The Shadow - Caravan of Garbage

welcome back everybody to Caravan of garbage where we are making our way through five superhero properties that are Loosely connected in the sense that they didn't do very well also some of them are pulp icons sort of but not all of them and most of them but not all are from the 30s it's the superhero-ish series it's superhero-ish you know when you see it exactly I think I might have found a link though after watching this movie go on the shadow yes the shadow sure 1994's the shadow directed by Russell Mulcahy oh do you want to reveal it later no I don't know oh can't be that good if you want to reveal it up top okay I think okay do you take a chance on a video that's so true so first of all they leave a like on this video so first of all leave a like and then you're gonna reveal the thing that's not good enough to say to Liam yeah yeah that's right yeah exactly right maybe it's tommy guns maybe there has to be a Tommy Gun Zombie guns but I don't think there's gonna be tommy guns in the fifth one we talk about I don't think there's gonna be any through that retro Vibe if anybody can find a definitive link and not something vague I mean like give us something you know something symbolic yeah that we could put on like an award and we could give the worst one an award so thus far it's the Tommy Gun award for standing in the street and spinning around slowly and shooting at cars that's what it is currently exactly which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice right now this one I think definitively exists in the wake of the Batman movie yeah absolutely Batman movies they went they made a billion dollars yep not really but you know adjusted maybe I don't know a billion's a big number I just wanted to say a billionaire right they made a ton of money and they went let's do something Batman yes Alec Baldwin was probably like I was offered Batman probably like everybody was and decided not to do it I'll do the shadow yeah well we also know that Bob Kane who invented invented Bob Kane who had a hand in Batman yes has talked about the influences of the Shadow much bigger hand in Batman as we all know but it just not great though right I don't mind it I I like to see I here's the thing I I think I like the shadow more than you do like as a character as a character and I think I like the origin of the character and I like his stuff in subsequent media and I've even listened to the old radio show and stuff like that but I don't think this does any of that Justice no you know what it is look I think it's two things I think one I like Alec Baldwin's performance I think he's a good straight man in this role like in 30 Rock he delivers an odd line yeah with a certain sincerity that I appreciate you are a barbarian but I think that this character they weren't sure if he was supposed to be charismatic and and a real nice guy or a lunatic or somewhere in the middle or if he switches depending on his Persona or what have you depending on the nose he was wearing yeah and I think the the character comes off as more of a kind of a mess yes and vague and vague and I also think in in a similar vein I think they didn't really know what they wanted to do with this movie did they want it to be light-hearted did they want it to be more sort of campy Grim like Batman there's some moments in this with Alec Baldwin and uh Penelope and Miller where it seems like they want it to be like a kind of 1930s 1940s screwball comedy where they're doing the fast dialogue like his girl Friday where they're like Snappy and back and forth and they've got a real fun and a run to it we need each other no we don't we have a connection no we don't it almost feels like they're gonna carry it off at certain points but there's so little of that yeah that I'm like if you'd made the whole movie like that could have worked maybe I would have loved it but I do appreciate like the weird stuff that's in this for example the opening sequence we have a shirtless Alec Baldwin in Black Genie pants she always got pointed nails and he's got a long black wig yes and in all of that he's fighting like a little cranky knife yeah wonderful stuff really and it's one of those things where it's like what are we bearing witness to here what is this what is this telling us about the the state of Cinema but I will say this I appreciate that look this was an ERA where you don't have to work out that much you don't have to Manicure your chest hair or your nails everything all your nails yeah more power to him quite frankly bring this back if you possibly could but I also knew that after that intro where it's like he's a warlord and then you know a deity found him or whoever or a guru and was like you should be a good guy and then there's a crawl yes and you know something's up there where like maybe you've botched the origin of this oh we should point out I guess he's a bad guy yes and so he's trained in mystical Arts so he can use his bad guy energy to look into the minds of other bad guys whilst mostly being a good guy yeah sure is that accurate yes so a lot of that is new to the movie like a lot of uh pulp Heroes a lot like Dick Tracy we talked about a couple of weeks ago his initial appearances he's just like I think I'm gonna fight crime to be honest like the the idea that he once was a villain that's that's new to the movie and My Shadow backstory would you like James what do you got well we can cut it all out okay here's the backstory of the Shadow you wanna you you want a potted history of the Shadows let's do it we can very easily cut out of the the video version so in 1930 there was a there was a pulp magazine called detective story magazine and it did history stories and crime stories and detective stories Etc and they thought a great idea to increase sales of the magazine would be to start a radio show where they did like dramatic readings of the stories yeah which was called detective Story Hour so what they did to tile the stories together is they decided they'd create a like a narrator to introduce the stuff and so they came up with a guy called The Shadow who had like a like a raspy Sinister voice and he would it would introduce the stories and it'd be like and that's why crime doesn't pay exactly like the Shadow and so sales did go up but it also had the unintended consequence that people would constantly go up to like newsstands and be like where are these shadow stories like where are they I'll burn your new stand down it was the 30s and so the editors of the magazine were like well we should probably invent iconic pulp character the shadow I guess but if we have to and so I got a guy called Walter B Gibson to create like the iconic look of the Shadow and I love the look the premise and he you know he's gonna you know be in New York and fight crime and put Terror in the hearts of criminals and Etc so they released the shadow magazine yeah which sold Great Guns and over the next 20 years there were 325 Shadow stories in the magazine and Gibson wrote 282 of them which works out to a novel length story twice a month oh my God once on the first of the months month on the 15th of the month and he just churned them all out damn but anyway people really love it they're quite good though aren't they no oh no some of them are it's a mixed bag oh no I mean I know you like some of them yeah yeah but anyway and then eventually that resulted in an actual like a like a full cast recording of Shadow stories on the radio like you've got his own radio show again but this time he wasn't just a narrator he was like I like the idea of them not being like this is the next big thing we've created this thing it grew kind of organically yeah yeah until they made the movie and then it stopped put a real full stop but all the all the uh all the elements were there that people liked in the 30s yeah through to the 50s uh Margot Lane was invented for the radio show and that is primarily because the shadow of as a man and the commissioner was a man and all the gangsters were men and I think they were like well if we put in one more male voice nobody will know who's talking so they so so the writers had a deep sign they went I guess we'll ride a woman which I think that that to me is fascinating because it's like the idea I think maybe we've talked about on our podcast the weekly Planet about how the first appearance of kryptonite Superman's weakness was on the Superman radio show and depending on who you ask that might have been because the uh the show was put out live every week and the guy who played Superman wanted a couple of weeks off so they had to go oh let's just invent a rock that makes him comatose or whatever just what they also changed for the the radio show is that they made it so the shadow only had one secret identity so in the Original Stories yeah his name's Kent Allard right he was a flying ace in World War one and then when he returns to New York uh he meets a guy called Lamont Cranston who looks a lot like him who's like an idol Playboy so whenever Cranston is out of town like on Safari shooting giraffes or whatever shooting breaking bad going exactly oh cramps ah yeah yep yep can't download would sub in for him and put on The Tuxedo don't be like I'm Lamont Cranston any would you know infiltrate high society and get information on the criminals or whatever sure so in the radio show they were just like let's just do we do we have to explain this every time it's just Lamont Cranston and the third thing is that they added that he had mysterious Powers yes because in the original he's like a smoke bomb guy like in the pop stories he's just like I've got a magician's trick and I'll do this or whatever but clearly based on all this stuff clearly they went folks this is the fast-paced world of 1930s radio no media landscape will ever be more hectic than this we've got cigarettes and nerve tonics to sell we do not have time to introduce the concept the villains are congregating in a warehouse and he's going to clamber up a fire escape and he's going to find a access hatch on the roof and then he's gonna taunt and then he's gonna leap down and he's gonna gun him all down like a hero we'll just say he's invisible and he's in the room with him and then he can gun him down like a hero yeah absolutely and I think that's the problem with this movie for me is that his set of powers is very vague and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't and sometimes it's invisible and sometimes he's just standing in water maybe you should be aware of that yeah yeah yeah there's at one point because you can turn into look he can't strictly speaking to turn invisible he can Cloud men's mind yeah yeah yeah make them think to them he appears invisible except for his shadow gotcha and women and non-binary people if he existed in the present day that's right NBS you'd be invisible to you too you're not special I mean I get all that yeah but then you introduce a villain yes who has roughly sort of the same thing so one of them does it a little bit harder than the other well that's what I was going to say so there is a moment where uh he's in a darkened room and a bad guy puts his flashlight in on in the shadows there he can turn invisible except for a shadow but then the the villain puts the flashlight on him and he's there just the Shadow and he just sort of like yeah he just looks like a deer in the headlights he just stands there frightened and gets shot a couple of times and it's like come on man you're absolutely right I quite like that they introduced a guy who has similar powers to him but he's kind of better than him yeah but then the shadow just gets better than him exactly like for nothing he doesn't learn anything he doesn't learn anything he doesn't go okay well the reason is that actually I was too angry or whatever you know often in the modern superhero landscape it's like well I didn't value my family enough but now I do value my family and and that's given me the power to win or whatever and this is just like boy this guy's better at levitating cranky knives or whatever maybe I'll be better at that yeah than he is and that he is exactly yeah but look to talk about things that I did like yes I think the outfit is great for Cape bandana prosthetic face he looks like Billy Baldwin he does look like Billy Baldwin that's a different bald one this is Young Baldwin and he looks like some of his younger brothers did yeah 10 years ago but I think the prosthetic is not good up close yeah I understand and I get that they kind of wanted to really distinguish the two but I think the outfit is enough absolutely yeah but you know I like the way that he kind of runs the city you know he rescues that guy at this start and then he's like listen you're gonna work for me I've got a network it's called spies you have no choice I might kill you yeah you don't know I don't know I'm really mean to you but I'm a nice guy I'm Charming but I'm mean but I just I just boss you around what's my deal I don't know you tell me but don't I'll kill you will I he's a ring show everyone the ring but never take it off I love that how he's you know he tells he tells him how it works and the network of spies and he's like see you later whatever your name is and the guy's like how did you know my name and it's like he just told you he had a network of spies yeah he probably looked into you he didn't just recruit you randomly idiot come on I think there's some really interesting effects in this we talked about the cranky knife doesn't always hold up but that's the thing that I remember exactly look ultimately even though the villain is shiwan Khan who's a who's a villain from the pulps originally the real villain is the cranky knife because he's like the school bully yeah because he goes to the Temple of the Cobra and he meets the the bully who pushes him around clearly then he you know he gets a real glow up and he moves to the big city and then all of a sudden the cranky knife is back and he's like no not the cranky knife I'm gonna get swirly no cranky knife but he stood up for himself that's true like you do with a boy that's what it is yeah maybe it is yeah but I think yeah look not all the effects hold up but no there's like a swirling kind of 3D tapestry at one point there's some smoke effects like at night that are that are quite good there's a bit where he kind of peels himself out of the Shadow at one point where he's pinned there's one point repeals his entire face off oh yeah and it's the other guy yeah yeah yeah he's the other guy isn't he I'll speak it yeah yeah look and speaking of there's two great lines that I love from from Alec Baldwin and this and one of them is he explains to Margot Lane that he he had a dream where he pulled his own face off I dreamed I tore all the skin off my face and was somebody else underneath but then there's the moment where she won Khan reveals the cranky knife and he goes oh that knife oh that knife remember that [ __ ] yeah and here's the thing right this era of Alec Baldwin aside from those little moments that you're talking about I'm not really into it okay if you get me up to like The Departed 30 Rock 100 I mean the moment in Mission Impossible Fallout where he talks about it how Ethan harness them yeah living manifestation of Destiny yes it's delivered with the same gravitar so oh that knife that's right yeah but the end I wasn't really wrapped in I mean this was always going to end in a hole full of mirrors I didn't know that but I knew you know which one is he whatever it's a mirror what's happening again and it's vague it's like I'm gonna explode all these mirrors better than you or whatever you can't run from me shout out to the score Jerry Goldsmith he also did The Omen Rambo Star Trek the motion picture Planet of the Apes we never talk about scores no we never do this is I feel like this is a really good one anything else to say before we do some trivia yeah well look I The Supporting Cast is great that most most of whom I didn't even remember were in this Peter Boyle is in this uh if if you were to ask me which cast member from Lord of the Rings was in the movie The Shadow I might have said young Viggo Mortensen is a thug or something but it's uh bloody it's only bloody uh it's only bloody Patrick Stewart no it's not Patrick Stewart Ian McAllen in McAllen thank you and Tim Curry is in this Tim Curry's that's just the oiliest I'm trying to say one of the oiliest man he's ever played but I can't make that promise honestly yeah an oily man that he has played I think everybody in this is doing a good job as well yeah anyways it's time for the trivia dough Shadow related trivia oh not the chat trivia no what are you did you know hear me when I said the trivia day oh I'm stupid yeah you are stupid but don't let that stop you from helping me finish this video I don't want to do this by myself okay I'll get lonely I'll get lost I've got this haunted knife I could do it with you how crazy oh God I don't like it what are you doing these videos James I just I don't know it's like my job now all right I used to have a real job now this is my job what do you care nobody's gonna watch these they do though thanks for now even these ones yeah yeah somewhat interesting is it I don't know what do you know about media nothing I only know about stabbing then shut the [ __ ] up sorry I didn't tell you about stabbing uh so the director of this is Russell Mulcahy who you mentioned he directed Highlander that's right probably and second Highlander sort of he claims that they [ __ ] that and they did yeah but before that Sam raymie actually wanted to make this but his pitch was ignored so he turned the ideas of what he wanted this to be and he created dark man there it is yeah and you can definitely see that in the costume similarities are uh one obviously yeah and Darkman is better by a wide margin it is better Sam Remy would have killed this man yeah if they let him I think there was even gonna be even after this I think maybe in the 2000s there was going to be a version again set with Sam Raimi attached where he was going to combine gonna team up the Shadow with like Doc Savage and the Avenger who's you might not know but he's he's got a malleable face yeah sure like they were gonna put him together in Avengers style team but I think the the rights have since lapsed so that's sad yeah yeah don't you think I don't think you're sad at all I'm not yeah you read that well actually I'm a good judge of character I don't think you are maybe one day you'll be able to control me the cranky knife I'm actually not today though stab oh God I deserve that I guess yeah I think you've got to stab me no matter what though if I'm honest he's right he's not wrong I love stabbing uh a video game version of The Shadow for the Super Nintendo was developed to time with the film but it was never released despite being completed due to the film's disappointing box office gross now you can get this it's being emulated or whatever since but that's surprising they didn't just release it anyway yeah I can't imagine it would cost that much would it who knows maybe who know anyway plate if you want apparently it's pretty standard oh is it some sort of action platformer on the Super Nintendo yeah you heard of it they're absolute bread and butter at the time yeah yeah yeah yeah uh Banyan from Seinfeld is in this oh yeah it's one of the guards yeah and I love this so the villain in this whatever his name is yeah claims that he's Genghis Khan's last remaining ancestor uh which is off bike quite a few million people so an international group of geneticists studying why chromosome data have found that nearly eight percent of the men living in the region of the former Mongol Empire carry Y chromosomes that are nearly identical that translates to roughly 0.5 of the male population in the world or roughly 16 million descendants living today oh it was a rude rap mate do you think we might be descendants of uh Genghis Khan I don't know ask your knife friend unlikely all right thanks knife I don't think you know but thank you I guess I just need a stab and shatter dreams yep we know uh the budget of this 40 million dollars okay I imagine uh Alec Baldwin's salary was a significant portion no doubt well you know he was Jack Ryan for a couple of movies or one movie I can't remember and various other things but it ended up only making at the worldwide box office of 48 million dollars oh that's not a lot more I'd imagine that this was a situation that was confusing for the movie studio where they're like we just we did Batman we did the guy they based Batman off right isn't that enough yeah no it has to be better less vague please yeah yeah I don't know look honestly I thought it was interesting yeah but I I can't say that I I loved it to vague the characters weren't defined well enough I think they should have leaned into they again I think they should have picked a personality for this guy you know what I mean I think or like shown us a better illustration of his struggle yeah you know what you know what I mean exactly I don't know but I still kind of liked it because I liked the derangement of the character I like like the fact that he's clearly like the character is leaning towards like psychopathy yeah just but like justice at any cost kind of thing you know what I mean if people would like to uh track down some perhaps some Shadow media no no I know for the one guy okay I'm talking to me but I've read this already there were a couple of Batman Shadow crossovers in the comic books through DC and Dynamite comics uh and they're both good uh but the first one by Scott Snyder and Steve Orlando is called Batman and the shadow the murder Geniuses and if that title doesn't uh doesn't Intrigue you I don't know what else I can do this series really leans into the shadow has been doing it too long and he's gone mad oh okay and sort of Imagine like the intensity of Batman but times a hundred like he's been doing it for nearly a century and and he's and he's lost his objectivity and he's just like yeah if I have to kill 10 people to save a thousand I'll do it I don't care whatever that's pretty cool though yeah yeah yeah it's pretty cool that he would do that yeah good the greater good I agree with this version of The Shadow is what I'm saying yeah I think the knife would agree with that yeah I think so too uh he's left though yeah I don't know I just like a nastier version of The Shadow yeah there's also a shadow comic series from the 80s by Howard Shakin called blood and judgment which is also very kind of nasty right it's quite violent and kind of dark but but uh I enjoy it too so do you think the knife would like it I think knife would like it but they're nice not here anymore oh he left he got in a cab so his flight is limited is it yeah yeah fair enough you need to get tired I guess yeah anyways do you want to hit for next week I think we already mentioned it but here it is Phantom is real we're gonna slam evil yeah with the Phantom that's right Australia's owned the Phantom that's great not really but we claim him he's ours but he met Bob Hawke once he did that's cool I bet the knife would think it was cool but again the knife is not here it left I heard Bob Hawk drag a big yard guy in the record for drinking a hard glass of beer you're back cause you didn't have money for the cab all right you're right in this instance you got 20 bucks can I borrow 20 bucks yes anyways if you do want to see that video earlier you can actually head over to bigsandwich.co where it's not just early videos do you know what else it is uh let me think it's early videos yep and it's a bonus podcast and it's video game Let's Plays and our podcast the weekly planner comes out on Sunday as opposed to Monday yep various movie commentaries can't believe it or you can just check out you know the stuff here all our podcast the weekly Planet over on its YouTube channel Spotify Apple all of that thank you so much Ben and Laurence for the edits and we'll see you guys on the next one and it's the Phantom in case you didn't guess maybe the knife will come back and the knife will become our sidekick cool awful little knife oh he's rolled up the 20 no he's doing cocaine Mason this is terrible news uh grab that Jeremy guys we'll see you next week

Channel: Mr Sunday Movies

Views: 276,009

Keywords: mr sunday movies, caravan of garbage, the weekly planet

Id: awcQWzdsW0c

Length: 21min 17sec (1277 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2023