it. And I almost felt like they were too dependent on that original Superman movie. And what I liked what James Gunn did here is they took a couple of things from the original Superman movie, like the score. They still had the John Williams Superman March.

David French (11:20)

Love it.

Sky Jutani (11:20)

Although updated and modified for use in this film. And they had a couple of things that were sort of iconic from that movie, like the design of the Fortress of Solitude with the crystals. So there was just enough kind of hat tip to the Richard Donner movie that I felt was appropriate without depending too much on that heritage. So I thought he just got that perfect.

Esau McCauley (11:42)

Can I say something about what he said earlier? It was about an hour from where we were, where we lived, to go to see this movie in imax. And for whatever reason, I just went and I decided to go back and revisit some old hip hop. Like it was a debate about which artists were the best. I wanna talk about who they were, but it was just like I always remember being very passionate about who I thought was the best rapper in the 90s. And so I'm listening to this now as an adult, and I realized I was completely wrong. That was strictly through the eyes of nostalgia, like, to go back and revisit it now. I was able to see or hear that music in a way that I didn't hear when I was 16, 17 years old. And so that reminded me what he said about these movies. There is an Emotional connection that we have to a movie that makes us feel a certain way at a certain age. And there is no, there hasn't been a movie like that. That's happened to me since I was an adult because I'm not in that stage of life anymore. But if I take a step back and say character by character, is there any major character in this movie that I don't like? I think they nailed Lois Lane, I think they nailed Superman, I think they nailed Jimmy. And I think they nailed the chief reporter. I mean, the head of the newspaper, Barry White. Barrett. Yeah, those characters who are central to the mythology. And I was like, you know what? I actually like all of them. And I think it's not a spoiler to say. Cause he plays a central role in the trailer. The dog. Like the dog.

Sky Jutani (13:14)

Krypto.

David French (13:14)

Yes. Skeptical about the dog.

Esau McCauley (13:17)

I was in on the dog. And so I just think that they did a good job of these are characters who I can imagine seeing like three or four movies with these people and getting to know them over and over again. Some of the other characters, they feel like they were cameos. And I'm not sure there's enough development there of the extra superheroes to really be interested in seeing them anymore.

Sky Jutani (13:42)

I agree.

David French (13:43)

I thought Nathan Filon as a Green Lantern was awesome. Chest. That was an unexpected bonus because I remember, you know, the trailers, you very briefly see him with this absurd haircut, just, I mean, looking very unsuperhero like. And he never looks like a superhero in the movie. I mean, he looks like a middle aged dude with a bad haircut and a funny suit, you know, and. But he's just consistently hilarious all the way through. And you know, I don't know if you noticed the subtlety here. Well, it wasn't very subtle. But when he intervenes at one point in the movie, again, just. They'll keep this vague. The green fists that he forms to defeat the enemies all end up flipping them. I don't know why that I cracked up. I'm interested though, because I do think we had a divergence of opinion on Lex Luthor.

Sky Jutani (14:47)

Yes, we can get into that for a second. But before we go to Lex, one of the things I thought that James Gunn did pretty well with the script is when you look at those other side characters, whether Green Lantern or Hawkgirl or Mr. Terrific, who I really, really liked.

David French (15:02)

Oh, he was great.

Sky Jutani (15:02)

He was fantastic. Those characters are. They're kind of jaded, a little bit cynical, kind of gritty. And you contrast that with the Superman character, who, in a way, and it's set up right from the beginning of the film, is kind of naive. He sees the positivity and goodness in everyone. And he's always. In one of the trailers, he rescues a dog. There's another point where he rescues a squirrel. When they're battling the giant Kaiju Godzilla, like, creature. Superman's trying to figure out a way to safely move that creature away from the city without having to kill it. And the other superheroes are like, come on. Like, we just got to kill this thing. Like, so he. He's presented as really innocent and pure and uncynical. Which I like that they made a positive Superman. Very different than the Zack Snyder Superman who's all angsty and snaps the neck of his enemy at the end of the movie.

Esau McCauley (15:58)

Remember, I think that's one of the things I was thinking about as the movie was developing is one of the hardest things he talk about in fiction and in literature is to convey to make someone who is virtuous narratively interesting. And so I was glad that Superman was doing good for the sake of doing good versus kind of saving the world on the way to saving his family. You know, it's like. It's usually like whatever larger good that I do in most modern superhero movies are like a secondary outcome of my primary objective. And so I think he found a way to make someone virtuous interesting. And the way he did it, which they did. And this is once again, not spoiler. Cause it's in the trailer. He's vulnerable. Both, like, physically. Cause you see that he gets beat up. That's in the trailer. And you see as the movie unfurls, there's kind of a simplicity to the way that he thinks that is outdone by Lex Luthor. Like, Lex Luthor is a devious character. And the way that he's manipulating events in Superman is just kind of plodding along. And you kind of want Superman as you're watching it. They go, no, Superman. Like, you're being manipulated. Like, figure out a way. Like, yeah, yeah.

Sky Jutani (17:07)

I want to get into that in a little bit because I. My take on the Superman character is probably the part that's going to get me in the most trouble of this. Of this conversation. But before that, let's go back to David and Lex Luthor. I found him to be kind of one dimensional in this movie, and I didn't dislike him. And I think this is part of the way James Gunn makes movies. James Gunn is not a subtle filmmaker. He, rather than Showing you why Lex hates Superman. Or rather than showing you something subtle, he just has the character say it.

Esau McCauley (17:44)

Yeah, right.

Sky Jutani (17:45)

They just model it. If you remember, there's this incredible moment in the original Superman movie where Clark Kent is in Lois Lane's apartment and you know, he's slouched over and he's wearing his glasses and he has this moment where he's thinking about revealing his true identity to Lois. And he takes off his glasses and Christopher Reeve just straightens up and no words are spoken, nothing is said. And in the course of a few seconds, you see him transform into Superman. Then he thinks about it, he puts his glasses back on, he goes back into Clark. And like so much is conveyed in that 15 seconds without any words being spoken. That is not the way James Gunn makes a movie. He has Lex Luthor just saying to the screen what he hates about Superman. And even like a climax in the movie when Superman is declaring kind his big lesson that he learned from this whole story, he just says it. You know, there's. There's no subtlety in the storytelling. And that's fine. It's just James Gunn. It's. But I kind of miss some of that. And for Lex, it was always just. I'm just. I just hate this guy. And like, I hate Superman. But he just says it. He never shows it. Like, Lex is jealous that the world loves Superman instead of him. But you don't see that displayed in the movie. You don't see the population shifting its loyalties from Lex to Superman or then back again. And it's just said, it's just stated. And I found, like, that's kind of lazy storytelling. But when you cram so much into a movie, you don't have a lot of time for subtleties.

David French (19:11)

Yeah, I liked the Lex Luthor character number one, because he was just very well played, is incredibly diabolical and also incredibly calm. Like, the one thing that I liked about it was when he felt like when he was feeling full of himself, chaos could be happening around him. And he had total confidence in his crew, he had total confidence in his technology, had total confidence in the moment. And I thought that that was portraying Lex Luthor as this hyper competent mogul who I've always. I've never found Lex Luthor like the most compelling villain because he has no powers. Right. Compared to Superman, et cetera. But here in this movie, you could see how he could be that villain and the way in which he made Superman vulnerable. Because the knock on Superman has always been, well, you lose a little Bit of the drama because he's just so strong, right. So powerful. And I thought the movie did a really nice job of both making him emotionally vulnerable and making him not truly physically vulnerable, but able to be defeated, at least in, you know, in the short run. And I thought that it was kind of an ingenious way that they did it and look so much as expectations. When I walk into a Zack Snyder Superman movie or a Zack Snyder superhero movie, or Christopher Nolan superhero movie, I know that I'm walking into something that in Christopher Nolan's case, it's going to be not just a superhero movie. It's going to be a film. You take the three Batmans, put them on a shelf. They're their own thing. They're almost not even in the superhero genre. They're so transcendent. But then you take a Zack Snyder. What's he doing here? His whole thesis, as Sonny Bunch says, is, what if the gods, Small G were real? What would that be like? How would that radiate out and impact all of us? And his movies are like a exploration of that, which is one of the reasons why they're darker. James Gunn is just like, this is fun. Yeah, this is fun. I enjoy this. I'm having a great time making this movie, and I appreciate that. I love both ways. I love both visions. But to call it. I love the way you said I was. It's a James Gunn movie, as you kind of saw at first. And for me, that's a feature. Yeah, that's definitely a feature, not a bug.

Esau McCauley (21:45)

I think that one of the criticisms that people have made of the Marvel Universe is that some of the movies felt all the same. And so the fact that you have a distinctive director. This is my freezing cold take, or maybe this is a hot take. I think that Gunn is the kind of director who can make a good Superman movie. I'm not sure that he can make a good Batman movie.

Sky Jutani (22:09)

Yeah, I don't think.

David French (22:10)

Oh, yeah.

Esau McCauley (22:11)

And so could you bring Snyder back to do the. They're such contrasting characters. And so I think he does good with someone who's. And the same thing with Guardians of the Galaxy. It's kind of a quirky, fun bunch, but if you want someone who's, like, dealing with that kind of darkness, I wonder if he could. I wonder how it's going to come. Cause he's gonna make a Batman movie.

Sky Jutani (22:30)

No, he's in charge of the dcu, but he's not the one actually writing all the scripts and directing all the movies. He's Overseeing it. He's overseeing it, but hopefully he's giving other writers, directors and creatives their freedom to make the films that have to fit within the universe he's constructing. So I agree with you. You have to match the filmmaker with the character.

Esau McCauley (22:48)

Yes.

Sky Jutani (22:49)

And I think he is a pretty good match for Superman. And for me, it felt like when I was a kid growing up, Saturday morning cartoons, Justice League was always the highlight. This felt like a Justice League cartoon updated and made into a feature length live action movie.

Esau McCauley (23:04)

So can I get slightly spoilery on the what's the guy? Lex Luthor character? Yeah, so the way that he sets it up, where he's kind of directing the fight from like Ultraman. And so that to me was just like an. It showed to me. And maybe this. I want to say there was a sophistication of his sophistication related to his evil that I hadn't seen in a superhero villain in a long time. In other words, he seemed genuinely to have figured out every possible scenario and have it worked out. And I was actually curious as to how Superman was going to win, given the things that were set up against him. And we won't get into how he resolves it, but even the resolution of the problem and the way that Superman eventually winds up victorious, he doesn't outsmart him. It's kind of like, as you'll see, it's kind of a quirky way of it kind of being resolved. So I just thought they did a really good job. Even if I didn't love every moment, the setup and all the things that were going on around it, it was like there is nothing that he hadn't accounted for in his, like, battle against Superman. And I felt like it looked like that the way the film played itself out, I could tell or present it as Luthor has been working on this for years. And we're coming into the culmination of a plan. And that's the part that I liked about it.

Sky Jutani (24:23)

So there's two things there. One, the problem you always have with the Superman character is how do you create a villain that can go toe.

David French (24:30)

To toe with him?

Sky Jutani (24:31)

And I thought it was really smart. The way they did it is they show that Lex is sort of the puppet master behind the whole thing, but it's. He's calling every punch and every, you know, so it's a way for him to be fighting Superman without physically fighting Superman. So that was pretty smart. But your point raises another question that I want to ask both you guys. The movie, I think to its credit is not another origin story. It's not, you know, baby Kalal being put into a ship, and I like that too. On the other hand, it drops you into the action right from the get go. And it seems like everything is fully formed. Like Lex's hatred of Superman is fully formed. His plan to destroy Superman is fully formed. Clark has been working at the Daily Planet for a couple of years. Superman's been around for a couple years. His relationship with Lois is already in place. She already knows his secret identity. It's all there already. So you don't see the development of either the romantic relationship or the villain hero relationship. You don't see any. It's just all there and you're dropped right into it.

Esau McCauley (25:31)

Yeah.

Sky Jutani (25:32)

Was it overkill? Would it have been helpful to see more of the development of Lex's animosity towards Superman or some. Or were you happy with it all just being fully formed and you're dropped into the blender?

Esau McCauley (25:46)

I will say, I think that the amount of people in America or in the world who don't know all the beats of the Superman origin story is so small that it's a waste of a movie to do it.

Sky Jutani (25:58)

Yeah, I don't want the origin story again, but the relationship.

Esau McCauley (26:01)

What I'm saying to you is like, I think normally when there's a new superhero movie or franchise, I normally judge the second movie because the first movie is basically all of the stuff that you just said. And so the fact that he skipped the first movie effectively is. And made the second movie first was, to me, gave me a lot of goodwill. And so I didn't necessarily think of the negative. I was like, I'm glad I'm gonna have to watch him land and grow up and kind of figure out, you know, how good is he gonna be in football in Kansas? He's gonna throw the football over the fence. Like, all of that stuff I didn't need to see. But had you done it? Well, I would've watched it anyway.

Sky Jutani (26:37)

David.

David French (26:38)

I loved the choice to just drop into the middle. I mean, we've been through so many origin stories. I mean, we've had the original Superman origin story. We've had the Zack Snyder Superman origin story. We've had. I mean, if you go to Marvel and dc, we've had so many different origin stories of so many different superheroes. You know, the Snyder cut had an origin story in it, you know, of one of the superheroes. So we've done the origin story a lot. And I thought it was a very Interesting creative choice to just drop it into a fully realized universe. So here comes the Justice Gang. Who's the Justice Gang? Well, it's not really explained, but everybody knows who they are, right? Who are these other superheroes? Aliens exist and everybody knows it. Somebody talks about a pocket universe, and nobody's like, what the heck? A pocket universe. They're more like, oh, a pocket universe. Totally. I get that. So you dropped into this fully realized superhero world, metahuman world, and I just thought it was a fun, different creative choice. The opening scroll in the movie where it talks about, you know, 300 years ago, 30 years ago, 30, and it ends up at three minutes ago was a really clever way to get rolling. And so I'm not gonna say that this is something that I'd like to see every time we're doing reboots or reimaginations, but I thought it was a fun way to do a reboot. And it also makes a lot of sense because, remember, Gunn had already directed a Suicide Squad mov. He'd already done. He'd already done that. What was it? The Peacemaker series on HBO with John Cena. So he's already been a part of a DC universe that exists. And so I think it does make sense. And you saw the Peacemaker in this movie, and so it did make sense, I think, to drop it just into the middle. It could have been a disaster, but I thought it actually worked. Not saying we need to do this every time. Origin stories can be a lot of fun.

Sky Jutani (28:45)

But don't worry, this is not the end of the episode. There's actually plenty more. But to listen to the rest, you need to be a Holy Post plus subscriber. So head over to HolyPost.com SkyPod and sign up. For just $5 a month, not only will you get uninterrupted episodes of the Skypod, which means you'll never have to hear this dumb announcement again, but you'll also get access to everything else at Holy Post plus, including episodes of Getting Schooled by Caitlin Chess, bonus interviews, live streams, the Holy Post Book Club, exclusive merchandise, and a whole bunch more. And you'll get the warm, fuzzy feeling of knowing that you're supporting our work of creating smart, pro neighbor Christian content. So head over to holypost.com skypod and subscribe.