An Awesome ‘F1’ Movie and Superman Expectations With Van Lathan and Charles Holmes

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Coming up later, Van Lathan is going to talk to me about F1, a spectacular sports movie with Brad Pitt that's out in the theaters.

Now, we tried not to do a lot of spoilers

until the end.

of the pod, but we talked for like an hour about the movie.

So like in the last 10 minutes of that, we start talking a little bit about some heavy plot stuff.

And then at the end, Charles Holmes came on with Van.

That's Van's Midnight Boys partner.

And we talked about whether I should see Superman or not and where I stand with the Ringerverse because I know that's keeping you up at night.

Do I like this nerd universe and all these DC comics and Marvel and all this stuff?

I've been kind of on the outs on it, and it's been that way for a while.

But

they kind of talked me into seeing Superman.

We're going to take a quick break and then

Pearl Jam.

All right, Van Lathan is here.

We are taping this.

It's the middle of the week.

I saw F1 in the theater with Brad Pitt last night.

Whole Simmons family.

A little 1015 showing at the Grove.

It was great.

It was packed.

IMAX

had a great time.

I have so many things I want to talk about.

I'm not a giant F1 fan.

Neither are you.

Never seen F1 race before the movie.

Ben Simmons, my son, on the way home, is like, I think I might get into F1.

It's like one of those kind of movies.

Same.

It was better than I thought.

I'll start here.

I can't believe this actually worked out.

That this movie they spent all this money on with 61-year-old Brad Pitt

as a Formula One driver.

Seems a little improbable, kind of old.

And then you hear the story about how they're spending money and spending it.

Oh my God, Apple.

Apple's involved.

Apple's had some busts.

They're doing it for IMAX.

It feels like Days of Thunder kind of for 2025.

There's a lot of signs that this might not work out.

And instead, it worked out great.

And I think it's one of the best sports movies of of the 21st century.

I'll go that far.

Sexy movie.

Sexy movie.

Sexy movie.

Sometimes when you use the term sexy for a movie, you think, God, there's a lot of sexy, sex-having people in the movie.

No.

Movie is sexy.

Cars look sexy.

The wardrobe is beautiful.

It moves with a certain pace.

It's a sexy film.

It's a sleek film.

It's a stylish film.

It also does something else.

You go into the movie, or the movie assumes that you don't know shit about F1, so it builds the lore of the sport.

People that know a lot about F1, I wonder how they would have responded to it because maybe they're being, maybe you're watching a basketball game and they go, if you get double figures in three different statistical categories, that's known as a triple-double.

Maybe if you watch a lot of basketball, you'd be like, I don't need you to tell me I'm not moron.

Yeah, this movie held my hand through the F1 driving and gave me a very simple and easy to go on

story.

And that made for a really, really satisfying experience in the theater.

Yeah, the only time it really, it really grabbed your hand and was like, look, we got to really explain this to you was some of the, I'll do some spoiler alerts later, but there was some tire stuff

in one of the climactic races that they were really carefully telling us.

Like, here's why this is important, blah, blah, blah.

Well, that's what I mean tires.

What I mean is that, yeah, I never felt like I was being talked down to like you do in some sports movies right man that that's what i mean what i mean is it's like okay

there's drama in here i don't understand your sport so why is this dramatic i'm like oh my god he's got to switch his tires jesus yeah got switches tires there's two guys that are on the same team there's a bunch of teams right this team's the worst team this other team has had gone through all these drivers they're so desperate they're going to go with this old washed up guy right you could understand all of it that i mean there's some stuff about uh when they would do laps where it would be like lap 54.

I'm like, I don't, how many laps are in this race?

And they'd be like, four laps to go.

Okay, I guess there's four laps to go.

But for the most part, I didn't feel like it talked down to me, which I liked.

I thought, as you know, I love movies when I go into a world.

Love, love just like, take me into this world.

So we're in different cities and countries every week.

Big part of it.

There's like this whole rich person scene with like those little clubs.

Like, I've never been to an F1, have you?

No.

There's like these, it's almost like these big ass luxury boxes with parties yeah um and all this money and all this ego i've seen some of it like i watched the first season of drive to survive i liked it

um and there's a lot there the drivers have a mystique about them so it made sense that brad pitt versus like i mean you were one of the things you said when we were talking before was this is it's a little bit of the top gun maverick blueprint certainly yeah it's it's brad pitt's top gun maverick but look but he's he brings more to the more to the table at this point in his career i think than cruise does for a movie like this.

Well, Tom.

I need to feel like he might fuck the technician who's running the cars.

With Cruz, I'm not going to feel that way.

That's the difference.

So also, just saying something.

It was age-appropriate love interest here, which

Terry Condon.

Yeah, right.

So with Brad,

you really do get it and believe it, right?

You get it and believe it because

we've seen Brad Pitt.

He's still incredibly virile and handsome, but we know that he's got some trend on his tires.

Yeah.

Some baggage.

He brings the baggage in in the movies though.

He brings the baggage in.

Cliff Booth, this character?

Same thing.

It's okay.

He's playing off of it.

It's working.

But everything that you just described about the movie is another reason why I really liked it so much.

There's nothing on screen that you don't want to watch.

You want to watch exotic locales.

The cars are beautiful.

It's a clean-looking movie.

So all they got to do after they set

the story up is just go fast.

That's it.

Well, and racing movies are the most easy to understand of any sport because it's like there's a checkered flag at the end and whoever drives through first wins it.

And it's dangerous.

And they kept doing it.

Yeah, it's dangerous.

You might have car crashes.

They did a really good job, I thought, with how they did the scoreboard and the leaderboard and the cars moving up and down

because we've seen that go badly.

Or we've seen like announcers be like, now he is in fourth place.

Yep.

Just feeling like they're shoehorning in it after the fact because the test audience didn't understand.

There was none of that.

And you know what's dramatic?

A pit stop.

Yes.

Stopping and everybody having to change tires that quickly, build a new car, all of that stuff.

If you can build

a drama around that and then make that a visual

touch point in your film, that's going to work.

It's a fun world because you start thinking about like the pit crew people.

There was that one lady who couldn't, she fucked up a couple tons of tires.

Like, oh, I bet at the end of the movie, she's going to be humming with gas.

And she She goes to him and she says, hey, don't encourage me out there.

It makes me look weak.

There's a whole culture that exists behind it and everything.

They're training tennis balls.

There's a little Rocky IV in there to where Damson's character is using all the high-tech stuff.

And that's kind of like, oh, my God.

There's a lot of Rocky IV.

Right.

And then Brad.

He's almost doing the split screens.

Just using the tennis balls and running with the crew.

And in some way, that's more effective.

It's all the tropes that we've seen before.

Yeah.

But I saw this movie in 70 millimeter at City Walk.

And it was breathtaking.

So we should have started.

We probably should have started with that because the reason this movie works over every other reason.

And I've been watching sports movies my entire life.

We did the longest year rewatchables a year ago, 1974.

That's kind of the modern sports movie.

So we're now in year 52 of sports movies.

We've done every version of these.

What we hadn't done is the IMAX.

This is like a fucking exhilarating experience to be in the theater for this, where you're just like, you're not.

I had to pee for the last hour.

And I'm not one of those old guys who has to pee all the time.

I just, I had a giant coke out of water.

I was eating popcorn and I didn't want to get up.

I was like, I don't want to miss anything.

I don't know what's going to happen.

And you're just sitting there like, ah.

It's, they filmed it a certain way.

They knew they spent a shitload of money just on because they knew that the IMAX thing was going to be the calling card.

And this is, you know, I know fantasy on big picture always talks about how do we save movies?

How do we reinvigorate movies?

And a big part of this in the last six years was we got to get people going to the theater.

God, give me experience.

I can't get it home.

This is the ultimate.

You have to see this in the theater.

They do these with the superhero movies or like Jurassic Park.

Like, it'll be fun to see in the theater, but

it's not a must.

You can still see it, whatever.

This has to be seen in the theater.

I know.

I shouldn't have.

I shouldn't have fired it.

You just did it so well for five minutes to not do it.

It's like, whatever, Superman.

Oh, you got to, I just, you got to see

the theater too.

There's no reason to down-talk Superman of Fantastic Four to uplift F1.

It's fair.

Okay.

You're right.

But it's fair.

I'll say this.

Good criticism.

I'll say this.

Sinners as well.

Now, Sinners is a movie that you think I could definitely watch that at the crib.

But then

Ryan Coogler comes out and makes a case as to why this is a theater-going experience.

So that video that he did that got like 10 million views with the Kodak people, great.

This movie is the type of movie that I go, when I'm talking to somebody, I go, man, you have got to see this on the biggest screen possible because it's so immersive.

You're going to be inside of the race.

Kaczynski is, and we have to start.

Well, Joseph Kaczynski, who's, I think, moving up the ladder for me, he's kind of like Tony Scott 2.0 now.

That's exactly who he is.

He is such an expert blockbuster film maker.

He knows the beats that you need to see to marry fantastic action with a big movie star and style.

And style, just enough plot to get you over the finish line.

Yeah, this Tony Scott would have easily made some version of this movie.

I mean, he did make this movie.

Days of Thunder.

Yeah.

But

the IMAX piece of it and just that technology is getting so cool now that you just got lost in the screen.

But this is like when we did,

I don't know, we do re-watchables from the 70s and you like a movie like Jaws or The Exorcist and people saw it in the theater and it like blew their mind because it's either that or they were home with like a little black and white TV.

Now everybody has nice TVs.

You could see sinners at home.

Yeah.

I still think it's going to be a better experience in the theater.

I've had it both ways.

It was just better in the theater.

This is like,

I think it will be a rewatchable, and you'll definitely watch this at home.

But I think this was like a must.

And I don't know if there's been a sports movie that was before this one where you were like, you actually had to see this in the theater.

Well, not all sports lend themselves to this huge because most sports movies are driven not by the actual playing of the sport.

Right.

They're driven by the culture of the sport.

Like we did blue chips on the rewatchables.

The basketball and blue chips, it's not bad, but it's like not a part of the story as much as the culture of college basketball is.

This movie

has a dramatic setup to get you to the racing.

The racing is the reason why you come see the film.

To that point, didn't have enough story for you.

Yeah.

Kind of a paint-by-number story, but it still worked.

Well, I had, I wrote down all the sports movie tropes that it did.

And I started to really feel this way.

I remember writing a column about this in the late 2000s, that I had just seen too many sports movies, and my brain became AI for a sports movie.

So as soon as they would set something up, I remember I wrote about Invictus.

Remember the Matt Damon rugby movie where he was playing the six-foot-three monolith?

Morgan Freeman in that?

Yeah, Morgan Freeman.

And I remember writing about,

there's like a South African kid and a cop, and they show them early and they're like far away from each other.

And the cops, and I was like, all right, by the end of this movie, they're going to be high-five.

You just kind of know in your AI brain, it's like, I've just seen too many of these.

This movie had a lot of sports movie tropes that you're like, old dog, young dog.

The best that never was.

Right.

Seeing that one.

He could have gotten there, but that thing happened and it sent him in a tailspin.

But now he's in a good place.

Still something left in the gas tank.

Maybe.

Old guy versus new guys.

Yeah.

Downtrodden team that needed a spark.

Right.

In this case, the Apex team.

The monologue about

chasing that one great feeling,

which not to say, I don't feel like we're going to spoil the movie too much, but Brad Pitt has this monologue in the movie that's that's really good.

I think he would have nailed it more 20 years ago.

We could talk, I want to talk about some Brad Pitt stuff later, but um, the monologue sets up this moment in the final race

that's just fucking awesome.

Yeah, I mean, it's like one of the better sports movie scenes of the last 30, 35 years.

It's, and you, you kind of know when he does the monologue, you're like, all right, I wonder.

You know, I wonder if there's going to be an umbilical cord now to

what I think might happen.

And then they fucking nailed it.

That is a trope.

The sports movie trope of describing a thing and then just waiting until that thing happens.

Like in 10 Cup, when they're talking about the last time

Roy,

yeah, when he made a crowd-pleasing 12.

Well, you know what started was Brocky.

Okay.

He, he, he goes to see the,

where they're having the fight.

Remember the promoter's like, I'm sure you'll give us a good fight.

Don't care about your shorts.

Right.

And he goes back and he sees Adrian and he says,

I'm not going to win.

I can't beat him.

Right.

But if I can just go the distance, nobody's ever been the distance with Creed.

And he does this whole Stallone monologue.

And you're like, oh man, now I just want this guy to go the distance.

Like he's planting all the seeds.

And they kind of do that with this.

But after five decades of these movies you know when they do the monologue you're like all right we're gonna circle back on this one but once it actually happens in this film i'm sitting there and i'm like because the movie has kind of set up

i guess at least a shred of belief that things can go wrong there are some unexpected turns so once it starts happening for him once he gets locked in that zone I'm just like, man, cross the finish line and win.

And if a sports movie gets you to that point, you know that your protagonist is probably going to win at the end yeah but them getting you to want the protagonist to win that's the the the goal of the movie well when i so i was i've been writing about sport well i don't write anymore but when i i used to write about sports movies all the time i was like the roger ebert of bad sports movies just like trying to trying to write i'd write reviews on anything roger eber i wrote a review of summer catch that's how many

how much many sports movies that's an important movie though well for you.

Yeah.

That's my girlhoff fan.

That's one of the movies when I was like that.

And then a couple of years later, she comes back with the iconic scene in, I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry.

There you go.

Yeah.

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Chill scenes were massively important in sports movies for a long, long time.

By chill scene, I mean those scenes when, like Hoosiers has a bunch of them where it's like they go around the locker room before the big game, it's like, I want to win for my dad.

And you're just like, oh, man.

Or like when Ollie hits the two free throws and everyone explodes.

And you know, you just, if you have a chance to get goosebumps or you get that little like funny feeling when it's like, oh man, that was great.

This, this, this movie has a chill scene.

What's chill scene?

Oh, the, the last, the last big climactic scene.

Oh, a chills.

You mean chills?

Yeah, you're just like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,

definitely.

Goosebumps.

Definitely.

Definitely.

One of those.

It's, and it also has like

something to where,

something in it that a lot of sports movies do, some of them do poorly, to where you start to wonder if your protagonist is getting on your fucking nerves.

Like if this guy is just a loser, right?

You.

In this case, Sonny Hayes.

Yeah.

What a name.

Right.

If this guy's just a, you know, you're like, come on, Sonny, don't have sex with.

the technical leader of the team.

Don't do this.

I know she's got that little cute Irish accent.

I know she keeps looking at you with those little bat-nosed eyes at you.

But Sunny's

stay away from it.

Come on, Sunny.

Sonny's whole deal.

And then you're like, you know what?

No, that old Sonny, he ain't going to pull through.

Get in.

Get in there, Sonny.

Yeah,

Sonny's okay.

I don't mind it from Sonny.

I accept it from Sonny.

Yeah.

You know, and then I think Damzen's part in this movie, because this is not a character that there's asked much of.

However.

But he brings a lot to the table somehow.

What you needed is someone who could charisma movie star their way through it.

It's a very important role in his career because I'm like, oh, when he's on screen, he is worthy to be next to Brad Pitt because you could easily get bowled over by the charm and the

magnetism, should I say, of Brad Pitt, but he never really does.

Also, like on paper, it's like Brad Pitt, old grizzled white hero guy.

Here's your cocky black counterpart.

It's like, all right, this could go.

This is a counterpart.

This could go.

Well, I'm saying this is

on paper.

is that equal.

Wait a minute.

Is that this?

Is this

when you saw that?

Have you been F1ing this situation?

I've been at the result.

Is that calling him?

Is cocky black counterparts anyway?

It's not.

I'm just wondering if I am either.

But they sent it the trailer, and you're like, all right, I get what this is.

But I didn't feel like watching the movie, I didn't, I actually really liked him.

Yeah, and I kind of saw his side of everything, you know?

Yeah, because

we haven't talked about Javier Bardeman, but I guess we should, but he is the guy that has sacrificed to be the lead driver.

And he's got all the potential.

Yeah.

He's two in his own head.

How is he going to both take the direction from the old wizard, but not lose too much of himself and become him?

And at the end, he was like, Well, wait on that point.

Okay, cool.

There's like some NBA NFL parallels with that, too, where it's like, but I'm a franchise player.

That's what my contract says.

Exactly.

Well, your team's not winning.

Well, but that's, I'm, I have

five million people on Instagram.

Like, like the way he was doing that, we haven't seen a lot of those characters in sports movies just because we're not making as many sports movies that are good anymore.

And that specific character is the last 10 years.

I am a star because social media and my place.

And I've done commercials, but I haven't really done anything.

But that doesn't matter because, and I have my guy who's arranging all this stuff.

And I'm in in Reese.

It's interesting that that specific character, because I think of the different generations of sports movies

in this generation we're in now.

I don't know other sports movies that have hit that.

Well,

I think you could argue that there are a couple of reasons.

Number one, we relate to that character more now than we ever have.

It's a last seven, eight years thing.

Right.

In the past, we just didn't relate to that guy.

That guy that went, Hey,

make a lot of money, become as famous as you possibly can.

If you win, cool.

If you build great teams and great culture, cool, but you don't have to.

Because like now we have arguments to where it's like, you know, hey man, if you came up on a $225 million contract and you never got to the conference finals, that's a win.

We're very cynical about these things now.

F1 is interesting.

because it's a sport where you could die.

So because it's a sport where you could die, that means if if you don't do things in the right way and you don't listen and you don't engage in teamwork, that could be the last race that you run.

So, right, like Gilbert Arenas wasn't going to die in the court if the Wizards went 35 and 47.

Whereas this guy, well, maybe he was the bad example.

Shout out to Gils Arena.

You never know how it's going to go in the locker room with Gils.

Shout out to all of them.

I love that show.

Let's go, Kenny Anderson.

But yeah, but in this situation, remember, he doesn't listen listen to Sonny, and he ends up out of commission for a little bit.

But he could have told his mom that he didn't listen.

Yeah, he did.

He let Sonny take the whole fault.

Sonny take it.

Yeah, I like that character, though.

And I think when you asked, was it a little light on the plot?

I don't think it was light on the plot.

It was just familiar.

And I don't know if that's the movie's fault because.

We've just had too many sports movies.

I don't really know, unless you're going to do like what Cameron Crowe was able to do with Jerry Maguire, where you're just completely reinventing a sports movie, right?

Where the star athlete is not even the most important character and it's built around an agent and this whole world around sports, which is kind of where movies have gone first from a sports standpoint the last, I would say, 15 years.

And I think the flipping point was probably money ball range.

Oh, yeah.

There was a movie called Sugar in 2009 that was loved it.

Sugar is

I randomly saw that movie on HBO years ago about the Dominican pitcher that comes to him.

It's a classic.

And he then he starts really pitching well and it looks like he's a phenomen and then it kind of doesn't go sideways.

Not a ton of dialogue or anything, but just fantastic movie.

Almost plays like a documentary.

Love that film.

Yeah.

So, and you saw like the way back with Affleck,

Warrior.

We moved into a different kind of era of sports movies the last 15 years where they were more, not like the ones we grew up with.

they're more like movies that also happen to be about sports yeah and character studies and this is like an old school could have come out basically in any decade there would have been some version of it which uh which i thought was cool uh racing movies

so

i've seen three steve mcqueen laman never saw it

bobby deerfield pacino no

something like it days of thunder yes driven with last Stallone and Burt Reynolds, where they both have just had, all of a sudden, they weren't cool anymore.

They both had a lot of plastic surgery.

I remember writing that they both looked like they were wearing Halloween masks of themselves.

And then our boy from Remember the Titans,

what was his name?

Sunshine?

Kip Pardue.

Yeah.

Kip Pardue.

What are you playing in Remember the Titans?

Sunshine?

But Sunshine, of course.

So that was supposed to be his star vehicle, and he literally crashed.

Yeah.

Tao Dega Knights.

Of course.

Senna, which was a documentary.

One of the best sports documentaries of all time.

Okay.

Rush.

Oh, yeah.

Rush is great.

Yeah.

Now, Rush is.

Rush is also probably a top 10 sports movie of the century.

A ringer-pilled movie because I had never seen that movie until I got here and everybody's like, you really need to watch that.

And then I checked it out.

And I think Rush has aged really nicely because people just care about F1 more though.

Yeah.

You know?

What about Ford versus Ferrari was the only other one.

I saw some bad ones.

Yeah, I saw one.

There was one with, and I don't know if I'm making this up, but I feel like there was one with

Kenny Rogers back in the day, where he played a race car driver and he had to take care.

Stroker Ace?

I don't think it was Stroker Ace.

He had to take care of a wayward group of kids.

Was it fat Kenny Rogers or skinnier Kenny Rogers?

I can't remember, man.

I'm telling you.

You go back and forth.

There was a Kenny Rogers movie where he was a race car driver.

I used to come on cable.

He had to take place of a group of misfit kids.

I did not have that one in my book.

I could be making this up, bro.

It's interesting, though, because boxing movies just happen over and over again.

We talk about that.

It's just, they never, and every, it seems like almost every great actor wants to say, fuck it.

I got to do my boxing movie.

I'm going to get in crazy shape.

See, that's a part of it.

And it's, and I'm just, people get to see me and I'll win the big fight in the end.

I'll get the girl and nobody can resist it.

And you go through every great actor or good actor who is like over 5'9

has probably made one.

It's over 5'9.

Well, like Pacino never made a boxing movie.

I guess he could have been like a flatweight.

But like Denzel,

Jake Gyllenha, they all have to do it.

I guess Leo's one of the only ones who didn't do it.

It doesn't fit with him.

Being a boxer in a movie.

He's not really physical in movies.

Yeah.

Like it's not, I mean, he sometimes, a little bit.

Tom Hardy does the MMA version of it.

So,

but racing, which I think can really work if you pull it up, but you need the kind of access.

I mean, that was another thing.

This movie, you were fully immersed because F1 let them fully immerse themselves in the movie.

You saw the drivers, like, they're racing, you know, people like Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton are like kind of borderline villains in the movie because they're trying to beat our guys.

Yeah, Lewis producer on it.

It, it,

it's also the perfect time for F1 because it's only been in the last

five, six years.

Like,

obviously, you know, pre-pandemic and then a little bit after that, I've heard people that I know say, Hey, Van, you should go to F1 race.

It's really just like an awesome well, we know, I mean, we know people that just have become addicted to it, right?

You know,

I have friends in my life, like people that work for the ringer, people like Rosillo, um, people that just like really got into it, that wake up in the mornings.

We started a Ringer F1 show, like, I never would have expected to have an F1 show.

This movie is like, I was saying, I saw Trayvon last night, he was leaving the movie for like the third time because he loves F1 that much.

Wow.

But also, it's a beautiful movie about beautiful, rich, expensive shit, which also

going all over the place.

You get to even get to be in Vegas with like a nice hotel suite looking out on the strip.

They're driving past the CVS on the strip and you're like, oh, I know where that is.

And maybe I should go to the F1 race in Vegas.

The villain, the real villain in the movie, doesn't appear to like the end of the second act, into the third act.

Yeah, we meet him, him, but we don't know he's the villain.

We meet him, but we don't know he's the villain yet.

There are parts of the film that I think a different writer came in and put in the movie.

Was there any part of you that could see the seams in it?

Yeah, that I mean, there's definitely some,

there's some holes.

I thought there was a couple parts,

you know, they definitely wanted to get the you do the dip where it's like, we're riding high, montage.

Now we're low.

Now we're riding up again.

Right.

And uh, it felt like it was, it was, they tried to do two dips with the accidents.

Yeah.

Um, which, by the way, one of those accidents I thought was one of the best things I've ever seen filmed in a sports movie.

I was like, I don't even know how they did it.

Which you're talking about

the Sonny's one.

Sonny's accident, yeah.

That was spectacular.

And Kaczynski was on Sean's pod talking about how they studied all of these different

accidents that actually happened and they didn't like completely recreate them because you can't complete, but like try to be in the vicinity of what the actual accident was.

So it was realistic.

Um, but I thought that part was great.

And then, um,

we got to talk about Brad Pitt.

Yeah, I was about to say that, yeah, because that's another giant piece.

I mean, there's some really good supporting people in this movie all over the place.

I thought Carrie Connant was excellent.

Not who you would say, like, one of the ways they fuck movies up like this is it's like uh they overcast it, yeah.

It's like uh, Gail God, yeah, Gal Godeau is going to be the

lady who's building the cars.

It's like, come on.

They put somebody in there.

Like it was like,

I think it was Denise Richards.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like nuclear physicist Christmas Jones.

Or like Elizabeth Shu and the Saint.

Right.

It's like, it's like, okay.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Just cast it properly.

She was just cool.

It's like, oh, man, I like, because she was in that Colin Farrell movie.

She's been a bunch of stuff.

She's a good actress.

Everything that came from that character just has to be believable you have it has to be believable that she would leave whatever situation she was in as a smart egghead and yeah go run a racing team or whatever it has to be believable that she would didn't have chemistry with brad pitt accent was great i like the way sometimes movies will have this like

she was really convincing like you could tell she was she was enchanted by sonny And she did a good job of just kind of like, you're watching her going, is she falling for this dude?

I feel like she is, but you kind of didn't know and for a while and then by the balcony scene she's full-on hanging on his arm oh yeah like he's got her in the podcast she was good that i thought she was a really good character because that's a character in a sports movie that could go sideways and then our guy uh our guy from no country for old men flip a corn oh

yeah yeah yeah flip a coin

and it would just become a coin and just think like

when they have when they have somebody like that i just think he should have the haircut from no country for old men just but never explain.

He's just got a bowl.

He's just dressed like the guy who's just carrying around one of those air vapor guns.

Quick aside.

Do you know what?

But I thought he was really good.

He was great.

Do you know what one of the saddest scenes?

Just quick aside.

The scene between

Anton and Carson, which is Woody Harrelson.

Yeah.

That is a sad scene.

I watched No Country for Old Men twice last week.

I'm not sure why.

It's the scene where he's, well, Woody Harrelson with all of that charm is sitting there

in front of the Grim Reaper.

Yeah.

And you know he's dead and he's trying to talk his way out of it.

It's a really top five sad scenes.

That's one of the two movies that has grown on me the most in the 21st century.

Weird ending.

I did it on rewatchable.

Okay, yeah.

I saw it.

I was like, ah, weird ending.

When I saw it in the theater.

And then you watch it a couple more times and you're like,

That ending was amazing.

And now in 2025, I'm like, that's one of the best movies, last 30 years.

But when you see him in this film, number one, once again, cast it very well.

He looks, first of all, like an F1 driver.

That's how those guys look, right?

Yeah.

He looks like an ex-F1 driver.

Yeah, you can see like he won in 2000.

Those guys are good looking.

Yeah.

They're European.

Yeah.

He looks it.

And then he also looks like somebody that, because Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt, when he's on screen, who is Brad Pitt going to respect?

It's kind of like the John Hamm situation from Top Gun Maverick.

You need somebody in that role that you could be like oh okay i see why this conversation between these two people would make sense um just not just in this world but like in my mind as well so he fills that spot yeah you have those xf1 guys

you they're just like

keep your girl away from these guys

they have to have some sort of vibe yeah

don't don't know you're not driving my wife home everything in europe has to do with sex

Okay, horny

regions of the world.

Sex.

Yeah.

Like I'm looking at these soccer players.

They're out there running around like models, bro.

The dudes in the NBA don't even be getting a lineup.

All right.

They're playing three games in a week.

Sometimes the shit, the opening date, and that's it.

Like everything out there, it's sex, sex, sex with these Europeans is what I've noticed.

It's a good observation.

Brad Pitt.

Four decades.

of Brad Pitt as a leading man in an iconic movie.

And I think this movie is an iconic sports movie.

I'm ready, you'd say that, yeah.

Okay,

only listen,

it's not, I don't know where it's going to rank in the all-time pyramid, but I think for what it does with the technology we have, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be remembered.

I think it's influential.

Greatest racing movie ever?

Are you ready to put it up in the Pantheon for discussion?

I'm looking at the list.

I have to watch Rush again.

I thought Rush was great,

but

but, like, for, to appeal to me and my wife and my kids, right?

And I'm sure the generations in between, and I know my dad would like it.

Now, you're, now it's four generations of people who are like, I just know if you like sports movies, you're going to beat on this.

And whether you like racing or not, you're going to like it.

Brad Pitt.

So.

Seven, Fight Club, Oceans 11, and Glorious Bastards, Moneyball, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and F1.

Just those seven movies from a rewatchable popcorn.

Culturally, they mattered when they came out for some way.

And that's a span of seven was 1995.

Yeah.

Mid-90s to now.

Like, think about who the famous athletes were in 1995.

It was like Steve Young won the Super Bowl that year.

Yeah, Michael Jordan.

Michael Jordan was coming back from retiring the first time.

Like, that's a long time ago.

I have six stages of Brad Pitt.

Okay.

Stage number one, up and coming, interesting, handsome guy, 90 to 94.

Thumb and and Louise.

River runs through a true romance, Kyle Fornication interview with vampire.

It's like, oh, every girl I know loves this guy.

Not sure.

Is he Redford?

What's the path for him?

Might be Redford.

Didn't know.

Then it's leading man on training wheels for the next four years.

Seven.

Big hit for him.

12 monkeys, sleepers.

Seven years in Tibet.

And then Meet Joe Black.

They really went for it with him.

And the movie wasn't good.

But they went.

That was the movie where it's like, Brad pitt's a massive star he's with anthony hopkins we're really going for this it didn't work it was the movie where they were like so it was the movie where they were like let's just put brad pitt in a movie with an older guy and a interesting young face and see if he can just movie star his way through it this is a robert redford part yeah can you be robert redford for two hours actually not what brad pitt does though no because brad pitt leaves he needs a little something he needs to oh he's a we it's always been said but he's like the best looking character actor actor of all time, right?

He needs a little something.

He doesn't just do that, even in the river runs through it.

Good movie.

Well, not a river runs through it.

I didn't mean that one because you left out Legends of the Fall, or was it in there?

Did you have an instance?

Later.

Okay.

Legends of the Fall is a very important movie for Brad Pitt to me because Legends of the Fall was the movie where a lot of people fell in love.

Yeah.

Right.

But.

Oh, I should.

That was 94.

That should have been in there.

Yeah.

Well, but

there's something going on with that movie.

That movie is like a serious drama.

It's not a dreamy rom-com about a guy coming back and he's deaf and all of that stuff.

And death is about to...

No, that movie is about three brothers go away to war or two brothers go away to war.

They come back.

They're trying to fuck each other's girls.

All kinds of stuff.

There's all kinds of mystic, beautiful, ethereal shit happening.

And that is the perfect Brad Pitt role.

And so he goes away from that, but he always has to have a little something in the movie that's a little grimy, as a little more.

We don't just trust Brad Pitt just to smile his way through a movie.

Well, True Romance, he's Floyd, which is one of the funniest Tarantino characters.

California Cation, he's a maniac.

Crazy.

Like that's just a nuts movie.

Didn't he

be classic?

He does movie.

He does maniac again in 12 monkeys.

Yeah.

So when he's leading man in Training Wheels, seven, 12 monkeys, sleeper, seven years Tibet, Meat Joe Black.

It's like, all right, this might not happen.

This might not happen the way we thought, but there's still something, something really good here.

And then he becomes an A-lister in the next five years.

Fight Club, Snatch, The Mexican, which was a movie that didn't do that well, but it was Julia Roberts, him, Gay and Olfini, Ocean's 11, I think it's the big one, right?

Because now he's with Damon's on the rise, Clooney's a star, the three of them together.

The movie becomes massive.

And by the time Troy comes out in 04,

it's like Brad Pitt can carry a movie like this.

Wasn't a very good movie.

I liked it.

Like,

but

I I just remember Troy.

I was in,

I was going to see a movie with Candace Stein.

Shout out to Candice Earl family, my girlfriend at the time.

I'm sure she's married or whatever.

And the Troy trailer came on.

And Brad Pitt was Achilles.

He let the hair flow.

And all of a sudden, we're sitting there.

We're in a, I'm with a black woman in a black movie theater in a black city in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

And Brad comes on screen and she goes, uh,

and I'm I'm sitting there at over 300 pounds and I'm like,

yo man, can you not?

And she goes, I'm sorry, Brad, still fine.

And she was saying still,

and that was 20 years ago.

She was saying still

20 plus years ago.

And that was 20 plus years ago.

That leads us to the next stage of Brad Pitt, the Brangelina heyday.

Oh, yeah.

04 to 11, Mr.

and Mrs.

Smith, Benjamin Button, and Glorious Bastards, Moneyball were the highlight movies.

But he's like an A-plus lister from the Brangelina thing makes him one of the most famous people in the world.

Could you make an argument that it's not actually

until Mr.

and Mrs.

Smith that Brad Pitt

is a hyper super megawatt A-lister?

That's what I just said.

I think he's an A-plus lister from Brangelina.

Okay.

I think he was an A-plister.

I was thinking about what I was going to say rather than listening to you.

No, no, he was an A-lister, and then he became an A-plus lister.

right?

But he was like, he had the celebrity relationships.

Like, he dated Paltrow, he dated Jennifer Aniston.

Jennifer Aniston.

Yeah, no, he always had, but I'm just saying, like, the Angelina thing was like, boom.

He was on the tip of everybody's tongue.

Everyone was talking about what was going on.

And not just that, but that movie became

a good movie and a formative film.

Like, they made a bunch of different Mr.

and Mrs.

Smith type movies after that.

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So in Glorious Bastards.

And by the way,

he works with Fincher and Benjamin Button.

Yeah.

Interesting movie.

Some New Orleans in there.

Yeah.

In Glorious Bastards, Tarantino.

And then Money Ball is probably the best he's ever been in a movie, except for maybe Fight Club.

He's just like...

Fight Club is tough.

Yeah, it's a tough performance right there.

Fight Club, he's awesome.

Like, you're just like, wow, this is like Robert Redford could not have been, not have done this.

You are now moving a little closer almost to De Niro.

But Money Ball was like, man, I just fucking like Brad Pitt.

That was like, that was one of those movies.

But then we hit the next stage, the swoon, because the Brandelina related, all of a sudden they have like six kids.

Bad press.

Some bad press floating around.

There's a lot of weird stories about them.

And the movies, even though he's producing and doing some good producing stuff, killing them softly, allied fury.

I love the

Killing Them Softly movie.

I just got to say it, though.

Have you seen that one?

I might have saw it when it came up.

Who's in it?

So it's him.

James Galnofini is in it.

It takes place

in New Orleans.

New Orleans Orleans month candidate?

New Orleans month candidate.

There's either it takes place in New Orleans or shot in New Orleans.

Well, we have to do Angel Heart last for New Orleans month because then that's when the pod gets canceled.

He canceled the pod.

But there's a robbery.

Brain Brad Pitt.

It's a good movie.

All right, I'll give it another chance.

I don't think it did well.

No, it didn't at all.

And the most successful things he was involved with were 12 Years of the Slave and The Big Short, which

he wasn't like leading those movies.

Just in them.

And then the Angelina thing went sideways, and it felt like his career might be over.

There was the tank movie that came out.

The Buy the Sea movie was like, and then

there was the allegation she had and the family stuff went.

And then Tarantino, this is the last spot.

Parentino kind of revives him with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

COVID happens.

Everyone forgets everything with COVID.

And then we get to F1.

Now he's in his 60s.

He's had a hit movie in his 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s.

This is a very important.

This is a very important movie for him.

Like a super important movie.

This might be.

I think for the catalog, he kind of needed it.

Had to have it.

Had to have it.

Because like Redford didn't have a movie in his 60s that was like a massive movie like this.

Also, there's something else that Brad needed, in my opinion.

The only way to quiet any chatter online about you.

And I don't like to, I'm way moved past the point where I litigate people's personal lives unless we're talking about really shitty people.

But the best way to,

in this day and age, is to quiet the chatter about you.

Anything that anyone might be saying is going, look, nobody cares.

And like, just, that's the only way you can do it.

You just be like, hey, they say this about you.

Maybe you weren't the greatest.

I have no advice to Diddy.

Okay.

There's zero advice.

There'll be zero conversation.

There's no advice.

Okay.

It's like care for two.

No advice.

No advice.

But like in that situation, look, nobody cares.

Look, everything is between me and my family or whomever or whatever.

I just went and did this gigantic, big, huge movie.

All the sponsors, the movie got made like 40 or 50 million dollars just in sponsorships, right?

Apple, everybody's fucking with me.

Everybody went to see it.

Nobody cares.

Next story, next movie.

So in a weird way, it's kind of emulating what happened with Cruz, where Cruz, when he hit a certain point in age, just basically became Mission Impossible Top Gun Maverick Guy.

And those are like the two kind of directions he'd go.

Brad Pitt, because Cliff Booth and Sonny

are not that far off from each other, I don't think.

I mean, Sonny's a little more talkative, but same kind of thing, like worn down, still super handsome, can still connect with any woman in the room.

Guys are comfortable around him, like that kind of thing.

Still can get it done.

Yeah, and you believe him in any role.

Yeah.

So maybe he has a little bit more upside, but the one time

is

now he kind of talks like Buffalo Bill a little bit.

Like he has a dip in in his mouth.

Yeah.

So I don't, like, I thought he was amazing in money ball.

Like, I actually think he could have made a case.

He could have won best actor for that.

Who won that year?

I think it might have been,

was it De Dente Lewis?

For Lincoln.

Lincoln year?

Yeah.

Monday's fantastic.

But now you're age 61.

He's had a rough life.

Connor does all his lines like this, a little half smile on his face.

But it works.

Yeah, it does.

You're buying it.

I don't think he could be like some of the roles he played in the 90s, 2000s, I just don't think he could do it anymore.

Well, no, I mean, he's gone from being

because if you look at 61, if you look back at that, at that uh, at that decade, he was in a lot of those movies, young cowboy.

He was a young cowboy.

He's a young cowboy in seven.

You see him?

He's the young one.

He's even kind of, although,

seven, he's just like a skinny cop guy.

I know, but he's the he's being schooled by the older, more grizzled, I'm out of here vet.

Uh, Ocean's 11, him and Rusty and Danny kind of on the same level, but now he's the old cowboy in the movie.

And it is it, he, it, the question is, can he still keep up?

And you would thought that Brad Pitt would have never gotten to a point to where you put him in a movie.

And then the question would be like,

he could never play the

can you still do it guy?

Because he's just too otherworldly handsome, otherworldly charismatic.

But he was able to kind of make that case in this movie.

He did a nice job.

And I'm sure there's some bells and whistles with it, but he's done a really nice job of keeping his looks as like an A-plus leading man guy, which I think when people hit their late 50s, 60s on the big screen, you just start transitioning, or you end up like Cruz, where it just doesn't seem Cruz, Jennifer Connolly in the bedroom scene, Top Go Maverick, one of the funniest scenes of the 2020s.

Right.

You just end up veering in that road where you're like, come on, guys, what are we doing?

Well, I got to give Tom credit for hysterically laughing.

Nice with no shirt on.

I got to give Tom credit in that movie for,

I know it's the script, for going with age-appropriate co-star because Tom was wilding for years.

Right.

He told me it would be Tom Cruise, and it'd be the hottest 23-year-old, 24-year-old, up-and-coming actor.

And we'd be like, Come on, Tom, man.

So, him with Anna to Armis and

Talk on Maverick, man, not a word.

Would not have worked.

Brad could pull it off, though, because Brad's one of those we looked up after.

My kids were like, How old is he?

And they were, they thought he was younger than I was.

Brad being 61.

Well, does he look 61?

Fuck no.

No, no, no.

I was like, I think he's like 49.

I had no idea.

No, he doesn't.

They were like, holy shit, he's

61 years old.

No.

My only nitpicks for this movie, it has a poker scene, and I just don't think they knit.

That's where they needed my sports movie consultancy agency to come in and help them out.

Didn't have a feel.

They're playing Texas Hold'em.

It's kind of a key scene in the movie.

And we don't really see the cards long enough in the middle.

I don't know who's, there's no drama.

Like it is not Casino Royal.

Right.

Let's put it that way.

I didn't love that.

I didn't, I, you know, Sonny,

not to spoil the ending, but there, but the, the big, big race at the end,

it's a long trip for him to get there.

And he just kind of shows up right before, and it's like, oh, man, that, like, oh, you mean the actual F1 race?

Yeah.

I thought you meant the Baja thing.

The Baja thing

actually was not needed at all.

No, I would have not had that.

I would just cut that out.

But him just going to Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi, wherever he was,

on a moment's notice.

Premium economy.

And then he's going to be in a race.

Right.

Like, it doesn't take like a day and a half.

Like, Martin Bikoli did that and he got knocked out in like a round, right?

But look, this is this is

he he travels around in a van.

Uh, he lives in a van.

He, he's, he's a rough and tumbled.

Like Ben said in the in the commentary of Armageddon, they don't understand his rough and tumble ways.

Right.

So he's the type of guy that could get off the plane, get right into the cockpit of an F1 car and go win the race, the biggest race of his life.

Very important Brad Pitt catalog movie.

Very important movie.

Big because Kazitski now, I think, has hit that Tony Scott.

Like, whatever his next movie is, I'm going to go.

I'm watching it.

Also, very important movie for Apple.

Oh, yeah it might have like saved their movie business gigantic i don't know save they got well would they have spent i know but would they have just kept trotting out 300 million dollar checks for movies if this didn't work man they and they promoted it great i mean and i try to avoid all of it because i never like to know anything when i go to a movie but they it was hard to escape especially like even if you went to apple tv it was like f1's coming f1's coming they're like one banging in your head on there right now you see f1 f1 i'm you know i'm just gonna go check it out uh

i think it was important movie more so,

not for Apple from a financial standpoint, because I don't think that really matters to them.

But I do think from the standpoint of, hey, we can put together a film, and this is not a shot at Scorsese's movie.

Not at all.

But we can put together a film that is legitimately successful.

And when I say legitimately successful, I mean worldwide successful.

Worldwide successful.

Our studio, our talent, our production, we go out and we make one that just attracts more.

I mean, not that they're going to have any problem getting talent.

Good.

Well, let's all get that Apple money.

I'm with it.

Start pitching them stuff tomorrow.

Yeah.

And then we forgot to mention Brad Pitt,

now in two of the best sports movies of the 21st century.

Oh, Moneyball.

Not ready to do.

I don't know if it's top five, top seven.

I got to probably do a ranking at some point this summer, but they're both in the top 10.

There's no question.

Is he two for two?

Are those his only two sports movies?

Is he two two for two?

Yeah, he doesn't have like a legend of Bagger Vance hiding his skeleton in his closet.

I'm trying to think, like, I'm missing something.

He hasn't when we're doing that on the rewatchables.

I'm not doing it.

Y'all could do it.

Could it be for how the fuck did this movie happen?

Will, what the fuck are you on?

Everybody, why?

Bet they didn't even know to play golf until that crash course teacher.

It'd be a fun movie to make fun of.

Um, all right, so last thing before we go.

Now, this is a spoiler.

Okay.

Did the right person?

So, if you haven't seen the movie yet, just go, you can just fast forward to the next segment.

Did the right person win the last race?

It was a swerve.

The way they set it up, I was actually really surprised how missionary positioned, old school, sports movie traditional they went.

It was like, let's have the old white guy win this one.

I thought for sure the new guy was, and he was going to sacrifice so the new guy win.

They both win.

And they really zagged.

And then we were arguing about it in the car after.

And my kids were like, no, no, but DP won too because the fireworks are behind him.

He's going to win a lot of races coming.

I was like, I don't know.

Like, Sonny's really going to win the race.

So I thought it was a little 1980s-ish.

I'm going to try to get my Mahoney on here and be concise, but it's tough.

I'm glad he won.

Okay,

I'm glad he won because he had never won before.

Right.

To me, my thing is this was a big

point of contention when we left the theater as well.

It's four of us, we went to see the movie.

Everybody had a different take.

But do you think it was a swerve, or did they just go Jerry Bruckheimer because he produced their old school Hollywood?

No, no, Brad's got to win the race.

This is how it goes.

I'm looking at the movie going into that final race, going, wow, who needs to win here?

Who

do we need to have a story where Brad ensures that Damson's character wins?

But if we do that, sure, he

shepherds this young man, but then he never wins a race.

This reminds me of my

great disdain for a movie called Mr.

3000.

I don't like that movie.

But here's, I'm not talking about, I like the movie just fine, but the fact that he has 3,000 hits, he comes back to get the one hit, and then he sacrificed Bunts or whatever, and sacrifices that last hit for the team.

Stupid to me.

I think about 493 home runs all the time for Fred McGriff, and I'm like, Fred McGriff was seven home runs away from 500.

I would have played nine more years.

Just be a court.

Just to get those seven home runs.

So to me, when I look at like guys like

the sunny character in this movie, Let him win one race, man.

Let him win the race.

Let him win one race.

Do you think DP would have been that excited about it, though?

That's his, but that's his character arc.

His character arc is

he's come so far that he can be excited that Sonny won his race.

Sonny's come so far that he doesn't sabotage himself.

See, this was Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown when they had the, when Jason didn't win the finals MVP, but he was happy for Jalen Brown because they both won.

That would have been.

This is what I was trying to say a year ago.

That would have been if DP was driving and he just choked in the last lap.

Jason Tatum's in a boot right now.

What are you doing?

He's doing great.

I'm glad he's doing great.

He's doing great.

Do you see him walking?

Yeah, he's swimming.

He's walking around.

He's going to be back.

Bill.

He's fine.

He might be back.

I'm not.

We're not allowing ourselves to think about it.

We don't have a center.

All right.

Yeah, that.

And then

flying.

Now we can say, because I turned the spoiler alert thing off or on.

Flying to Abu Dhabi.

showing up right for the race and then winning a 4mm one race.

Because son, my son was like, Should I start?

Like,

you think I could be an F1 driver?

Like, it's like one of those conversations.

I was like, we're all worried.

We're like, is this going to be a new fascination for you?

And we were all like, the amount of concentration and endurance you need to have to do that.

That's like, you can't even to

the amount of locked in you have to be to be locked in for that long.

It's like a special kind of human being.

And that is not my son.

It's like a,

It's not anyone I know.

Yeah, like who knows?

You ever see those guys, their old granny pictures where they're like behind the wheel of a co-cart or a soapbox car when they're like seven or eight years old?

Right.

Like a little bit, look at me.

Hi.

You know what I'm saying?

But what I always think about is

I think about these drivers like Lewis and Michael Schumacher and all of those guys.

I think about all Sina and all those guys.

But I also think about how many sunny hazes there must be out there.

Oh, yeah.

Guys who wrecked it, fucked their backs up or whatever, and now they're somewhere, you know, popping pain pills for the rest of their life, and they didn't make it.

That's why I was happy that he won the race.

Yeah, because one of the things I don't understand is that pointing, because it seemed like when he was trying to sabotage the race early on and like basically

causing little accidents.

Yeah, and I was like, can people do this?

Like, it feels like that would be a big thing if people did shit like this.

That's the part of the sport.

That's where we don't know.

Exactly.

That's the part of it where the, where I'm holding the movie's hand, going, okay, if you guys say this could happen, then this can happen.

Yeah, well, that's like probably what it's like to watch a basketball movie with us, right?

Because I remember the first year of ER, we watched with my stepmother one of the episodes, and she was like, Oh, my stepmother was a doctor,

and she was like, That's stupid, that would never happen.

Oh my god, they would never have the and we were just like, Can you just stop?

Can you just let us enjoy

the sapendectomy that's being performed right now, please?

Have you seen a show called The Good Doctor, by the way?

Yes,

so we watched Bachelor in Paradise this week.

what the fuck

it's always home you oh oh

okay yeah it was me

um

and it ended and they you know the streamers do this new thing where they just show

there's no credits it's just there's a new show starting so the good doctor started never seen it never seen one moment of it and it was the pilot episode and we were kind of like locked in you with it it's pretty good young kid it was a it was like kind of the good doctor's background

it's pretty good network Network TV, maybe I'm aging into the demo finally.

Maybe I should start watching it.

NCIS Simmons?

Maybe this should be my new podcast where I age the over 55 shows.

I just start.

It's like, oh, good Matlock last year.

Cannot believe.

Matlock, Kathy Bates.

Yeah.

Kathy Bates is Matlock now.

NCIS Simmons with the lady from True Blood.

She's in the show.

It's called like Elizabeth or something like that.

I know these shows because my mom.

And my dad.

Yeah.

My dad was furious that canceled Blue Bloods.

Couldn't believe it.

Felt like it had five more years.

But then they spun off Donnie Wahlberg in a Boston Blue, which is in mid-September.

Oh, okay.

It's in Boston?

We're back.

Go ahead.

Make your

jokes.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

What?

Make your jokes about the three-episode arc.

I'm saying

he's a cop in Boston.

Yeah, so we'll make sure that us in the community, we keep track of the

police brutality events that are portrayed in the show.

It'd be very positive.

It's going to be a positive role model.

Per show, then it's not real.

By the way,

Donny Wahlberg, very close to Jalen Brown, could see a Jalen Brown cameo and that's Boston Blue.

Yeah.

Donnie Wahlberg's like very tight with the Celtics.

So Donny Wahlberg is, is Mark Wahlberg cool with Jalen Brown?

I don't know, Mark Wahlberg.

I can't speak for Mark Wahlberg.

Yeah, Jalen.

I want you to see the

house to Paris Otton.

I want you to Google because,

all right, so Mark Wahlberg has done it.

No, No, no, no, we're not doing this.

All right.

Should we bring in Charles, talk about Superman or no?

Charles.

All right.

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All right, Charles Holmes is here.

Yo, what up?

Van's partner in the Midnight Boys.

You guys are going to convince me to go see the Superman movie.

I'll just make the case.

This is how this started: Superman came out in 1978.

It's on the theater.

Okay,

I really like Superman 2, a movie we'll do with the rewatchables at some point.

Do you like Superman 2?

I love Superman 2.

Who doesn't?

Superman 2 is great.

There's like some real stuff in there about

how far will you go to keep your powers.

Oh, it's like some sports shit in there.

That's in a lot of superhero movies, though.

How far will you watch?

Go.

True.

Then they made Superman again.

Then I think if they made it a third time.

They missed four original Christopher Reeves Supermans.

Then they came back in 2006 with the Brian Singer Superman.

And then there's Man of Steel.

Man of Steve Superman.

And now without the Justice.

The Cavill one, people kind of liked, right?

And not really?

Or they like Cavill, but they didn't like the movie.

Cavill wasn't given a super awesome opportunity to play Superman the way he was supposed to be played.

He never really got great scripts.

No, actually, the thing is, once he got good at playing Superman, it was over, it was over.

All the movies had flopped to such an extent.

Then, do you remember The Rock coming in and being like the hierarchy of the DCU is changing?

So, it was just like he got caught up in a bad system.

Okay, well, now we have another Superman, all right, corn sweat, but you guys liked it, yeah.

I did

Charles liked it.

I don't want to see it, I told you.

I'm a hater, and even I liked it.

All right, let's put so you said something crazy over at the office.

Where you was it crazy, get up, you said, You said to me, james bond is cooler than batman and i would say not only is that a crazy take that kind of points us towards why are you so why do you have such a uh ill-will to superheroes not an ill-will i just like i like my heroes to be at least somewhat realistic

james bond is realistic yeah okay there you go all right makes a lot of sense Handsome English guy with some gadgets.

John Wick,

James Bond.

John Wick, they killed his dog.

Somebody kills your your dog they killed batman's parents what is more realistic and then batman learned how to fly off buildings like once you're flying that's where my suspension goes sideways but i've seen all these movies i just with superman i don't know what's left to explore oh man

go ahead i want to hear it um okay so you guys this is not the ring reverse so this is about to get a little bit schmaltzy and and and and whatever i can't wait so i think there's a reason why we keep coming back to the story of Superman.

The reason why we keep coming back to the story, and we've always had stories like this, and we talked about this on the Midnight Voice,

is that the story of something that is, let's face it, Superman is a higher being than the rest of the people on earth that surround him, right?

It's a very powerful being, but chooses to do good.

A being that is that powerful with godlike, almost limitless powers that chooses to do good is unlike our growing species

who chose the other way, right?

Because when we are human beings and we get power, a lot of power, even earthly power, we often don't choose to be good.

So, Superman, to me, is a character that reflects the durability of humanity.

Like, oh my God, he's such a big deal, but he just wants to be one of us.

He wants to have a relationship.

He wants to have a job.

He wants to be saddled by his greatness.

Saddled by his greatness, which you love.

This is a storyline that you you invest in every single sports season.

Why is it with superheroes you can't?

You will say all of this about Jokic, but you won't say it about Kala L from the Planet Crypto.

They got him a good bench this year.

Does Superman have a bench in this movie?

Yes, he does.

He does.

This is a terrific hot girl Metamorpho.

Who's Hot Girl?

There you go.

Who's playing Hot Girl?

Isabella Merced.

Well, you didn't watch Last of Us either?

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I got one for you, though.

It's not her.

Last of Us, the zombie one?

Yeah.

That lasted five years ago.

Rachel Brosenhan, though.

That's not the

Cat Grant.

Cat Grant.

That's a Bill.

That's a Bill special.

That's a Bill special.

Bill,

there's something for you in this film.

I'm telling you.

Okay.

So in the whole Ring Riverse, because

it got pretty grim there for a few years with some of the movies.

We talked about it.

Our friendship.

Is Grim fair?

I will say Van and I have had a lot of like, it got so bad, I'm like, damn, our shit is is like fucked up now.

He's not wrong.

Like, we, we, like, like, the relationship is in trouble.

The movies got so bad to where it,

the, the, the stuff was so bad to where it was starting to affect our dynamic.

Yes.

Because he was getting really frustrated.

I was trying to put on a brave face and the whole group was like, man, I'm like, yo, y'all.

get together.

I was like, sure.

We got to go to work.

Okay.

We got to watch Secret Invasion.

Come on, everybody.

This is what we do.

And Charles is like, man, these shows.

I was, bro, it was rough, rough.

The stuff just got bad.

Like, it, and Superman.

So, what got bad?

It was too familiar.

The CGI, like, what were the reasons it got bad?

They flooded the zone.

I think the superhero genre was very, very great when it's like, oh, we get two or three movies a year.

Then, when

the late 2000s, yeah, but then when Marvel is like, actually, you're going to have a Marvel hero in your household every single quarter, every single week.

And it just diluted the brand to such an extent.

And when you see a Superman movie, you're like, oh, this is a cinematic character.

I don't necessarily want to see him 52 weeks of the year.

I want to on July, on a weekend in July, I want to believe a man can fly.

Also, the movie making.

Yeah.

Like what he's talking about, the filmmaking.

So with Marvel, there was Kevin Feige, and he was connecting all the dots on all of this stuff.

And they just overwhelmed their capability.

And the quality started to suck.

So it'd be like if a couple of baseball movies worked and then they just started making five, six baseball movies a year.

It'd be like, all right.

Think about this.

They make a baseball movie, right?

A Babe Ruth movie.

Yeah.

They make a Babe Ruth movie.

It's great.

They make.

So now we're getting Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig.

But no, not just that.

We're getting a 52-week series about Mark Limke and Jeff Blouser.

And no discipline.

It's like, okay, you guys love this series we just did about Ken Griffey.

Tommy Glavin.

Tony Marie.

We brought a series about their fucking mothers in the 1950s and what the fuck they was up to.

And I'm like, hey, yo, show me the fucking superheroes, bro.

Right.

Too much.

So we got back to the basics.

Back to the basics.

Because it feels like the heyday was

late 2000s when we had Dark Knight, which is one of the best movies.

That's the heyday.

That's not a heyday.

That's the heyday of Dark Knight.

I'm saying when we had Dark Knight and Iron Man right around each other.

Oh.

And it felt like it reinvented the possibilities of how great these movies were.

You hopped off before we got Guardians of the Galaxy.

Yeah.

and Panther.

Because all of a sudden there was too many of them.

And like even Iron Man 2, I thought was super disappointing.

And that was when,

but I would say the heyday would be 16 to 19.

Yeah.

Well, that's the second heyday, but I missed that one.

Okay.

Because I enjoyed that first heyday.

And neither of your kids were into the MCU.

You know, I tried to get it going with my son, and it just never completely took.

We started it correctly, and by like the fifth one, we were out.

But don't you also feel like Superman is in that like, is in that milieu of characters to me where it's like

James Bond, Batman, Superman.

Like, you have these like characters where we're kind of like, damn, I kind of want to see if they can work.

Rocky with Creed.

You have those type of characters where it's like, it kind of took place.

But then it's diminishing returns after if it's the same, right?

You liked F1.

I liked F1.

F1 wasn't reinventing the wheel.

It's just Top Gun Maverick again.

But there is something about like.

Settle down, Charles.

Jesus.

jesus this is this is the this is the top gun maverick again this is the guy this is wait

we got

f1 is top gun maverick but it was i mean the imac stuff was no amazing though love this movie i it's one of my favorite movies of the year but they they didn't reinvent the wheel on this i know but my fear with all this stuff is we talked about this a little before just there's No way to reinvent the wheel because the wheel has already been looked at every single fucking way at this point.

So that's when a movie like trying to think of like a wholly original movie that like Sinners, when that came out, we were like, whoa, this is a movie unlike anything I've seen before.

Even though it had some vampire roots and all the different things.

Yeah.

It just felt like original creative IP.

But how does, but how did that ever get to sinners where it's like,

it's like Christopher Nolan had the ability, of course, he did the Batman films, but he had the ability to make a bunch of original movies.

And then Batman

got him into the category where it's like, oh, we're going to see Inception.

We're going to see this.

Ryan Koogler basically had to prove to these studios, all right, I did Creed and I did Fruit Vale Station, but Black Panther showing y'all that I can actually do a four-quadrant blockbuster movie.

Do you ever ask yourself, you ever wonder what attracts somebody like Christopher Nolan to Batman?

Or like what attracts,

why do some of these guys, like

when you got to Batman Begins and you look at who's in the movie, it's Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman and all of these people.

And I know everybody wants to pay for their winter homes and Aspen and all of that stuff like that.

I get it.

I get it that you're an actor.

You got to make money.

I get that.

But also, there is something with creatives on that level that intrigues them about making

movies or content with a character that is so well known and so well understood because they get to think about what can I do with this character that's actually there that hasn't been done.

So there's four reasons.

Okay.

That's the one is the one you just said.

Challenge.

Yeah.

Everybody has stared at this IP for 100 years.

It's a challenge for me.

I can solve this.

Two is money.

Three is ring culture.

Oh, you want to?

Against sports.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is like,

if you can pull it off on this, it's like when I remember talking to Halflick about this.

Because I wrote about this when he did,

what did he do?

When he did the Superman movie.

Bear Casey, because because it's 10.

Okay.

He was a Batman.

When he did Batman versus Superman.

Justice League, all of it.

But remember, he was on the heater because he had had the town, Argo.

He was the fucking man.

He had won it back.

And then it's like, why are you doing this?

And it's the second go-around because he was daredevil.

So that daredevil.

But you know why he did it?

Because he was like.

My kid.

Fuck it.

If I pull it, it was like, basically, it was like Tom Brady going for the Tampa Bay Super Bowl.

If I can do this, I can do anything.

So that's the third thing.

And then the fourth thing is money.

And Bill, let me tell you something.

There's something that people don't talk about as much, but they should.

He was sensational.

Really?

Affleck was a great Batman.

He was a great Batman.

He still has a suit.

Oh, and the fourth thing is impressing your kids.

Everyone always forgets that part.

Most of the people that are making movies like this at some point have kids, or at least one kid under the age of eight, who thinks, like, holy shit, my dad's going to be Batman?

I mean, it's just like impressive.

Look at Tom Holland.

Tom Holland as Spider-Man.

Does Tom Holland get into a Christopher Nolan movie?

Because if we look at his track record after Spider-Man, could you name me a Tom Holland movie?

He said you'd like the stamp of approval almost.

I think with like Corn Sweat, with Holland, with Pattinson, Pattinson like becomes Batman.

He didn't need this.

He was.

killing it in terms of just like, oh, he is the indie darling.

Everyone loves him.

But there's a different thing when Robert Pattinson gets to go to his acting buddies and be like, but y'all not Batman.

Well, that's that's the Downey is the best example of that, right?

Or like Keith Ledger, who just broke back and he's great in that, but then Dark Knight becomes the movie that's probably gonna outlive him 50 years.

He had a take, though.

He had a take on the character, the character that we're so familiar with.

He had a take, and that take went on to define the character.

There's one thing about being the Joker.

There's another thing about

redefining the Joker.

He redefined that character.

Even like, I'll give you

so Nolan, right?

Yeah.

The Odyssey.

That story is thousands of years old, right?

Like, it's well, hundreds.

Hundreds?

When did the Odyssey, whatever.

It's an ancient by contemporary standards story, but we're going to keep telling it because the themes in the story

are as relevant today as they've been in the past.

And everybody's going to want to retell.

That's the story of Moses, the story, all of that stuff.

It's all the same shit.

the matrix is a kid you guys are wanting me back a little bit the matrix is a retelling of the jesus story now i will say this we should talk about specifically like what is awesome about this superman movie that makes it like worth the trip well the villain seems good lex lex the nicholas hole as lex is phenomenal also i feel like this is a movie where it's going to be a lot for you it's very cartoony it's very comic booky but i do think that this movie does a very good job of you don't have to see anything it is it has that iron man feel of just like i can sit starting from scratch baby starting And it's not starting from scratch where it's like, you already know the origin story, where it's like, planet blew up.

He goes to what happens here.

They're just like, we don't need that.

It starts in the middle of the action where you're like, okay, I get it.

Like, I do like that.

Little James Gunn had some success in the past.

Yeah.

Little crawl, tell you where you at.

And it reorients the character.

It's your

we said this on the podcast on the Midnight Boys.

Most Superman movies,

they're looking through his eyes.

And if you you look through his eyes, everything is weaker because he's way up here.

If you look through his eyes, everything is weaker.

So you start to wonder, like, what the fuck is going on?

Get the fuck out of here.

Okay.

He is a bad motherfucker, though.

It's pretty good.

He is.

You know,

that was one of my,

you know, I'll look back at the dickhead momentum that I've had in the past.

I'm doing it again with Caitlin Clark to a degree, but I don't care.

I won't stop.

Can you talk him off to Caitlin Clark?

I don't want to say that.

I like it.

It's one of the best acts of the 2020s.

It's great.

But, but Jokic is a.

It's a great sag.

I asked my, so just real quick, I come back to Superman.

I meant to get you on the phone with this guy.

So one of my homeboys, my best friend from Baton Rouge, Ryan Davenport.

I remember me and you got into it about the Jokic and the Shaq thing.

We're going back and forth about it.

So I hit Ryan up, and I know that Ryan is going to agree with me.

You know, my man Ryan was in the streets for a long time.

So it's very, he talks the way he talks.

And I was like, bro, let me ask you a question.

Who do you think better?

Jokic or Shaq?

And he goes, man, Jokic.

Like, he said he was angry.

Like, he didn't want to have to say it.

He was like, man, Jokic, bro.

And I was like, what?

I was like, bro, you can't do shit with that bitch.

He was like, that bitch get the ball.

If you double that bitch, pass that bitch.

He's like, he's like,

if you one-on-one, he cooking everybody.

It's Jokic, man.

He made Anthony Davis look crazy.

He's Jokic, bro.

I'm sorry.

He better.

And I was like, I was, after that, I had to, he was mad.

He felt the feeling.

It's hard to admit it.

I still don't agree with him, but I get it.

Well, now you got Caitlin.

Yeah, I got a new foil.

The next one has to be black, or I'm not getting an agenda.

I have to choose.

Lamar Jackson's sitting there.

One more playoff watch.

No, I'm just saying.

I'm sitting there.

I still got to get it.

I got to be able to get into the people.

You expect me to go.

Keep people on the toes.

Whitlock?

No, I can't do that, bro.

They're not gonna let me into the

trouble, bro.

Superman, this movie does something different.

It orients the story.

It puts Superman in the middle of the story.

Okay.

And the story happens around Superman.

Simple fix.

Now, Superman, Superman is not somebody that you have to question at every single plot turn.

So you weren't just pleasantly surprised.

You were deliriously surprised.

I you couldn't believe it was good.

I got emotional on the podcast.

Wow.

Yeah, there were tears.

i'm tempered i hate everything and even i was like i was like i can't hate everyone i was like all right they got it you know what i'm saying like i gotta get he didn't think it was a perfect movie but i didn't think it was it's an eight like out of ten it's like to me it's like in that seven eight range where i'm like all right i'm gonna see it you guys won me over hell yeah well so give me three movies from the last 15 years three ringer verse movies that i have to see I know one you're going to love straight off the bat.

Guardians of Galaxy.

You might like that.

I could see you liking that, but that's not the one i was talking about wonder woman

bet you would right

captain america winter soldier yeah okay wait you've never seen winter soldier that i never seen any of those you would like that have you seen black panther black panther doesn't count that movie was awesome yeah wait black panther definitely counts oh that's a michael b jordan i gotta i have seasoned tickets for my guy yeah he's a big michael b jordan's fan but wait you're actually on michael b jordan island i had i think i was his first podcast i through fail station i think i was the first podcast he ever did.

I've had to defend him a lot.

People have been like, hey, when before sinners, everybody's now on his fucking dick.

Everybody's like, I don't know about the twins.

I don't know if you can act.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's like a movie star, man.

There was a couple poor choices.

There's a couple hiccups, much like an athlete.

A couple bad.

Not on film, though.

Well, that legal movie he did was bad.

Whatever the one where he was the lawyer.

That got a memory hold.

We don't really put it on.

The movie when he's with Zach Efron and the other guy and they're

Early on, but that movie's bad.

Yeah, but he did a couple of bad ones.

But look,

he is...

He's a movie star.

He's the Mike movie star.

Mike movie star.

Sinners,

we were waiting for the...

Can you be a movie star in a movie movie?

So actually, that's like Brad Pickle.

You've seen Black Panther.

Yeah.

Michael B.

Jordan, but you saw F1, right?

How are you feeling about Damson as a movie star?

Did you recast him as T'Challa?

Is that on the table?

That's the rumor.

So the rumor is he's Black Panther now.

That's rumor.

Do you think he can kind of like take that?

Did you see in F1?

Because the question is, can he go from Snowfall TV show to movie stardom in F1 to like leading an entire franchise?

I'm with it.

I think he could do it.

I thought he carried himself like a leading man in F1, even though I didn't really have a history with him in a movie.

You didn't watch Snowfall?

No, just like a movie like that, where he's like, I had to believe in him as my hero.

I wanted more.

I think in the second movie, I'm just like, I think Brad Pick could take a kind of like back seat.

You could.

I thought he had it.

I think he's a star.

So I would say, easy work.

You can't not like Avengers Infinity War.

Endgame might not work on you.

You can't watch Infinity.

He's not going to know what's going on, bro.

This is fucking Spider-Man.

He knows who Spider-Man is.

Spider-Man, Iron Man,

none of the B-list characters in the movie.

I think he would know.

You know who Thor is, right?

Yeah.

I would say Winter Soldier.

Definitely.

I would say Infinity War just because I don't think he can miss in Charles was the last one?

Honestly, I think you would like Guardians.

You like Team Dynamics.

You might like that.

I do like Team Dynamics.

I mean, and also the last thing about Superman, you love dogs.

Crypto.

Oh, amazing.

Crypto is amazing in this movie.

This is the thing.

You're going to love this movie.

Okay.

Do you have a good dog or a misbehaved dog?

I've had both.

You've had both.

You're going.

Yeah.

You met Murph.

Right now.

I fuck with Murph.

Yeah.

But Murph doesn't like everybody.

Murph doesn't like everybody.

Yeah.

You have to come in a few times.

Yeah.

Murph is cryptic.

Hey, you're going to love this movie.

Yeah.

Wait, I just blanked on what I was going to say.

Oh, the superhero movie that does Charles know my superhero that didn't get a movie yet that I can't believe didn't get a movie?

I don't think he's ever heard it.

You might not have heard it.

I think I did.

Wait, wait.

Who's this hero?

Plastic Man.

Oh, yeah, we did talk about it.

We haven't talked about it on pod, but we talked about it at your.

So when I was a kid and they asked Saturday morning cartoons, they had a Plastic Man cartoon.

It was fucking great.

And he could do all this, like, stretch himself out shit and had a hot girlfriend because he was plastic.

All right.

So, but let's follow up.

But I always thought that as the technology got better, I always thought Plastic Man would be in the universe somewhere.

Stretching is very hard to do.

They're trying to do it in the new Fantastic Four movie that's coming out in a couple weeks.

Like, he could reach up and grab

canonically.

Superman is afraid of Plastic Man.

Plus, like, plastics, you get like what's going on in the world now where we all all pieces of plastic from from

drinking bottle water made of plastic well is plastic man bad for the environment like there's all these ways it could go they might do it but like he's he's the he's ridiculously powerful so powerful because he used to be a criminal so powerful that superman's a little wary of him superman's like this guy might be the most powerful guy in the justice league we gotta watch out for plastic man that's why he bought dumb powerful i don't know he wants technology now though no comedically i think you need like a comic actor so what's the best bill hater bill hater Hayter would be

amazing.

It's the best ringer verse movie of the first 25 years of the 21st century.

We should have done this.

We should have done this.

It's like the baby.

We can do it anyway.

No, we're doing it.

We got some shit.

It's dark.

What's number one?

Dark Knight still hasn't been topped.

That's why I think, like, that's the movie to me, everybody's like,

but I know what Van's going to say.

He's going to say, you're going to say endgame.

You know.

It is Dark Knight, without a doubt.

It's not even close, but like, it almost doesn't count.

It's how because it's not really a superhero movie it's a psychological thriller with batman it's basically the town yeah yeah it it is i know it's the the answer is the dark knight it's closer to the heat to heat in the town way closer

i could make a really compelling argument that it the reason why the movie resonates with people like it is is because it's closer to those movies than it is to the stuff that we're talking about but the movie has batman and the joker in it So if it's not the dark knight, what would it be?

It'd be either Iron Man or Ingame.

Iron Man is actually probably the...

Yeah.

Before we go, can you make the case for me to watch season four of the bear?

Because I still haven't dove in yet.

Have you watched season three of the bear?

I watched all three.

I love the bear.

I didn't like season three.

This was a bounce back season to me.

Don't listen to me.

Look at Andy.

Andy on the watch.

He's my boy.

Call him out.

You know what I'm saying?

But like, there's a lot of hate going on.

I think,

Van, we ended up, I would say, there was probably only one episode this season that I was like,

and not even bad.

Just kind of just like bored.

And I haven't listened to the pod yet because I haven't watched the episodes yet.

And it was really fun.

The bear was fun again because the show got to a point to where season three was too grim.

It was too grim.

I think he got thrown off by that Thanksgiving episode and how intense that was.

And all the things that weirdly affected season three.

I agree.

There is an

episode in season four that is a spiritual successor.

to that thanks it was it thanksgiving or christmas christmas whatever like to that episode

but it's the

other way

so where where that episode was super intense and almost suffocating this episode has all of the same people the same family dynamics however it's a release and they executed it really well are you so is your like apprehension to the bear just that it's not apprehension just not ready yet because it's intense this one doesn't

it's not

anymore they took the notes where it was just like, hey, bro, we got to bring some of the comedy back.

I actually laughed this season, which like third season, I was like, bro.

Before we go, can I pitch you a superhero movie?

I'm ready.

Late 90s baseball steroids error superhero.

Oh.

Yeah.

That's it.

That's all I got.

Wait,

why does he do the steroids?

Everyone's on steroids, but we actually have a real superhero in baseball and nobody realizes it.

Oh, that's good.

Oh,

they played around with that.

They've played around with that a little bit,

but that's good.

Like, he's like, finally, I have some cover because all these guys are these steroid monsters hitting 60 homers.

I can finally.

I thought you were saying

powers, but no.

Right.

I can finally play baseball.

People won't be suspicious if I'm a superhero because all these other guys are changing.

Taking pissed off.

That's all I have to say.

That's it.

Just taster.

This is actually,

we're giving away recipes, but this is a limited.

And you have a reporter.

Eight episode Apple.

Eight episode Apple.

You have a reporter, and that reporter is doing some sort of profile on him.

She's a hot lady.

Starts realizing there's something wrong with him.

Starts to realize.

She thinks it's a creatine thing, but it's not.

At the same time, you know what?

The owner of the team is actually a nefarious super villain.

This guy

guy.

This guy

is doing the whole deal, but it starts to become, are you going to continue to chase what's happening on the field or are you going to use your superhero powers for good?

Whole thing.

But it's rated R, though.

You know, it's sex.

It's baseball.

It's the whole nine.

It's a dirty

baseball superhero steroids movie.

What team would you want him to play for?

Yankees.

Thank you.

Let's go.

Thanks, guys.

Good to see you.

All right.

That's it for the podcast.

Thanks to Van and Charles.

Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well.

I'm going to be back on Sunday, a week from now.

So you'll make it.

Nothing's happening.

It'll be fine.

This is the most boring week of the year.

If anything crazy major happens, I'll come back.

Otherwise, I'm going to be doing football prep, getting ready, trying to top my 27 and 5 on the over-unders from last year, which I'll never top.

I'm probably going to suck.

But

enjoy the rest of the weekend, and I'll see you in a week.

I don't have

a feeling

with them.

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