Call for Comments: Is Sucker Punch really a bad movie?

“To be frank, the people I’ve run across who’ve come to me and said ‘Sucker Punch is my favorite movie’ are normally angsty teenage girls.” -Zack Snyder, 2023 From Monica: In 2011, I was a deeply depressed femme goth who was assaulted by a man, subsequently realized I was gay, tried coming out, and was…

e278. Hollywood is on Strike! (But, what does that mean?)

If you’re a fan of current American popular culture it’s pretty much impossible to not know that Hollywood is on strike right now. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike since May 2, 2023 with the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) joining them on July…

e277. The VoxPopcast #Barbenheimer Double Feature Double Date

Every once in a great while an unprecedented unpredictable pop culture moment organically happens and takes the world by storm. This was the cast last week when, after an incredibly lack luster summer blockbuster season at the box office, two films Barbie and Oppenheimer dropped on the same day. We’ve known this was coming for…

e276. Old Heroes Never Die! (But Do They Even Fade Away?)

There’s a lot of roles for old guys in media these days. Or rather, not just roles for old guys, there’s a lot of roles for characters that we’ve seen grow older in their movies and TV shows. For instance, there’s an Indiana Jones movie floating around theaters at time of recording, as well as…

CFC: No Country For Old Men

From Wayne: I had been noticing a trend in a lot of recent media that hadn’t really fully formed in my mind until a couple of weeks ago when we recorded our Indiana Jones episode. Dial of Destiny was very much a movie about an old man, facing the ravages of time. Indy is o…

e274. Indiana Jones and the Legacy of Pulp

Last week the fifth (and supposedly final) Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, finally hit theaters to substantially mixed reviews and audience reaction. Some have complained that it isn’t really giving them the vibe they were looking for out of an Indiana Jones movie while others have said it was a…

e273. Is Pixar Over?

Last week, Pixar released their 27th feature film, Elemental and it has had… less than stellar box office reception despite having pretty rave reviews. This has actually been a problem with all Pixar films in the pandemic era, which has led some critics and fans to ponder is the Pixar era over? Are audiences tired…

e272. Why Are So Many Superhero Adaptations So Very, Very, Bad?

There certainly are a lot of superheroes adaptations. In fact, some people would say there’s too many. And yet, they just keep coming and coming. In fact, one of them, The Flash, is bombing at the box office right now, all while Across Spider-verse is getting constant acclaim? What makes a superhero adaptation good and…

Call From Comments: Thoughts on Adapting Superheroes

(From Mav: This is a guest blog for an upcoming episode. We’re recording it soon, so give us your thoughts really quick! Take it away, John!) From John: Like most genres, adaptation has been the key to the superhero’s popularity and longevity, spreading across multiple media to capture as wide an audience as possible.  While the…

e271. Crossing The Spider-Verse

Have we done a show about multiversal superhero movies? It feels like it’s come up before… as though this were just a thing that we feel the need to talk about a lot. Oh well. Certainly we haven’t done this talking about Spider-man movies specifically? Or maybe we have! In any case, it’s time to…