A group of disposable delinquents band together to push back the void and save New York City.

Are you just watching episode 161, Thunderbolts?

Estric.

Welcome to the podcast that shares critical thinking for the entertained Christian.

I'm E.

Franklin.

I'm Tim Martin.

And you know, we did it.

We went back to Marvel.

It was bound to happen eventually.

I mean, yeah, we had a couple really dry months in there.

Yeah, well, maybe a couple years.

When was the last time we did a Marvel movie?

It seems like it was the Black Widow.

Was that the last one?

Well, I think it was.

Was.

Was that after no Way Home?

We did no Way home.

Right.

With Dr.

Strange.

I think we did.

Yeah, I think we did that one.

Yeah, we did that one.

Okay.

Yeah, that would have been the last one then.

So anyway.

Was it?

Yeah, well, you know, Marvel has been not so great over the last couple years, and so, yeah, I mean, we just kind of avoided it.

And I don't even have Disney plus anymore, so I haven't been keeping up with the.

The series that they've been putting on Disney plus.

So I missed out on some characters along the way, some character development.

I don't know whether I can call that missed out, but missed out is.

Probably the wrong way to put it.

There's a lot of stuff you didn't miss.

I avoided it, let's put it that way.

And then I'm hoping I might be able to impose on a friend to give me a chance to see whether the new Daredevil is any good.

Because as we have established in the past.

And I won't give you any spoilers.

Yeah, thank you.

Daredevil is one of my favorite characters and I'm just praying they haven't ruined him.

Anyway, so we're not talking about all of that stuff.

We are talking about Thunderbolts, which at least a couple of the characters in Thunderbolts have been established in previous Marvel's movies.

So it's not like we're completely starting from.

Yeah, some of them were in the TV shows that I did not watch.

So anyway, I think that this was kind of a good cap, you know, to kind of pull in some characters from the previous franchise and Bucky and some new characters that we haven't met before.

Some that were referred to in the newish.

Yeah, I mean, some.

That obviously Natasha's sister and father were.

From the Black Widow as Taskmaster.

Right.

Ghost was from Ant man and obviously Bucky Barnes from the Captain America ones.

Yeah.

So I Mean, mostly characters we met before, I think the second rate Captain America, whatever his name is.

Walker.

Oh, yeah.

He was in one of the TV shows, I think, wasn't he?

Yeah, he was in Falcon and Winter Soldier.

Yeah.

On so Marvel Disney plus, I think, is what you meant.

Yes, that's what I meant.

Yes.

Thank you very much.

So, anyway, this movie was surprisingly good.

I didn't go in with super high expectations, but you had already seen it and told me you thought it was good.

And, you know, they weren't, like, super low expectations, but they weren't super high expectations.

And I enjoyed the humor.

I actually like Yelena as a character, so it was kind of nice to.

To have her, like, be the main character, and I appreciated that.

In a way, she's very similar to Natasha, you know, very broken, but very loving and caring about people around her at the same time.

And I think that, you know, she balances those characteristics just as well as the Natasha character did.

So I liked her.

Yeah.

You know, she was in the Hawkeye series, too, for the second half of the season or something like that, and I think she really shined there, too.

I've really grown to like Florence Pugh's, you know, portrayal of this character.

Yeah, yeah.

No, she.

She's doing a really good job, and I appreciate, you know, the heart that she brings to the roles.

And, you know, I felt like the movie was very dark, almost DC level dark, but at the same time, it had a lot of humor in it.

So I don't think that it, like, went over the cliff like a lot of the DC stuff does.

So you just feel utterly depressed when you walk away from the movie.

Even though this movie is, like, mostly about depression.

Yeah, depression is a big part of it.

Yeah.

So, I mean, and mental illness as well, in the.

I guess he's not really the villain.

He's the guy that's taken advantage of by the villain.

Of course, one of the things that we always talk about in a movie is the music, and I think that, you know, this was done by.

Is Sonlux a band?

Is that.

Or is it a composer?

I had to look it up.

Son Lux is the name of a band, and they make a big deal out of the fact that they are multic, you know, highly representative and everything like that.

Oh, yeah, of course.

It's Disney.

Yep, exactly.

The music was amazing.

So I, you know, I can't complain about the actual score.

So, yeah, I was listening to it this afternoon, and I don't think I noticed it so much in the movie until we got to the credits.

But that, to me, when you don't notice the music, that means it did its job.

It created atmosphere without being in your face.

And so a soundtrack you don't notice is often better than a soundtrack you do notice.

And then you can listen to it later and go, oh, I really like that.

But so why don't I play a little bit of the music by Son Lux and then we'll get into our discussion.

All right, so as I was already talking about, this movie does deal a lot with depression and mental illness.

And I do appreciate that they're able to bring those out and tie, you know, it into the characters worldviews.

And, you know, one of the things I really appreciate is that they're asking each other for help.

You know, like, there's scenes where they ask each other for help with their depression and they give bad advice to each other.

And so you come out of it going, there were never really any good answers to how you deal with depression.

And I think that that's actually a good thing.

They don't attempt to, like, solve the world's problems in this movie because that's.

It's more of, like, an every man's take on it.

It's like, yes, we've all been there and we've all struggled with ways to deal with this.

And, no, we don't have the answers.

And I appreciate that because that gives us a chance to give you the answers.

Because as Christians, we have the answers.

We have been given the answers, yes.

We have been given the answers.

Yes.

And we didn't get them from Disney, thankfully enough.

So that's our new tagline.

The answers didn't come from a mouse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now, the other thing I kind of thought was interesting is that a lot of the themes that we're dealing with with this movie we've already dealt with a lot over the last few months with the other movies.

I mean, like, even Dogman, which was a very simplistic story for little kids.

It had a character who, you know, was struggling with purpose and getting depressed.

And so I think that the fact that these movies are dealing with these topics means that that's something our society is facing and needs the answers for.

And so I think it's great that we get the opportunity once again, though it might seem, after a while, like we're rehashing the same stuff over and over again.

It's obviously something the world cares about right now, and we do have the answers to give.

So that's kind of A positive.

You know, that's how Hollywood does it nowadays is they find what works and then they just keep rehashing it.

Yeah.

Because it's a business.

They have to make money.

I can understand that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I appreciate that we're able to take it straight on.

And I agree this movie was the best MCU movie since Spider Man.

No Way Home.

I think I did go back.

You had said, how long has it been?

The last Marvel movie we did was actually Spider man across the spider verse from June of 2023.

And that wasn't really Disney Marvel.

That's not MCU.

Yeah, exactly.

The last MCU movie we did was.

Was the month before we did Guardians of the Galaxy 3.

So that was.

Wow, two years ago.

It's been two years since we're done in that scene.

That's what I was thinking.

It's been a couple years.

We did good.

We did good.

We stayed away from Marvel for two whole years.

Woo hoo.

So I too, especially given the fact that I suffer from clinical depression frequently, I appreciate that the movie is framed through this melling melancholy that Yelena starts, particularly how it right out of the gate starts with this monologue that it leads you into thinking it's a suicide and you're like, wow, what did I get into?

And then it turns out she's actually infiltrating a high rise building.

And it's actually pretty famous stunt or I don't know, famous is the right word.

They made a big deal about it.

In the making of stuff that I've seen, she literally base jumped off the second highest building in the world.

She doesn't jump off, she just falls off.

She just like.

Yeah, she walks off it.

Kind of like somebody committing suicide.

Yeah, exactly.

Just like you would expect somebody who's just given up to do.

Yeah.

It doesn't treat the topic with kid gloves.

It.

It puts it front and center.

And I really do appreciate that.

I found it refreshing, the monologue.

I really got a kick out of the fact that at the end, and this is, you know, this is the first 10, 5, 10 minutes of the movie.

At the end you find out this entire monologue is not internal like you were thinking.

Yeah, she's talking to somebody, talking to a hostage, as if he was a therapist.

Yeah.

Still, you know, I found a lot of how this movie is the pain hiding behind humor, which is very much my love language.

I couch all of my pain that way.

Jessica, my oldest daughter, who was.

She turned 20 the day that I got hit by the car.

And she said, as I was being loaded into the ambulance, I was just making jokes left and right with the paramedics.

I don't remember any of it.

But I appreciate that the MCU finally seems to be moving past the origin story necessity.

You know, I understand it's difficult for them because they have to rotate out the characters.

You know, not a lot of actors want to continue playing the same character for so long.

Chris Evans played Captain America for what, like, 13 years?

I've heard they're trying to bring Robert Downey Jr.

Back.

Apparently they have.

Yeah.

As Dr.

Doom.

Yeah.

It's like everything fell apart when he left.

So now they're trying to find a way to bring him back after killing off his character.

No offense to Robert Downey Jr.

But I certainly hope it doesn't work, because Robert Downey Jr's absence was not the problem.

No.

It was crappy writing.

Yeah.

Anyway.

And agenda.

They were throwing way too much agenda.

Oh, yeah.

The stories were suffering.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Eternals was the worst one by far.

You know, I didn't find it all that bad, but they put a lot of what we, you know, commonly call woke content into that particular movie.

I appreciated the fact that they opened this movie in such a way that it was like, we now join our story already in progress, like the.

Like the old serial.

So it rewarded those people who had seen the Marvel movies, you know, and had been keeping up to speed with them.

And.

And I've seen most of them.

I think the only recent one I haven't seen is BR of New World.

But even that, actually, I think that hits Disney plus this week or maybe even today.

Anyway, the writing felt fresh for a Marvel movie for me, and they did enough different and enough well that I feel like I was being welcomed back to the good experience that they seem to have left behind five or six years ago.

Yeah.

And you know what?

I didn't really feel like I had been there were any holes in anything because I.

You know, coming into it with having not watched a ton of Marvel over the last two years, I didn't feel like I was lost at all.

I mean, I did know who Valentina was.

Yeah.

You know, if there were gaps in the story that I've missed, that it didn't affect my enjoyment of this movie at all.

And I think that reflects the.

The quality of the writing was that they didn't lean too heavily on what has come before, but they were still able to start in the middle of the story without leaving people behind.

Right.

So everybody who listens knows that I love a good redemption arc, and this movie, Thunderbolts, has them, but they're not the clean and tidy ones that we've grown used to, and I loved it.

Yeah.

There's no point where.

Where people give, you know, a huge, big, emotional speech.

There's a couple monologues.

The opening one with Yelena and.

And Alexei gives a very funny one.

Yeah.

But, you know, they don't harp on it, and they really focus on the idea that the redemption arc is about change, not about realizing you're changed.

It's.

I.

I just liked it.

I liked how they.

They did it.

It felt real, you know?

Okay, so for the listeners who aren't familiar with us, Eve and I are often on different sides of the conservative spectrum of politics, and I saw a lot of this government as a villain theme.

The first off, I noticed how Valentina was treating these.

The members of this team, even though they weren't a team to her until it was sort of forced on her as exposable.

They were all expendable, and to her, they were literally worth more dead as being silenced than alive.

As she was trying to cover her tracks for all this dumb stuff, evil stuff that she had done, she never weighed the cost of the mission against the benefit.

It was really just what's in it for me.

Yeah, she's definitely the classic villain.

She's a classic villain, but you sort of like her.

She channels enough of that Elaine character from Seinfeld that you see it.

I don't know.

I don't like her.

I didn't like her at all.

I never liked her.

Even when she first showed up in any of the pieces that I've watched, where she showed up at the end or whatever, I was like, that woman is evil.

At one point in the movie, I was thinking, well, maybe they'll give her a redemption arc.

No, no.

But the.

You know, the heroes of Thunderbolts are not heroes getting honored.

They're.

They're morally compromised.

And she just treats them as resources or assets to be used or abused.

And she doesn't use them because they're good people.

Quite the opposite, actually.

She finds them useful, and they fill her need.

But the way she behave reminded me a lot of what I'm seeing in the real world today.

I've seen a lot of decisions recently made by political leaders across parties and administrations.

You know, that they're treating people.

They're making decisions not as servants who lead, but as what's in it for me.

And they're using them like Game pieces on a board.

And it's not just specifically just Christians either.

It's.

It's foreigners, people who are, who are here either illegally or legally.

They're being used to make a point.

And the idea of Christianity has been co opted to be ruined by this.

And you know, there are citizens rights and there are human rights and the light has gotten blurred in the last.

Not just the last, you know, two years or one year, but the last five or six years.

And it looks a lot like what I'm seeing Valentina do in, in Thunderbolts.

And it sort of got under my skin, but maybe in a good way.

You know, it got me thinking and it.

I wanted to point out that God's word makes no mistake about how people who do this kind of thing should be seen.

Isaiah 10:1 through 2 says, Woe to those enacting crooked statues and writing oppressive laws to keep the poor from getting a fair trial and to deprive the needy among my people of justice, so that widows can be their spoils and they can plunder the fatherless.

And you know, that's the whole point of the movie for me is we are a magiodei.

We carry the image of God, and God doesn't take that lightly.

Neither should we.

God doesn't shrug off injustices.

We may not see justice in our lifetimes, but after our lifetimes we definitely will.

So in both Thunderbolts and America Day today, you know, I really see a theme that we should be paying attention to here, or it's interesting in movies, but not so in real life.

So in this movie, we are talking about some kind of redemption for characters.

Like you said, it's not really like the clean redemption that we're used to seeing.

And I think that carries over.

I mean, if you stay in the theater all the way the end of the credits where there's a scene at the end, you really do get that feeling that this was kind of forced, you know, like this group of delinquents who are used to working alone and working in the shadows and not being seen.

They were kind of forced into the limelight to be, quote, unquote, heroes when they're not really heroes.

And so the whole redemptive arc is a little weird in this movie overall.

Yeah.

And it kind of reminded me my small group has been doing.

We just, actually just started.

We've only been in like Judges for a couple weeks, but probably take over a year to go through the book of Judges.

And it's very interesting to me in Fact, our last Bible study, we were talking about Ehud, the story where the guy is left handed and he puts the sword into the evil king's gut.

He was very big and massive.

So it's very interesting.

There's a lot of really interesting stories and judges.

But one of the things that you notice in the cycle of judges is that God judges them through bringing in their enemies and subjugating them.

And then they cry for help and he sends a savior.

But one of the things that we noticed is it never says they repent.

They never admit that they did wrong.

They never come to this point where it's like, we're tired of being oppressed.

Come help us, God.

But there's none of this.

We're sorry, we disobeyed, we moved away from you.

There's none of that.

It's just like, we need help, God, come help us.

Every section ends with and they did what they thought was right in their own eyes.

Right.

Yeah.

Or they had peace for so many years and then they did what, you know, and so.

Yeah, and it says that then they get.

Do even worse than their fathers did.

So it's like every time that cycle repeats, they get worse and, and the.

Amount of peace they have gets shorter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, this kind of reminded me that, you know, we're, we're dealing with, you know, a culture that had these heroes.

They had the Avengers.

And then the Avengers disbanded and went their ways.

And for whatever reason, they are no longer there.

They can no longer be dependent on.

And you have a world that is trying to come up with a new batch of heroes.

They're crying out for help.

They want a savior that will be willing to step in when things go wrong.

And they're trying to manufacture that.

But there's no repentance.

And even in the characters themselves, they're not really repentant.

They're flawed people.

Just like the deliverers that we see in the book of Judges.

Not a single one of them was a godly man.

They were just heroes that God rose up to deliver the people.

They were all had flaws.

I mean, you look at Samson, he was like, he was like sleeping around with women and.

And you know.

Yeah, he was a jerk.

He was a real jerk.

Yeah, he was the hero that people deserved, you know, and I am Batman.

Well, I think that's what we're seeing in this movie is the group of heroes that, that the world deserves, you know, that they, they don't deserve the Avengers any anymore.

They're going to get the Social delinquents that are, you know, flawed.

And in the context of judges, you know, I was thinking it's like he didn't raise up heroes to take all the glory.

God raised up heroes to rescue the people.

But he did it in such a way that he would get the glory for it.

Yeah.

It wasn't the hero doing the thing.

And they kind of deal with that a little bit in the movie because there's that whole thing where they're talking about being a God.

Oh, yeah.

Where the century says, I'm.

I can beat Thor, so I'm essentially a God.

Right.

So it was just this, you know, ongoing discussion of, you know, well, you know, we can be gods, you know, but they were all flawed.

And so I thought it was interesting when you put this theme in here, it's like, was this redemption, or was it reputation management?

I don't even think it was reputation management.

I don't think it was redemption either.

I think it was just flawed individuals being shoved into roles, you know, that they were forced by circumstances to actually take on the characteristics of a hero and step up to the plate and do heroic things.

But they weren't necessarily heroes.

And the thing I thought was really interesting about that was that, you know, every single one of them, because of the depressions and everything, you know, they're being antisocial and all that kind of stuff, nobody had ever told them they mattered.

And they might have been, like, really skilled at what they did and arrogant in that skill, but at the same time, none of it mattered because they were being fulfilled by any of it.

And so there's that scene where they defeat the Void at the end of the movie, and the people start clapping, and they're standing in the street and they're getting this adulation from the people on the street.

And then Valentino rips them out of that and pulls them in front of the press and declares they're the new Avengers.

And it's like they got this taste of what it meant to be seen as a hero.

And I think the only one who'd really had that before was Alexei.

But, you know, it changed them in a way.

It wasn't necessarily redemption, but it was a change.

It was like, oh, wait a minute, you know, we can help people.

We can be good.

You know, there was a movie that we didn't review called the Bad Guys.

I finally saw it the other day.

Yeah, with the dogs.

Yeah.

I haven't seen it yet, but I saw they've got a sequel coming out.

Soon that is actually a very similar theme to this one.

If you went and watched it, you would.

It's almost like an animated version of this movie, because it's like they are forced by.

They're all bad guys.

They're all like an actual criminal team that does bad things.

And by circumstances, they're forced to actually do something good.

And they saved the day.

And it was like, whoa, wait, what does this feel like?

And there's actually this scene where the leader, he's a dog, and his tail starts wagging, and he's like, what is this?

Why is my tail wagging?

And it was just like this totally foreign feeling, like, wait a minute.

What is this?

I'm feeling happiness at doing good.

So, yeah, I think they weren't necessarily redeemed, but they definitely were changed.

Yeah.

You know, in the last episode on the movie King of Kings, we talked about how behavior has consequences.

Mm.

I can't remember the little boy's name now, but.

Walter.

Walter.

Thank you.

He did some childlike stuff and got in trouble for it, you know, and then Charles Dickens, his father, did some angry stuff, and, you know, he had to pay the pipe or two.

But we talked about how there were consequences to their actions.

And I was thinking as.

As I was working on, you know, the outline for our episode today, I was thinking, you know, the people on this team, they're not just bad guys.

They're war criminals.

Yeah.

I mean, they have higher kill counts, higher murder counts than many dictators.

And where is the justice for their actions that they have wronged?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the victims, the families of the victims.

Can you imagine if you were, you know, a judge and Yelena had killed your spouse in order to, you know, encourage a crooked decision or something like that?

And then you see her.

You see her being touted as a new adventure.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, Bucky was already there because, like, Bucky.

Yeah.

We know what his past was, and he was, like, a freshman.

Was it senator or house rep?

I guess he was a house rep.

Yeah, in the movie.

And so he's playing politics now, and it doesn't really sit very well on him.

But you can imagine.

I mean, like, he even referred to that when he was talking to Valentina's assistant.

He was like, you know, I didn't choose to do all of these things.

I didn't get to choose who I was working for.

But you do.

And I thought that was a really good point.

Is like, that a lot of times, you know, like, Yelena, she was raised as a red Room assassin.

She didn't have a choice.

She was raised to do that.

You know, Bucky was brainwashed.

Yeah.

Alexi, you know, we don't actually know what he did.

He served his country.

Right.

He was Russia's captain in Russia.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You could look at him and say, you know, he.

He may not be a criminal, but Ghost was an assassin.

She was very much like Yelena, where she was held against her will from the age of a small child and then taught to control her abilities so that she could use them to be an assassin.

And Taskmaster's the same way.

That was the one that Ghost killed.

I didn't know that character.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

She.

Well, that was the character, the one in the mask.

That was a character from Black Widow.

Oh, at the end that, you know.

Oh, Natasha.

Yeah.

Natasha had this connection with.

I was so surprised when she died in the first, you know, 20 minutes of the movie.

I was looking forward.

I was looking forward to seeing her more.

You know, the marketing team did a good job because they actually made sure that she was in a number of the behind the scenes pictures in costume.

So they really did a good job with that.

And Walker, whatever his hero name is, he killed a guy in cold blood.

But you could say that he was, you know, under steroid induced rage or, you know, super soldier serum induced rage.

We can make excuses for all of them.

Yeah.

But that doesn't do anything for their victims.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's not really redemption because there's.

There's no repentance.

Right.

It may be rehabilitation, but I don't know.

They.

I think Yelena was.

Because there was that.

Yeah, well, because she.

She was telling her father, you know, she says, daddy, I'm so alone.

She says, I come home from work and I sit.

I sit and think about all the bad things that I've done.

And then I go to work and then I come back and I.

So it's something that is.

She recognizes that.

That she has a long history of doing really bad things and it weighs on her.

So I would say.

I don't know about the other characters, but she definitely expresses an understanding that she has done a lot of wrong things, which is, you know, in a way.

Repentance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, you know, without the consequences.

I feel.

I feel like the MCU has a story opportunity here that would be perfect for the Disney plus platform, but I don't think it would make them any money.

Yeah, people don't want to see that behind the curtain type stuff.

They don't want to see the law getting made, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was struck by how we have this entire team of misfits, and none of them have faced the legal consequences for their actions, even stood trial.

Well, actually, Walker stood trial, I believe, but as far as we know, Bucky never did.

And none of the others have actually been in a court to answer for what they've did.

And like, you know, like the story suggests.

And like you said, a lot of them have reasons.

They have excuses.

Maybe.

Yeah.

But I don't think they should be getting a get out of jail free card as much as I like them.

Well, you know, in a way, that's not what redemption is anyway, facing the consequences for your actions, because.

No, it's not.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, that's kind of the whole point of salvation, is that we don't get what we deserve.

That's the mercy part.

And I really kind of feel like in this instance, that's kind of what we're seeing is, you know, they.

They step up to the plate when they're needed most, and because of that, they get some mercy for that.

And I don't know.

I.

I honestly do feel like Yelena was ready for a change because she actually.

Yeah.

And I think, to be honest, they were all staged in that, you know, they were supposed to kill each other.

And I think they were all asking the same thing.

You know, it was like, we want out.

We won't want to do this anymore.

And so I kind of feel like, because they were all told this would be their last mission, and it was supposed to be their last mission, they were supposed to die.

That's true.

Well, it was true.

It was supposed to be their last mission.

So.

Yeah, none of them in this were villains.

And I don't think that they were set up to be villains because Valentina was meant to be the villain of the movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And she.

Boy, she makes a great villain.

That's all I gotta say.

She's so disgustingly evil.

I don't know.

I feel like getting what they deserved.

The fact that they don't get what they deserve is kind of an indication of them as being the Everyman.

It's like, as Christians, we believe in the fact that if everybody got what they deserved, it would be an awful world because none of us deserve good.

I think it would be.

Would have been nice then if they acknowledged the fact that they got pardons or something.

Yeah.

Or even the character said.

And Yelena sort of did.

You know, I've done so Many bad things.

But if they acknowledge the fact that, you know, we've got this new lease, we've been given a second chance, and they sort of did, but it wasn't, you know, as clear as I think it, I would have liked it to be.

This is Disney.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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And we'd just love to hear from you because, you know, we're kind of, you know, working in a vacuum here.

We hear each other's thoughts.

I do actually have a couple co workers who listen to the podcast and they kind of give me a little feedback one on one.

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So anyway, bear my heart a little bit there.

This one was actually one of the big ones for me because like I mentioned in my initial reactions, saying I'm a fan would be absolutely wrong.

But I tend to deflect with humor.

And one of the things that I don't like about myself is people that I admire greatly.

I will frequently use depreciatory humor with either on myself or on them.

And I acknowledge how much it is a defense mechanism.

It's like, it's like armor to prevent, you know, I'm gonna hurt myself first so that they don't hurt me later type thing.

And the writing in Thunderbolts is very much humor packed, but it's that kind of humor that still embraces the suck.

Yeah, it, you know, it acknowledges that not everything is hunky dory and that the characters really are not all just good, all happy, all truth, justice in the American way type thing.

Yeah, you know, that's, that's kind of the everyman kind of feel of this movie because, you know, just like you said, that speaks to you.

But I think everybody is hiding some kind of pain.

The people that we see that are like happy and cheerful all the time, you know, some of it just might be their personality, that they're very outgoing because that's what extroverts are.

But that doesn't mean they're not hurting inside and they don't have some kind of pain.

They're hiding.

Robin Williams, like, right up until he committed suicide, you know, nobody would have known because he was such a cheerful and funny person.

And this is a self defense mechanism that we all possess because you know what?

We live in a really nasty world and the world is fallen.

It's full of sin.

The consequences of sin.

I mean, even to your comments about, you know, politics and government and there's just nothing fair.

Right.

It's the world we live in.

And so you have to laugh or you're going to cry because it's bad.

Yeah.

And you know, I enjoy making people laugh.

I really do, but I frequently take it too far.

So.

Yeah.

And I think that Thunderbolts did a good job illustrating not even that type of humor, but that use of humor is a defense mechanism.

I think it did a great job doing that.

Mm.

Yeah.

What they keep saying about like pushing it down or hiding it or, you know, not dealing with it, we keep it buried and we think that nobody else wants to hear our Problems.

And so we, we do the humor instead, or we do the smile.

Or when somebody asks you how your doing, you're like, oh, I'm fine.

You know, I think that's like the biggest lie that we tell the people around us.

You know, it's like, how are you today?

Oh, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

At church I lie constantly.

So how you doing?

Oh, I'm great.

I'm great.

Yeah.

If you don't answer I'm great, then you're looking at a 30 minute conversation and you've got stuff you need to do, darn it.

Yeah, I'm needed in the sound booth.

But sometimes that is simply because we think, you know, other people have their own problems, they don't want to deal with mine.

And we suffer in the silence of it because we just, we.

We don't want other people to know we don't have our act together.

Or we're afraid that they might judge us when they find out the thing we're struggling with.

And then there's those of us, like me, who never know what to say.

You know, when somebody actually does share that they've got a problem, it's like, o, okay, what do I say?

And you see that in this movie too, you know, where Yelena's trying to give advice to Bob and she's like, well, you know, you just shove it down.

You know, like when you feel that void, you just shove it down.

Not the best advice.

And I catch myself that sometimes doing that too.

It's like when people want to hear an encouraging word from you and they've opened up and shared and then you're like, what do I say?

You know, that is what we all struggle with.

That is the human condition.

And I was thinking about Romans.

You know, there's so much in Romans about the human condition.

But I chose this because it's talking about how the world looks away from God.

And I think that that is a good setup, I guess, for what we're going to deal with next.

So this is Romans 3, 9, 18.

What then?

Are we any better off?

Not at all.

For we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin as it is written.

And this is portions taken from multiple places.

In the Old Testament.

There is no one righteous, not even one.

There is no one who understands.

There was no one who seeks God.

All have turned away.

All alike have become worthless.

There is no one who does what is good, not even one.

Their throat is an open grave.

They deceive with their tongues, vipers venom is under their lips.

Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood.

Ruin and wretchedness are in their paths and the path of peace.

They have not known there is no fear of God before their eyes.

And that's really depressing when you read that because that is the state of the world apart from God and that is the state of the people that we see in this movie.

The characters who are supposed to be the heroes and they're just drowning in their own misery because they've done bad things, they've had wretched childhoods and they have every excuse to be feeling that way, as does everybody, because we all live in this wretched, sin, cursed world.

But the cool thing is, even though they're all kind of left with that in this movie, as Christians, we have a hope that we can turn to.

And so the next theme that we're going to deal with is one of the things that is like the central climax, I guess, would you say of the movie that you don't have to be alone?

I think it's the main overarching theme of the movie.

Right?

Yeah.

Because that's how they stop.

The void is joining together to tell Bob that he doesn't have to be alone.

They hugged it out.

They hugged it out.

Yeah.

Which, I mean, these are all anti social delinquents.

Yeah, exactly.

Doing a group hug is not exactly something that you would expect them to do.

It's specifically against their nature.

Yeah.

All these people, they're just so broken.

And to get out of the death trap at the beginning, they're all forced to literally lean on each other.

You catch that how they have to like, like go back to back to work their way up the silo.

To get up the silo.

Yeah.

It's kind of an interesting way of doing it because you got that whole premise where they have to suddenly start working together when.

When Valentina says, oh, they're.

They're all loners, there's no way they're gonna work together.

And her assistant's like, they're working together.

You probably don't know this, but that method of climbing is one of the exercises that the army uses.

Uses to teach teamwork and basic training.

So.

Yeah.

You learn to depend on your.

On your partner.

We called it Battle buddy because, you know, it was that time.

Yeah.

That age when I was in basic training.

So.

But yeah, so they were forced into a team building exercise.

Yeah.

And literally leaning against each other to get, to get out of the silo.

But One of the things I came out of this movie not necessarily singing the song, but it made me think of the song Lean On Me, which was a pop hit back in the 80s.

And I found out when I looked it up that it was actually a hit in the 70s before, right after I was born as well.

But I remember the Club Nouveau version.

Of it that was like the mid to late 80s version, right?

Yeah, it was mid to late 80s.

And I had that thing every time I came on the radio.

I was like, sing into it.

It's basically, lean on me when you're not strong.

And then someday when I need a friend, you'll be there to lean on.

Basically.

I'm paraphrasing the lyrics, but when I grew up and started to really think about that song, it's like, it's very transactional.

I'm not going to be a friend for you just because you need a friend.

I'm going to be a friend for you so that when I need a friend, you'll be there for me.

It's very transactional.

And that's not the way we're taught as Christians to be a friend to somebody.

It's not supposed to be, I'm going to be a friend for you so that you'll be a friend for me when I need you.

But it's true that that's the way the world thinks.

Everything's very transactional.

You know, it's like if you rub my back and then I'll rub your back, and even, you know, politics and business and everything is that way.

I think I kind of see that a lot, gift giving as well.

It's like at Christmas time, it's like, oh, yeah, you try to give a gift that is, you know, equal in value to the gift you get back because you don't want to feel like you're sliding your friend, you know, and.

And it's all very transactional.

It's just the way the world runs, you know?

Real quick, I just wanted to comment.

One of the greatest feelings that I have when I'm giving a gift is when I feel like the gift is so appropriate for the person that it doesn't matter what it cost because you feel like you're fulfilling the purpose of the gift that really is, you know, the purpose of the gift, and it's how we should be acting.

It's not a matter of reciprocating cost.

I'm sorry, that was a rabbit trail.

No, I mean, when you really love somebody, you want to give them gifts, and it's not because you expect them to give gifts in return, but a lot of times when we're dealing with more casual friendships or, you know, associations, we try to reciprocate equally and.

And that's just, you know, that's the way the world works.

And we're kind of seeing this in the movie is like, you know, that, you know, we're.

We can't really help each other out.

We can only help each other.

Yeah.

And it's like the.

The blind leading the blind or, you know, broken people trying to piece each other back together.

Back together.

But we're never really able to be the completely reliable person that somebody can lean on because we're going to fail.

Everybody's going to fail.

I mean, we're all fallible.

And it's not just our strength.

I was thinking our strength is not enough.

Yeah.

And yes, we can be there for somebody who is alone and needs.

Needs a friend.

We can definitely.

And I think it's really great when you can encourage your children to be looking for the lonely child in the playground, you know, to be a friend to.

Because sometimes they're the best friends because they're not in it for anything other than they just want a true friend.

But in the long run, people always disappoint us.

And that is, I think, where codependency becomes a problem because then you start depending on somebody to fulfill a need in you, and then that person fails you and.

And then you fall together.

It's just like there's just no.

There's no way as humans that we can be the ultimate help that someone else needs.

And that's why it's so amazing that we have God because He's the only one that we can really rely on.

He's not going to fail us.

And he's the one that can be there when we need Him.

And so like in Matthew 11:28, 29, it says, this is Jesus speaking.

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.

Isn't that a great way to describe what we were seeing from the characters in this movie?

They were weary and they were burdened.

And he says, I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And, you know, that verse from Matthew speaks really well to how we, as the body of Christ on earth are called to be like Christ, where society expects us to be strong and tough.

It Out.

We're supposed to depend on one another.

We're supposed to carry one another's burdens.

Not so that they will carry your burden for you when you need their help, but because that's what we do as a body, is we all bear it together.

And in First Corinthians 12:26, it says, so if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.

If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.

And that's how we, as the body of Christ, can fulfill our requirement to be like Christ, as he expresses in Matthew 11.

Yeah.

And then in John 16:33, Jesus also says, I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace.

You will have suffering in the world.

Be courageous.

I have conquered the world.

So he's like, you're gonna suffer.

I'm not taking away the suffering, but in me you will find peace.

Yeah, that.

That's a promise.

You will have suffering in this world.

Yes.

And then in Philippians 4, 6, 7, Paul writes, don't worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

So that is kind of like the reminder of even when you're in that.

That valley, that shadow of death that you know is talked about in the Psalms, that you can pray to God and be thankful and you ask of God and God will give you peace.

That you don't understand where it comes from because it doesn't come out of your circumstances.

It's like we've talked in the past and several reviews about how joy versus happiness, you know, that it's not based on your circumstances because God is as the source of joy and peace.

And so it's.

It surpasses our understanding because it's God and God surpasses our understanding.

And then in Psalm 34:18, it says, the Lord is near the brokenhearted, and he saves those crushed in spirit.

So that is where we have our hope.

And, you know, watching this movie, it made me think, you know, when I was walking out, I was like, these characters are such an everyman.

They very much stand in.

Most of us haven't got a massive body count or been raised as childhood assassins or whatever they do in just their utter despondency over.

Just the day to day grind of doing the same thing over and over again and getting no fulfillment out of it.

Real quick, I wanted to go back to the peace of God surpassing all understanding.

I've mentioned on this podcast before Fox's Book of Martyrs.

And I was blessed recently to be able to spend some time in London, England.

I got to go to the Tower of London.

And one of the stories that they tell there, which is also in the.

In Fox's Book of Martyrs, is the execution of Lady Jane Grey.

She was executed by Queen Mary.

I believe it's the Queen Mary who becomes known as Bloody Mary because she's a Protestant.

And Queen Mary is bringing the Catholic faith back to England for a very short time.

Yeah.

As she was being led to her execution, she's quoted as saying, I die a Christian woman and I trust to be saved by the blood of Christ.

Which alludes to Psalm 51 as well.

And, you know, it's that kind of calm, joyful demeanor that is reflective of Philippians 4, 6 or 7.

Yeah, I think we've discussed this in the past.

It's like we don't know how we're going to react under those kind of threats of persecution until we're in the midst of them.

And I just pray that, that if I should meet that kind of an end, that God would give me the.

Yes.

The endurance and the ability, the peace to be able to react in the same way.

Please don't let me betray my brothers and sisters.

Yeah.

Obviously all these characters are lacking fulfillment.

They're going through work as just being like this day to day grind.

And I was beginning to think, you know, even for the best of us, the ones that love our jobs, you know, that it's not just works, it's a career.

It's something we love doing.

We have those days where it's just like, I don't want to go to work.

I don't want to do this.

Why am I doing this?

What's the purpose in this?

And there was this really cool scene when she goes to see her dad, when Yelena goes to see Alexei where, you know, she asks him, she says, are you fulfilled?

And he's like, I'm full.

I'm filled.

Yes, yes, so full, so filled.

But then after just a brief moment of discussion, he admits that he's absolutely miserable and, and he's missing the, you know, what it was, you know, the fame and the fortune and the friends and the, you know, the clothes of when he was serving the country.

It was just obvious that he really enjoyed the limelight and the adoration of the people and he really missed that.

And that was where he found his fulfillment.

And, you know, Yelena has always been, you know, the agent in the dark.

The shadow agent.

And she never got to feel, you know, the limelight or what that meant.

And so she's never had a fulfilling career.

And I put that in quotes.

And she's lacking purpose.

I mean, that whole monologue at the beginning where it almost sounds like she's suicidal.

You know, she's just.

You know, I clock in, I clock out, I clean up messes.

You know, if you hadn't been watching what she was doing while she was saying that, you would think she was a janitor or something.

That's an interesting image.

Well, don't get me wrong.

I mean, there is definitely value in the janitorial services.

I love the people who clean my office.

Clean up after me.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like, thank you so much.

But, you know, that is, you know, that emptiness, that feeling of lack of fulfillment or whatever, that's actually in the Bible.

One of my favorite books of the Bible actually, is a.

We've really talked about Ecclesiastes a lot.

Maybe we shouldn't get into it.

You're not gonna let me read this?

Okay, please, please, please.

Okay.

You can never get too much.

Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes.

You know, this idea that work is just boring, you know, and you don't get any fulfillment out of it.

You think that that's something modern or new.

But this is what the preacher says in Ecclesiastes.

He says, I hated all my work that I labored at under the sun, because I must leave it to the one who comes after me.

And who knows whether he will be a wise or a fool, yet he will take over all my work that I labored at skillfully under the sun.

The this, too, is feudal.

So I began to give myself over to despair concerning all my work that I had labored at under the sun.

When there is a person whose work was done with wisdom and knowledge and skill, and he must give his portion to a person who has not worked for it.

This too is feudal and a great wrong.

For what does a person get with all his work and all his efforts that he labors at under the sun?

For all his days are filled with grief and his occupation is sorrowful.

Even at night his mind does not rest.

This too is feudal.

There is nothing better for a person than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work.

I have seen that even this is from God's hand.

Because who can eat and who can enjoy life apart from him?

For to the person who is pleasing in his sight, he gives wisdom, knowledge and joy.

But to the Sinner, he gives the task of gathering and accumulating in order to give to the one who is pleasing in God's sight.

This too is futile and a pursuit of the wind.

And that's Ecclesiastes 2, 18, 26.

It really kind of sounds like Yelena in this movie.

She's just like, I just don't care anymore.

But then, just a few, a few chapters later, the preacher concludes this topic on work in chapter nine by saying, whatever your hands find to do, do with all your strength.

Because there is no work, planting knowledge or wisdom in sheol where you are going.

That's Ecclesiastes 9, 10.

But we see that kind of, I guess, expanded on in the New Testament because it's a slightly different, less fatalistic take on it in the New Testament.

But in Colossians 3, 22, 24, it says, Slaves, obey your human masters and everything.

Don't work only while being watched as people pleasers, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord.

Whatever you do, do it from the heart as something done for the Lord and not for people, knowing that you will receive a word of the inheritance from the Lord.

You serve the Lord Christ.

And that's Colossians 3, 22, 24.

And you know, that's kind of where we find fulfillment in work.

Even if we have a job we enjoy doing, or if you have a job you don't enjoy doing and you're just earning a paycheck regardless, you are supposed to be working as unto the Lord.

That's where the fulfillment comes from.

And the job may be as menial as, you know, picking up trash or cleaning houses or flipping burgers.

You know, flipping burgers or, you know, any job that you have.

You may be just, you know, clocking in and clocking out, but in the end, you should be doing your work as if you were working for the Lord.

It doesn't matter who your employers are.

If you're disillusioned with your place of business or your immediate bosses bothering you or your co workers, you have people irritating you at work or whatever.

None of that matters if you're working for the Lord, because then your work will be as excellent as you are humanly able to be, because you are working for somebody who you really care about and, and who is the ultimate judge on, on what you do, whether you're recognized for it or not.

And then in James 1, 2, 4, it says, consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces Endurance.

And let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete.

Lacking nothing.

So the lacking nothing, that's fulfillment.

If you are fulfilled, you are lacking nothing.

And that comes a lot of times through persevering through trials when you're just, you know, the depression is there, the void, as they call it in this movie is overtaking you.

You're going to find your fulfillment in the maturity of making it through that.

You know, experiencing those trials and, and counting it as joy because you get to experience it and praise the Lord through it.

Yep.

Anyway, in short, just a reminder that the work we do, the relationships we have, even our hobbies, all of those things should glorify God.

And that is.

And in that glorification is where we find fulfillment.

Yeah.

Not in making money, not in or as Alexei says, in fame and fortune and the right kind of friends who gets you good clothes.

So that kind of stuff is transitory.

It will not be the long term fulfillment that your heart and soul need.

Yeah.

You know, Alexei was the face of communism for his most of his life.

And by the end of the movie, he is 100% in the capitalist mindset.

Everything's a marketing thing for him.

He's like changing their.

He looked like a NASCAR pitman.

Well, you know, it's interesting, when I was reading that passage on Ecclesiastes about how you do your work and then someone else gets it who didn't work for it, I'm like, I didn't realize that socialism communism was actually written about in Ecclesiastes.

The preacher was a communist.

Well, you know, he wasn't a communist.

It was.

He was faced with communism.

So for the last topic for this movie, and there are lots of them, but for the last one that I wanted to talk about, it's one that I've been thinking a lot about over the last couple years because it's been in.

In our face, it's really been a very sensitive social issue and still is, honestly.

But not only in, you know, conservative versus progressive, but also in conservative religious circles.

So what we have in Thunderbolts is a question of reputation versus identity.

Right.

Reputation is sort of how people see you and identity is how you see you.

Right.

But identity is not just up to us, it's up to God.

Well, both of them are up to God because God is sovereign.

God is utterly sovereign.

Yes.

But you know, as Christians, our identity is in Christ.

And a lot of times we have difficulty dealing with the juxtaposition of our reputation versus our identity.

And you know, we get treated by other people based on that reputation.

But in society today, so much is being made of this identity thing.

You know, people are, they identify as gay or they identify as non binary.

It's.

They identify as a different gender than they were born with or something like that.

And it's that whole intersectional thing where you're like rated as your value to society based on how many ticks you have in the intersectional.

Yeah.

Graph or whatever it is.

Yeah.

But the thing is, is that the Bible doesn't support any of that.

There is no identity in the Bible besides that which we have in Christ or apart from Christ.

And those are the only two identities that matter.

There's this thing in conservative Christianity, particularly in my denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, where the subset of people called side B Christians, as opposed to side A Christians.

Side A Christians are the ones who claim that homosexuality is compatible with God's word, God's will, and that it's okay to be practicing homosexual.

Okay.

That is clearly in opposition to Scripture.

I can't, I can't back that up.

But recently this thing has come out about side B Christianity.

And what it is is it's Christians who are abstaining from practicing homosexual behavior because they believe the Bible and they believe it to be wrong, but they still identify as gay Christians.

I can appreciate that they want to be identified as Christians and they want to make it clear that they're struggling with their sin.

I can respect that.

You know, it's, it's not easy to do.

I struggle with really, really deep, deeply rooted sin too.

Yeah.

A struggle I didn't choose, but you know, sin temptations I still choose to pursue.

Yeah.

The sin shouldn't be your identity.

Exactly.

I think that's the point you're trying to make.

Yeah.

It's like instead of saying you're a gay Christian, you could say, I'm a Christian who struggles with same sex attraction.

Exactly.

That would be an indication that you struggle with a sin, but it isn't your identity because you identify as Christ.

Right.

Yeah.

You identify as Christ who has, who struggles with a particular sin.

So, yeah, I get what you're saying.

It's like we have people who are trying, who are holding on to worldly identities instead of identifying themselves with Christ.

Yeah, yeah.

We shouldn't be identifying with that which we are trying to kill.

In Ephesians 4, Paul, you know, he starts out saying, don't walk like Gentiles do.

People who, you know, they're not in Christ, they're hardened people, they have hardened hearts and they don't have that fulfillment that we talked about.

Their.

Their life is empty and they're completely severed from the truth.

You know, they, they become numb.

Right.

But here's the thing.

When you reject the truth, you're not neutral, you're evil.

You slide deeper into this evil mindset every time you reject the truth.

And that's what Paul's saying.

And then, then he shifted, shifts gears because he's talking to the church in Ephesus.

He says, that's not who you are anymore.

And then starting at verse 20, he says, but that's not how you came to know Christ, Assuming you heard about him and you were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness in righteousness and the purity of truth.

And that's Ephesians 4, 20, 24.

It's not about erasing our stories before we were saved or erasing the sin that we struggle with even as Christians.

Right.

It's about being in Christ.

I sin, it seems like constantly, but in Christ I am righteous.

And that's the kind of thing that we have to remember.

And it's not easy.

It really is not easy to remember that.

It's easy to know it intellectually, but it's really hard to remember it.

It's harder to live.

You know, it's like.

And you're not supposed to abstain from sin.

You're supposed to put it away from you, to turn away from it completely and walk away.

And I think if you're identifying yourself in your sin.

Yeah.

Which if you're going to say you're a gay Christian, then you're identifying yourself in your sin, then you're still allowing that sin to have bondage on you.

And you're saying, well, I'm not doing the sin, but you're identifying with the sin.

And so you're not.

You're just abstaining.

You're not putting it to death, as you said.

You're not turning your back on it and walking away.

People don't walk around saying, I'm a proud Christian.

Well, okay, that's not the best.

I'm a gluttonous Christian.

Yeah.

Because that's the one thing we're allowed to be proud of, is Christ, you know.

Yeah.

But in Thunderbolts, who's defining Them?

Are they heroes?

Are they villains?

That's the question that we face as Christians.

Who is writing our name tags?

Yeah.

Are we doing it?

Are the people who are viewing our reputation doing it?

Or do we use the one we got when we accepted Christ as our savior and he came to us and made us his?

You know.

Yeah, I mentioned it earlier as, like, I really feel like, you know, this team of misfits was very much misappropriated by what Valentina did at the end of the movie, by forcing them to step forward as the New Avengers, that this fledgling remake of who they were got hijacked by her actions, and it actually came back to bite them.

And so I think that.

But they weren't able to complete that journey into being the new creation that they were potentially on in our lives.

We're never going to complete that journey.

It's going to be a journey through our whole lives.

But we don't have to identify with who we were.

We need to look forward and keep our eyes on Christ.

Like Peter stepping out of the boat and walking towards Christ on the water.

It's like as soon as he looked down and looked back at himself or looked at the waves and lost that focus on Christ, then he faltered.

And we're going to have that confidence as long as we have our eyes on the right thing.

And if we're constantly reminding ourselves of what our failings are and what our sin is and what the things that we struggle with, by identifying with those things, then we are.

We're looking down instead of at Christ.

Yeah, I like that image.

And it ties back to our previous episode, too.

Yeah, Very well done.

Reflection on that scene.

Well, I think we've already mapped out our next two months.

Unless the Lord comes while the Lord tarries, I should say.

We're hoping to deal with this new Karate Kid movie in June.

So coming up up in the next few weeks, we will hopefully have an episode coming out on this latest Karate Kid movie, which we have done.

Other Karate Kid move.

At least one other Karate Kid movie.

We did the one with Jackie Chan.

I thought he should have gotten an Oscar nod for it, but hey.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Will Smith and his son, Jaden Smith.

No, I guess Will Smith wasn't it.

James.

He wasn't in it, but it was the executive producer.

And I might point out he was also the executive producer of the Cobra Kai series.

Series or one of them.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, with Rap Macchio, so.

And this Karate Kid movie is a continuation of the series, so hopefully I won't be left too much hanging because I haven't watched all of the ceiling I saw.

I think the first season.

My understanding is that not having watched any of Cobra Kai will not be a detriment to enjoying new Karate Kid movie the Legends movie.

Yeah.

So yeah, so we'll be doing that one for June and then for July.

I think we've already picked out how to train your dragon.

The I'm going to put this in quotes, real life version, heavily animated cgi.

Yeah.

It's just the people are real.

Yeah.

I'm looking forward to that movie.

I saw the previews for it.

I am.

I'm excited about that.

I don't think we reviewed the original, so this will be nice.

But it's the author is the same author who did Wild Robot that we reviewed a few months back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's no firm statement either way, but I think there's good reason to believe that the author is a practicing Christian.

Well, cool.

Well, yeah, I'm looking forward to that.

And since we're giving you so much leeway in what we're going to be discussing for the next couple months, that gives you guys some homework so that you can be watching the movies and prepping for our discussion and maybe even joining us on Discord if you would like.

So we look forward to hearing from you and thank you so much for listening to this episode.

I'm E.

Franklin.

I'm Tim Merton.

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