Every single Avengers: Doomsday trailer has leaked so far. The Steve Rogers trailer, the Thor trailer, and now the X-Men centric one. I’ve seen the memes, and I don’t know how secure you could possibly be at this point.
This was the very first Mr. Know-It-All live stream, and I was late to it, so thank you to everybody who showed up anyway. Preacher was in the chat. Good to see you, brother. I covered the X-Men stills, the Stranger Things drama I somehow had no clue was going on, and the most recent Avatar movie, and that’s what’s here.
One thing before any of it. If you don’t want to be spoiled, go away. Don’t be here.
Why There’s a Live Stream at All
A little look behind the curtain. YouTube is making algorithm changes, specifically to how videos get pushed to the YouTube TV experience. By my understanding, according to the creator hub, that side of the platform is going to push and promote live streams. And I went, well, I’ve wanted to do live streams for a while. This may very well be the springboard I need.
So the plan is every Monday and Wednesday at lunchtime, noon to 1, give or take depending on how the stories fall and how the chat’s going. Friday night is still Nerd Fights. There’ll be times I have Salty on from Nerd Fights, times I have Ganso on, who you’ll remember from the previous attempt at Nerd Fights, and maybe Danny Dorknite. I’m trying to take as much of what I’d normally put into my videos and do it here instead.
A lot of folks think that when you do this, you’ve got to pick a side on everything. Hollywood, streaming, whether Netflix is going to do the thing or Paramount is going to buy them. You got to fight. I don’t do that. I never have. I’m not a rage baiter, but I’m always open for the conversation.
The X-Men Doomsday Trailer, and Whether It’s Real
The big question around these leaks is whether they’re real. AI keeps handing us incredible looking images that could very well be genuine, and then you find out they’re not. I dabble in it myself. The thumbnail on this video is me going to Nano Banana, Google’s Gemini image tool, and telling it to take this frame, clean it up, and that the character in it is played by James Marsden, who plays Cyclops. So that thumbnail is clearly an AI version of the scene.
There are two versions of this trailer going around and they’re very similar. One is the version that’s being taken down everywhere. The other is an AI version people made from the information we already know, really realistic looking and not real at all. I didn’t play anything on the stream because of the takedowns, and I made sure the stills I showed were the right ones. They’re blurry, because it was apparently filmed off a screen somewhere, and there are big color dots on it that I can’t explain, but they’re consistent across the version that’s getting pulled. I’ve seen the motion version too.
I might be getting some of this out of order. My homeboy Chad over at the GeekyCast is really good at confirming this stuff, so check in with him.
It starts with a voiceover, and I believe it’s Patrick Stewart. There’s a version floating around where it’s Doctor Doom’s voice. It’s not. The real one has Charles Xavier saying very over-the-top, melodramatic stuff, as he does, over the wrecked sign from the X-Mansion. Then he rolls up in what we understand to be a yellowish version of the classic X-Men chair, the one with the big X on the wheel, and he’s sitting there playing chess. I had a still of the chessboard, but it was too rough to show.
Then they cut to an overgrown Magneto. Sir Ian McKellen, long hair, overgrown beard, and the two of them are talking. You get several other shots, and then the one everybody’s arguing about, which is whether the Cyclops scenes are real. It looks like James Marsden in the classic ’90s X-Men outfit. Things are burning around him, and it culminates in the big shot everybody loves to see, him just explosively firing that blast straight up into the air. Very à la the intro of X-Men ‘97, or the classic animated show.
I was so leery about even putting this in the stream. But to do anything else would’ve been irresponsible, because it’s what all of us are talking about. The last thing I want is to bring you something and have it turn out to be fake.
Stranger Things 5 Started Like a Cannon Shot
I’ve seen Parts 1 and 2, and I’ve got a video on both of them coming, finally.
Season 5 Part 1 started like a cannon shot. Boom. I was thrust right into what they’re doing. I watched it with Baby Know-It-All and Boyfriend Know-It-All, and their feeling was, oh my gosh, everything’s happening so quickly. And it was. Everything was happening quickly, but nothing was happening. That’s how I saw it.
First off, everybody’s way old now, and we’ve all had that conversation. The bigger thing is how the story’s being written. In the past, the character-driven stuff would’ve played out in a longer, more protracted version, and you’d have more to chew on with the characters and the events. Now everything’s just going, going, going. And they recently put out a bunch of information saying some scenes were cut, and that some of those cuts alter the story itself. I’m fine with that. I really am. Those are creative decisions. We trust the Duffers.
One of the reviewers I read pointed out the pattern I couldn’t shake after that. Every so often the whole group comes together and discusses the dilemma. Somebody pops in with the explanation. Somebody else says, “Oh, you mean like this?” and explains it again, a little dumbed down, almost like nobody trusts the audience. Then they go execute the plan. Mass info dumps. I waited to see if Part 2 would change that, and Part 2 was exactly that.
The Will Scene Lost the Era It’s Set In
When I watched it, I wasn’t aware there was a whole thing about this online. I think we all got the impression Will was gay. That was literally a subplot of a previous season, or at the very least the implication of one. And I need you to understand it’s very minor in the grand scheme of the issues I have with this season.
I thought they were already addressing it with him talking to Robin, and I was fine with that. Then you get to a scene that literally stops the forward momentum of the story, such as it is. You get the slow burn setup. He’s talking to his mom and he’s hemming and hawing. He’s talking to Mike and he’s hemming. Then he finally gets everybody together. Can you imagine being in that group in real life? All right, everybody come on in. Find a seat. File in, file in. Will’s got to talk.
It felt horsey to me. In film and TV, horsey means you’re taking a ride. Everything’s up and down and nothing’s steady and smooth.
In defense of the scene, in the era the show is set in, that was a big, traumatic, dramatic event in somebody’s life. We take it for granted today. In context it’s a significant thing for him. And that’s exactly when you start poking holes. Why are there so many strangers in the room? Why is he suddenly coming out in front of his teacher? Vicki doesn’t have an issue with it, because she’s kind of in the same boat. But you’ve got Kali, you’ve got his teacher, all these other people.
I’m wonderfully happy that everyone’s accepting. But let’s be real, in that era not everyone would have been. Just on sheer numbers, somebody in that room says, “Oh, you don’t want to do that.” Or at least somebody says the corny thing we would’ve said in the 80s, that maybe you just haven’t found the right person. Something. There would absolutely have been supportive friends and family. But in their attempt to be inclusive, they lost the reality of that era.
That’s the problem with telling stories from hindsight. Here we are in 2025 telling a story set in the mid 80s and painting it with our sensibility. It’s the same reason Disney puts warnings in front of the old stuff instead of editing it. People originally wanted Disney and Warner Brothers and everybody else to cut the problematic material out, and the answer was no, that’s part of our history. I don’t care how you feel one way or another. You don’t like it, cool, don’t watch it. But it’s where we come from, and if you rewrite it too much you end up losing all of it.
What Would Have Made It Work
My wife and I came out of the film and TV industry, so I’d rather come at this from what would’ve made the scene work better. The idea’s fine. The problem is they stopped right at the surface. We should have an inclusive scene where he comes out and everyone’s accepting. Great. The deeper part should’ve been, let’s explore the conversation.
That’s what Seasons 1, 2 and 3 would’ve done. We’d have chewed on that throughline for an episode or two and dealt with how it affects him and how it affects the group. They tried to handwave it by tying it to the plot, because it helps him be free of Vecna’s ability to latch on and grab hold. I get it. You established the psychological stakes of him coming clean and being honest with his family. But we didn’t explore any of it, and you don’t have room to do that now.
Honestly, this scene should’ve been closer to the top of the season, so you’d have had time to process it. Then this could’ve been the moment when somebody says to him, unprovoked, whether we understand it or not, we love you. Knowing where they were in that era, that’s what you want to pull off in that scene. If you don’t do that, what are you doing it for?
There’s a whole bunch of people who want to argue that the scene is woke. And I’m like, no, it’s just a thing. There was a better approach that would’ve at least been faithful to the era. The 80s had the music and the clothes and the TV shows, sure. It was also how the culture was handling things. Around this time you had the massive rise of HIV, and there were real questions happening in the gay and lesbian community. There’s a snapshot of that era I would’ve found fascinating. They chose the very lazy, very surface route instead. I’m okay with that too, but it could’ve been handled better, and I think we’d have enjoyed it more.
Staring Down the Game of Thrones Barrel
I’d argue Stranger Things is one of the major properties that put Netflix on the map creatively. They were always on the map as a content generator. But I think it’s probably the first thing I saw that was worth getting a subscription for back in the day.
Right now it’s genuinely facing down the barrel of the Game of Thrones phenomenon, where you have a strong, massive run only to fall flat on your face. I don’t know if there are mandates. You’ve got to remember that Netflix’s analytics are closer to what we get here on YouTube than to what a TV network or a movie studio has. They know things, and they can hand that to showrunners. It shouldn’t steer your creative. But if you know your audience is heaviest in the first third, you’d better make that first third the most compelling thing you’ve got. Stranger Things has done that. And then you get to this season, and it’s sort of fallen on its face.
I’m here to the end, obviously. About 15 minutes into the first episode of Part 2, out of nowhere, Boyfriend Know-It-All goes, “What is this writing?” So they’ve got opinions, and I’d love to have the two of them on soon.
What I’m not excited for is the spin-off. I saw the video of the interview, and one of the Duffers says they’re closing up everything happening in Hawkins, and this is going to be a new story with a new location and new characters. So it’s a different thing. That’s okay. Stephen King did it with Pet Sematary and The Shining and the rest, and now we’re watching those pieces come together in a really nice way. I hope it works for them. But this season has a very lost feel to it. It started strong and it’s petering out, and if they’re not careful a lot of people are going to carry a bad taste for the Duffers. I feel like the ending ruined the two creators of Game of Thrones, because I haven’t seen them do much since. Look at how unforgiving people were with the Wachowskis after Speed Racer. And I contend Speed Racer is not as bad as most people think it is.
On the lore, I didn’t have an issue other than it’s a lot of new information that feels like you just invented it. The whole idea of the Abyss. The Upside Down turning out to be just the wormhole and never its own thing. And is this really the first time anybody’s gone far enough to find out there’s a wall on the outside? How did we not know this?
The finale lands New Year’s Eve. I’ll have my review up the next day, January 1st, and we’ll get into it Friday, January 2nd, on Nerd Fights at 8:00 PM Eastern.
Welcome to Derry Knew the Assignment
Contrast all of that with Andy Muschietti’s It: Welcome to Derry, which just finished on HBO. Powerhouse. That show blew my socks off. As I said in my reviews of the first two episodes, I’m not a horror fan like that. This thing made me a believer. It also got me interested in a lot of other Stephen King properties, because of the way they interweave them. In my head canon those all exist in a very similar space now, and I love that. It knew the assignment.
Which gets into my concerns about Netflix buying Warner Brothers. I lean toward them over the Skydance Paramount deal, mainly because I don’t like Ellison and I think he’s shady. I mean, they’re all shady on some level. But I’ll take Ted Sarandos being a jerk over Ellison being shady. Lesser of two evils. And Paramount trying to come in and coerce Warner Brothers isn’t going to happen. There may be regulatory issues down the road, but I don’t think Paramount’s got a chance or a prayer.
People in the industry are worried about jobs, and it’s not like Hollywood’s been doing a whole lot to help job growth lately. Terrestrial television is dying very quickly, which is why Netflix is saying no thanks to TNT and Discovery and those channels. Spin that off and go make money with it if you want. They know there’s no money to be made there. The money’s in streaming, and still in theatrical to some extent.
Fallout, and the Video Game Movie Argument
Are you watching Fallout? God, I hope you are. I didn’t know anything about the game except the mobile one. Then I started the show, the show got me into the games, and now I’ve got a PlayStation and I love the game. I think they’ve captured that nuance really well.
Walton Goggins is stupid amazing as the Ghoul. I want him in everything. For a long time he was that fast-talking, Southern-voiced slimeball, like he was in Ant-Man and the Wasp, and I hated him in that because I’d seen that character from him a million times. He’s such a character actor when you give him the opportunity, like in The Righteous Gemstones. Fallout gives him two time frames, before the bombs and 200 years after, and I love what he’s doing with both.
People still want to compare it to the old line about video game movies. Look, video game movies have been back. Mario Brothers, a billion dollars. Every Sonic has worked, and they put the next one into production almost immediately on the heels of each release. Have there been a ton of failures? Absolutely. They’ve got a bunch of successes too. So I push back on that idea.
Avatar Is Style Over Substance
Avatar is the juggernaut that won’t stop. I don’t care how you feel about it. I’d argue that, culturally speaking, it isn’t as impactful as its box office says, outside of itself in the abstract. Joe Russo, love the guy by the way, makes a very compelling argument the other way. My immediate response is, okay, cool, name the characters other than Jake Sully.
When I was talking to Danny Dorknite about it on Nerd Fights last Friday, his first words were, “The 3D was so beautiful and so compelling.” And it made me go, so why did you watch it? I don’t know that I’m going to a movie just because the 3D looks compelling. I go for all of it. The visuals, yes, but the story, how the people are acting, what the plot’s telling me, the themes, the music, whether the effects stand up. And whether what the characters are doing is compelling enough to hold me for two and a half, three hours.
I believe James Cameron has been a revolutionary filmmaker in terms of pushing the technology forward. But anybody who tries to tell you these are the deepest storytelling, stop it. Knock it off. It’s a colonization story. It’s Pocahontas. It’s Christopher Columbus. None of it is unique, other than the window dressing of big blue cats, which are gorgeous.
Somebody else said this and I have to agree with the assessment. You introduce us to what I’ll call the fire tribe, for those of us familiar with the other Avatar series. An arguably compelling tribe who’ve forsaken Eywa, their god. A heretic tribe. And then you don’t tell us much more about them. Very surface. We got the info dump version of that story. Somewhere in the second hour I started feeling like I was being preached to, especially when everyone’s saying the same thing over and over.
I love these movies. I think they’re beautiful. I went partly wanting to see a trailer, and I ended up going to actually see the movie, which is good, because I don’t know that I could’ve bought a ticket just for a trailer. But they are 100% style over substance.
And they’re doing good. A lot of us are geek culture people. I’ve got Marvel on the shelf behind me, Star Trek, Doctor Who. But it feels like Disney’s hitting its best stride with the animated stuff and with the live action remakes, and I use air quotes, because those are basically another form of animation. How to Train Your Dragon, wonderful. Lilo & Stitch, excellent. The Moana live action looks stupid good. As for what a Warner Brothers buyout means for superhero movies, I’d argue DC is in fine hands right now. DC is moving in the direction Marvel was in a while back, while Marvel tries to flounder its way out of some recent mismanagement. Same thing with Star Wars.
We Don’t Need to Be Toxic in Our Fandoms
I’ll live and die on this soapbox. The fact that I like something, or that you don’t, should not define our relationship.
I started this channel because I’d go see a movie with my friends, and afterward we’d end up at a McDonald’s or a coffee shop and just talk. I’d say, oh my gosh, this was amazing. They’d say, you liked that part? That sucked. And I’d say, you’re a jerk. And when we were finished it was, all right, cool, talk to you next week. That was how it was.
People have gotten so tribal. The rage baiters, I’m freezing all those guys out. The minute I run into it I block it or mute it, because I don’t need that stress in my life. If you want to have a real conversation, I’m down.
Am I a fan of all the decisions Stranger Things is making? No. If you love it, awesome. There’s a level of appreciation to be had for things I don’t like. The fact that it gives you joy is all that’s necessary.
Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.
Your turn. Did the way the Will scene was handled surprise you, and what would have made it work better? And where did you land on the most recent Avatar? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.
