This week on the pod your three favorite shithead haters find another thing to tell you sucks. Only this time, it's a movie everyone loves: Top Gun: Maverick, the sterile, Lockheed Martin sponsored legacy sequel to Tony Scott's (RIP) 1986 Air Force recruitment blockbuster that's equally as jingoistic but lacks the benefit of pure eighties cheese. We're mass issuing "fell for military propaganda" awards to people who should have known better but got caught up in the Cult of Tom Cruise, the sense we could finally go back to Normal under President Biden, and the desire to see some kind of sign that the "movies are BACK" after COVID. Nicole's not falling for it. Stu's plane autism was annoyed. Cole thinks its mid.

An extra special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: JetChiclete, Isaac, squishward, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Lohik, bernventers, and Owen2. 

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

• Gaza Funds

• PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

• MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

• National Networks of Abortion Funds

• Urgent Aid for LA Families of 14 Detained by ICE

If you enjoy the show please consider:

• Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive subscriber only episodes.

• Joining our Discord.

• Checking out our Credits page where you can view a complete list of Patrons.

• Leaving a rating and review on your podcast provider of choice. 

Production by Miguel Tahni. Art by Zoe Woolley and Jo Hermeer. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates. 

Friend and critic Jake Tropila, bravely joins us to talk about the third Jurassic World movie, which is the sixth Jurassic Park movie, in which the fist film's septuagenarian cast is reunited to putter vacantly around a lab looking at big grasshoppers. Meanwhile, in Malta, Chris Pratt does the "talk to the hand" at every dinosaur he meets and it works for some reason. It's a cavalcade of bad performances, bad direction, and terrible xillennial writing. Thank you to Jake for joining us on this Odyssey into Crap. You can find his writing on inreviewonline.com.

An extra special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: JetChiclete, Isaac, squishward, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Lohik, bernventers, and Owen2. 

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

• Gaza Funds

• PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

• MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

• National Networks of Abortion Funds

• Urgent Aid for LA Families of 14 Detained by ICE

If you enjoy the show please consider:

• Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive subscriber only episodes.

• Joining our Discord.

• Checking out our Credits page where you can view a complete list of Patrons.

• Leaving a rating and review on your podcast provider of choice. 

Production by Miguel Tahni. Art by Zoe Woolley and Jo Hermeer. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates. 

 

Oh my god shut the fuck up!!!!!! I'm going to turn these goddamn screaming meme goats into curry I swear to god.

It's another demoralizing Marvel movie. You guys like these episodes huh? You like listening to us inflict great pain on ourselves? Well this one's a two hour Old Spice commercial that inexplicably costs $200 million and pisses away whatever good will Taika Waititi ever had. Wherein one of us takes very personal issue with bringing Natalie Portman back just to give her the cancer that makes you reconnect with your ex and Stu offers an armchair analysis of Mr. Waititi to explain why his movies are Like That.

A special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: JetChiclete, Isaac, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Sam, Lohik, bernventers, and Owen2.

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

• Gaza Funds

• PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

• MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

• National Networks of Abortion Funds

• Urgent Aid for LA Families of 14 Detained by ICE

If you enjoy the show please consider:

• Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive subscriber only episodes.

• Joining our Discord.

• Checking out our Credits page where you can view a complete list of Patrons.

• Leaving a review on your podcast provider of choice. 

Production by Miguel Tahni. Main Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates. 

On this episode Stu and Cole bully Nicole for enjoying things. Cole tells us about Thor and Hulk in comics, and how the MCU films have sold them both short. We discuss how a film that seems to want to be so whimsical and colorful seems to fall so flat, and how director Taika Waititi seems totally apathetic towards if not contemptuous of fantasy and science fiction: The small-minded and unimaginative cynicism that deflates the wonder and spectacle from Marvel's adaptations of it's more cosmic and psychedelic material. Also everything is on a green screen and half the cast are clearly never on set at the same time.

 

Thank you for listening! Please consider rating, reviewing, and subscribing to our Patreon where you can enjoy special bonus content, exclusive Discord community events, and have your name added to our Credits Page. Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates.

In this special bonus episode, Andy from Those Good Old Fashioned Values joins the pod to walk us through a retrospective on the formative years of this generation spanning cartoon franchise, its origin in independent comics, and a discussion of the surprisingly well-crafted and endearingly corny 1990 live action film. But first, Nicole makes a horrifying discovery about Turtle biology.

Check out Andy's Twitch and listen to TGOFV!

Thank you for listening! Please consider rating, reviewing, and subscribing to our Patreon where you can enjoy special bonus content, exclusive Discord community events, and have your name added to our Credits Page. Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates.

What if they made a comic-book movie... for grown ups? It's Logan! It's Wolverine! Remember Wolverine? He's old and sad. He says fuck. He chops dudes arms off. Professor X says swears and poops his pants. Everybody dies in the grim dark future of six years from now. We liked it ok, it's good but not as good as you remember, but we get to enjoy some great performances, fun gore, and discuss just what it means to make a 'mature' superhero story.

 

Thank you for listening! Please consider rating, reviewing, and subscribing to our Patreon where you can enjoy special bonus content, exclusive Discord community events, and have your name added to our Credits Page. Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates.

 

Nicole reckons with her cringe girlboss past, Stu spergs about how badly they got WWI wrong, new permanent third mic Cole has some wild shit to tell you about Wonder Woman comics lore. How could you take something as wild as a demigoddess created by a Freudian bdsm polycule and turn it into this bland rehash of First Avenger? How could you take a solid cast of stars and character actors and force them into orbit around the dead cold star that is animate mannequin Gal Gadot? Why did people like this movie? All this and much more on Marvelous!

 

Thank you for listening! Please consider subscribing to our Patreon where you can enjoy special bonus content, exclusive Discord community events, and have your name added to our Credits Page. Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates.

 

Cole (@java_jigga) returns once again to help us out with Spidey's grand foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and Disney shareholders' wallets), Spider-Man: Homecoming. After a prolonged and ugly custody battle, Sony begrudgingly offered Marvel Studios to share parental rights over their little baby cash cow, and the result is yet another genre pastiche with the visual tactility of a Verizon commercial. 

 

Thank you for listening! Please consider rating, reviewing, and subscribing to our Patreon where you can enjoy special bonus content, exclusive Discord community events, and have your name added to our Credits Page. Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates.

Spiderman expert Cole returns to take us from the close of the 1980s Bronze Age of Comics and into the modern day, with the rise and fall of independent comics, 'adult' subjects, edginess, Marvel's bankruptcy, and the decline of mainstream American comics in the 21st century through the lens of Marvel's flagship webhead. This is the second part of a two part series. Next time, we'll be watching Spiderman: Homecoming - as the friendly neighborhood arachnid is assimilated into the Disney-Marvel Machine.

 

Click here to check out Cole's twitch stream and other things!

 

Subscribe to our Patreon and come hang out in our Discord.

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! Thank you for listening!

Noted comics scholar Cole (@java_jigga) joins us to discuss the History of Spiderman as a character and brand, from his origins in the 1960s, through major lore moments, changes in creative staff, behind the scenes shenanigans, and the long weird history of licensed spin-offs, including a Japanese live-action series from the 1970s that had a formative role in the tokusatsu/sentai genre of television that begat series like Kamen Rider and Power Rangers. Along the way we learn about the long-history of exploitation of artists and writers, the origins of the crossover shared-universe and multiverse approach as a marketing gimmick, and in the process sketch a general history of superheroes and comic books from the post-war period to the today.

 

This is the first part of a two part episode, which carries us roughly up to the 1980s. Part two will drop later this month, followed by an episode on Spiderman: Homecoming. An additional off the cuff conversation between Nicole and Cole (aka Ni/Cole) will also be available soon on our Patreon.

 

Click here to check out Cole's twitch stream and other things!

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! Thank you for listening!

We ring in the new year and year two of the podcast not adrift in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but somewhere a long time ago in a galaxy far far away (but still owned by the Walt Disney corporation). 

The Force Awakens: woke SJW propaganda, the Walt Disney Company's hollow retread of A New Hope, a Lacanian manifesto in white men's fragile masculinity, or a JJ Abrams puzzlebox that's all set up and no pay off? Stu and Nicole take a break from capeshit to talk about gay ass space wizards and how delusional everyone was in 2015/2016. Plus, Nicole does some intellectual self-mutilation as by revisiting her award-winning psychoanalytic essay on The Force Awakens. It really was selected as the best essay of 2018.

Rate, review, subscribe to our Patreon and join our Discord Community! Special extra thanks to producer Miguel, who had to slog extra hard through technical issues for this one!

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! Thank you for listening and supporting the show!

Merry Christmas simps! 

While our Patreon subscribers will be treated to the much teased Batman Returns discussion like good little girls and boys, you freeloading plebs get a lump of coal in your shit stockings. But isn't every lump of coal capable of being a diamond — or at least an insanely horny and stylistically over-the-top curio of Millennial childhood at the end of history? To celebrate the Yuletide, Nicole and Stu (re)watch Ron Howard's 2000 live-action adaptation of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas starring actual crazy person Jim Carrey. Topics of discussion include: Baby Grinch, Carrey being trained by the CIA to withstand being in a stinky green yak suit, the Grinch spectrum, the charm of 90s Nickelodeon gross-out humor, maximalist sets, Grinch/Martha May Whovier rule 34, and Christmas nostalgia. 

If you're in the Christmas spirit and feel like giving something to your favorite podcasters, kick us a few bucks on Patreon and join our Discord Community! Patrons enjoy secret ultra-high quality content including Uwe Boll movie commentary tracks, and extra episodes (Batman Returns coming for year's end!)

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! Thank you for listening!

Nicole kind of liked this one. Stu did not. It's kind of a movie. It's about found families. It's about feelings. It's fine. It's just fine. It's smooth. It's the vaseline you smear over your baby groot funko pop before you jam it up your ass and it's so smooth you feel... nothing. Nothing at all.

 

If you enjoy the show please consider helping us out with a positive rating or review, subscribing to our Patreon and joining our Discord Community! Apologies for the late release. Stu, like the cartoon raccoon, felt sad and didn't show up.

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! Thank you for listening!

On this jerkin' (FREE BONUS!!!!!) episode of the Girl Mode subseries, Nicole is joined by the iconic multi-hyphenate visionary behind Fucktoys, Annapurna Sriram, to discuss the once maligned and deeply misunderstood Y2K pop satire Josie and the Pussycats, another cult camp classic proudly reclaimed by the girls (and the gays) as the Best Movie Ever. Before Riverdale updated and franchised the Archie Comics for modern audiences, A Very Brady Sequel screenwriters Harry Elfont and Deborah Kaplan took Dan DeCarlo's groovy girl band and put them at the center of They Live-plot against industry plants and consumer capitalism's mind-controlling powers over the youth of America. Smarter than it has any right to be, so of course critics at the time were ready to dismiss it as trivial teenage girl shit. Opens on an Backstreet Boys parody group singing about anal sex. Let's go back in time and meet Snoopy!

Fucktoys is currently on the festival circuit and will be screening at the following festivals:

“Get Off the Internet” Film Festival, San Francisco, California, July 19

Fantasia Film Festival, Montreal, Canada, July 22

(More festival dates TBA)

A special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: JetChiclete, Isaac, Porridge Fist, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Sam, Lohik, bernventers, and Owen2.

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

• Gaza Funds

• PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

• MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

• National Networks of Abortion Funds

• Urgent Aid for LA Families of 14 Detained by ICE

If you enjoy the show please consider:

• Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive subscriber only episodes.

• Joining our Discord.

• Checking out our Credits page where you can view a complete list of Patrons.

• Leaving a review on your podcast provider of choice. 

Production by Miguel Tahni. Main Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates. 

The non-event Marvel film formula is perfected with Dr. Strange, a movie so perfectly smooth and spherical it's already become a fixture of neoclassical economics textbooks. All the pieces are here and they're all shiny and grey like a kitchen appliance. Join Nicole and Stu as they try and fail to talk about this movie and talk about everything around this movie, because there's nothing to talk about. There is an idea of a Dr. Strange, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real movie, only an entity, something illusory.

You can get everything Dr. Strange has to offer, better, in under five minutes, by watching this Michel Gondry directed Chemical Brothers music video from 1999.

 

Rate, review, subscribe to our Patreon and join our Discord Community! Special extra thanks to producer Miguel, who had to slog extra hard through technical issues for this one!

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! Thank you for listening and supporting the show!

A civil war brews on this very podcast as Nicole and guest Cathy Brennan square off against Stu over whether this movie is terrible, or merely kinda ok. We've got Steve Roger's not-gays, quasi-incest and age gaps, dubious character motivations, contrived plotting and a centerpiece action sequence that takes place entirely in a call of duty tutorial level, Nicole's insasiable lust for Chris Evans, the liberal conception of power, and the titanic behind the scenes battle between smooth-brained executives to make this movie even duller and lamer than it already is. For good and ill (ok it's all ill) with Civil War the MCU reaches peak-MCUness. 

 

Get more Cathy here: https://twitter.com/TownTattle

http://cathybrennan.contently.com 

https://cinemayearzero.com

 

Rate, review, subscribe to our Patreon and join our Discord Community! Special extra thanks to producer Miguel, who had to slog extra hard through technical issues for this one!

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! Thank you for listening and supporting the show!

A little catch-up two for one episode as Stu and Nicole revisit Marc Webb's Andrew Garfield starring "Amazing Spiderman" films, the movies so bad they convinced Sony to bend knee to the Disney-Marvel imperium. We talk about how Marc Webb turned Peter Parker into a self-insert artsy film kid, how Garfield and Emma Stone have chemistry despite dating IRL, the complete failure of the JJ Abrams esque 'puzzle box' parent plot, how stretching out the origin story into being an hour long doesn't add depth, the madness of casting swaggiest-man-alive Jamie Foxx as a chris-chan type character, Nicole's lust for sickly and dying men, the comical bathos of Gwen Stacy and her cop-dad Denis Leary, and so much more! These movies really are amazing...ly bad! But this episode is good.

 

Rate, review, subscribe to our Patreon and join our Discord Community!

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! Thank you for listening and supporting the show!

We always complain that these movies don't have enough sex or violence, so they gave us one with sex and violence. It's ok. Some of the humor is funny, some of it has aged badly. Has so much changed in just six years? It's a very 2010s movie. A very Reddit movie. We also talk about how TJ Miller is a freak and Morena Baccarin deserves better. Includes bonus Mario movie trailer live reactions (stu soyfacing dot jpg) and other miscellania.

 

Subscribe to the Patreon and join the Discord. We need weed money to keep doing this.

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! Thank you for listening and supporting the show!

Stu gets out of pocket in this excerpt from our Patreon-exclusive bonus episode "We Need To Talk About Ezra".

 

To listen to the full episode, wherein we discuss the ongoing melt down, messianic delusions and crime spree of DCU tentpole Ezra Miller, please subscribe to our Patreon. All bonus content is available at the $3 per month tier, with shout outs, credits, custom discord roles and other additional benefits available at higher tiers. Shout out to our most recent $5 'Producer' patron, Tankbuster! Thank you listeners for your support, and your forbearance while we get through what's been a rough few weeks for everyone involved with the show. We'll have a new main series episode out next week. 

There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. My punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.

 

 

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by sharing links, subscribing to our Patreon, and/or leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

Twist ending: We didn't hate it. DC Jumps into the Cinematic Universe game ass first and Zack Snyder takes a second crack at Watchmen but with official superman and batman action figures. As we've said about cinematic universes: It makes the sum of it's parts weaker. A decent if overblown Batman vs Superman movie is buried under the unmanageable weight of a rushed Death of Superman movie and a terrible Justice League prologue. Three movies is too much! Listen in as Nicole and Stu discuss how American mythos and self-identity is projected onto superhero figures, how these films continue to grapple with the legacy of post 9/11 America, and how a movie that is fundamentally about nostalgia for the golden age of liberalism gets misread as fascist by it's critics... And much much more! It's an extra long episode, but still not as long as the movie (we watched the Ultimate Cut). 

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by sharing links, subscribing to our Patreon, and/or leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

In delaying their dark fate (i.e. watching the 3+ hour director's cut of Batman v Superman) once more, Nicole and Stu pre-game with Zach Snyder's big-screen adaptation of Watchmen, the definitive Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons anti-superhero comic once deemed unfilmable by Terry Gilliam. More than a decade and several loud, gray, and stupid movies later, how does Snydog's Watchmen hold up? Well, it's not Man of Steel! 

And big ups to our wonderful patrons/producers! If you like what we're doing and want to support us, or think we deserve hazard, subscribe to our Patreon for interpersonal clout and bonus content.

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by sharing links, subscribing to our Patreon, and/or leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

Modern dance. The RAF and Baader-Meinhoff. Chest vaginas. Human origami. Abject mothers. Metal rib hooks. Thom Yorke. Mennonites. Eating chicken wings. It's Suspiria (2018), a certified Nicole-core movie (one of her favorites actually) that arguably surprasses the legendary original and paves its own fucked-up way in the process. Is that controversial to say? Do you disagree and want to yell at us? Well you're going to have to listen to the whole episode on our Patreon if you want to make a good faith argument and not get laughed at by Nicole. 

For as little as $3 a month, you can not only listen to this and future bonus episodes of Marvelous! (and unlock exclusive content), but you'll be supporting a ginger Canadian shitposter and his Bostonian bimbo co-host survive under the crushing machinery of late-stage capitalism. Subscribe to our Patreon here!

Double, double, toil and trouble, it's the first of our long teased two-parter Suspiria (1977) vs. Suspiria (2018) episode! On this edition of Watch Something Else, Nicole and Stu discuss Dario Argento's original Technicolor nightmare in all its bloody glory. With the color palette of a demonically possessed Disney movie and the gnarliest score ever recorded for a motion picture, 1977's Suspiria is a cinematic assault on the senses the way movies can and should be (i.e. not financed by the Department of Defense or directed by Zach Snyder). Plus, Stu goes on an inebriated tangent about Canadian cable channels because he thought this was the Patreon exclusive episode.   Subscribe to our Patreon for $3 to hear our discussion on Suspiria (2018), coming soon! Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by sharing links, subscribing to our Patreon, and/or leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

We're eating good again on the pod this week with Jordan Peele's spectacular, horrifying, and impeccably made third film, Nope, a modern masterpiece in its own right and (in)arguably one of the best blockbusters of the last twenty years. It's about bad miracles, filmmaking spectacle, the legacy and erasure of the black cowboy, aliens, UFOs, Travis the Chimp, how much Jordan Peele loves anime, and the exploitative relationship between people of color and American entertainment, all of which coalesce beautifully into something that transcends the sum of its parts and influences. Plus, Cole offers an alternative — and really, the definitive — reading on Nope's ending.

(And rest in peace Jim Shooter.)

A special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: JetChiclete, Isaac, Porridge Fist, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Sam, Lohik, bernventers, and Owen2.

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

• Gaza Funds

• PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

• MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

• National Networks of Abortion Funds

• Urgent Aid for LA Families of 14 Detained by ICE

If you enjoy the show please consider:

• Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive subscriber only episodes.

• Joining our Discord.

• Checking out our Credits page where you can view a complete list of Patrons.

• Leaving a review on your podcast provider of choice. 

Production by Miguel Tahni. Main Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates. 

This fortnight on Marvelous!, Nicole and Stu follow up Avengers 2: Joss Whedon Embarrassing Psychic Projection and finish out Phase Two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a smaller-scale movie where Paul Rudd plays a bug guy who steals. Like Iron Man 3, it's okay for inflight entertainment, but it's also the Marvel movie that shows just how controlling Feige and Friends are over the studio's productions. Hey, at least Edgar Wright got to make his Kevin Spacey movie! Plus, a brief check in on Thor: Love and Thunder's box office slump and Taika Waititi's ongoing campaign to make everyone sick of him. 

Please consider supporting us on Patreon and come say hi in our Discord!

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

In his follow up to the most reaction GIFed movie ever made, feminist filmmaker Joss Whedon buckles under his own ego and the studio mandated checklist Kevin Feige and co. needed him to fulfill in order to set up Phase 3 movies. This episode of Marvelous!, Nicole and Stu dissect Avengers: Age of Ultron, the divisive sequel to The Avengers where another Olsen twin and not Evan Peters team up with the gang to stop an unsexy robot played by movie sex symbol James Spader from doing evil human genocide. It's a mess.

 

Please consider supporting us on Patreon and come say hi in our Discord!

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

 

After the success of Avengers, the MCU was burgeoning into a colossus, and Disney found itself in desperate need of Intellectual Property to enlist in it's conquest of popular culture. They take a risk: A cult director with a pedigree in sicko schlock, a far fletched cosmic setting, and a d-list cast of offbeat throwoffs including a talking raccoon and a tree. What did they get? A smash hit and a money printing machine. What did we get? A perfectly fine mainstream blockbuster. Nicole and Stu take a look at the movie that helped define blockbusters in the 2010s and probably the best movie the whole Marvel thing has yet produced - but in it's success, does more than any movie to expose the problems and limitations inherent to the 'Cinematic Universe' approach to film. Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

It's conspiracies and queerbaiting as we get to possibly the most disappointingly overrated and bafflingly well remembered of these movies so far. We discuss a conspiracy thriller without a thrilling conspiracy, the problems with green-screen action and quick-cut editing, how the film inverts the relationship between the US Gov't and post-war Nazis, the continuing hollowness of hollywood 'war on terror' feaux-critiques, and Nicole guides Stu into the weird, wild world of horny fandom, queer readings, and the issue of 'queer baiting'. Are Steve Rodgers and Bucky Barnes gay for each other? It'd certainly make a more interesting movie.

 

Plus: Check out our conspiracy thriller and queer cinema Watch Something Else recommendations! 

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

Thor is back for another aimless, dull adventure in Thor 2: The Dark World. Why do they keep shoving Thor's sidekicks on screen with nothing to do? Why do all these movies have pale black-cad bad guys in big pointy black ships? How come Natalie Portman stops being a character twenty minutes into the movie? Did studio interference actually make this movie slightly less terrible? Is genocide only bad if you're not good enough at it? Join Nicole and Stu for all this and much more as we discuss the movie that begs the question "Why don't you jus watch Krull instead?"

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

Nicole and Stu talk Iron Man 3, the most adequate MCU movie yet! It has the most OK action! The least bad politics! A less underused villain cast! It's everything you could ever possibly want in a movie you see on an airplane! Tune in for a in-depth analysis and scathing critique of a movie we both thought was "perfectly fine." Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

It's time to take another break from charting the decline of the hollywood blockbuster to take a look at two more movies we love that you should watch instead!* In this episode Nicole and Stu discuss two movies about the monstrousness of the American Bourgeoisie, Bryan Yuzna's 'Society' and  Michael Lehmann's 'Heathers' both from 1989 the beginning of the end of history. We're talking imaginative weird creature effects, sick outfits, the rich feeding on the poor, loving our dead gay sons, culture presaging columbine and the era of stochastic violence, how Christian Slater plays the original 'we live in a society' joker guy, and more! 

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

 

*Or at least one that we love, and one that we like.

Nicole and Stu discuss Man of Steel, the superman reboot hastily retrofitted into the genesis of WB and DC's 'Not-MCU' franchise. We talk about the exploitative and ill-conceived use of 9/11 imagery, the bizarre strain of gruesome horror running through the film, the failure of writers Nolan and Goyer to fit The Last Son of Krypton into their 'gritty realistic' Dark Knight formula, the enigma of dumb-smart/smart-dumb guy auteur Zack Snyder, and much more! But hey, at least it looks like a movie...?

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

At last it comes to this. The terrible beast that tore a path of destruction across the cultural landscape and remade the rubble in it's own image, the ground zero for an era of industrially produced perfectly smooth franchise IP gangbangs. A decade after it's release, what do Stu and Nicole make of Marvel's The Avengers Assemble (not to be confused with 1998's The Avengers)?1 What can we say about writer/director Joss Whedon, male-feminist nerd icon turned pariah?2 What, in the end, does all this superhero stuff actually mean?3

Find out all this and more as we take a look at the movie that made the modern blockbuster, and cross the dark threshold into the world that Marvel made.

 

1-It's a perfectly adequate adventure movie

2-He's a pretentious dork

3-Tune in to find out!

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

Nicole is simps over Chris Evans and his big feet, Stu is leads the crusade against body fascism, and a man dressed like a flag punches Hitler - It's Captain America: The First Avenger. Join us as we trace the MCU's retconned origins back to WW2 and we discuss the origin point of American Hegemony, the mythology of liberal imperialism, the genre's immanent inability to confront it's own moral contradictions, sperg out over period military tech and much more! 

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

A sample from our discussion of Mamoru Oshii's (Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor) surreal first live action film, and the first entry in the multimedia alternate-history 'Kerberos' series.  If you like what you hear, subscribe to our Patreon for exclusive episodes, commentary tracks and Discord community events at patreon.com/marvelousdeath. 

Half of this movie is sexy ET without sex, half of this movie is Shakespeare in Space but without any drama. Nicole wants to know how this movie didn't kill the MCU in the crib. Stu wants to know why Kat Dennings is shilling crypto. The movie is bad. The podcast is good. It's the "Marvelous!" Thor episode.

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

This is the inaugural episode of "Watch Something Else", in which we discuss movies that actually kick ass and recommend that you watch them.

 

This week (Bi-week? Fortnight?) Nicole and Stu take a partial look at the career of Paul Verhoeven, noted Dutch Christ scholar and sometimes filmmaker. We examine the theological themes, the Christian analogies, and the explicit sex and ultra-violence of such films as Flesh + Blood, Robocop, Total Recall (briefly), Starship Troopers, and Nicole calls for a critical reevaluation of 2000's nearly forgotten thriller Hollow Man. I'd buy that for a dollar!

 

Paul Verhoeven will be back in "Mad Dutchman Returns", when (some day) we get around to discussing Showgirls and Benedetta.

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

 

Nicole and Stu take a look at Iron Man 2, three action scenes in a trenchcoat pretending to be a movie. It's boring. It's meandering. It has a lot of plot threads that don't go anywhere. It's dumb as rocks and retreats from and muddles further whatever meager social commentary even the first film could muster. It's bad! So instead of watching this turd listen to our conversation about it, which is slightly shorter and substantially more entertaining!

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

For our first excursion outside the realm of the MCU Nicole and Stu take a look at another 2008 movie. One that was even bigger than Iron Man, even more a reaction to the Bush era, and equally formative on the following decade's  blockbusters, in particular defining the style and tone of Warner Bros attempts to build a competing cinematic universe. Is it a neocon tract? Fascist apologia? Or is there more going under the hood with the movie IMDB users once rated the greatest ever made?

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by sharing links, subscribing to our Patreon, and/or leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

He's big, he's green, and he's... remarkably boring. Also he can't have sex with Liv Tyler. In the pod's own troubled* sophomore outing, Nicole and Stu talk about 2008's almost forgotten The Incredible Hulk. We go over the film's production woes, the conflict between the studio, the director, and miscast star Edward Norton, its failures as a movie, and how the media franchise that now rules culture with an iron fist almost sunk out of the gate - a conversation much livelier than its subject. 

 

*Nicole's power goes out

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by sharing links, subscribing to our Patreon, and/or leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

Nicole and Stu start at the beginning with 2008's Iron Man. There was no plan. There wasn't even a script. An indie director on the come-up took a long-shot casting a burnt out has-been who's charisma and pathos single-handedly turned a mid-tier action film into a monster hit that would spawn a monstrous cultural behemoth. We take a look at the troubled production, Downey Jr's charisma, and the film's confused politics as it tries simultaneously to critique the military-industrial complex while celebrating American empire and exceptionalism at the close of the Bush Era.

 

Production by Miguel Tanhi. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow us at @MarvelousDeath for updates! If you enjoy the show please consider supporting us by sharing links, subscribing to our Patreon, and/or leaving a rating or review on your preferred podcast distributor. 

Finally, some fucking mid.

Even late-period Sam Raimi (more the guy who made Oz the Great and Powerful than Evil Dead or Spider-Man 2) manages to pick the bar up from the depths of hell to make something we can at least trip and stumble on. We literally remember nothing about the first Doctor Strange, so this is a marked improvement even if it's marred by another bad screenplay from one of Dan Harmon's writers. And hey, Elizabeth Olsen is having fun for the first time in five movies? Was this movie worth its $500 million price tag? Probably not. Is it one of the better recent Marvel movies we've had to sit through? Despite everything, yes.

Plus, we derail the episode for a live reaction to Zohran Mamdani winning the NYC democratic mayoral primary.

A special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: JetChiclete, Isaac, Porridge Fist, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, jprestonpoole, Sam, Lohik, bernventers, and Owen2.

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

• PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

• MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

• National Networks of Abortion Funds

• Urgent Aid for LA Families of 14 Detained by ICE

If you enjoy the show please consider:

• Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive subscriber only episodes.

• Joining our Discord.

• Checking out our Credits page where you can view a complete list of Patrons.

• Leaving a review on your podcast provider of choice. 

Production by Miguel Tahni. Main Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates. 

Not even ten minutes into our Raimi Spider-Man (maybe we'll do the third one eventually I don't know) double feature episode and Cole goes old head about sixties cartoons and an X-Men reference in a Wings song.

If you like what you hear, subscribe to our Patreon for exclusive episodes, commentary tracks and Discord community events at patreon.com/marvelousdeath. 

It's finally here. 

A special bat-thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: Isaac, Porridge Fist, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, Jim, jprestonpoole, Sam, Lohik, bernventers, Owen2, and Ronnie Gardocki.

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

• PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

• MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

• National Networks of Abortion Funds

• Urgent Aid for LA Families of 14 Detained by ICE

If you enjoy the show please consider:

• Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive subscriber only episodes.

• Joining our Discord.

• Checking out our Credits page where you can view a complete list of Patrons.

• Leaving a review on your podcast provider of choice. 

Production by Miguel Tahni. Main Art by Zoe Woolley. Episode Art By @kingchefyaoi. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates. 

Today we tackle yet another incipient cinematic universe that never made it past one movie because half the character rights went to another studio before release and then had its opening weekend just as every theater in America was closing due to COVID. It's Bloodshot starring Vin Diesel (who's terrible in it by the way), the first and last entry in the Valiant Cinematic Universe and a movie that seemingly fell out of a portal from 2009 after your high school drug dealer tripped and fell while trying to put the copy he owns into the DVD player. Kinda like if RoboCop and Total Recall did the fusion dance and it came out with a significantly lower IQ. We talk about the movie for maybe 15 minutes before Cole and returning guest/comic artist extraordinaire Graham (@EddieMcstriplin) talk about this really tall guy named Jim Shooter who once had an effigy of himself burned because Marvel employees were mad at him or something.

Buy Graham's comic CYMK ULTRA on Etsy.

A special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: Isaac, Porridge Fist, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, Jim, jprestonpoole, Sam, Lohik, bernventers, Owen2, and Ronnie Gardocki.

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

• PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

• MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

• National Networks of Abortion Funds

If you enjoy the show please consider:

• Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive subscriber only episodes.

• Joining our Discord.

• Checking out our Credits page where you can view a complete list of Patrons.

• Game the algorithm for us by hitting the like button and leaving a review, ideally a nice one.

Production by Miguel Tahni. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates. 

Thanks to Patron raffle winner Glenn Shook, the gang enjoys an opportunity to talk about the 2004 Michael Mann thriller 'Collateral'. Would you like the chance to select an episode? If you want to hear more, or get a chance to select an episode, subscribe at patreon.com/marvelousdeath! Active patrons are automatically entered for each raffle, which is drawn quarterly.

Hell holds no surprises for us.

A special thanks to our $10 Executive Producers: Isaac, Porridge Fist, Walt Lewellyn of The Black Casebook, Tropical Doves, Jim, jprestonpoole, Sam, Lohik, bernventers, Owen2, and Ronnie Gardocki.

If you can, please lend some support to these organizations:

• Fundraisers related to Los Angeles 2025 fires

• PCRF (Palestinian Children's Relief Fund)

• MAP (Medical Aid for Palestinians)

• National Networks of Abortion Funds

Thank you for listening! If you enjoy the show please consider:

• Subscribing to our Patreon, where you can enjoy exclusive subscriber only episodes!

• Joining our Discord, where we maintain active and friendly community!

• Checking out our Credits page where you can view a complete list of Patrons.

• Leaving a positive rating and review on your platform of choice. It really does help!

Production by Miguel Tahni. Art by Zoe Woolley. Follow @MarvelousDeath for updates. 

AnimeSerbia from Kemonofriendzone joins us on a breezy, digressive odyssey into zoomer nostalgia, 2000s toy lines, advertising, and the Tom Hanks Dynasty in an episode about a direct-to-TV CGI Hot Wheels movie. Support Marvelous! on Patreon to get the full episode and more!

With Nicole away, Cole and Stu indulge themselves with a two and a half hour conversation about The Pitt, a popular new medical drama. It's just good TV. Would you like to hear more? Subscribe at patreon.com/marvelousdeath!