Corporate & Tech Jargon & Thunderbolts*

Thunderbolts

Reegs: Welcome to Bad Dad's Film Review. The podcast that is to film criticism as a performance review is to actual human worth. This week we are leaning in, circling back, and taking things offline as we count down the top five corporate and technical jargon promising to add as much value as a company Vision Day held in a travel lodge by a man in a fleece who keeps saying there are no bad ideas, when there very clearly are from synergy to deliverables, we'll be unpacking the language of people who are paid too mu ch to say little of value with considerable confidence and who have almost certainly described themselves as a thought leader on LinkedIn. After we've run that one up the flagpole, we'll be turning our attention to Thunderbolts asterisk Marvel, surprisingly moving group therapy session dis disguised as an action film. It's basically the Breakfast Club. If the Breakfast Club had government assassins and instead of Saturday detention, there's a sentient void of existential depression trying to consume in the interest of full transparency and stakeholder management, please be advised that we'll be spoiling more plots than the White House who this week described bombing Iran as kinetic action in support of regional deescalation objectives, and then called it Operation Epic Fury, which is either the greatest corporate rebrand in history or proof that nobody in that building has ever been asked to pick just one tone. So if you're still under the impression that this podcast has quality control in place, I can only apologize for whatever series of decisions brought you here. Joining me to leverage our core competencies and deliver some low hanging fruit to three men whose cumulative contribution to this organization can best be described as a persistent drag on shareholder value. Starting with Dan. He's so old. He remembers when going forward, just meant walking and who operates with what can only be described as a net zero fucks framework. I,

Dan: Hi

Reegs: and it's devastating. Chris, a man who approaches watching films with the quiet fury of someone being asked to do a favor they never agreed to at least there's at least one person being violently removed from the organizational structure by the second act. Chris considers it aspirational content for people who use the word journey without irony. And currently on gardening leave in third place, the man who spent a week apparently banging away at his backlog and whose daily standup has been described by colleagues as the most unpleasant 15 minutes of their lives. It's

Sidey: Hello.

Reegs: and then there's me regs. Hello.

Dan: Hi.

Reegs: You went bonkers with the corporate jargon in our

Dan: Yeah, we started talking about all those blue sky thinking,

Reegs: Mm-hmm. Had you had a lot of that or something at

Dan: No, not really. I think it just been because I work with on a podcast with real kind of corporate people like yourself, weeks, you know, you you are, you, you send it up the flagpole a few times, surely.

Reegs: I don't, I try, I really try hard to avoid those cliches at work. I mean, there is a sort of language that you have to

Sidey: yeah, I was gonna say, 'cause some of that stuff, when you remove all the bullshit, the meaning of it, you still have to speak about that in various meetings. 'cause I work in a like corporate environment, but you can tell in loads of meetings everyone's trying really hard not to use the fucking bullshit bingo card.

Reegs: I think stuff like circling back and all that is just gone. You can't

Sidey: but me, who was one of the founders of bad dads, he's all in on that shit. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah,

Reegs: of people, this is their life. Yeah.

Dan: Do do they say it just because it's easier to say a cliche like that than it is to say actually the real words of, instead of circling back is like, why the fuck didn't you do it right in the first place?

Reegs: yeah. Yeah. I

Dan: And I think people

Cris: like to show off that they know that language, in my opinion.

Reegs: Yes. I think it's about presentation. So 80% of communication is nonverbal, right? So if I just show up looking confident, saying a load of words that sound impressive, then people will think I'm

Cris: well look at the most of the politicians, right? That you ask something or you hear a big sentence and you think, what was the actual purpose of those words that you just said? Because they're just big words and they sound really

Dan: well they get to hide behind them then, don't they? And they have double meanings. Yeah. But that's what I mean. It's

Cris: It is the same with this corporate wording as

Sidey: well. Blue sky thinking.

Cris: But that's my, that's my opinion is I've seen it before and it, it's almost like, especially if they know that they're speaking to someone like me who I don't care. And I'll be like so what do you mean kind regards? It'll just, yeah, it'll just make them sound more intelligent in elevated to peasants like me. But I dunno. That's my opinion anyway.

Reegs: I hear a lot of it.

Cris: top five.

Dan: You hear a lot of it

Cris: you're gonna hear even more now.

Dan: Well, there is a fair bit in films as well, so we kind of open up not just a corporate jargon, but I suppose sci-fi tends to have a,

Sidey: all, all I've got is sci-fi stuff. That's how

Dan: Yeah. And, and I know that there'll be other

Sidey: techno babble. I

Dan: techno Babel and, and films and and legal jargon as well.

Reegs: Any kind of

Sidey: jargon. Medical Medical is good for that.

Dan: Me, anything mechanical as we heard in the midweek, if, if anybody's watched my cousin Vinny, is they get to the verdict on that. Then the the piston fuel Carre

Sidey: yeah. Limited slip, diff blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Dan: differential is all about what's gonna get them off the murder charge. So did you watch anything? Other than the homework this week Chris Chris What? What I did,

Sidey: Hey. Watched something. I watched

Cris: the walking football on Sunday morning live.

Dan: Wow. What? Down at Springfield.

Cris: Down at Springfield St. Ones versus Portuguese.

Dan: I heard. Oh, wow. That, that would've been an epic game.

Cris: It was a cup semi.

Dan: Wow. I've got a semi. Tell me about it. What happened?

Cris: Uhs ones were

Dan: the mighty ones. ones Yeah.

Cris: got went one nail down.

Dan: Oh fuck. There's no way back. What they,

Sidey: what

Cris: they made it. One, one and then two, one in quick succession. Daniel

Dan: Wow.

Sidey: was

Cris: SS

Sidey: one, one and a half time though, I think. Was

Dan: I think it

Cris: One or half time.

Dan: halftime. Yeah.

Sidey: and they had missed a penalty at that

Cris: Someone gave, gave a penalty away,

Dan: and we were actually on three walks knowing

Reegs: the next walk run

Dan: the next run will be a pen. Thank you for those who have like edge of their seats now, all shouting, the next pen, the next walk will be a pen or the next one. And it happened. It happens.

Cris: for the, They

Sidey: them them first. So two one ones.

Dan: Yeah. Daniel, and then we inevitably gave away. The Was it the shepherd

Sidey: running to get,

Dan: was herding his, his flock

Sidey: a goal scoring chance. He, he shuffled too fast towards the ball and it got done. Pen

Dan: it got, it

Cris: and they scored

Sidey: They didn't miss this one.

Dan: No, no.

Reegs: Too old.

Cris: And then it was, it was, it was on a knife

Dan: It was to and fro. At one point they'd stream forward with like. I dunno. It was like a scene of Zulu. There was just so many of them coming at Sidey who was just there alone.

Reegs: Virgil Van Dyke

Sidey: protector.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: just defend on your

Dan: he he did. And, and managed to, to see off two of them and forced

Sidey: I had to beat them all off. You had

Reegs: had to beat both of them off. Yeah.

Cris: he beat them all off.

Dan: it. It did make me think, how are we pushing everyone forward with like, you know, 30 seconds, three minutes or whatever it was to go. And then we scored a glorious winner and,

Sidey: it was, it was glorious though.

Cris: on the counter,

Dan: I mean, when you're sliding on your knees, it's really hurts because we're old and it's an astro pitch. Yeah. But no, no, we left all our kneecaps there that day. But that was that was pretty exciting then Chris. Yeah.

Cris: Yeah, it was pretty good.

Sidey: onto the final,

Cris: Yeah,

Sidey: we dunno, we dunno what it is. we,

Cris: we just can't wait for the final under the lights.

Sidey: I got

Reegs: at a big psychological blow for rivals in the league

Sidey: Yeah. I like to psychologically blow people and then. What we dunno is the date of the final. And then so we were like really buzzing off that result and then our goalie is fucking great player. It's like, oh, by the way, I'm away for like these two weeks. I'm like,

Reegs: No you're not.

Sidey: Let's make sure that we let the league know. We're I told those fucks down the league office? Like we are not playing the game.

Reegs: Roland Cha,

Sidey: Don't roll. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's not happening. What they have done though, fucking irritating is they have shared George like four round of fixtures on Mother's Day. If that goes down, like so every fucker there,

Reegs: well, everyone's got a

Sidey: got a, has some sort of involvement in, in, in Mother's

Reegs: kids,

Sidey: Well, it was Father's Day, you know, it wouldn't fucking matter one job. Whereas it just happens to Mother's Day. So that's gonna be,

Dan: yeah,

Reegs: not gonna go down. Well,

Sidey: it's gonna be

Dan: it'll be a few scratch

Sidey: gonna have to live with it.

Dan: but yeah, we will,

Sidey: we'll Persevere.

Dan: we'll persevere. We'll persevere. Get through it. I actually watched I think it was called Lords of Rock or Metal. Lords of Metal, if you might have seen that one. The kids who have a deaf metal van

Sidey: Alright.

Dan: post metal deaf, no metal band.

Reegs: Young kids. I think I might have heard of this.

Dan: yeah. I think it was. So I watched that last night. And their band called skull Fuckers. I'm watching it with Nelly. And they've got like, sort of me, ya, at the end of the film we're going skull fuckers. Because it was, it was really kinda awesome, actually. It was a good film a coming of age feelgood factor film with the highs and lows of skull Fucking Skull fucking, and

Cris: very interesting.

Reegs: the highs are so high,

Dan: and it was little bit, you know, when you think, oh, there's a kid in it and he's, he's so cool. He's gonna be an absolute dickhead. But he was super nice. So it just made, it just twisted some of the the cliches a little bit to make it pretty cool. I thought it was a pretty good watch actually. So maybe it's something we will watch together as a family again

Cris: Holding hands,

Dan: a family of, of podcasters. But that was it really. That was my TV watching. Mm-hmm.

Reegs: Mm-hmm. you, I watched tarot, which was a horror movie that was on Netflix, which I would not recommend.

Sidey: Bad or scary. Oh,

Reegs: just boring. And I listened to a thing that is about, there's a Peaky Blinders movie coming. It's got Barry Kean in it and a load of, and I thought, oh, I'm not gonna be interested in that. But then listening to them talking about it on the radio at the Stephen Knight and Sian Murphy's in it. And like I said, Barry Kien and loads of other really good actor actors as well,

Cris: Alright. so. just a film, like one film rather

Reegs: no. A film that's then kicking off a two season return of Peaky Blinders one season of which is being shown on BBC and I think the other is being shown on Netflix or something crazy like that. Yeah,

Dan: Just to share the costs. And, and,

Reegs: the film is gonna be on Netflix pretty soon? It's going out to the cinema and then it'll be on Netflix in like the next month or something?

Cris: Okay.

Sidey: Never seen any Peaky Blinders,

Reegs: Oh, have you not?

Sidey: No. I mean, either. I

Reegs: I did quite enjoy

Cris: just know that scene where there no fighting. No fighting, no fighting. And then what you fucking going and

Dan: it kicks off. No, I kind of enjoyed a few seasons of that actually.

Reegs: But I'm not sure about this, but it did listening to 'em talk

Dan: about, did you say Killian Murphy? Yeah. Yeah. They're all back in it. Okay.

Cris: Did you watch

Reegs: had that Joe Cole in it that we

Cris: Joe Cole for, with Sam

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: He makes it, he makes it watchable

Sidey: No, I didn't watch anything. I've. Quite know, like into reading recently. So I've been

Cris: Oh yeah, I've seen

Sidey: Books and stuff.

Reegs: You

Dan: Anything. What you what? I

Sidey: I just finished the MF Doom biography that I was reading. Now I'm reading 4 45 which is by Bill Drummond Who? He was one half of the KLF.

Dan: Oh, okay. So it's like autobiography

Sidey: so well, yeah, it is. And isn't

Reegs: that about the record? 45?

Sidey: So he wrote a book when he was 33. He's written memory. He's 45 and his next one would be when he is 78. Okay. 'cause he is a fucking weirdo about stuff like that. So that's quite interesting.

Reegs: those prime numbers? No,

Sidey: they're just the different kind of records speeds that you play records at on there. So yeah, that's good. So I've watched like, my usual YouTube stuff, but nothing movie wise really. Or tv.

Dan: I, I've been talking about reading. I've been well actually listening to a book on the pod, on the order. Audible? Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Philip Kerr he's got this there must be one day Wan did you wanker? There, there must have been a

Sidey: it's the Steve Co isn't it Steve?

Cris: Ker Steve? Yeah. He

Dan: He's got a German policeman set in the walk called Bernie Gunther, who's a SS officer, but he's not as bad as all that sounds. He, he hates the Nazis, but he doesn't hate 'em enough to not look after himself and, and like. protect himself 'cause it's a shit time in the world and everything. And he's, he's he tries to do the right thing. It's very noir, it's very kind of dark and detectors kind of thing. I can't believe they're not gonna make a film out of this character at some point. It's absolutely brilliant. Read

Sidey: spider Noir things Out, isn't it?

Reegs: Yeah, it's coming on Prime, isn't it? Nick Cage.

Dan: And there's one other thing that caught my eye this week. It's the Baz Luman thing that's coming out for Elvis called Epic.

Reegs: Alright.

Dan: And it they put together a load of footage when he did the Elvis

Reegs: of styles. Actually.

Dan: Yeah. Well, Elvis, well he did the Elvis film. They've got all these

Sidey: as the Butler thing one must

Dan: Yeah. The Austin Butler one. They, they, they found all these, unseen footage of Elvis, and they keep it in a salt mine in somewhere to somewhere that it draws, it draws all the moisture away, you know? So they've got all the,

Sidey: thought I just wanted to season it.

Dan: Yeah, yeah.

Cris: No. It's the cleanest air in the salt mines. That's where they do the, wherever. Sorry. It's, I trouble, but

Dan: No, that's right

Cris: I know from home, because that's where they test airplanes. Like the small models. Because there's no wind. There's no wind, there's really, really clear air. And it's like, I dunno how to explain

Dan: it. That's

Sidey: it. No, I get what you mean. Yeah. Aerodynamically,

Dan: Yeah. It, it takes all the moisture out. So this is where they've kept all these these canisters of, of film and everything, and they, they, back in their day when Elvis was goofing around and everything, they never kept any of that in because it was, it wasn't, you know, I

Sidey: wasn't as the image

Cris: it wasn't sexy.

Dan: wa it wa yeah. It wasn't, you know, the image that they wanted to do it.

Reegs: the real Elvis.

Dan: they started doing a lot of the stuff that you know, sharing a lot of the stuff. And he's, he's put it in where he narrates some of his story himself. So it's like Elvis is telling the story himself. And it looks just from the

Sidey: people who are such huge mega stars that they could, you know, they almost seem like they're not human beings.

Dan: mean? Well, Elvis

Reegs: icons?

Sidey: yeah. Like you haven't seen Elvis do anything other than perform or, you know, do stuff,

Dan: get to see him

Sidey: eat a cheese bag or

Dan: Well he's at Vegas, but right at the beginning of his Vegas, when he wanted to perform, he wanted to be there. He is absolute fit as a fiddle in the catsuits when they still really fit him. And he's doing everything. He's just kind of, you know, doing that hunker, John Glow swinging his arms. He is, or. Straight in the musicians, the audience and

Reegs: see you gyrating

Dan: well, they, they wish for that

Sidey: the Jordanaires

Dan: And all of those guys. But it would've, it would've been bigger than that. It's Vegas, you know, it's it's, it's, it's massive. So that is something that I'm looking forward to coming out actually. 'cause I, I like a bit of the big E

Sidey: right. Should we do a top five?

Dan: Let's do this mumbo jumbo, which we going technical jaha ha hargan and techno babble. And the first thing that comes to most of our minds is flux capacitor, I guess. What the fuck is that? And,

Sidey: head on the toilet to know.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. It's well they rewire the flux capacitor and back to the future and many other kind of

Sidey: still trying to get this watch,

Dan: it. Watch it's those kind of words, I guess when they've just made it up themselves is some of the best tet babble that you can get. Sci-fi cider. You said that you had a few other

Sidey: Mostly sci-fi jargon. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: What, what other classic sci-fi jargons do you jargon with

Sidey: Well, we're doing a Marvel film later on. If we go back to fucking now, 2012 is when the original Avengers movie, well, the first Avengers movie came out. Does Lowkey need any kind of, any particular kind of power source? Bruce Brown says he'd have to heat the cube up to 120 million kelvin just to break through the Coolum barrier. Yeah. Star says, unless Selvi has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect, well, if he could do that, then he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet. Finally, someone who can speak English is what star says. And

Reegs: Is that what he says to

Sidey: me? Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Nice.

Reegs: too geniuses just

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: I suppose that referring to the subatomic physics suggested to a highest level possible physics being managed and in many ways Chris is probably agreeing with that, aren't you? Yeah. Anything from yourself si in the, because you are obviously in this world, you, you write a lot of this

Reegs: what in the Marvel quantum tunneling

Sidey: Yeah. No,

Reegs: No, but I was thinking about when Chris was talking about the kind of person who uses a lot of words to disguise the fact that maybe they're not saying an awful lot of value earlier. And you get like, we would get a lot of that in corporate speak and somebody who has a bit of that corporate speak but in a different world. Is Ulysses, what's his name? Everett McGill. From George Clooney's character in o brother wear art now. He's like a real loquacious guy. He is. Got a lot of words. He's slick talking intelligent, really. But also well just a dumb ass, I mean, gets himself in a lot of trouble. He's chained to help me out

Dan: Toilet

Sidey: John Terro

Reegs: and

Sidey: Tim Blake

Reegs: Tim Blake Nelson and he convinces them that there's a a huge sack of cash, isn't there, from an old bank job that he did with his brother, I think. And it's gonna be buried forever by the Tennessee Valley Authorities Dam building. And so he convinces them to escape together. It's based on the Odyssey. And he's the smart but arrogant hero of the story. He's got a good one. Hey when they're, do you remember they're chained together, say any of you boys smithies, or if not smithies per se, where you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straightened circumstances forced you into life of aimless wondering, and it's full of that kind of well writ ten dialogue. one. Yeah.

Dan: Well, Pete was thinking that we're forward thinking results driven consortium, leveraging best in class solutions to unlock scalable synergies and drive sustainable value creation across the ecosystem by harnessing data led insights and adopting an agile customer centric mindset to empower stakeholders to optimize core competencies, accelerating transformational growth and maximize ROI through innovative end-to-end strategic frameworks and work. Yeah, strategic,

Reegs: frameworks. ROI

Sidey: course. Strategic stuff like that. Strategic stuff tends to be where it happens most at athletes.

Dan: Well, I suppose, you know, if you want to

Reegs: strategic what you thinking?

Dan: you wanna remote at the forefront of industry disruption while delivering impactful holistic outcomes in a rapidly involving global landscape. It's where you've gotta be, isn't it?

Reegs: It is. Dan,

Dan: basically.

Reegs: Yeah. Thanks for that. It's horrible how, how hard

Sidey: just means like, to do better, I

Dan: Yeah. I think we'll take

Sidey: do a good job.

Dan: I think we'll take this offline

Sidey: that I hear a lot. Yeah. When the meeting kind gets derailed and Let's take this offline.

Reegs: Yeah. I'm fucking seething with you sort this out later. I also don't like thought terminating cliches like it is what it is

Sidey: or, yeah. I hate that, that doesn't mean anything.

Reegs: well that's just designed to completely shut down my point in the absence of any logic well done. Must

Dan: admit, in the, in the conservation world, sometimes you'll get jargon and technical and, and people will just assume you know what they're talking about. And sometimes you feel like the way that they said it, you should know what they're talking about. Yeah. So you don't say anything and then, and then suddenly you are just. You, you're not in the conversation anymore. You're just nodding along and you go away going, what the fuck was all that about? Because you're not quite brave enough to admit you didn't know what they, you know that

Sidey: or call out that

Dan: or call it out. And 'cause you think I should know. I should know. That should know. I should know the, and I, nothing's coming to my mind straight here. Straight away now. But

Reegs: I think you were probably just fed a load of bullshit. If you didn't have to do anything or make any decisions, then what was it all about anyway?

Dan: Yeah, sometimes mindless, well sometimes they'll, they'll come back to you and say, oh, I told you about that. The you know, and you're like, did you what off?

Reegs: something down or do

Dan: Well, possibly, probably they expect some of that. Sometimes you to do that work, don't they? Is there much in the in the, in the coffee world of

Cris: Yes. I tend to ignore all that because it's, it's the same, like the wine world is, half of it is bollocks because what I tell you in the tasting notes of coffee is the same, like the tasting notes of wine is the tasting notes of white wine, red wine, whatever it tasting, tasting notes of tequila or whiskey or whatever.

Dan: A cinnamon based cherry off the taste.

Cris: Yes. Cherry asshole. It's exactly that. It's, it's personal. Perception if you smoke, if you've just, there's so many variables is the same like in any other industry.

Dan: My farts got vanilla flavoring. Exactly. Yeah.

Cris: Tobacco and and dick moisture. That's, and, and that's where I kind of draw the line. And then when people start to talk about extraction and the, the, how long they stay, the coffee beans in the sun before they were washed and everything else, if it starts to get too technical where, unless it's something of, of, in a medical term or in a military term where you're either gonna die or you're gonna survive or these people are gonna attack you and we need to stop them and that will actually make sense to speak technically. In my, my hospitality world, let's say be it in a bar, in a cafe, when someone, a member of the public comes in and starts speaking to you like that half of the time or 90% of the time, they don't actually know what they're talking about. They just heard these words and they'll come and repeat them to you. Right.

Reegs: Maybe saw a YouTube video or

Cris: or, or, or, yeah. Or a podcast or, or they really like coffee or whatever. Normal people that are in the knowledge. 'cause I've met pretty much both sides. And it is the same with any industry I find, is if someone really, really knows what they're talking about or how you do it, they won't come to ask you. They'll just watch you how you do it, and they'll know exactly how you've done it. Yeah. Because I'm facing customers, I'm facing people. I send three emails a week. I don't, I I, if I speak to someone, it'll be face to face, right. So I don't have to pretend I'm technical. If I have something to say, I'll say it. If someone has something to say, they can say it back. And also they can see what I'm doing.

Dan: I th I think, you know, I it reminds me what you're saying when I was in Nam, because we had a lot of that copy that Roger, you know, we've got company, there's bogey all over me. Watch your six, 12 o'clock. And I think you, you obviously in the wine tasting coffee world, it's very similar to that kind of military action. The other the other side, you get a lot of technical jogging and is me medical

Sidey: forensic

Dan: kind of stuff as well. When you're bagging and tagging and you've got you know, specific code blues and, and things like that

Sidey: could find yourself with a subc cranial hematoma.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Love all that when you

Sidey: than that.

Reegs: bit of Latin as well. You need to throw some Latin in there every now and then, don't you?

Sidey: you? Phlange?

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: House is good for that. He normally

Sidey: ER was great for it as well,

Dan: er Yeah,

Sidey: because they, and I was always impressed that they've learn those lines in there. It's all real. They're doing real emergency surgery on the show. Yeah. And they're having to remember their lines at the same time as they're doing really good. Yeah.

Reegs: It's

Dan: Mm mm

Reegs: I've got, are you interested in some names that sound a bit Ty? Yeah. Awesome. Some films I've got Buy-in Blessed it's a benchmark. Kingsley Robuster Keaton Value, Adam Sandler. And then the films headcount of Monte Crito circle back to the Future, boil the Oceans 11 Bandwidth of Brothers, and of course, not least well. Yes, actually. Least. And last Sprint Eastwood. And he's starring in granular to Reno.

Dan: They're really strong. Yeah. It reminds me we should top our next few moments with a five of, of the best.

Sidey: Do you want a Simpson's one?

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: go on.

Sidey: The episode is das bus. I think that's the one that has Go Banana.

Reegs: Go Banana.

Sidey: But it also has comic book guy wanting to upgrade his internet and he says, I'm interested in upgrading my 28.8 kilobit per second internet connection to 1.5 megabit fiber optic t one line.

Reegs: God, that's so small. Anyway, when was this? A million years

Sidey: will you be able to provide an IP router that's compatible with my token ring ethernet land configuration? but like you say, that is

Reegs: annoying though. 'cause I know what that means. So.

Dan: yeah.

Sidey: that thing is, it's like, it's all, that's not made up stuff, that's all like real stuff. But like I say, we're now what a gigabit was like ages ago. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So Simpsons, like we say, there's a Simpsons for everything.

Dan: Well, I've, I've got, star Trek is my kind of one that I'd like to per put in because phrases

Reegs: we nominating

Sidey: what about Chris? Chris? Yeah.

Dan: God, sorry. Sorry if I jumped the the proverb

Cris: to be fair, I I've had actually, I had some other things to say, but it doesn't matter.

Dan: It does,

Sidey: yeah. absolutely.

Cris: The,

Sidey: The,

Cris: the norm that I have is from v from Vendetta.

Sidey: Oh, yeah.

Cris: Which there's the V words that don't mean anything when he

Reegs: that guy must have just got a thesaurus

Cris: when he introduces himself to Evie, where he kind of goes a humble vvi veteran. Yeah. In view humble vvi veteran casby car as both victim and villain by the iveness of faith.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: So, I dunno what that means, but apparently is a literate monologue. Packed with the words.

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: So it is basically, I hope that makes

Sidey: sense. That was written by Alan Moore. You seen the bit when he is on the news and they got his job, you know when they say like, oh, here, Soandso, he is a firefighter. Oh, I'll have to dig it out for

Reegs: Why, what has he got for him?

Cris: I also wanted to say while he's looking for that about the, I know you said about the military terms, but we did that war zone, was that what, what it's called? And that was just

Reegs: flat out

Cris: honestly every other word procedural. Yeah, that was, it felt like I am, I was being, I was in Afghanistan them and

Reegs: all the acronyms and all the jargon

Sidey: all. So that's what he looks like ala mor.

Reegs: Yeah, he's, he's quite

Cris: looks like,

Reegs: What does it, what does it say underneath him?

Dan: Strong

Sidey: this is, he was on B, b, C news. I think it looks like more like a question time or something. Alamore, and then it's writer Wizard Mo Santa Rasputin impersonator. Nice. Kind

Cris: makes sense. he does look like it.

Reegs: Yeah. Very good.

Sidey: Go on then. Dan, you were going with the Star Trek. I'm also gonna do that.

Cris: sorry

Dan: Are you, are you also going Star Trek? Well it was let me find the words that I was gonna use. 'cause they are quite technical. They're tachyon emissions from the temple anomaly.

Sidey: Tachyon. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. Tachyon

Sidey: They, they

Reegs: a lot of tachyon

Sidey: they get tack on quite a lot.

Reegs: Not the kind of emissions that occur in a man cave.

Dan: it doesn't actually mean anything. I think.

Reegs: well, tachyons are, a,

Dan: what

Sidey: I think it was just,

Dan: emissions in the temporal

Sidey: placeholder word when they needed to sound like

Dan: scientificy and without any real accuracy. But it fooled me all, all the time when, when I was watching the, those Kirk kind of ones and things. And obviously Spock would come out with a few beauties as well. That got me into it, I guess the, the techno babble as a child,

Sidey: R whatcha going for?

Reegs: Should we, are we about the point of rattling through and

Sidey: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Reegs: up? Okay, so just a couple of office space was Mike Judge's 99 T nine Comedy. That's about exactly this kind of thing. It's kind of like fight club, but without the fighting club part. It's like a board software engineer, a soul crushing company doing soul crushing job. And then he goes to a hypnotherapy thing, I think, and ends up coming up. He gets promoted when he comes back with a zero fucks attitude and then decides to rob the company that he works for. It's a good one. He even has a watermark, American psycho. It's not corporate jargon, but it's how corporate identity can be wrapped up in something as important as a business card. As they. The look of dread on his face when he sees that one of his mates has got, I think Jared Lito even it might be, has got a nicer business card than he's got. And the, what I'm gonna go for is from a TV series. It's from season five, episode 16 of friends. It's called The One with the Cop. It's the one where Joey thinks he fancies Monica. It's the one where Phoebe finds a policeman's badge, but it's most famous for the scene where Ross, Chandler and Rachel are trying to get a sofa up, a staircase pivot.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: Pivot, which I hear quite often at work. We've gotta pivot and do something different. So that's my non pivot.

Sidey: Hacking and that kind of stuff happens quite a lot in certainly like police ones. I was thinking of 24. Mm-hmm. And also NCIS. So I used to watch quite a bit of NCS when I first got together with my misses. The actual quote?

Reegs: Oh, you got some hacking jargon for us.

Sidey: It's not that amazing. I'm bypassing the firewall and injecting a worm into their encryption algorithm. Yeah. But they would always be able to hack something from like, from start to finish within about 20 seconds. Yeah. You know, I dunno if it's that quick, but right. Then with Star Trek, this is

Reegs: Mr. Robot has some very convincing hacking

Sidey: Yeah. I fucked that series off after the first series. I did a Chris, I was like, I'm not watching series two of that.

Cris: You do

Sidey: as you do

Dan: A star, A Star Trek one with Scotty describing trans walk. Beaming is hitting a bullet with another blindfolded while on a horse. thought that was quite,

Reegs: yeah. Beaming somebody while they're on a warping spaceship. Yeah,

Dan: trans warp beaming.

Reegs: But you can just go, oh, we've got a trans warp beaming

Sidey: Well, they have a formula. They basically have a formula for, it's called ver well, it's verb plus modifier, plus physics, noun plus through the space component.

Reegs: Okay.

Sidey: Okay. That's generally how it works.

Reegs: alright? How did you know that? Were you reading that or was that off the Okay.

Sidey: the one I'm putting in is, is from this is from start at NextGen. If we modulate the phase variance in the subspace field and emit an inverse tachyon pulse through the main deflector, we might be able to stabilize the warp core.

Cris: Wow.

Reegs: I bet it worked as well.

Dan: And it's, and it's only a

Sidey: they put something through the main deflector Yeah. That, that thing can fucking do anything. Can do anything. And then basically when they need something to fix the plot, that's what they're, they, that's what they go to. Yeah. Yeah. Still fucking brilliant though. So there you go. You've

Reegs: Have you seen that thing about those nerds who wrote to the Star Trek guys about giving some big detailed, like, you know, in season seven you said this and it's, this works by blah, blah blah, and how does this actual thing work? And they wrote back to 'em saying it works very well.

Sidey: Thank you. always say, think of when Homer just like pans those nerds and Simpsons.

Dan: Have you ever heard of the little Mosque on the Prairie? There's one, one character says it looks like a nasty sprain. You don't have to dumb it down for me. I came for your medical opinion. You violated your anterior cruciate ligament. I know what it mean. Looks like a nasty sprain.

Sidey: Did you see

Reegs: Little Mosque on the prayer? Yeah. It's, have you just made that

Dan: No, I've not.

Sidey: did you see that there? I think it was an, it's an AI music site.

Reegs: It's already a no from me.

Sidey: No. It'll be a yes for you. Someone hacked it and replaced all of the music on it with Homer Simpson cover versions.

Reegs: I like it. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Sidey: So the, there's a version of Fairmont. Get the

Reegs: done by Homer. I will not listen to that though. I

Sidey: I know you have to do it like on something that's not gonna affect your algorithm. I think I saw on a news thing and so I just heard him go, dun dun dun. It's amazing.

Dan: I think sometimes you've gotta activate the supersonic de celebrate and contracting turbines vertically to get a little cl too close to the sun. Otherwise, and you've gotta de decompress the aero thematic thermo Thermo thermoreceptors and accelerate the isothermal axo tract beam value of parameters to invert the compressor. Radio, radio and energize the tandem of electrons vertically. While turn up this interplanetary microphone.

Sidey: I was in a board meeting where someone did suggest that something got taken offline. Okay. And the chair went, no fuck off. He said, absolutely the place where we need to discuss it. I was like, that's brilliant.

Reegs: Love take this offline? Nah

Sidey: it was brilliant. And he could say he was really fucking angry as I was like, oh, this is good. Right. Should we talk about

Reegs: thunderbolts? I say everyone nominated? it. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet

Dan: Thunder.

Sidey: Asterisk. 'cause the marketing for this was actually quite clever.

Dan: Had you this been on your radar before?

Reegs: I'd seen this before, yeah.

Sidey: Say so.

Cris: I've never seen this.

Dan: You were a first timer like me, Chris. Because you,

Reegs: and you are coming in, you are not a Marvel fan at all in any way, are you

Cris: I liked the first Captain America. Yeah. And I liked the first Avengers because it was new to me. Yeah. I've never seen the comics. I've never seen a comic magazine in my life.

Reegs: Yeah. So was this kind of, 'cause Marvel is now like a massive, enormous TV show

Cris: Yes. With, with films rather than

Reegs: films now. So coming in for like, like phases or whatever the fuck they call it

Sidey: Don't, this is the last film Baffling. This is the last film of phase five.

Reegs: is it? yeah,

Cris: well I think because there's quite a few reference that I didn't understand Yeah. And

Reegs: who any of the characters were

Cris: I didn't know if these, any of these have been in any of the other, the other ones that have been done recently. 'cause I've not watched since the first ones. As soon as they made the second one and the third

Reegs: they're sort of essentially Marvel C list tier. So

Dan: this sort of Bucky, who's one of the,

Cris: the one with the arm. And I also know, because he's Romanian, Sebastian Stan. He's actually born in Romania and then Yeah,

Reegs: I didn't know

Sidey: He's smoking hot as well. Yeah, like you say re this is their kind of second tier of heroes and villains. Yeah. And they do this with other things that they'd done it in the old Netflix Marvel TV series where they had a team up of like Luke Cage and all that

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah. The defenders, so this was the Thunderbolts and they were, they were kind of like a sort of suicide squad equivalent really, from the DC

Reegs: I think the marketing led you to believe the story was much closer to the suicide squads kind of, you know, Renegade team assembled and doing jobs. But whether it's not like that,

Cris: Why does he have the asterisk

Sidey: So we'll get onto that at the end. So the whole film, like the marketing of it, that was the question they was saying. Why has it got an asterisk at the end? And they didn't reveal that till after the film was premiered. It's quite, I thought it was quite good actually.

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: Well, it starts off with

Reegs: oh, we get the Marvel logo first

Dan: Okay.

Reegs: and then the void, the existential depression, swallowing it up. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. And it starts out in, it Kuala Lumpa in a a lab there where some,

Reegs: where she's on top of a building, she's narrating

Cris: You're sitting there. Yeah.

Reegs: and then she throws herself off the

Dan: drops off,

Sidey: She had petitioned for ages to do the stunt herself 'cause she loves heights. She'd even been like badgering Kevin Feige to let her do it and they're like, it's fucking insurance nightmare. No,

Reegs: she base jumps from one building to another. It's not even down to the street. It's fucking mental really. And yeah, so she jumps off, it looks like she's committing suicide and she's talking about how depressed she is and how she has suicidal thoughts. And she's sort of doing that kind of like. Oh God. Every day's a Monday type thing,

Sidey: Kill, kill, kill.

Reegs: she's beating the shit out of a load of guys in a pretty cool, actually one take action sequence. Right from the shot from above.

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. 'cause her, like, if you have watched all the films, then you'll know that her sister has died. The back widow. Yeah. She's,

Dan: oh, I didn't know this. So I haven't, I've seen, I'm probably not as far along as you, but more further along than Chris in the, in the

Sidey: So Scarlet Hansen Sky is her sister. She's been,

Reegs: obviously died in the event. One of the Avengers

Sidey: Her father is the Red Guardian. And she's been well, surrogate father. Yeah. But, and, and she's been in this kind of like orphanage training thing for being, being an assassin. So her life is like essentially just been training to

Dan: Machine. Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: devoid of any joy, let's say.

Reegs: Yeah. And like you say, Dan, they're in this location, which turns out to be a secret lab for Project Century which we'll find out is actually quite important as the film unfolds. She sees a Guinea pig there and she, and she ends up rescuing it, but not before a doctor comes out and tries to warn her. No, no, no. There's something going on. But she too, you know, cynical to listen to it, blows him away, she does get

Cris: she

Dan: well. and she's very cool with it all. And as you say, she's quite cynical. She,

Reegs: it's Florence pce, so she's like a really good actress,

Dan: Yeah. She's talking to one guy and telling all her problems and he's kind of just

Sidey: well, you just see her and it kind of comes back.

Dan: Yeah. He's, he's, he ends up his face getting blown off and she's. Kind of disappointed because she wanted his face for the facial recognition. And okay, it's just means that she's gotta do a little more work to get it a slightly different way. And you see her leaving the building walking down the street on the phone saying, yeah, well that job's done, and the building blowing up behind her in a big fireball. And she's asking to get out of the business really, that she's had enough of it. And she's then told by the boss of who's setting her up, one

Reegs: Allegra, Deon. And this was scary because she looks so much like Tulsi Gabard the actual director of National Intelligence now. But this predates it even down to the white streak in her hair. It's like freakish how they like predicted her rise.

Dan: Right? And well, she's, telling her, I've got one more job for you, then we can get you something else that is more aligned with what you wanna do. A more public, front facing role that she wanted rather than all this cloak and dagger suicide stuff that

Reegs: well, she's still all cut up about it and she goes to visit her surrogate father, as we talked about, Alex David Harbour, who's kind of, he's the red guardian Russia's equivalent of Captain America. And he's like in this, he's a pretty much just a comic relief character throughout the movie. A bit there to provide emotional support for her. But he's like watching videos of his former glory on the TV and that sort of thing. And they have a big emotional moment together, don't they, where she's confessing about her depression and feeling abandoned by him

Dan: stuff. Yeah. And he's not in a much better state himself. He's living like, a bit of a slob. He a, he's got Chris a hero,

Reegs: but he now he runs a limo

Dan: He's got Chris packets and chocolate wrappers and beer cans all around him. We're laughing because that's exactly the environment we're in here. And yeah, they, they try to you know, reconcile and, and chat, but things aren't really going as planned. Both of them are set in their ways. So though he's trying a little bit more to, to see the brighter side of, of things and obviously wants to, they haven't seen each other in a year. But he hasn't made the effort. It becomes a little bit clearer down the line as well that she's

Reegs: well, I think it speaks to one of the themes of the movie. It actually really does have a theme for a Marvel

Dan: Yeah,

Reegs: letting people help you through depression. And There's the reason all the plot is being kicked off basically is 'cause the woman you were talking about, DeFonte and she's got some sort of weird impeachment thing going on, being led by Wendell Pierce from The Wire as Senator Gray or something. And Bucky, who is also a congressman now that I'd completely forgotten that. I think that happens in Captain America. The other

Sidey: doesn't it? Yeah. It's hard to keep up. Even if you watch them all,

Reegs: It's hard to care. And he gives quite a funny like no comment sort of, oh, it's worrying type interview. Everything's worrying, you know, the language of politicians when they don't actually say anything, just when they're being told something controversial, say, oh, that's definitely worrying.

Sidey: I was waiting for 'em to say they're gonna scale the mountain of conflict.

Reegs: Yeah, exactly. And so basically this, to cut a very long story short the story, she's been running this superhuman project thing going on and she sends out what's she called?

Dan: Oh, what the one that,

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. But what is her, like her superhero name? I've completely fucking blanked on it.

Cris: Yeah, I dunno. Does she have a name?

Reegs: She must have a name.

Sidey: I don't think she does,

Reegs: does she not? She's just,

Sidey: it's just gi I don't think, she's not like Black Widow or

Reegs: No, she's not got one of those. All right. Well she, she gets sent out to this complex to go and destroy this stuff and she turns out in a bit, in a sequence is quite good. It's revealed that there are a load of other second string heroes there, including the new Captain America.

Sidey: Russell's agent doesn't he? Yeah.

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. And he's a bit of a dick and knows it, knows it about himself and everybody he like has to sort of accept his place as being the lowest on the ru on the rung. And he is constantly trying to like one up everybody. This task master was in one of the films and is dispatched in about three seconds.

Sidey: Yeah. And it was kind of known because she was in none of the promotional stuff and everyone knew that she was in it but was gonna die.

Reegs: I'm not even convinced. It was like actually her, like it looked like they'd CGI ID her face on the

Sidey: yeah. And then they, they put a bullet in her face anyway, just to make

Reegs: dead after one line ghost was in one of the Antman movies and red Guardian turns up as well. And they've all been trapped there. And Bob? Yeah. Who just is Bob? Yeah, just who the fuck

Cris: he's never been before in any of

Sidey: them. No, no. It's his first time. Yeah.

Cris: Okay. The new guy, new kid on the block.

Dan: Yeah. Well, he, he, he

Reegs: he doesn't really remember anything about who he is or how he got there.

Dan: He does get a name afterwards, doesn't he? He's known as the,

Sidey: well at this point he is just some guy.

Reegs: just, some guy's just Bob,

Dan: some guy.

Sidey: They don't understand why he is there and, and they've all been told, so person X has been told to kill person, y person. Y's been told to kill a person and basically a leg was just clearing house. So everything in there exactly is a big warehouse of stuff, including a human being. I don't think she knows about him though.

Reegs: she doesn't.

Cris: No.

Sidey: And it's, it's all to be shut down and all the evidence is gonna be like incinerated and

Reegs: They're all there to kill each other

Sidey: her out of her in her.

Dan: she she's impeachment trial. Yeah, exactly. They're, they're closing on on her. This is a ma and she kind of clearly says to her assistant, you've gotta get rid of all that stuff. As soon as they come out of that that hearings and things. And this is part of it, as

Sidey: It did that amazing like superhero film cliche thing of, or, or anything, you know, when people are about to start putting a timer on

Reegs: Yeah. Two

Sidey: Two minutes till this is, why would it need a

Reegs: I know, that's what I was thinking as well. Who are you telling? You can need to

Sidey: minutes.

Reegs: Oh, fuck it. But anyway, yeah, they do manage to escape the in fi in fiery room. But then they, the army and shit turn up, don't they? And there's a scene where they, they sort of stealthily exit, but then they're gonna get caught at the gate.

Cris: Yeah. But in between the the, we find out that Allegra sees Bob. Yeah. And then she's like, who is that? And why is he there?

Reegs: And we do find out

Cris: and then we realized that and she went, she goes from kill everyone to

Reegs: we gotta bring this guy in

Cris: not kill everyone, basically. Right. So that's the only

Reegs: You are Right. You're

Cris: everything else.

Dan: they've gotta shimmy up a tunnel. It's about a mile high.

Reegs: That quite funny with their backs to back.

Sidey: how do we Yeah. They just get

Reegs: then Captain America sort of fucks them all off and jumps, leaps for it. It's quite, quite funny. Some of these bits they do kind of get out, don't they? And, but they're disguised and then suddenly they're disguised is going really wrong. They're stopped at the gates on the way. And Bob, who has already been implied to be a bit druggy a bit

Dan: yeah. He's he's

Reegs: out there.

Cris: Yeah. But we also see the fact that when he touches them, oh, he, they experienced their worst memories Into, into a memory. So he first touches Yelena. She goes to the moment when her friend was killed.

Reegs: Yeah. She set up

Sidey: her first test, you

Cris: up a or she set her up basically in, in some woods. And then it's

Reegs: about 10.

Cris: Yeah. And then the Captain America with a family went in the

Sidey: a row. Yeah.

Cris: touches him and the,

Reegs: You see that? He's racially cool 'cause his family's black, but he's just an absent lazy father.

Sidey: Mm-hmm.

Cris: Yeah. That, so, so you, you already know that

Sidey: got powers,

Cris: got something, he's got some powers and you know, there's something about him, but we dunno exactly what the crack is.

Reegs: you don't really

Cris: You don't really expect. But he's the one that escapes from the truck and he practically sets himself as a decoy. He

Reegs: He gets full Robocop at this point, like a million bullets just fired

Sidey: it. Yeah.

Reegs: and it looks like he's down. And then suddenly he

Cris: gets back up. Yeah.

Reegs: gets back up and you

Cris: and then he shoots up in the sky.

Sidey: Yeah, he does.

Dan: Yeah. He's got powers like none of them have got. And we find out that this project Century. Lab rat kind of experience that he went through which was said not to have worked. And he was, part of the evidence of it not working in was in this big warehouse. Actually he wasn't dead. He was just in kind of hibernation, I guess. He came out around the time that they were about to incinerate the place and is now learning how to use his powers as much as anything else.

Reegs: Well, you say that, but I mean, after he flies up in the sky, he immediately just crashes straight back down to the floor. Doesn't he like? And it causes an

Cris: like a meteorite. Yeah.

Reegs: And he's like passed out, which will allow them to subdue him and take him back.

Dan: yeah, He's learning.

Reegs: Yeah, he's learning. You're right.

Cris: That's where the Serge or whatever his name is, he comes to rescue them with a limousine.

Reegs: turns up in the limousine. I liked this little action

Sidey: he turns on the music in the band. They're like, what the fuck? They

Cris: get

Reegs: going, oh, I'm trying to find the machine guns or whatever. And he just, the disco lights come on.

Dan: Yeah. He fucking

Reegs: then Bucky saves the day. Yeah.

Cris: the

Dan: He also fucks up the day for them as well because he has as he is, he's kind of getting everybody on their tail and, and wiping them out. He also captures them with a massive flip of this huge stretch

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. That was cool.

Dan: And he takes them all as his prisoner because they're all part of Allegra

Cris: trial. Yeah.

Dan: The fontaine's evidence against him in trial, they were villains themselves and Bucky's playing the straight card and

Sidey: he's, doing the kind of T 800 Termin too, like on a fucking Harley, no helmet, doing the shotgun thing, flipping it around and shooting. He looks so fucking

Dan: now, now they're trying to explain. No, no. Look, there's a guy called Bob who's real badass and you know, something's going wrong here in the power he's got is is unbelievable and it sounds bullshit to him. But then Allegra's. Assistant calls him

Reegs: I love how they basically just, they so lazily set up this, he's just like, one time gives her his card and then later all she has to do is sneak off and make a phone call. It's so lazy,

Dan: It's how it works though. People give cards, people make phone calls, people give information. Probably saves about three hours of film time though.

Reegs: No, but there were ways to do it. Same but better.

Dan: Right. Well, okay. It was got the message across though to

Cris: and he's a handsome man with a metal arm,

Reegs: And he puts it in the dishwasher to clean it, which I really fucking

Dan: Yeah. He, he's and then finds out that actually they might be telling the truth here. Assembles them as the Avengers

Reegs: well, not really. No. They're

Dan: they're beginning certainly the, certainly the Russian dude. He's going like, yes, I told you yes. We're all together. We're gonna fight against them.

Reegs: The thunderbolts is what

Dan: we Yeah.

Reegs: jokingly christened themselves. Actually in a moment when they're talking about how not a team, they are named after her football team. Did they mean American football or soccer? It was soccer. They actually said soccer. So It

Cris: say soccer, middle school, soccer

Reegs: team where one of the players did a shit on the pitch. Yeah. And that's the team that they're named after. So, 'cause meanwhile, the reason they're gonna have to then suddenly move away from here is because back at the old Avengers

Sidey: Yeah. The Watchtower

Reegs: Bob is waking up and DeFonte is convincing him that

Cris: gets a glow up.

Reegs: He gets a glow up. He's convincing him that he's the superhero they need, he gets a full glow up in like, well, we don't actually see that straight away, do we? But we can skip to that part because the thunderbolts end up out there coming to stop him. Stop the Superhuman project. Stop Def Fontaine.

Sidey: no chance.

Reegs: And yeah, he's had this glow up. He's wearing this frankly ridiculous suit with this embellished s Gold plate on his groin. And he fucking beats the shit out of them like,

Dan: what, what's he called

Reegs: Century. The

Sidey: yeah. right.

Reegs: Yeah. Right. It loosely follows the plot of, of a comic book character called The Century, who was an unstable guy. But yeah, he just, there's a quite a good action sequence where they use all their powers, but they're not even close to being a match for him. He's like godlike compared to them.

Sidey: Yeah. I mean, med guardian's just strong. Yeah. Elena's just

Reegs: well, they, they call this out themselves, right?

Sidey: don't have actually

Reegs: she was like, everybody can hear, can, can punch and shoot a bit. Is that it? Yeah. Like,

Cris: Yeah. The only one is the one that

Sidey: ghost can phase in and out stuff. Yeah.

Reegs: she can only do that for A minute

Sidey: a minute.

Cris: A minute anyway.

Reegs: And not when the plot fires a a thing at her to stop her for a minute.

Cris: and I Is this where he turns Captain America's shield into a taco?

Reegs: Yes. Yeah. He just bends the shield and he just like, ah, ease beats the shit out of them. And he flies off into the sky or wherever and comes back down. They escape. Out of there. Yeah, they and she hits him with a kill switch to sort of switch him off to fte.

Cris: Well, yeah, because his ego, his ego's gone too big and he is like, well, a

Reegs: like, he's like, I don't need to listen to

Cris: A God doesn't need to listen to

Sidey: anyone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Reegs: So she, she switches him off, but it doesn't stop him. And when he comes to, he is now the void which is really cool. This like a neg, the effect is, is more than just black light. It's like negative light and just pin prick, diamond eyes that you can see. And he speaks in a

Dan: and suddenly we learn a little bit more about Bob, who hasn't been the happiest kind of, in, in himself from the beginning really. He shared a little bit of how he didn't really feel his his own worth with Yoa at the beginning. And she's shown some compassion and, and wanting to know more about that, but actually,

Reegs: well, because they're all terrible people who've done terrible things. That's one of the big things in the movie, isn't it? They've all done awful things and they're all trying to look for how to do things in the future better.

Dan: And and Bob then goes, slides into a depression, but he's, he's, he's a depressed superhero. God effectively, and that's how he sees himself now as a God,

Sidey: look, his power that he starts to use on people looks like he just obliterates

Reegs: He eros them, basically.

Sidey: what it looks like. The they're dead. one he does it to a kid.

Reegs: sequences in the movie. Yeah. 'cause the city, he starts, the depression, the void sinks everywhere. It infects everything and breaks everything. And

Dan: black shadow kind

Reegs: the city starts to crumble. So we get some superhero rescuing, like, you know, catching shit and moving people out the way and that, and there's a really affecting sequence where they all, five of them struggle to save this little girl. And then afterwards they're like, red dy iss talking to her. There you go. Well done little girl. And then she just gets voided out of

Sidey: And you're like, wow, this is dark for a Marvel film. Yeah.

Reegs: And at this point it's not clear what I mean, I you just assume they're dead because you don't know anything else. Yeah. And somebody who didn't think that, or maybe she did and didn't care because of her suicidal ideation is Yelena and she steps into the void herself. To find that it's sort of essentially, I think this was

Dan: your

Reegs: bit of the movie in some ways. The, it's like a series of interconnected memories, like separated by strange sort of,

Cris: and walls

Reegs: walls between each area. Yeah. And eventually she's able to traverse through them and find Bob. She

Cris: He initially gets seen, she sees him through a mirror. Yeah. And then she's like, oh, okay. He is behind that wall and goes to another room. And then it's like, you are here. Alright. This is the room. And they

Dan: She's got a burst through barriers and walls, as you say, breakdown walls to, to get into the same room as Bob and they start to have a discussion and a chat. He's, he's himself in this room.

Reegs: He feels powerless to, to stop the depression, essentially the real bob who's sitting there. She convinces him, no, it can be done. And even though the physical world around them starts to attack them, then the other thunderbolts turn up as well. In a big show of solidarity, I rip this evil pillow. This

Dan: they, that's it. They all, they've all kind of gone into the void. They've all followed her in and the power of teamwork.

Reegs: she says to take him. She says, let's go to your worst memory, the place that you fear the most, which turns out to be

Dan: that Malaysian

Reegs: Lumpur lab that we saw at the beginning where he became sentry and accidentally voided out the staff there. And he'll have a confrontation with himself as the void. A physical fist fight. I really like this about this movie. The, the final third of this movie had no, like, fighting robots or giant things or portals in the sky. It was just a fight between a really kind of fairly amateurish fight between two reasonably regular looking dudes, although one of them is all in black, and then it's resolved

Cris: emo fight

Reegs: with a group hug.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: And there's no riffy quippy marvel bullshit about all that stuff. It's just, no, you, you know, we are here for you, Bob, and this is just, you're not on your own.

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: help you. And, and that is literally what saves everything. It, it, it stops the spread of the depression and the void

Dan: and those that have been snuffed and voided out, start popping back into lifeing and starting with the little girl who, who we we were all still

Sidey: they are all sent off to deal with their worst ever traumatic memories. So there's probably some PTSD knocking about,

Reegs: including that little girl. Were you, were you interested in what her most traumatic memory might have been

Sidey: Like she lost a toy or something? I

Dan: We then see the one that started it all Lenta, what's her name? Allegra Allegra,

Sidey: richard Dreyfuss daughter.

Dan: Yeah.

Cris: She was in Seinfeld. No. Is that

Dan: Yeah. She really cleverly kind of,

Reegs: but bearing in mind the whole plot of the movie has been about them wanting to confront DeFonte about all this bullshit for them to just give it up in five seconds, because there's a couple of TV cameras there made fucking zero sense. But,

Dan: well, it, I guess, you know, they wanted. Looking at the bigger picture, they're, they're trying to gain confidence. So the world's just been through another real shocking event here. The, they're

Reegs: all looking for a path to

Dan: They're all looking for a path for redemption, and suddenly they're shared just as they're about to strangle her. She steps through this kind of curtain to reveal as they follow her, all these TV cameras and press and everything. And they feel like obviously they can't do anything now. And she's talking about how great they are. And it was all part of her plan. And it's all thanks to her good work and, and foresight that they've saved the day.

Reegs: And here they are, the new Avengers and everything. I really like the fact that Bob starts clapping even though he's supposed to be one of them. And he's like looking at them.

Dan: and then you see little bits afterwards in sort of comic booker

Reegs: I quite enjoyed this. They have at, they devote at least 90 seconds of one of the post credit scenes to a discussion about intellectual property, which was good. Good, good content that

Sidey: they, so this is what they do with the marketing they had the whole time. It was thunderbolts our asterisk, and then they had them at the premier, I think ripped part of the poster back. And it was then the New

Reegs: the new Avengers.

Sidey: Avengers. So

Reegs: then it's revealed that Sam has the

Sidey: Sam, they're suing, they're getting sued by the Avengers being called the New Avengers. Yeah.

Reegs: Alexi, the red guardian comes up with the idea of putting a Zed on the end to avoid infringement, which nobody likes, but I just,

Sidey: see this, it's, it's post credits after the, after the

Cris: Oh, so you have to wait for the whole thing. Oh,

Reegs: We've just understood their journeys from like tortured assassins to hopefully being slightly on the path of redemption, but they willing to dease themselves now and sit in the Avengers Tower waiting for a call from that fucking maniac to go and do more stuff. I don't get it.

Dan: it. We'll have to make any sense. Well, we'll have to see the next one, I guess.

Sidey: Then they get, did we get to see some sort of early warning alarm? The other thing's, okay, alarm goes off and they're watching something coming through and it's a big spaceship with a four on it. I dunno what that means. Who knows? We'll never know.

Reegs: We'll never know the

Cris: for the Marvel.

Sidey: yeah, yeah. It's there.

Dan: who knows? Who knows? It's, it's all there for next time. As ever, this, as I said, wasn't on for me before. I hadn't seen it before. It wasn't high on my, my radar to, to see it because I was a little bit marveled out and I thought the ones that I had seen, I. There was a few bad ones. There was a few kind of real mid, mid, mid range. Yeah. Shit, man. Mid-range. So, so it was nice for me to see this get back on track. I thought it was one of the stronger Marvel films that I've seen in a little while. I dunno what you, you guys felt, but I thought

Reegs: think it's a little bit too much to say. It's like a big return to Marvel because it still makes no fucking sense in the context that's happening. But it was nice to see a Marvel movie that was different in the ways I described before, where the climax was very, very and it had, did have a consistent theme with narrative weight behind it that was genuinely quite moving at some points about a serious subject. So yeah, that was quite good.

Sidey: I hate all the foreign accent stuff. I really hate it, And they've done it before and phased it out. So why they have to start bringing it back,

Reegs: the Chernobyl route and just have 'em all be like

Sidey: Yeah. When when the Sky Witch first arrived, she, she had the accent and they just over a few films, it's like, nah, that's shit. Let's get rid of it. And they bring it back and it just, I don't know. I thought Florence Peter sounded terrible with it. And David Harbo, he's obviously in the douche realm anyway. And he just felt like a pantomime character to be honest. Yeah. But I did enjoy the film overall. It's one, like you say, having had like Antman Quantum Mania, it was fucking awful. The Harrison Ford,

Reegs: America Brave New World was so shit.

Sidey: Shit. Yeah. Yeah, it's garbage. They reference it in this one, don't they? So this was nice, at least like something that was watchable compared to some of those other shy ones that were really bad. So yeah it was okay

Reegs: and it didn't have that riffy quippy marvel bullshit going on all the time. Like a

Sidey: definitely have in the. Do want say one?

Reegs: You think so?

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: I just like, I thought the tone it struck was slightly better

Dan: Yeah, I agree. I think it was it was, made it a little more watchable

Sidey: length. Chris? Too long.

Cris: too long, man.

Reegs: was it?

Cris: Two hours and a half.

Dan: Yeah,

Reegs: Was it

Dan: 2 23. Two, something like that? Yeah. Caught that 20 minutes

Sidey: Yeah, man.

Cris: Just, and again, you look, you know me, right? It sounds like a broken record, but that's, I can't just not tell you my opinion. I have seen films that are three hours and enjoyed

Reegs: this.

Sidey: Yeah. But they, they should be few and far between. There is this trend to make millionaire

Cris: know, when you actually watch a film and you are like looking at the time, I actually caught myself twice looking at the time. I was

Reegs: I'm sure you could have cut it without losing

Cris: and I enjoyed a few bits. There was a few funny things. The limousine thing. There were the, you know, there was a few things that I found quite funny. I don't know, the escape thing from the, with the back to back thing, I thought it was a bit, if you are that good that you catch people while they're flying through the air and shit, surely you can come up with a better idea than that. But anyway, that's just me and. I just, I dunno. It's, it's just these superheroes when you see a couple of them, it is, I I've seen the

Reegs: ve seen the one You've seen them

Cris: I've seen these, I've seen

Sidey: is too many. That's the problem.

Cris: And also that's the, my main point was the accent. I know who Fi, Florence Pew is. We all know everyone that's ever watched a film. That's why Do you have to make her sound like that?

Reegs: She's Russian, I think.

Sidey: Yeah, but just don't make a Russian. No,

Cris: no. Come on. I know what you mean, but just No, there's no point

Dan: or hire a Russian to

Cris: no, just, just make them sound like American. We all know they're American.

Sidey: I really fancy though, so if that

Reegs: It does. Yeah,

Dan: yeah, yeah. I think we all do.

Cris: So all in all,

Reegs: I'll tell you the other thing about it and I will

Cris: Did it make a lot of money? Sorry?

Sidey: Yeah, it did.

Cris: Sorry.

Reegs: Yeah, I the only other thing I was gonna say about it is structurally it's a weird movie because it feels like it's only got a first and third act and there's no middle act. Like the whole setting up of the team and then suddenly the climax. Yeah. Like, it's just, that's how it happens. But I, it's not bad for, for that reason. It's just a weird structure. Go on the, the numbers. It did a bajillion dollars.

Cris: Did it make a lot of money?

Dan: Well, this is why they keep making 'em, because there's,

Sidey: they don't all, I think some of 'em have floundered, but this one 180 million budget, 'cause it's a big cast. I mean they always have a big cast, but when you've got a team up movie, then you're gonna have lot. So 180 million. But then the Avengers ones were probably three, 400 million to make. So, and it made 382, which is not massive for them. 'cause they do, they have some billion dollar films.

Cris: Sorry to interrupt, I've never seen that Captain America ever like the, that actor, I don't think I've

Reegs: he was in the

Sidey: Russell Wyatt, he was in the TV show version. So it was the Winter Soldier one. so he became the next one and he lost the job in that series. He was shit. Right. And a, he's,

Reegs: But he's, he's thinky Russell's son. Kurt Russell's son. Yeah. And

Sidey: he looks to look like Harry Kane, I think. Do I think he looks like Harry Kane? I

Cris: feel like a little bit,

Reegs: he sort of didn't get most of his father's good

Cris: I was gonna say he, out of all of these actors, I think he was the least,

Reegs: He's a strange looking guy, but I think he's a really good actor. He was in Ingrid goes west that we watched, but some other stuff as well. I think

Cris: he's, I've never seen him, or if, if he looked, obviously he had half of the time he had the helmet on,

Reegs: I think in the Falcon and Winter soldier, they deliberately picked him because he looked stupid with the hat on. Right? I,

Sidey: genuinely, yeah, no,

Reegs: they picked it because his chin looks

Cris: Yeah. like, a

Sidey: it's the hurricane. It's the hurricane chin.

Cris: like a thin, thin looking chin, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Reegs: Okay. Thin chin. And on that bombshell.

Dan: Wow. Strong.

Sidey: Recommend.

Cris: Yeah.

Reegs: strong. Recommend

Dan: I would,

Cris: get involved.

Dan: it a strong,

Cris: I didn't say it

Reegs: Yeah. And we need to do the outro. Chris, you've gone,

Sidey: Chris, you're so keen to get out there. I've

Cris: press the button. I thought that's it.

Sidey: No, no. We can Do we outro? Um, Sorry. You do you fancy nominating next week. Are you around?

Cris: Yeah.

Reegs: I'm away

Cris: week. Yeah, I'm around. Yes. Yeah, next week I'm around. I'm

Dan: Woo. Where are you going? Work. Okay. Right. Nice.

Cris: Yeah. I'm gonna be the week after. I'm gonna be, I'm going to Barona, but,

Sidey: I'm, gonna, I think Res and I are away the week after. Was that on the Tuesday?

Reegs: We're on the Tuesday we're away. Yeah.

Sidey: means

Reegs: Wutang clan ain't nothing to before we, before we close, I forgot to say that I watched two films in the thing because I got caught on the walking football and I forgot that I actually watched something else.

Cris: I watched a housemaid.

Sidey: Oh yeah. Sydney.

Cris: yeah. And I was all right, she gets naked. That's all I'm here for. That's great. And I watched a film with Hugh Jack Mann and Kate Hudson which is a 2025 film called called, I'll tell you what it's called. Song sung Blue Blue.

Dan: Ah, the has this? I, yeah, I have it. It's the Neil Diamond one? Yes. Yeah. Like Neil

Sidey: forever in Blue Jeans.

Dan: Yeah. He, he plays a Neil Diamond impersonator. I heard it was quite good.

Cris: It's good. But it's also, do you know, I I liked it, but it's, it's quite, it says it's a drama comedy musical, but it's quite a drama.

Sidey: You need to look up the will Farrell sketch of him doing his Neil Diamond impersonation.

Reegs: seen that actually. Yeah,

Sidey: brilliant. I've seen that. It's so good.

Cris: But yeah, I this is what I watched, so sorry

Sidey: Oh, okay.

Dan: yeah. Okay. That I've, my mom and sister went to see that actually and they said that they enjoyed it. So, I think it was could be one for the future. We will wait

Cris: potentially. Okay. Wait, I can nominate till

Sidey: next week. Yeah. Chris, you'll nominate. And all it remains is to say society signing out,

Reegs: res is ghosting. You

Cris: la

Dan: Dan's gone.