The summer season opened with a number of big movies but a pair of films that opened last weekend fell short as "The Flash" managed only $55 million and "Elemental" took in only $29.6 million in U.S. box office results despite finishing in the top two slots.
Expectations were particularly high for "The Flash" considering the hype behind Michael Keaton reprising his role as Batman helping Ezra Miller's Barry Allen/The Flash character.
We dive into the movie — yes, there are spoilers — to discuss its standing in the DC Extended Universe, the various Batman and Superman cameos and the use of the multiverse as a plot device.
We follow that up with a discussion of Peter Sohn's latest Disney Pixar film "Elemental." While better than Sohn's first Pixar film "The Good Dinosaur," the movie lacks star power beyond Wendi McLendon-Covey and Catherine O'Hara and runs a little long.
What does this mean for the rest of the summer? It's hard to say for sure, but films up next might want to take note and be prepared for subpar results.
Where to watch
Past episodes about summer blockbusters
About the show
Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Welcome everyone to another episode of Streamed and screened and entertainment podcasts about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and co-host of the program with the Master of the Multiverse, Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. Bruce, when you're in the multiverse, like, what are you doing in your other What's the other?
Bruce Miller doing right now? Other one is actually enjoying himself. This one, it's like the third circle of hell, You know, where you go, What am I doing? Why is this one so tough? But I think they always say that a different one gets you a better life. So I'm hoping that the better life is in another, more diverse universe.Unknown
Okay, so you brought it up now. You were the one. The flash. Yes. The Flash has these multiverses. This is the the kind of the overriding narrative that drives this thing, that there are many multiverses out there just like Spider-Man has the kind of the other world. And all I realize that this is is an excuse to be able to get rid of the actor that they don't want or is asking for too much money.
Because if you say, well, I'd like a dollar more to be able to do this, it got near you. We're going to go to another multiverse and they'll be different. We'll be fine or we'll go back to an old one. I don't know. I'm sick of that. And I really don't want those things to color. Just a straight old story.
Right. It's not. Whenever they need to get out of a problem, they just zip over to another multiverse verse and try and solve it. And that's what happens in the Flash. The flash as how much do we dare tell? Well, I'm out. If you haven't see the flash now, you're not going to see it. Right. So let's. Let's do this.
Should we just. This is a spoiler. This is not a spoiler free episode. Let's just now let's just go for it, because I'll tell you, I did like Ezra Miller as The Flash. I thought he was really good, and I liked him playing off himself because he has a two version kind of thing where he is good and at that kind of give and take.
He's funny and I know that they're trying for their own Spider-Man because Spider-Man skews young and I think The Flash, they need something like that in that old timey DC Comics universe. So all that is there was a good idea, and I'm glad they kept him. They didn't reshoot all that stuff, but then they decide that they're going to go dig back in some other universe.
And we see a Batman. We get a Batman. Ben Affleck, who I don't like as Batman, I never have and never will. And I think his term could be up, at least in my house, that he is. And then they go in and they find an old Batman, which is Michael Keaton. And Michael Keaton is a good Batman.
But they must have decided somewhere along the line that he needed a little more to do. And so they make him into Howard Hughes, and he's living in this old kind of rambling building or house or mansion or whatever you want to call it. And suddenly he's got more skills and toys than I ever remember because that Batman the thing with Batman.
Sorry, I'm on a rant, but the thing with Batman is he is a human. He's one of the only human people that don't have special powers or aren't from another planet or any of that kind of stuff. And now he's got a kid that can do everything. I'm not so sure about all that. I really I question it.
Yeah. So. Ezra miller. Forgetting about the controversies I thought was fine. No problems with Ezra. It was a solid, solid performance for as much as you could do with that role. It's, you know, obviously, it is what it is. And I had no problems. So I thought from. From just that aspect of it, totally fine. You and I have talked before.
I'm not a huge comic book movie person. It's just not my thing. I do like the Batman movies I like or I like seeing Batman movies. I don't always like the Batman movies. I like kind of the Superman thing. A little bit of Wonder Woman here and there, but that's kind of the extent of my superhero kind of movie going that I'll do.
I've never really seen any of the Marvel movies. Like one of them I saw That was probably a bad one, right? No, it was. Which one's with Ryan Reynolds? Oh, really? Ryan Deadpool. Deadpool. Yeah, Deadpool right now. Guy He's kind of in his own universe. He doesn't wrangle the others. No, that's. That's probably why I liked it. And it was just kind of somebody told me, Go see it, you'll like it.
And actually it was funny. And he makes fun of superheroes. That I like that. That's probably why I liked it. So. But my problem, my my problem, especially with these Batman movies and the whole DC thing is just the constant reboot after reboot after reboot after reboot in this. Like your point to the multiverse helps us because now you could just throw it all out and it doesn't even matter anymore.
Now there's another there's another movie franchise that I absolutely love, which is called the James Bond franchise. Now, they, of course, have had like seven James Bond's. But the difference there is the stories don't really conflict, right? You have you know, you'll get like six episodes of Sean Connery. He bows out. You bring in Roger Moore to do a half dozen, plus he bows out.
There's only been a couple of instances with short term bonds with George Lazenby doing that one that bridged the two. Connery's had a Timothy Dalton had two, and, you know, Pierce Brosnan by standards. What a year. You only had, I think, four movies. So that was on the shorter side. But, you know, even with with Daniel Craig, he was even though he didn't do the most movies, I think he was in the role for the longest.
Like he he was even longer than Roger Moore. He just he just kind of packed in more movies over a shorter period of time. I'm fine with that because it's just all those stories kind of live outside themselves. There's a little bit of crossover, a little bit of a nod here or there, but it's I'm fine with that, but it's just the constant starting and stopping with all these different actors.
I can't keep up. I don't even remember who Batman is anymore. And one other point that I'll make, too, is what I loved about the Tim Burton Batman with Michael Keaton, is that, sure, there's special effects? Sure, it has a certain look to it. But as you said, he's a superhero, but he's a human who's just taking he's a vigilante, Right?
So he's just kind of taking these extraordinary measures to kind of save save the day. They're vomiting special effects at us now. And I'm of the opinion that less is more. You don't have to. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it. And I think another franchise that kind of brought this back a little bit was Star Wars, where, you know, you had the original Star Wars, which sure had lots of special effects, but they they kept it pretty low key because they couldn't do more at the time.
And then I think the huge mistake with George Lucas when he did the prequel and back then, he just he went back. He like he re-edited the originals and put in all the special effects, which did not help. And then those prequel movies that he did, it was all shot against a green screen and it looks like and it doesn't feel real.
And what I think has been good with The Mandalorian and the newer ones is they went back and they're actually doing puppeteering again and the special effects that they do use in it, like let's De-Age Mark Hamill, because we can't have a 70 year old guy playing young Luke Skywalker. I'm totally fine with that. You know, you can bring Grand Moff Tarkin back because he's been dead for so long.
But those things I'm okay with, But you don't have to throw up special effects at me nonstop. So that's my rant, you know? Well, what I found with the Flash is they go back and visit all these other characters, right? And you have to remember too much. You need to know something about that version of whatever. And they have a number of Superman that comes when, of course, there's that the heart tugging moment when you see Christopher Reeve as as Superman come out.
That's that's the gold standard for that, even though his films probably don't hold up at all. But you see that and you go all and then they toss in a Nicolas Cage Superman with a film never got made. And so the idea that that they would do that, but they conveniently don't hit all of the Batman. And it must have been something where, you know and you think all well they get that's choices as artistic choices.
No, it was probably because Christian Bale said, there's no way in hell you're using my image in this film. And he had it written into a contract. So you get a little bit of Batman from the Adam West years, and then you go, Well, now what's that about? Because that's TV. Do we do TV Batman? Or is that not, you know, so there are these things that are choices that they make that I'm sure it's because do we have the right go call on this.
Call the lawyers, see if we got the rights on this one. We're going to throw this one in just because I think they got nervous at the end and they decided we've got to have all these people show up, not unlike Space Jam, where they took every cartoon character they could throw in. That was a Warner Brother cartoon and then just have you kind of go nuts about it.
And you go, Well, wait a minute, why is there Wizard of Oz in this? I didn't know The Wizard of Oz was part of Space Jam, but that's what they do. And I think they get nervous and they don't trust their artistic instincts and they just do this stuff. And I don't think all that was necessary. We caught the concept That was enough.
You didn't need to show a world revolving with every character there was in it. I would hope that if they go back to the Flash and do it again, he gets new adventures with different characters. That Zod thing crazy and it can be more, more Shazam like if you will. And and I think you got a good actor.
Let him just do what he can do. They obviously with the multiverse have set up a total reset of the DC expanded universe because they've kind of just said, you know what, we're going to we've closed the door now. On Ben Affleck as Batman, and it seems like they're largely closing the door on probably some of the other ones.
I mean, there's going to come back here. Any idea is that Superman not there shouldn't be another shot at it, you know, So it's selective lawyering is all it it. Yeah. I loved Wonder Woman when that came out. The first one I thought I thought 1984 was just terrible. I was so disappointed when that one. I remember even telling my wife I'm like, honey, I saw, I saw the Wonder Woman and it's fabulous.
We need to go. And it was on HBO. It was it was during the pandemic, and it was just on HBO. I'm like, Let's watch it. You'll love it. It's actually like, I don't like, you know, I don't love comic book movies. And then we sat through it. I'm like, I'm apologizing to her after because that's how bad I thought it was.
So I even with her roll, are they going to bring her back for another Wonder Woman or have they said, you know, the last one wasn't good? Like we hit we hit a homerun with one second, one was there. So we're kind of we're going to reset that now, too. This is our deal breaker. This is the way we cut the contracts and move on and whatever it wants to be, it'll be.
But I think blast is worth keeping. I just wish that they would do different things that they and not this concept of let all or nothing forget it, make it 90 minutes, make it good, Give us a situation and a and a character. You got it. Who is the new Batman? Is the new Batman George Clooney? Well, who knows?
Oh, you know what? You know, he's back and I can see why this is not doing well in the theaters. I think you've got to realize that you cannot rely on the Old Faithful, the comic book nerds who will come do this no matter what, because took in other people. And I think that's where Marvel went wrong, too, is that they want to tie too much together and if you're a casual viewer, viewer like you, Terry, where you see one, you go, What is this crap?
I don't know what this is all about. You've got to make it stand alone. It's like we say, you know, I, I read the book and there are lots of things aren't in the movie that were in the book. Well, it's the movie has to stand alone. It's got to be able to tell its story and move on from there.
And so that's that's where they go wrong. I agree with you. And you know, it only did 55 million It led it led the box office almost almost doubled, elemental. But the 55 million is a terrible, terrible opening when you consider we're getting back to a point where movies are opening at 100 million plus and you know. Yeah.
And Flash is clearly I mean, it's not going to it's not going up. I mean, next week it's not going to do 90 million in week two. It's only going to go down. So, you know, will it even recoup its money? And, you know, you bring up the point of the casual viewer. I was lucky because I had seen, as I said, I see the Batman movies, I see the Superman movies.
So when I saw The Flash, it all made sense to me. But if you're a casual viewer and you didn't know what the deal was with Zod and all that stuff, you would be so lost. Like if you came in because you're like, I love Michael Keaton from those those early Batman movies with Timothy Burton, you're just going be lost because you're going be like, What is going on here?
You just dropped the storyline. Makes no sense. Ellen Slater, if you were familiar with Ellen's later way back when, her appearance doesn't mean anything to you. So it is what it is. I think that they did a great job with the Flash on TV when it was on the CW, and I think he was a perfectly good flash.
But when they're going in another direction and you're doing something that it's a little quirky stick with the quirk. Don't feel that you need to go back to the traditional and grab something there. One other point I'd like to make. We talked about the multiverse, the concept of the multiverse, right. And how big it's become because we're seeing it in a lot of different things, you know, Spider-Verse and and we saw it obviously everything everywhere.
I wonder, I was thinking this is a it's a concept that basically replaces time travel or it sort of replaces time travel because that was such a driver of of, you know, show movies, shows of the 6070s, eighties, you know, like Star Trek when they would get stumped in like, well, what should we do? Well, how about we just send the Enterprise back 200 years to get a humpback whale and bring it back to the future?
Right. And then, of course, there's back to the future. So I started I'm going into this movie knowing that it's the multiverse and thinking to myself, like, yeah, this is completely replace like the concept of time, travel back to the future and all that. And what did they do is this they heavily referenced back to the future in the flash where in this multiverse Eric Stoltz is not the part got the part you know and again you have to have a point of reference to enjoy the laugh.
And if you're a young kid, did you know that Eric Stoltz was originally cast as Marty McFly? You didn't. So it it kind of falls flat on that. I is this made for critics? Maybe it is I don't know they just want them to say nice things. I mean it's cute. It's a cute concept. They do hammer it a couple of times and maybe I don't need to two or three times of that to get it.
Now, let's talk about Elemental, because I you know, I'm a huge Disney fan. I love all those animated things. But boy, did it take effort to like Elemental. I'm not going to call it the worst Pixar movie I've ever seen that Cars. It's definitely not the best Pixar movie I've ever seen it. From my perspective, it was fine.
It checked all the boxes. We went on Father's Day. We took the kids. The kids enjoyed it my way. Restless? Nope. They liked it. They liked the movie. My wife cried during a couple scenes. She enjoyed it. I was fine. I was fine. You know, I walked out of it and I was like, That's fine. That's fine. It's a fine movie.
It's not great. It's not terrible. It's fine. I got what they were trying to do. They're trying to talk. Really. It's the immigrant story. Did you come to another country and you feel like you are alone and you don't fit in with others and you don't want to mix with others? And maybe mixing with others is a good thing.
And we see how this works out in everything. But I think it tries way too hard to be jokey and it tries to make every person it can think of. Like I could see them sitting around a table and saying, Okay, fire. Think of all the things that you can think of that have fire in it that we can use.
This is hotter than and you know, and they would just throw this out and then try to kind of squeeze that in in the process. And the idea that wind water, earth, an air or a soundtrack by Earth, wind and fire, how they don't, you know, combine. Well, they do. And if you just did a simple experiment, you'd know that all this does work together.
And so they needed another villain. They needed somehow somebody to cause the problem that encourages them to come together to solve it. And they didn't. They kept these kind of universes or these worlds separate. And it was like, Oh, that's where the rich want people live. Oh, that's where the poor down and outer fire people live, you know?
And I don't know, it's a basically it was good to look at I don't know how you make a stuffed animal out of a fire, but yeah, I really had a prop. This is me now. I had a problem where they show this baby fire sucking on a can of lighter fluid. And I thought, this is like, wrong.
You don't if you image that to any little kids and they say, oh, lighter fluid, I could see a kid sucking on a bottle of that. I could. And so I think they didn't think through some of the things that they were playing. They just thought it was a cute gimmick and there it felt wet. I can see that, you know, as someone who grew up was born in New York and very familiar with the city culture and the concept of of a bodega that's run by an immigrant family, it resonated a little bit with me to an extent.
I got what they were trying to do again with the concept of, you know, a melting pot. And there were moments to even when I would lean over to my wife, it's like, is this family, is it is it a Greek family? Do you think they're touching on agriculture is No, no. Maybe it's Turkish. You know, it's like, oh, no, no, no.
Maybe it's like Pakistani or something like that. And, you know, and then of course, you see the relationship, the Korean heritage relationship, you know, to the Peterson And so and I think that's the point is you're not actually supposed to figure out what it is because it's this concept that it could be anything. Right. It's it's you know, these are the anyone that's an immigrant to this country or any country is going to face obstacles and discrimination.
And it doesn't really matter where it's from. It's just, you know, we're just going to bring in these concepts. So, you know, I think it's a good movie for lessons of inclusion and whatnot, but it just felt, you know, it's fine. As I said, I don't know how else to describe this movie other than it was fine. There was no stars in this movie.
No. And I tried to raise the voices and I thought, is this anybody? Is this somebody who is? And I thought at one point it was Miley Cyrus doing the voice of the Amber the flame girl. But no, it's it's not at all. Catherine O'Hara is in there is the mother. That's. Wait, wait. And it's that's the the the most notable actor that they they cast in it, which is kind of interesting from a few aspects because if you think back Disney up until really what the nineties largely just relied on on mostly unknown voice actors to do the roles and I think it was a lot of it had to do with like Toy
Story and The Lion King where you started casting bigger screen actors to take on these roles. So I am wondering a little bit because they went low key, because it wasn't just this barrage of A-list actors. Did that hurt this at the box office? Because there isn't that that big name? You know, normally what they do is they have and I was waiting for a Justin Timberlake song, actually, I thought this is almost like rolls.
They should throw in a Justin Timberlake song because there is a song in there. I think this is like one of those things they let people do with short subjects. They let them kind of go very creative and try things out. And maybe this one, they, you know, let's let's just give it a whole movie. Let's not give it a short subject because it seemed like a short subject concept.
And there is kind of a pattern to Disney Pixar characters that have a certain look that you can turn into merchandise. And like I say, I don't know how you merchandise this at all unless everything is just a character on a on a t shirt. But we'll see. It'll, you know, they'll do it. But I yeah I thought that of that kind of odd mix inside out did a better job of kind of blending things and making it seem like, okay now I don't have to think too hard on this.
And I thought too hard on this. I was trying all the time to make sense of it and I couldn't. The movie was a bit long for my tastes. Well, we again, animated films. Come on, I the kids start running about the 30 minute mark. And if they're not stopping by the 60 minute mark, you've gone too long.
I hate to get up to go to the men's room during a movie because I don't want to miss a thing. And as soon as the credits started rolling because and with these Pixar movies, you don't want to miss something at the end. So it's like the movie. The credits started rolling. I like beeline out, leave my family behind, take care of business, come back in because that you know, that gallon of soda I was drinking went right through me.
And then I was disappointed because there was nothing in the credits either. It just kind of they just straight rolled it. But it was it was a story that that I agree with could have been told in about 20 fewer minutes. And it would have been completely fine to keep the kids entertained. And I and I will say this, too, with Peter Sohn, who directed the movie, it's definitely the better of his two movies that he's done now for Pixar, because I.
I absolutely hated The Good Dinosaur. Did. Do you remember that one? I hated that, too. I hated it. Well, one thing I notice when you think of the good dinosaur, the only thing I remember was the grass looked good. It looked Grant's look good in. And that was and I remember walking out of it with my kids because they were a lot younger than am.
I like one of my daughters is crying. She's like, Dad, does this mean you're going to die, too? And because they killed now, they killed a dad. And I didn't like, Oh, good Lord, God, like you have to do. You have to kill a parent in every movie. Yeah, well, you know, interestingly, I think this is the only Pixar film that doesn't have a John Ratzenberger appearance.
Might be that could be a curse. That if you don't use him, you're in trouble. So I'm throwing out there that maybe they should have had him in there somewhere as somebody. But yeah, ice and earth. Did you ever see anything earthy besides that little kid picking the flowers out of his pits? Yeah. Yeah. And then they. The wind people.
It was a game, and that was it, Right? Right. And I would say that was somebody, too, from The Goldbergs, the mother on The Goldbergs as the voice of the Wind. Okay, Thank you. Wendy covered MacLaine to make clear she has a hyphenated name. When Wendi Mclendon-Covey Wright. Thank you, Your Honor. I'm sorry, Wendy. I apologized profusely, but you got a long name, you know.
Yeah, but Elemental 29.6 million to open. That is not. That's not where you want to be if you're Pixar. And on the heels of Disney wiping out a huge chunk of the Pixar department recently, maybe this is my this is well, it also came after light year because light year did not do well last year either. It's very much like Zootopia.
And I think if they're going to go back to that, well, Zootopia is a better way of dealing with it, because when you had characters who were goofy animals, you could be you could be snarky with them. And I think they wanted to be a little too noble. Yeah, Yeah. So Flash 55 million. Elemental 29.6 million. Not a great weekend for too big.
It's supposed to be two big heavy hitters. What do you think this this means? You know, coming up, is this just a blip on the radar? I don't think. Come up or what? What what do you think? Now, interestingly, we have no hard feelings. And Wes Anderson's new movie coming out this week, those will be low key because they're not expecting anything out of that.
I think no hard feelings will do really well once the word of mouth gets out there, because it's the old school R-rated comedy where it's like, ah, if you know what I mean. And I think people are looking for something like that, so that'll be a surprise. And then we get into Barbie week and boy, I'm seeing a lot of Barbie and I'm hearing a lot of Barbie, but it isn't all that positive.
So we'll see what happens. I want it to be very positive, but I think you know, it's going to be I think we're still on the roller coaster. I don't think we're there yet. We're not heading toward the the entrance of the theme park ride. So it'll be like Indiana Jones that'll go big. There's nerve endings about that thing, too, that it is not as adventurous as they want it to be.
These are viewers who've seen it and maybe, yeah, it'll still do well, Open. Well, it'll open big. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Like, it'll, it'll people like me will want to go see it because we're huge fans of the franchise, but we'll go see it. Maybe not like it and then not go back. So I don't know that it'll have a long run, but I think it'll open big.
Yeah, a little up, a little bit down. We'll see what comes in the next few weeks. Next week we are getting ready for the 4th of July holiday, so we are going to dive into our favorite patriotic movies of all time salute right. All right, Bruce. So thanks again and thank you all for listening to this episode is screened and screened.