Podcast Episode 7: The DC FanDome

Episode seven of the podcast has dropped!

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hello. I’m Chris Olszewski and welcome to Real Recognize Reel. It’s been a while. This is episode seven: the DC FanDome.

San Diego Comic-con didn’t happen this year. That took away big studios’ ability to use it as a space to hype up their new content. DC replaced it with the DC FanDome, a sort-of virtual convention that takes place over two days. The first day was August 22 and the second day is scheduled for September 12.

I’m not gonna talk about the turmoil on the DC comics side here. That’s its own episode.

I really liked the first day. The format’s not exactly novel, but it makes something like a Hall H panel accessible to a wider audience. That’s always a good thing. Talking with my friends and watching the panels in real-time isn’t an experience I can remember having too often and I hope DC decides to replicate the format in the future.

DC dropped a lot of movie-related content on the first day of DC FanDome; James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, the Flash movie, Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Wonder Woman 1984, Zack Snyder’s Justice League and Shazam all their got their own panels.

So we’re gonna tackle my thoughts on most of those in this episode. Let’s start with the Batman.

I can’t say I’m sold on this yet, but I’m definitely intrigued. It looks better in action than the stills that were released before the panel did. In the trailer you hear Robert Pattinson as Batman, Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon, Paul Dano as the Riddler and Andy Serkis as Alfred. We also got a first look at Zoe Kravitz as Selena Kyle and Colin Farrel as the Penguin.

Pattinson stepping into the role of Batman was never my problem. I love him as an actor and think he’s underrated. However, the first images that were released made him look less like Batman and more like a 14-year-old waiting for his mom to pick him up from a My Chemical Romance show.

The actual trailer looks much better. This is definitely a darker take on Gotham, but hopefully it’s less nihilistic than something like Joker. Pattinson fits into the darker vibe pretty well; much better than someone like Christian Bale or Ben Affleck would. The Batmobile looks pretty cool too.

This is also a much younger Batman. He’s only supposed to be in his second year of fighting crime. It won’t quite be a Year One adaptation, but I’d expect this Batman to be rougher around the edges. A real far cry from the experienced Batman that Ben Affleck played.

I’m excited for Paul Dano’s Riddler, but I’m not sure I’m 100% down with the character design or the voice modulation. It sounds cool, but duct tape isn’t exactly what I think of when I think about the Riddler.

Only about 25% of the film was shot before work stopped so I kinda doubt it’ll make its currently scheduled release date of October 1, 2021. Hope I’m wrong.

The panel also talked about the prequel TV series that’ll be premiering on HBO Max. That will focus on a “crooked cop” in the Gotham City Police Department which...I really hope it’s something more than a standard police procedural because it certainly looks like they have higher aspirations with the movie.

Something a little closer to screens is Wonder Woman 1984.

That joke at the end is about a fanny pack. Uh, 80s!

We finally got a look at Kristen Wiig’s Cheetah, which was nice. My concern is that the only shots of her in the full Cheetah get up are at night. I don’t know if that means DC doesn’t have faith in the CGI, but bad CGI is easier to hide in night shots than in day shots. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so gimme daytime Cheetah.

Pedro Pascal as Maxwell Lord looks cool, but if you know what his character can do the plot could be pretty easy to sketch out.The guy can control people’s minds. Maybe we’ll see Wonder Woman kill him like she does in the comics.

I think I prefer the original trailer simply because it used Blue Monday.

Miss me with the Snyder cut. He used Hallelujah in the trailer. Again. Snyder also used it in Watchmen. I am unsure he’s aware other songs exist.

I feel the same way about Shazam 2 and, to a lesser extent, Black Adam. Although Black Adam bringing in the Justice Society could be cool. The Justice Society is basically the original Justice League, so seeing that bit of DC history could make Black Adam worth it on its own.

Moving on to things I’m more interested in, we got our first look at the absolutely massive cast of characters in James Gunn’s Suicide Squad movie.

I’m not going to go down the list of every character, but Margot Robbie and Viola Davis are returning as Harley Quinn and Amanda Waller respectively. Quinn has a new look in the film that’s closer to the comics. It looks cool, but I might prefer her old look. It was unique among Harley’s different incarnations and it had started to influence things like the Harley Quinn TV show.

This cast is absolutely loaded though. Robbie, Davis, Pete Davidson, John Cena, Michael Rooker, Idris Elba, Peter Calpadi and just so, so many more. It makes me wonder how they’re going to give all these characters sufficient screen time, but this is James Gunn directing and writing. If his Guardians of the Galaxy have proven anything, it’s that he’s really good at ensemble pieces.

Gunn also described the film as a “gritty 70s war movie”, which…*sigh*...just stop. It’s a superhero movie, don’t try to make these things what they’re not. I’m still reminded of Marvel trying to call The Winter Soldier a 70s political thriller. And it’s not a pleasant reminder.

Just let superhero movies be superhero movies.

Finally, there’s Flashpoint.

The Flash movie is confirmed to be an adaptation of the Flashpoint comic. This means it’ll be a way for DC to create a connected universe of movies without really trying. The Flashpoint comic was an attempt to merge several different DC imprints together. Essentially, the Flash wakes up in an alternate timeline and has to set things right.

Ben Affleck will reappear as Batman in the Flashpoint movie and there are rumors Michael Keaton could as well. It wouldn’t surprise me if Robert Pattinson popped up as well, depending on what gets released first.

I actually really like the idea of a Flashpoint movie setting up a multiverse. DC seems to be coming around the fact that they can’t compete with Marvel at this point, so they’re not going to try. It could lead to a lot of different stories being told and all technically being connected, but not beholden to those connections. The nature of the MCU means that the movies are all generally the same. If DC elects to go a different route, more power to them.

Thank you so much for listening. Like, rate and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice. See you next time...whenever that happens to be.