The Top Guys
A pop culture podcast. Devon Sanders, Chris James Scott, and Omar K. Mills discuss what is best in life.
The Top Guys
Tell Me Something You Loved About Something You Hated
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Tell Me Something You Loved About Something You Hated is a fun, surprisingly thoughtful episode where the Top Guys challenge themselves to find genuine praise for movies, comics, and pop culture they normally criticize. Instead of piling on negativity, the crew explores the overlooked bright spots hidden inside projects they consider disappointments, disasters, or missed opportunities. Along the way, they dive into everything from RoboCop 3 and Batman v Superman to The Matrix Reloaded and The Wolverine, mixing sharp analysis with the usual Top Guys humor, tangents, and friendly roasting. It's a celebration of finding the good in the things that didn't quite work.
This severe chain.
SPEAKER_02Ladies and gentlemen, children, welcome back to the Top Guys Podcast. Alright, so because uh we are pressed for time, because Chris has to return it as fast. How dare you?
SPEAKER_01How very dare you. Listeners, I come to my friends in a time of weakness, a time of vulnerability, and I mention that I am a bit famished. And this jackass Omar says, hang on, let's record.
SPEAKER_02Hey, you know why because I forgot what you said about the Smurfett thing. I've been owing you that from weeks ago, but you know, let me get let me get back right. You know, I've I've been I've been saving that. Damn it. Alright, let me refocus what Devon cake boss get me. Alright. So part of the reason why we wanted to bring this topic up, um, what we're talking about right now is that tell us something that you like about uh a thing that you hated. And before I do that, that is Chris James Scott. That is the cake boss Devon Sanders. I am Black Prince Adam Omar K. Mills. We are the top guys. Alright, so we're talking about. Tell me something that you liked about something that you didn't love. And the reason why we wanted to talk about this is because something that I've been thinking about. We live in an era where criticism is basically rewarded. Like everything is either the greatest thing that ever happened or the worst thing that ever happened. You know, negativity really gets clicks. Outrage, selective outrage gets engagement. Anyone can tell you what they hate, but finding something genuinely good inside, something that you didn't love, I believe that's a harder skill, and I think it's a healthier one. I would rather tell you about something I loved than tell you about why I hated a thing that somebody somewhere spent time to make and pour their heart, soul, and love into. That is the framing for what we want to do. Gentlemen, I will throw it to you. Who would like to begin telling us about something that they loved in a thing that they didn't, there really wasn't for them? Okay.
SPEAKER_01I take this one. Editor's note. I'd love telling you about shit I hate. So let's let's get that off the off the table right now. I do not hold such altruism in my heart, no, sir. So today I would like to talk about Robocop 3. It's a trash fire, it's terrible, it's real, real bad. And let me tell you, recently I re-watched parts one and parts two, and it is really unfortunate that they never continued their franchise with any further projects. There was no cartoons, there were no live action series from Canada that for some reason were like PG. What? No, it never happened. It was one and two, we're out.
SPEAKER_00But Robocop 3, trash fire that it is, contains a couple elements that I think are pretty rare. Exhibit A. Gun hand. It's pretty sick.
SPEAKER_01You just it Murph you know, it's because of Bob Morton in the first one. He said get rid of the arm. So, okay, gun arm attachment. Let's go. Sweet! That's really it. It's got rocket launchers, it's got machine gun, even has a flamethrower. He lit a pimp's car on fire. It was ridiculous. Second nugget of gold in this maelstrom of shit that is RoboCop 3. Jetpack. It shouldn't. It shouldn't work based on the the the progression of character growth between one and two, the way Murphy is, the way that world behaves and operates. Jetpack should be just no, don't do that. Don't do that to that character. It doesn't need it, it doesn't warrant it. No.
SPEAKER_00And yet pretty fucking sick. It's pretty sick.
SPEAKER_01It's it's pretty cool. That's about all I can muster as far as niceties about Robocop 3. RoboCop 3 is terrible and it pains me. It pains me so grievously that some of the stuff that it foresaw is a bit true in current day Metro Center and LaFont Plaza. I can't make a transfer from the blue to the red line without seeing some jack-booted National Guardsman in my face with the biggest goddamn gun ever. Omar sent me a text about three weeks ago. Hey watching Batman vs. Superman. Not as bad as I think, as I thought it was. It still holds up. I've watched it like eight times. That's how we sound like when I'm actually reading this text. And so I actually felt kind of bad because my response was basically like, eat a bee.
SPEAKER_02That's what he told me. That's literally what he said.
SPEAKER_01Why are you wasting my precious?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, why are you why are you wasting my time with this? That's what he said. He hung up on the text.
SPEAKER_01I hung up on you.
SPEAKER_00So we are hung up on the text.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. But in retrospect, I'm sorry I was so harsh with my response. My apology. You deserve better. I promise to do better from here on out. See, that's what that's what we're about here on top, guys. We're about accountability. Yeah. And and and reconciliation. That's what we're about. That's what we're about. We're about love, y'all. All about love.
SPEAKER_00So is there a thing that I liked about it? Oh my god, did you really? Wow. Wow. My heart hurts.
SPEAKER_01Going back to that, why not actually talk about something that I liked within this trash file movie? And I'm gonna say this. I'm gonna say this. I really liked Ben Afflex Batman.
SPEAKER_00I actually liked it. I liked the costume. I liked the Batmobile. The costume was brilliant.
SPEAKER_01It was like a mix of the Dark Knight returns Batman and Yeah, something. I don't know what it was, but it just looked really, really good. Like if someone would have said that uh Frank Miller Dark Knight Returns uniform would actually move decently in real in real world, I'd have been like, hell no, it doesn't look it wouldn't. It's it's too bulky. They made it work. And Ben Affleck is a big dude, by the way. He's like 6'3, but they made it work. And I thought his portrayal of an older Batman was actually good. And if I have a criticism, and I have many criticisms of Batman versus Superman. No kid. Yeah. I think had you taken Superman out of it, I think you would have had a decent Batman movie.
SPEAKER_02It's not a one-to-make a Batman movie. You can tell by how much he hated Superman.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01He hated Superman, but he had to throw him in there. And I think the thing was he wanted to do a Batman movie. And then that just became a dumpster fire. Like, I actually felt bad that he didn't get to make what he wanted. And that's why it's such a trash movie. Now, also, I don't think he's a great filmmaker by any stretch of anything. The good visuals guy. Visuals for sure. Yeah. Not putting a narrative together to save his life. But if you just want to, if you did a supercut of just those Batman scenes, I think that you would have a great short Batman film. Where it's like murders dudes. Where he just murders dudes. But I'm not saying that's my Batman. But for a certain certain contingent of Batman fans, that he gave them what they wanted. Not what I needed to see. But I thought it was like a good representation of the parts of Batman that I don't particularly care for. But somehow it looked good moving on a screen. It's it's almost like when I don't know, when you see somebody here's what it is to me. There's this bulletproof thing that happens on like the showtime at the Apollo. You would send a kid up on the stage, and the kid would sing a gospel tune, and the kid would get polite applause at the end because nobody is going to boot a child singing gospel music. Right? That's kind of what Batman is. Batman is the child you can send up and not get booed because he's singing gospel music. People are so happy just to get any Batman nowadays that it'd just be like, just send the fuck kid up there. Yeah. It's like, unless it's absolutely terrible, it's still gonna make half a billion dollars. Why does he say that name?
SPEAKER_00My mother's name is Martha. Martha. Martha. Martha. My mother's name's a Martha. Martha. Gentleman. Yeah, if you take that away, you have a half like a 25% decent film.
SPEAKER_01So that's what I'm saying. Ben Affleck Batman, not terrible. Not terrible. I would have loved to have seen the Ben Affleck Batman movie that he directed and starred in. I would love to see that.
SPEAKER_02In the Terminator. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Man.
SPEAKER_00That would have been strong.
SPEAKER_01But we got Rob Robert Batman Bat. Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Matt Reeves. Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_00I got Carl Batman.
SPEAKER_01I loved it.
SPEAKER_00But man, Argo Batman would have ripped. Devon, I have no notes. Alright. Yes, well, well, well done. Golflap. Go flap.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Alrighty. I'm gonna I'm gonna piggyback off of your your positioning, Devon, and talk about something that was a movie we didn't need. We didn't need this movie. But I'm glad we got this movie because, in the same vein that you just mentioned, if you take certain pieces of this and put it together and do a supercut of this, I would love to have that. I don't even need any story or any context. I don't need a good hour and a half of this movie. I need about 40 minutes of just these scenes.
SPEAKER_01Is it James Mangold's The Wolverine?
SPEAKER_02You know what? You just gave me my honorable mention. We're gonna circle back on that when we have time. Oh, is that your okay, okay. The don't get me started on that, man. I I'm so mad at that because we talked on the other show about X-Men 173. So you know how I feel the way that that is, I want to find him and punch him in the face.
SPEAKER_01But that is a James Mango's fault.
SPEAKER_02That's fair. Just side. I don't know what he was doing, but he was eating protein shakes for sure. Abbed up. But anyway, side. The my pick is the trash fire known as The Matrix Reloaded.
SPEAKER_01Reloaded.
SPEAKER_02Reloaded. Reloaded Reloaded. I can't even get that like that. That's low-hanging fruit. I'm gonna tell you what, I'm gonna tell you why reloaded. We didn't need it. Think about it. So the 1999 Matrix, it's not a great movie. It's a perfect movie. It's perfect. You go back, you watch it, it holds up today. The problem is that Neo's arc is complete. By the end of the flick, the man is stopping bullets and he flies off the screen after talking trash to the machines, saying, Look, you know, we we know we know about y'all. Now you know about me. I'm Neo, I'm nice, I'm a walk out, you know, I don't run from y'all no more. I'm I take off Superman. Stop. Where does he go from there? Right? We like if you never make another one, we good. But when the Matrix reloaded was announced, and it came, you know, and they started, I started seeing the the posters for it, and you see Keanu Reeves lean with the black outfit that has the the the the flowing, you know, sort of like dress, but it's not a dress cape and everything. And it looked like a cape when, you know, but it's not quite that with the black and the net and Morpheus with the green tie and Trinity back. And I'm like, oh. And then you see these twin dudes with dreads, and I'm like, who are they? Oh. Not only did I take off work to go see the Matrix Reloaded, I bought two tickets. I went and then went back. Back to back. There's about an hour and then went to the next show. That's how hyped I was for The Matrix Reloaded. And I got in there and I watched it, and I was like, I'm glad I got tickets because I need to make sure that I, one, I understood what I just saw. And two, like, I really wanted to like it. So I was glad. I was like, oh, maybe the second showing I'll really like it. When I walked out, it was one of those things where like if if I say I hated it, then this was a complete waste of a day, was kind of where I was. So I walked out with the it was good, but you know, like I'm lying to the mirror on this. No. So the the thing that I am happiest about that we got from this was, you know, like I said, it's terrible. It's terribly written. It's just, and it was unnecessary. Anything, any scenes where they are outside of the matrix, pretty awful. But the whole sequence with the Merovingian, when they're in the chateau, and he goes on the whole thing about causality. You come to me, you come to me without you come to me without power. Causality. You know, I drank too much wine, I must take a piece. I love that whole sequence. Then they go in and he fights those vampire dudes in the chateau after stopping all the machine gun fire. And while Morpheus and Trinity are running away with the keymaker, and they have the whole thing, they're fighting on top of semi-trucks on the middle of the highway. Morpheus is fighting agents and Neo's children. Yeah, it's a I need that. I need that whole, I need the the dance club music soundtrack, backdrop that's playing while Morpheus is fighting dudes in the like they had a fight inside of the car. Yeah. You know, the the twin that could you know basically phase into the car, they fight in front seat, the back. It's fantastic. But the movie's trash. But those scenes, outstanding.
SPEAKER_00You're describing the first half of the movie.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't need I don't need nothing else after that. Yeah, anything that happened after that, I don't need it. Yeah, I'm I'm straight. I don't need it. You know, you go back, man, and watch the scene where Neo meets the architect, and you got to be smoking something. For that to be, yeah, literally, for that to make any kind of sense. You get you gotta be high. Somebody was high who wrote that scene. I I I guarantee you. High. So I love highway fights and things, and I love a chateau fight, which is basically one whole sequence.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02That's it. You can you can burn the rest of it. And it's and the the two sequels.
SPEAKER_01We're not we're not gonna we're not gonna talk about the the the hundred agent Smiths.
SPEAKER_02We're not gonna Alright, so let me tell you about the 100 Agent Smiths. The whole thing with Smith just bothers me. Right? Just what they did, he deserved better. You know, to me, if I were to go back and talk to Hugo Weaving, I'd say, man, look, you know, stay in Lord of the Rings. Don't come over here. He's gonna be able to do that. Do one flick and then bounce. Yeah, the I'm like, you do one flick and then don't do this next one. You know, I would tell him to do a pull of Michael Keaton. You know, do two dip. Don't even do this one, you know, like the do matrix, and that's all you need to do. Don't do nothing else on this because he needed to do Red Skull too. Well, that, but you know, again, but just yeah, don't don't do no more of these, would have been the thing that I would have you know advised him. You know, the my issue with it isn't him. Hugo Weaving is fine, he's an amazing actor. The CGI doesn't hold up, it didn't really hold up sitting in the theater. You could tell, like you sitting there and it's like, that's not Keanu Reeves, that's a video game. Go back and watch the scene where he's fighting the Smiths. And so the first handful of moments of it is Keanu Reeves, and mind you, that's amazing. Keanu Reeves beating up a whole bunch of people. It's kind of pre-John Wick, John Wick. And then it becomes this CGI fest. And I'm like, Go ahead, please.
SPEAKER_01To that, I'm I must I must ask you.
SPEAKER_00Yes, Omar, are you a are you a fan of professional wrestling? Yes. You know The Undertaker. Yes. Right. I got a laugh track already.
SPEAKER_01You accept that the undead zombie mortician is very interested in wrestling championships. Do you not? Yes. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. You know it's not real.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm saying it's it is real.
SPEAKER_00It's real, it's real to me. It's real.
SPEAKER_01Now, the only leg up that professional wrestlers have over their more traditional acting counterpart is that that is them throwing themselves in the air 60 feet to the outside. It's not 60 feet, obviously, it's not 60 feet, they be dead. But we exaggerate for the point.
SPEAKER_00That being said, one, Keanu Reeves literally had a broken back. Two, it takes a lot of people to make these movies.
SPEAKER_01A lot of artistry, a lot of a lot of lot of a lot of know how, a lot of wizardry. I don't think. That it is unfair for you as a viewer to be axed to accept that Keanu Reeves might at some point look like a video game character because he's in a fucking computer. So no.
SPEAKER_00I need him to look real the entire time. I'm sorry, baby. It's two plus two. Go fuck yourself.
SPEAKER_02It's fair. It's fair. I'm only gonna accept it because you use the Undertaker to you know make your point. And I can't really argue against that. But that's well played. Alright. I will concede. I will concede this to you.
SPEAKER_01After we we rescue the keymaker, turn reloaded off. Turn it off.
SPEAKER_02But you feel but you're good with everything up to that.
SPEAKER_01Alright, I'll I'll I'll take that. I'll I will I will I very much enjoy the first half or so of Ray Maestri's Reloaded.
SPEAKER_02The Council of Haters, we we respect your take and we we we we we receive The Council of Haters.
SPEAKER_00Captain Kangaroo hater, what say you Chris?
SPEAKER_02I I cede my time to you, sir, for James Mangold.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think right it's it's lit it's gonna it's five minutes. The Wolverine by James Mangold, the movie that immediately uh preceded Logan, which no notes about Logan. Logan's phenomenal. And we don't need to talk about it. It won all the things it's gonna win. Everybody knows it's a good movie. It won my heart. I will I will always laugh at dudes that it's like Deadpool and Wolverine, it ruined the ending of Logan, but shut up, man. Shut up. You sound stupid. Shut up. One of these things, you can just enjoy the thing by itself because it's it's all in your head, you can tell yourself, all right, I'm looking at Logan. This happens over here, boom. And it's not like the MCU and Deadpool and Wolverine gone out of your out of their way to give you logical reasons to just accept that other stuff is happening in other timelines. So it's okay. But again, I digress. James Mango's Wolverine. It's like an episode of Justified if Raylan Givens had metal claws and was in Japan, and it's awesome. It is so dope. And then the big metal robot samurai happens. It's terrible. But we're talking about the good, we're talking about the things we like and things that we don't like. And I can I contend that the big metal samurai is enough to derail the entire picture. So it is a thing that I hate. But the whole two acts before we get to dumb ass robot samurai were excellent. I was oh man, they even found a way to make Wolverine get hurt so you could actually have stakes in the movie. It was awesome. It was so dope. I love the little girl was playing. Was she Yu-Gi-Oh? She was Yu-Gi-Oh!, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Cause like it's a different Yu-Gi-Oh! obviously. But like, yeah, she was awesome as like his Robin, or well, you know, his not Jubilee. It was awesome. It was so dope. And he got to like he got to wear like the the noir detective fit the whole time. Oh man. Would have been cool if we could find a way to work in the brown suit, but alas, it was not in the card. But man, the the director's cut when he has like all the arrows in his back, because like every ninja everywhere has shot him with a bow is awesome. It's so good. And then the silver samurai shows up and it's like, you had Hiroyuki Sonata in this movie, and Hiroyuki Sonata is a badass, a legendary cinematic badass who could have very well worn the actual silver samurai suit in this movie, and you could have ended it there. It would have been sick. Because how hypocritical would it have been for him to be a mutant this whole time and also hate the fact that he's a mutant? Oh man, dichotomy, we're playing with it. Ah man, but then some dumbass Fox executive was like, no, Pacific Rim just came out. I want a robot. It's like you stupid ass.
SPEAKER_02He had X-Men 173 right there.
SPEAKER_00Man. You had the blueprint. You had the blueprint. Just do make that. Do that.
SPEAKER_01With like extra steps. Do that with extra steps.
SPEAKER_02And don't tell me his sword can cut through claws when the source material sh tells me it can't.
SPEAKER_01There you go. There you go. If you're not prepared to like introduce magic swords into your thing, then don't don't mess with the source material.
SPEAKER_00So yeah. The Wolverine. There we go. I see my time, Jim.
SPEAKER_02Alright, well, Chris, do you wanna since you're seeing time, do you wanna, you know, pray us out?
SPEAKER_01Okay, okay. Um, all right. Everybody heads on this lovely Friday evening before SmackDown comes on. You see what I did? I tied it back because we were talking about the Undertaker, you see?
SPEAKER_02That's what you did there.
SPEAKER_01Cinematic. We've had a wonderful time. I hope you I hope you all in Internet Land have enjoyed your time in our home. Um, but as a wiser man than me once said, you must leave. You need not go to your home, but you cannot stay here in house. God bless you. Get the hell out. See y'all next time.
