Marvel’s desperation era? ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ is ‘nonsensical’ and ‘looks really bad’



The first trailer for "Avengers: Doomsday" has arrived, and it’s raising some serious questions about the future of superhero movies — especially whether or not anyone still cares about them.

And BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere admits that he has never cared less.

“It seems like they took all previous superhero movies and put them in a blender. And then just released whatever came out of that blender. A green sort of brownish mess,” he tells co-host Dave Landau on “Stu and Dave Do America.”

“The actual plot of it is nonsensical,” Dave agrees, adding that it “looks really bad.”


“I am not a fan of superhero movies generally. I don’t like the Marvel universe. I don’t get into this, so I’m not the right person to ask necessarily. To me, a lot of them seem kind of nonsensical,” Stu says.

The film stars Robert Downey Jr. as Dr. Doom, which, Stu points out, seems a little desperate.

“It seems like a desperation move, like when they go on vacation in a dying sitcom, you know, and then they add a brother that you didn’t know existed and you’re just like they’re just reaching for whatever at this point,” Stu says.

“I feel like it hurts the Robert Downey Jr. trajectory, because you go from heroin addict who had all kinds of problems, you know, fell asleep in his neighbor’s race-car bed,” Dave says. “And then he came back and became Iron Man and a superhero ... and he’s lived this kind of extraordinary comeback. Why be the villain?”

“I am a fan of his work, but I think it hurts the actual RDJ,” he adds.

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'Absolute horses**t': No influencer envy for Robert Downey Jr.; star baffled by their new 'religion'



Actor Robert Downey Jr. has a message for today's internet influencers: Get off my lawn!

In a recent appearance on Bran Ferren's "Conversations for Our Daughters" podcast, the 61-year-old star admitted this new crop of DIY entertainers seem like "hucksters" to him.

'I don't know what world you're living into, but I think that that is absolute horses**t.'

Downey added that the proliferation of online personalities seeking celebrity without effort has made it harder for anyone with talent to stand out.

Phoning it in

"People can create celebrity without ever doing much besides rolling a phone on themselves," he said. "And I don't look at that as a negative thing. I just look at it as more like the challenge for individuation is being upped."

The New York native also said that he hopes young people can resist falling into a "self-aggrandizing kind of influencer-type thing."

Not that the "Iron Man" star dislikes all social media strivers. He revealed that he has even gotten to know a few and found them grounded and accomplished. Still, don't expect him to buy in to the idea that they're the stars of tomorrow.

"When I hear people talk about, 'Oh, the stars of the future are going to be influencers,' I go, 'I don't know what world you're living into, but I think that that is absolute horses**t."

RELATED: Iron MAGA? Comedian Chris D'Elia rants that in 'real life,' Marvel heroes would all vote GOP

- YouTube

Stream me up

Downey noted that even his own teenage son has gotten "caught up" in the influencer world.

"Next thing you know, it's like, 'Hey, if you like the way I'm playing this video game, do you wanna send me a donation?' And really, it becomes a religion."

"There's something about the influencers today are almost like the Evangelical hucksters of the information age," he continued.

"At the same token, it's different because we’re playing in this new territory, and so it's a little bit of a frontier, and I don't really have a judgment on it."

For his part, the veteran performer said he resists industry pressure to reveal more of himself online, saying it feels inauthentic.

RELATED: Tech billionaire Palmer Luckey calls out homeschool haters' hypocrisy

]M. Tran/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Stark reality

He also worries about being reduced to disposable content for insatiable clickbait culture.

"I don't wish to be consumed," he explained.

The father of three also pondered the "turnover" from traditional media to online that many believe took place in the late 2000s.

"There's something about this ... there's something about that era that because we were just in it, and you know how it always feels like 2009 was ten years ago."

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Anti-Trump Green Day calls for Orange Man's head



They don’t call them Ruthless for nothing.

The fellas at the “Ruthless Variety Progrum” (note the “u” is on purpose) skewer politics from a sane, right-of-center view. And they’ve leveraged classic “Veep” TV show clips to mock Vice President Kamala Harris over the last three-plus years.

They called it “Veep or Veep?”

They joked recently (if "recently" means anything beyond ten minutes ago in this hyperactive news cycle) that they ran out of old “Veep” clips to compare with Harris’ growing body of word salad quips. Yet the mind behind the HBO series is so Trump-deranged that he can’t see any resemblance between Selina Meyer and our current quasi-not-really president:

Well, for a start, Selina Meyer is not Kamala Harris. When we were making Veep, we didn’t have anyone in specific in mind. It was more we wanted people. … It really is not based on anyone. It’s just our vice president. Plus, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is an amazing comedy talent, and why wouldn’t you have her as the center of your show? So it’s about that. It’s nice that Veep has been watched again, but I wouldn’t want people to think that Kamala Harris is like Selina Meyer.

OK, Jan …

Green Day ghouls

This rocker knows a thing or two about American idiots.

Like many a left-leaning celeb, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong missed the “tone down the rhetoric” memo following the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. So perhaps it’s less than shocking to learn that the 52-year-old multimillionaire rebel did something ghoulish on stage to protest Trump. He held a Trump mask aloft as if it were the former president’s actual head.

In speaking truth to power, Armstrong bravely ignored soaring inflation rates, the frightening crime levels in Democrat-controlled cities, and the Oct. 7 attacks that killed more than a 1,000 Israelis in order to go after the real enemy: a guy who hasn't been in charge of the country since early 2021.

The band even shared the clip of Armstrong's low-effort Kathy Griffin-style decapitation on its Instagram page, much to the delight of his fellow White Men for Kamala.

Who says punk is dead?

Up the Academy

Wanted: Oscars host – modest pay, global scrutiny, DNC talking points included.

Jimmy Kimmel toned down the hard-left politics earlier this year during his third Oscar hosting gig. Now he’s ready to pass the torch to another comic. Good luck.

So far, stand-up star John Mulaney has turned down the offer, which could have instantly given him the biggest spotlight of his career. Hmm.

The gig’s risks are obvious. Every joke will be put through the social X-ray machine to determine possible offense. The host’s prior career will similarly get the FBI background treatment to ensure no problematic joke has ever left his or her lips.

Just ask Kevin Hart.

Just know the one person who could rock the Oscars like no other will never be offered the gig. Ricky Gervais skewered Hollywood Inc. so thoroughly in his 2020 Golden Globes appearance that he’d instantly double the night’s ratings.

Heck, the ratings might double just by making every beautiful person in attendance memorize Gervais' 2020 advice for nominees:

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg. So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent and your god, and f**k off.

Imagine getting through the Academy Awards broadcast in less time than Biden's withdrawal speech ...

Iron Man's new platinum payday

Hollywood talks a good game with its sharing-the-wealth memes and working-class platitudes. When push comes to shove, however, the message is clear: “Show me the money!”

It’s why Robert Downey Jr. just reupped for another tour of duty in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The “Iron Man” star said goodbye to the beloved character in “Avengers: Endgame” five years ago. Now he’s back to play the villainous Dr. Doom in two MCU features.

And we have his first, exclusive line of dialogue: “Ka-ching!”

Oh, wait, that’s the sound his agent made after inking the deal. Reports say Downey Jr. will walk away with “significantly more” than $80 million for his work in the two-part film saga …

Late-night host to make jokes

Just in: Seth Meyers has snagged a deal for his first HBO comedy special. Career reinvention is never easy; best of luck to Meyers as he tries his hand at being funny.

FACT CHECK: Did Robert Downey Jr. And Mel Gibson Start A Movie Studio?

A post shared on social media purports that  Actor Robert Downey Jr. left mainstream Hollywood to create a new movie studio with Director Mel Gibson. Verdict: False The claim stems from a satirical website. Fact Check: Downey told fellow actor Jodie Foster in a recent interview that he would consider playing the role of Tony Stark again, Forbes reported. […]
'I must have really f***ed this up': Ben Stiller says 'Zoolander 2' failure made him question if he still knows what's funny
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'I must have really f***ed this up': Ben Stiller says 'Zoolander 2' failure made him question if he still knows what's funny



Ben Stiller revealed that the release of "Zoolander 2" didn't sit well with him and made him wonder if his perspective on comedy was still relevant.

Stiller, who has produced amazing comedies like "Dodgeball" and "Tropic Thunder," followed up his 2001 hit "Zoolander" with a sequel in 2016.

The original had seen over a decade of memes and quotes that kept certain themes of the movie alive, making Stiller expect that fans were clamoring for the second film.

"I thought everybody wanted this," Stiller said. "And then it's like, 'Wow, I must have really f***ed this up.' Everybody didn't go to it. And it's gotten these horrible reviews."

With a reported budget of $50 million against making just $29 million domestically (Variety), Stiller appeared to believe that reigniting the old flame was a good move. The film's original stars all returned, including Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell. It also included Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Mila Jovovich, Penelope Cruz, and Stiller's father, iconic actor Jerry Stiller.

Stiller revealed how big a toll the failure took on his psyche during an interview with actor David Duchovny on the "Fail Better" podcast.

"It really freaked me out because I was like, 'I didn't know [it] was that bad?'" Stiller continued. "What scared me the most on that one was I'm losing what I think what's funny, the questioning yourself. ... On 'Zoolander 2,' it was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time."

Stiller recalled that the movie's poor performance affected him so much that it actually stopped him from making films and led to developing more series.

"The wonderful thing that came out of that for me was just having space where, if that had been a hit, and they said 'Make Zoolander 3 right now,' or offered some other movie, I would have just probably jumped in and done that," he added. "But I had this space to kind of sit with myself and have to deal with it and other projects that I had been working on — not comedies, some of them — I have the time to actually just work on and develop."

This stopped the 58-year-old from jumping into a series of other comedy movies that he may have regretted.

"Even if somebody said, 'Well, why don't you go do another comedy or do this?' I probably could have figured out something to do. But I just didn't want to," he explained.

Duchovny, now 63, asked, "Why didn't you want to? Was it anger?"

"It was just hurt," Stiller answered. "Finding yourself in terms of what creatively you want to be and do, I always loved directing. I always loved making movies. I always, in my mind, loved the idea of just directing movies since I was a kid, and not necessarily comedies. And so, over the course of like the next like nine or 10 months, I was able to develop these limited series."

"Sequels are hard because really what audiences want is to feel what the first movie made them feel, but again. That wonder, that newness, that love at first sight. And they're not always going to get that from a sequel — sometimes they're going to get that from just some other film that you make," producer Cody Clarke told Blaze News.

"To me, 'Tropic Thunder' is more of a 'sequel' to 'Zoolander' than 'Zoolander 2' is, because what I loved about 'Zoolander' is that it was this whole other world, completely out of left field, that was so committed to and so uniquely funny. And 'Tropic Thunder' does that in spades, and 'Zoolander 2' doesn't do that at all," he added.

Stiller has either produced or help produce five series since 2020, including "La Flamme," "Severance," "Le Flambeau, les aventuriers de Chupacabra," "In the Dark," and "High Desert."

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Christopher Nolan Flexes His Filmmaking Brilliance In ‘Oppenheimer’

Nolan's excellent handling of all this isn't just in the visuals as the director, but also in the script as both writer and adapter.

‘Oppenheimer’ Explores The Heroic And Horrific Power Of Man’s Inventions

The peril and the promise are both built into science and politics because they are built into us.

Unlike ‘Barbie,’ ‘Oppenheimer’ Lets Us Decide Who The Villains Are

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Ben Stiller refuses to bend the knee to the woke mob, declares he will make no apologies for 'Tropic Thunder'



Actor Ben Stiller made it clear that he will not bend the knee to the woke outrage mob regarding the controversy surrounding the 2008 movie "Tropic Thunder."

Earlier this week, a Twitter user implored Stiller to stop apologizing for the controversy swirling around blackface-wearing and the mentally challenged farm boy characters in "Tropic Thunder." The fan told Stiller that "liberals" are trying to cancel "Tropic Thunder," but he proclaimed that the movie is "even funnier now with cancel culture the way it is."

Stiller replied on Twitter, "I make no apologies for 'Tropic Thunder.' Don’t know who told you that. It’s always been a controversial movie since when we opened. Proud of it and the work everyone did on it."

In 2018, Stiller admitted that he apologized for his mentally challenged character "Simple Jack," but also said he stood by the premise of the character and "Tropic Thunder." Stiller made the comments while defending Olympic Gold medalist Shaun White, who wore a Simple Jack costume for Halloween.

"Actually 'Tropic Thunder' was boycotted 10 years ago when it came out, and I apologized then," Stiller tweeted. "It was always meant to make fun of actors trying to do anything to win awards. I stand by my apology, the movie, Shaun White, And the great people and work of the Special Olympics."

In 2020, Stiller admitted that "Tropic Thunder" probably couldn't be made in the climate of political correctness.

"Honestly, I don't know if it's the politics as much as just the atmosphere of the political correctness now and everybody being afraid to say something that's offensive," Stiller said.

"But at the time — that's the thing to me that's so complicated about how we approach what's appropriate and what's not in terms of the timeframe that it was made," the Hollywood actor continued. "It doesn't necessarily mean that anything was more appropriate at another time, but you have to look at the context and realize that that's what was happening."

Fellow actor Robert Downey Jr. has also refused to apologize for "Tropic Thunder."

Downey played pretentious Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus, who undergoes "pigmentation alteration" surgery to temporarily darken his skin for his portrayal of Staff Sergeant Lincoln Osiris — who is black.

"I think that it’s never an excuse to do something that’s out of place and out of its time, but to me, it blasted the cap on [the issue]. I think having a moral psychology is job one. Sometimes, you just gotta go, 'Yeah I effed up.' In my defense, 'Tropic Thunder' is about how wrong [blackface] is, so I take exception," Downey said during a 2020 interview on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.

Downey said the controversial acting roles were meant to "hold up to nature the insane self-hypocrisy of artists and what they think they’re allowed to do on occasion."

Speaking of "Tropic Thunder," Downey added, "It was impossible to not have it be an offensive nightmare of a movie."

In 2020, Stiller batted away woke backlash and defended the cameo of Donald Trump in the movie "Zoolander."

Could You Make Tropic Thunder Today? w/Robert Downey Jr. | Joe Rogan www.youtube.com

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5 Nontraditional Christmas Films To Spice Up Your Holiday Season

The following films are decidedly not Christmas movies in the traditional sense, but they're better than Hallmark's annual output.