SvB Ep175 Tyler Perry’s Zero Percent Rotten Tomatoes Score

Summer is here and we talk about some books we like. How Tyler Perry got a 0% Rotten Tomato Score? Emmy Nominations include X-Men ‘97. Why’d the Russo’s get called back for more Avengers movies? How does The Acolyte stand up to other Star Wars shows?

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
00:18 Gary V and Advertising Insights
01:20 Facebook Ads and Marketing Lessons
04:57 Understanding Your Audience
10:48 Negotiation Tactics from Chris Voss
14:56 Fun Media Recommendations
19:23 Emmy Nominations and TV Highlights
27:35 Controversy Surrounding X-Men's Future
28:30 The Russo Brothers Return to Marvel
32:10 Marvel's Struggle with Hero Narratives
34:57 Deadpool and Wolverine: Marvel's Last Hope?
39:32 Tyler Perry's Polarizing Productions
46:08 The Acolyte and Star Wars' Decline
49:55 Disney's Star Wars Dilemma
53:44 Concluding Thoughts and Farewell

YouTube link to this Podcast Episode:
https://youtu.be/RnhitJX-jcM

Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and  Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.

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Transcript

Introduction and Episode Overview

Theo Harvey: This is show versus business where pop culture meets pop money with your host the real theo harvey and mr. Benja, mr. Benja So what's been going on, 

Mr.Benja: man? What has been going on? Nothing but me, messing up my computer setup here But we got good stuff going as always regardless of it if i messed up or not.

Gary V and Advertising Insights

Mr.Benja: We got some, Got a little talk about Gary V now. I know a lot of you haven't heard of him in a while. You may have totally forgotten who he is. We're going to talk about that in a little bit. It's going to wrap into some stuff. We got to talk about advertising and getting your name out there and stuff like that.

We got some Emmy nominations that we want to talk about and discuss. X Men 97 made it in there and some others. So we're going to get into that just a little bit. And the Russos are back for two more Avengers movies. We haven't talked about Marvel in a bit. But this might spark a new conversation coming up in the next season, at least until Captain black, American Falcon, Wilson, Sam comes through and we all go watch that.

That'd be Captain America four, by the way. And the acolyte and star Wars ratings throw a little bit of spice in there. Talk about that. And Tyler Perry's 0 percent on rotten tomatoes and number one on Netflix at the same time. Theo, how does all this sound, 

Theo Harvey: man? That sounds wonderful, brother.

Wonderful. Hey man, this week, man good times, man. Good times. I want to just say that when I think about business, man is a lot going on right now. 

Facebook Ads and Marketing Lessons

Theo Harvey: Have you even played around with Facebook ads right now? It's crazy time, man. 

Mr.Benja: No, yeah, 

Theo Harvey: election is here and things are Getting people's attention.

I probably messed myself up, man. So my, my, I had my ad stuff going pretty good, man, with my book. Pocket. Guide to practice value creation. Just a small plug out there, but I had it going, man. Pretty good in June, man. It was rolling getting, boom.

So I said, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to raise the price. That didn't go over well, man. It's everything stopped for a second. I was like, Oh no what happened? And the 

Mr.Benja: product or you're talking about how much, yeah, the 

Theo Harvey: product, yeah. The product itself.

I didn't change anything else with the ads. Setting that up for anything. I just, I'm just going to raise the price up, see what happens. My full, I was like, Oh I'm spending this much on the book. And then losing a little bit money, but then when I do the calculations, I found out that because I have what they called one time offers, things like that, bumps and stuff like that over overall, making money, even when I shipped the book out, but I was losing, on a per basis book basis, I was losing some money, shipping it out.

But I was like, Oh, but it doesn't matter. I'm just trying to get a lead anyway. I'm just trying to get people interested to buy the book. And then I can, have a call from later about my services. But anyway my foolhardy mind, I was like man, I can get a little bit money on the book up front so I can do some other stuff.

And yeah, the audience didn't like it at all. So they just just abandoned cards. I said, okay, so they don't like this this raising price. And to be fair, maybe I need to, change the headlines up a little bit or maybe change the offer up a little bit.

It may have worked. But I said, no, I just need to get working like it was right. I screw all that. So basically I had to, get in the covers and figure out okay, how am I going to get these folks to, to get back engaged. So I changed the headlines, I changed the ads up still. I didn't change the price yet.

I just, so basically I rose a price about like about five bucks, just to see what would happen from the initial base price of like 10 bucks. So I said, okay, let me just see what happens if I change the headlines up with the landing page, change some of the ads. Stuff. Say some of the, yeah, some of the ads I create, some of the headlines for the ads.

Still nothing, still getting, people to click on it. I'm still getting, high click through rates, but I was not getting people to convert to actually buy the book. And I was like, what the hell? So I said, bump it. Two days ago, I'm just going to go to price back to, 999, oh whatever. Turned it off. First thing I woke up this morning, got a book buyer. 

Mr.Benja: Eight. 

Theo Harvey: This is something. So this is a lesson, man. Just. I'm sure there's ways you can probably market it and change it to get it, to, have a higher perceived value to make people want to buy it at a higher price point.

I just didn't want to do all that. I'm playing around price and it really was nothing I had to do. It was just, it was already working and I messed it up for myself. So that's just a lesson learned. I'm learning just in just marketing, in this whole world of like digital marketing, man, it's just, 

You have something working, Understand why you really have to understand why it's working, right?

It's probably a little bit of everything the price the landing page You know the ads I put out there and it all has some magical chemistry to work if you change one little element to it, it could mess up everything or it could make something go wildly explosive, right? So 

yeah, 

so that's something i'm learning and I thought it was interesting I was like, okay, so I probably need to keep the price point The same for right now until I have better understanding of how to get the landing page convert better or do something different, but I don't want to change that too much because that does give me a good sense of leads for new opportunities for what I'm trying to sell.

So yeah just good lessons to learn, man, just in marketing in general. 

Understanding Your Audience

Mr.Benja: I got So talking about your advice, we talked and you told me, Hey, make sure, you get your avatar down and who are you talking to and the audience? And I'm like yeah. It's one of those things were in my head.

I'm like yeah. I've heard that. I know who I want to talk to, but I really didn't get detailed with it. So I went back and was like, okay, let me just go through this list of people pull out about 200 people that, I knew just across dimensions from art shows from, Tallahassee to New Orleans to wherever I was just like, let me pull out all these people who have rocked with me and list them out and okay, these people go in this category, these people go in this category, I started coming up with categories, right?

And I said, I had a list of about 200 people and around 50 of them, close to 20%, we're like people who are rocking, I was like, wait a minute. Oh, here we go with the 80, 20 again. So I had like around this many people and I took those people and okay, of those people who really, you know, and I started getting that, okay.

Yeah. That person they bought before they're my friend, they've done this. They've given me good feedback, and that, Going from what I had in my head and matching that with that exercise of I was just literally taking a list of people and going through and okay, this person, that person.

And I started to go from my head and to the people that have rocked with me and going in both directions, developing that avatar. So what I'm thinking in my head and what I. I'm getting up from the feedback and like the people who were talking to me. So I was like, okay, and I'm developing my own little strategy here, for this kind of thing.

So I'm figuring it out. It's all fun. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. For instance, I had calls with some customers and I thought that happened to the. To the end of, purchasing something and, they ghosted me a little bit, I was like, you know what, but I can't get mad about that.

It was like the market will teach you what people want or don't want. And so you have to just accept that, and. And I get upset because we get upset. Then he's none of this works. Forget this, but you just have to say, okay, I just have to, there's something I'm not getting yet or how communicated to people properly.

To get them over the hump. Like some people, and what happens, I have a win. And I said, okay, this is this is what works. So I'll sit down and write my little protocol. You do this, do you do that? And so I try to follow protocol, with someone new and it's Oh, They didn't work that time.

So what did I do differently? So it's, yeah, people don't realize it's a lot of understanding exactly what works consistently. So you can just nail it down. And then once you have it consistent, because then the next phase of what I'm trying to do is trying to bring on more people to do this for me, right?

The selling side of it and marketing, but I have to nail it down first. So I'm trying, like I was telling my co founder, I was like, I have to tell it was like, look, I'm trying to build a pipe, right? I don't care if it's like a drip of water comes through. I just need something to work right all the way.

Yeah, exactly. And then once I understand that this drip of water comes in, okay, turn the water on, so that's in my mind, when I'm doing this and like you said, it's fun, man, it's, but it's, you can't let yourself get overwhelmed. Matter of fact, I went back to yeah, it's another book I'm reading too.

I didn't, yeah, but I went back to reading alexa Moses, 100 million offers again because I was like 100 million leads, excuse me, where he was just talking about how to get more leads, just going back to basics. It's okay, he said, okay, you first have to identify the problem. You got to think, okay, do you reveal a solution that they didn't think about?

Or do you, do a step in the solution or do you is it a multi level step and you do the first step for them? And then the way you deliver a lead magnet, if you will, is it like a software? Is it a physical product? So he's just breaks down how do you attract the right people, for your initial offer.

And so I'm just like, you know what, let me just go back to basics and think through, every step of the way to make sure I'm hitting the right angles because it looked the market will tell you, man, if it's something that people want they'll buy it. You just got to find that.

That right combination, like a Rubik's cube, right? That's gonna light people up. And so anyway, so like I said, I think you and I are in the same boat. It's just just learning this whole process and is, and then I think so mostly talks about this too. It's like that boss level in the video game.

It's once you beat this boss. Guess what? You can move on to the next level. So if I do something else, I already know, okay, this is the steps I have to do to make this work. So I love it. So anyway, I tell myself that it's frustrating sometimes, but yeah, it's cause it's always, you just I thought I 

Mr.Benja: got it.

Dang it. 

Theo Harvey: You learn something new. 

Mr.Benja: No it's really funny. And for people who are really into, data, I see how this could be a whole rabbit hole because I'm figuring out the difference between two people who I thought had the same, basically the same profile, and then they're behaving slightly differently.

Obviously they're different people, but I'm like, huh. This person gave me a really interesting response, and this person just like you said, ghosted, so one person ghosted, and the other person wanted to tell me everything that I was doing wrong. I've gotten both of these responses in the art world, so I was used to that.

I'm like, someone isn't really feeling a certain. Direction of your art. And they're like, and they stepped back or you have the person that gets in your face. And it's I'm trying to really understand where you're coming from, because when I see this and, they have a nice way of telling you that they don't like this piece of art, but they're sitting there talking.

So I'm sitting here trying to piece through these two and I'm thinking that the same person, but they both want something for me. They're going about it in different ways. One by the ghost and one by 

Getting all in my face, talking to me. I ended up resolving that and I got two, I've gotten, I got two purchases from those people.

So they were the same person. They were just expressing themselves differently. And I was like, huh, interesting. I'll write that in the notes, click. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, you're right. There's some people do it different ways and stuff like that. And maybe we'll talk about it later or maybe we'll talk about it now.

I don't know. You had mentioned some books and stuff, so I've been rereading this book. 

Negotiation Tactics from Chris Voss

Theo Harvey: Never Split the Difference. And it's by Chris Voss. Chris Voss, the is that 

Mr.Benja: the FBI guy or the interrogation guy? CI, 

Theo Harvey: yeah. The negotiation FBI guy. James, you could put this on the, on May make shorter this one.

This is pretty interesting. Never split the difference Negotiating. As if your life depends on it. And so basically, his thing was like, look, if he split the difference, you can't split a hostage. So he had to always get what he wanted in every negotiation. And so to him, that's like the way you win.

And so he gives you all these different insights on how to get to the other side. And one thing he said to me was really interesting. He said, you want to have a situation where it's more about relationship. Yeah. Yeah. Affirming right where you still win what you want for your side, but it's relationship affirming, right?

A lot of times people go in negotiations and someone feels like they lost and they get buyers or more so upset But if the way you do it is proper and right because you really understood what the person really wanted and how that Affected your negotiation style then you can create a situation where you get what you want and the other person feels Feels validated and heard.

And so a lot of that gets into the hitting means behind what people do because a lot of people don't tell you exactly. Because a lot of times we don't even know ourselves, but a lot of people don't tell you what they really want. And so you got, your goal is to get as much information about those hidden desires that really driving people to want to buy your thing or move in your direction.

And he talks about all these different ways of doing it, about communicating. Empathy, having a negotiation style that's focus on not just win, but understanding, what their desires really are underneath. And people are not gonna tell you that right away. So to your point, some people, they tell you stuff with, by their silence, but then he also said, if you can get them talking more and some, I'm just not, giving a high level view of this.

If you get people talking more, Then that gives you more information that you can leverage later on, right? To say, okay, you said, like you said, if you give an example of buying an art, you say, you didn't like this about the art, let's say you don't like blue, the color blue.

I'm assuming, and then you talk to their feelings, you said, so it seems you have a hatred to blue. Are you unopposed to red or something to that effect? And so I said yeah. I do hate blue cause we used to go to the beach all the time and my mom always made me wear this nasty blue color.

Yeah. I just don't like blue. So it may not be anything dealing with your painting. He just don't like the color blue and you put blue all in your painting. And so it's that's what he's trying to say. How do you get to those underlying causes of what's keeping people from moving forward? And I think that's that's what I'm learning a lot too, is just like, you can get that from the data, from, From internet marketing or you get that from talking to people.

And the more you understand that, I think the better you become at just understanding human nature and get people to move toward action. And so yeah, so that's what I'm excited about. Just learning those secret arts, man. And you and I come from engineering and, CIS background.

So this stuff, they don't teach you, man. I wish I learned this earlier, man. I'm learning this all a new man, basically going back to man, this is like some stuff I knew, subconsciously, because, I grew up with brothers and sisters and negotiating for my parents, love, stuff like that, but, it's still, it's good to understand what you're doing.

It's like the dark arts, I can get this to levitate, but I don't know how to do it right now. Yeah. Oh, okay. I get this all 

Mr.Benja: the time. You talk about understanding there's that level of, oh no, I understand. That was all about. The war in, Vietnam or whatever, but then when you start meeting people, like you met somebody who's the granddaughter of some important person and they border dispute, when you start really connecting with it, then you go back to the book or the source and you're like, Holy crap.

Now I understand. I understood it on paper, but now I'm there. I get it. Yeah. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah. And that's, just got to do it. And Alex talks about, Alex Ramos, he talks about it all the time. He said the reason why he started to get better at business, cause he wrote down, He, that's why he created his podcast so he could document the journey.

So he could constantly remind himself what was working, what wasn't working, what was his feelings like, because then you can understand, it's like only when you document the process, you really understand what you did right or wrong. And so I thought that was insightful. So anyway, so yeah, man, it's been a fun week.

Fun Media Recommendations

Theo Harvey: Beyond that, man, just a couple of things on the fun stuff side. I I saw I think I told you about that show. Supercell. Did you get check, take that, check that out yet. 

Mr.Benja: On Netflix. 

Theo Harvey: Okay. Yeah. When you check it out, maybe we'll talk about that later and then yeah. And then the boys, the season finale that kind of popped off on Amazon.

So a very interesting show. 

Mr.Benja: That's my weekend watch right there. Okay. So 

Theo Harvey: we'll catch up on that next time. And we'll talk about that. And I saw a twisters, the latest I guess blockbuster movie came out, redo of the nineties, hit twisters twister. So basically about tornadoes and stuff. So that was interesting.

Cool. So yeah, that's been my media, social, diet for the last couple of days. So anyway, I wonder 

Mr.Benja: if. Nature movies do big in areas that have natural disasters. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, I could see that movie traumatizes some people, right? It's so funny too, man. These remakes are coming out now. It's like this movie came out with the nineties.

That was in the nineties when, we were younger. Obviously the thing they talked about was a spectacle. Oh, you're going to see. Up close with a tornado looks like and all that stuff. But this one, yes, they had that, but it was so much focused on the people. It's like after turning it, we'll hit, let's go help the people.

Let's do stuff, cause this, we're just a little bit more aware of the devastation, that can happen to people and just being more cognizant of that. So the spectacle was there, but it was more about like, how do you help people in these natural disasters? And so I thought that was interesting.

Yeah. 

Mr.Benja: All right. Yeah, man. I was this week I was doing old man activities and who said it guy was talking and he said anything that you're doing all the time, just sleeping, breathing, eating, walking, call anything you do regularly, make sure that has a good flow for you basically.

Cause you don't want the downward spiral of doing something in a grinding your way. If you're going to do it all the time, then at least. Make sure it's doing something good for you. So whether it's having breakfast or whatever, I got some new insoles in my shoes.

Cause I was walking on, I'm like, Hey, I feel great. Hey, I got my new Reebok walking shoes and some new insoles, baby. I'm 85 on insoles. Boy, never done that before. And I was walking around, I was feeling great. And then I sat down, Mr. 

Theo Harvey: Benjamin sketchers. Yeah, I love it. 

Mr.Benja: But yeah, man, I sat down and I was like, you know what?

Need a lazy boy. I need a recliner. I don't want to bed cause I want to go to sleep. I don't want just my office chair to take a nap in. Now. I need, I'm a recliner age. I don't know what that says about me. It 

Theo Harvey: says you get old breath. Then you get an old, I love it.

Mr.Benja: Oh yeah. I want to sit around in my recliner and I, I started reading, rereading the 10 X 10 X rule. I went back to that cause we had been talking about it and we've had so many 80, 20 discussions and. And yeah, as far as like understanding goes, I was picking up on these little gems and nuggets that I didn't get from Cardone before.

I think he just knows the stuff. And I don't know how much of an intellectual writer he really is. Behind the curtains, whether he, but he seems to have all this stuff on lock. And the one thing he said that got me, it was like, if you've got this thing, that's, taking up all your time, see if you can do it in one 10th of the time.

And, instead of trying to go 10 times as fast or build your company up to, he's Hey, just see if you can do like a 10th of it. He didn't say it like that. And I think that's why it just didn't hit me before. But when he basically said, yeah, just do a fraction. I was like, wait a minute wait.

Is there something I can do like a 10th of and still get pretty much the same result? And I worked it out and I was like, Boom. There it goes. Now, it's just like shaving off stuff. It's yeah, I only do a 10th of this. It still gets me pretty much what I want. It saves me all this time because I do it all the time.

And it only takes me a 10th of the effort and energy and time. Now I just 10 X this part of my life by doing a 10th of it. And speeding along forward is great. Yeah. And all this falls under the category of old man activities. I ain't doing all that 

Theo Harvey: I love it. I love it, man. Nah, man, what you want to get into today, brother?

Mr.Benja: Let's just jump let's jump into the movie thing. 

Emmy Nominations and TV Highlights

Mr.Benja: I want I think this sounds like a movie based podcast here And you're talking about some movie and tv base You're talking about the emmy nominations before we started what's going on with the emmys? You 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, man. I'm the TV guy here, man.

I keep up with this, what's in these streets with television and whatnot. And the Emmys were not announced this was it I think it was Thursday or Friday. And so basically all the great TV shows that you probably even you, Mr. Benja are aware of got nominated. The bear, I think it got like 23 nominations, great show.

If you haven't seen it it's on FX. Great show. That was for comedy though. It was nominated for comedy for whatever reason. And then the big drama winner was Samurai. Do you, have you watched Oh, Shogun, excuse me. Shogun have you watched Shogun at all on FX? 

Mr.Benja: No. 

Theo Harvey: Great show. Great show.

Mostly spoken in Japanese. It's a lot of reading, but it was, it's based on the obviously the book and then the 1970s mini series. Do you remember that one too? Did you watch that one back in the day? Or did you know? Are you familiar with that one? Yeah. So just 

Mr.Benja: didn't ever invest. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, me neither.

I knew about it. So I watched this one just in very good show. But it's almost so good is basically about this foreigner that comes to feudal Japan and just learns their ways. And so it's almost the way they structure it is almost like a Yeah. Alien visiting a new planet, right?

Because it's like a whole new way of structure thinking about life and philosophy and everything. So really good show and it got nominated for all these Emmys for drama. So if you haven't checked out Shogun, great show. So I highly recommend it. Just be prepared. If you don't know Japanese, you're going to be reading a lot.

And so it's they do not care, but they do have a dub version of it. So you can listen to dub, but it's, I don't know. It's not the same. I don't think cause the vast majority of characters, there's two characters in the whole show. They speak English to each other and technically they're speaking Portuguese.

But 

yeah, but they're speaking English, so we can at least understand that, but everyone else is speaking Japanese. And so it's just very interesting. But anyway, go check it out. There is that was good. So anyway, those are the main ones. But the one that kind of caught my eye was the nominations for anime series, Mr.

Benja. You got a show called, simpsons, you know be nominated for Emmy has been around for what 30 years. How long is it? Simmons Simpson's been on golly 

Mr.Benja: since yeah 

Theo Harvey: Golly, man since the 90s. Yes been on. It's crazy, man There's probably have these actors doing you know that AI impersonation of the voice actors, right?

This cartoon for the future, man I say that to say is that they're going to they, they got nominated two shows that we're very I'm pleased to announce. We talked about a couple of them on this one. The first one is blue eye Samurai, and that was Netflix show. They, we both loved it.

I even talked to Dr. Chris Dr. Chris he loved it too. Great show, man. And so that got nominated for Emmy as it should. That's interesting. Cause that's a very adult animated show, but it's definitely was awesome. And then the next one was a little show that we talked about as well.

X Men 97 was nominated for an Emmy. Good for them, man. So what do you think about that? I know you're not really big into the Emmys, but like the little show that could man X Men coming back for rebirth got nominated for an Emmy. What are your thoughts? 

Mr.Benja: I'm happy. I'm happy for that. So it got nominated as an animated series.

Theo Harvey: Yes, 

Mr.Benja: okay, so it's not like it was just TV series and x men 97 flew up in there. I know I'm glad and I usually Even for animated series, I usually don't expect hero stuff to go in there. Usually it's something else, but X Men 97 did a lot of things. And in fact, I'm in a group with some some people in theater and Hollywood and video production and things like that.

And they were constantly talking about, Hey, it was really interesting how they bridge this whole story and they told this story at the same time. So when they switch scenes, it's like they were still telling the story from the same. I was like, Oh, yeah, you're right. I guess they did do that. What does that 

Theo Harvey: mean?

They were switched the story, but we're still thematically the same, even though it was a different story. Yeah, 

Mr.Benja: so they'd still tell the story, they'd still have the same theme going on and when they jumped from one set of characters to another set of characters, they didn't have to do that mental reset, where you, your mind's okay, now I'm over on these set of characters, what are they doing over here?

Okay. That's what they're doing. Okay. Cut back to the first set of characters. They had a way of moving the emotion and the theme. From this set of characters and saying hey, we're not going to stop with the emotion and theme. We're just going to switch the scenery around 

And the characters. 

So there were times when they did that and that's how they got so much story in such a short amount of time.

Theo Harvey: Yeah. You know what I was wondering? Cause I'll be watching the show. I was like, man, this still got like another 15 minutes to go. Wow. So I wonder if that contributes to the, why it feels like there's so much story to your point, because your brain is just following everything, even though, like you said, it's switching like 20 different things, but it's Emotionally it's or if it's a, it's emotionally, but it's consistent, right?

If they're trying to draw you up, they're building it over time. So your emotion is following along, even though you went through eight different characters. And so that's interesting. Yeah, I love to get that breakdown on how to, how they do that. Cause that's probably exactly what they were doing when I was watching, I was like, why does it seem like there's so much story and it's still got another 15 minutes to go.

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Without without trying to. Overanalyze the script and how they play it out in those episodes, because I haven't taken out a pen and pencil and done that. It does, it, it seems like your brain is able to do, to tell itself two completely different stories, but it's got the gaps filled in because the theme is underneath both of them.

You know what I mean? So it's if you're looking over here and you hear somebody talking, and then you look back this way. Okay. And you still hear that same person talking. It's like the story is continuing in your head, but you just don't see them. You're seeing something else. So doing a bunch of Pope in the pool stuff where the visuals aren't necessarily matching up with the conversation that's being had, but the conversation you have having is important.

So you're listening and watching at the same time to two slightly different elements of the story. So it's some complicated stuff. If you really want to get into breaking down, 

Theo Harvey: So kids, pope in the pool is the exposition trick that Hollywood does a lot of times based on the godfather. I think part two where they do a lot of exposition and then while the person is telling you the story, to help you explain what's going on, they actually have the pope take off his pope robes and jump in the pool.

So even though the story is being explained to you so you can come, oh yeah, they did explain that you're distracted by, That's a pope in the pool. What's going on? So yeah, so you're still watching. Your mind is like engaged, but they're just exposition because that's gonna be important to understand the story.

So yeah, I think there was a lot of that going on with that. But yeah, I always think that remember, it was still good at the end. But remember me. No, remember it was I think the high watermark, right? With Gambit spoiler alert. Gambit had an incident happen to him. And that to me, I don't know.

That was the high mark of the series. What'd you think that, that episode? I thought that was just chef's kiss. Everything about that episode worked. 

Mr.Benja: I guess I'll say that's it. In terms of. Emotional impact. Yes. Oh man. 

Theo Harvey: Everything worked on it. What's it what's that leech and Magneto, Magneto and leech looking at him like he's going to save him the whole story.

I even get emotional now thinking about it, man, with what's her name? Rogue. Yeah. She said, I can't feel you right at the end with Gambit and just, and she was touching him and she was sad and just oh man, all of that just worked for me, man. Just thinking about that.

And so just, yeah, it was good show, man. Excellent all around. I'm glad it got his flowers. 

Controversy Surrounding X-Men's Future

Theo Harvey: Controversial, the fact that the guy who created this great show, I think he wrote. Season two. So we'll see some of his Bo DeMaio, he's no longer part of the series and they got a new writer for season three already.

So I'm hoping they can keep the same excitement energy, together. 

Mr.Benja: They got, you tell you, they got the guy from what if, man, what if it sucks? 

Theo Harvey: Hey man, that's sad, man. Just dang. He has some man, but you know what art is fickle business, right? You can have something. Look at the Game of Thrones guys, right?

Everybody loved that to that because they were they ran out of track. They didn't know what to do. So they had to make up stuff. And, that's when you had a coffee, Starbucks coffee on the table. Man, they just rushing to get this thing through with and just it just none of it made sense.

So I think hopefully they can keep it together. But yeah, kudos to X Men, man, getting the Emmy nod. That's the powerful stuff. 

Mr.Benja: That's right. That's right. 

The Russo Brothers Return to Marvel

Mr.Benja: And we got the Russos back. Speaking of Marvel, got the Russos back for the next two Avengers movies. This news just broke. Saw that on the Hollywood Reporter.

Yes, the gentleman who put together the whole Avengers, the spectacle that blew everyone's minds. These directors are coming back to do the next two Avengers movies. And people are starting to Oh, the buzz is starting to get back to over to Marvel. Excited about this, but it makes me wonder a few things.

And one of them is, do they have a choice? Shout out to Roland for asking this in the hero movies group. But it was like, yeah, do they have much of a choice? And I was like 

Theo Harvey: who has, you mean Marvel today? Does Marvel have 

Mr.Benja: much of a choice? Yeah. When you don't know what's now, I was about to say, you don't know what you're doing, but when you don't know you don't know how things are going to turn out and you need a surefire bit.

It always seemed like corporate one on one to just, Hey. That worked last time and we're doing it again. Let's do the same thing we did last time to make sure it 

Theo Harvey: works again. But the Russo's haven't proven themselves to be great filmmakers outside of Marvel either. They had the gray man that was, it was okay as possible the movies they do the the citadel that was that crash and burn.

Mr.Benja: I don't know anything about these. 

Theo Harvey: Exactly. That's the whole point. So it's but man, you're right, man. I was watching, I was going to rewatch Spider Man long way home. So this is before no way home. This is with the Mysterio, right? That's the second one. And man, they were cooking, man.

I had just came out after infinity. Yeah, vengeance. What was it? Which one I was in game after end game. And Tony Stark, did the snap. So he was gone. So Spiderman came out and, Marvel was still cooking, man. They were doing these storytelling things, they, they didn't explain nothing.

They just jumped in there. They had Nick furry talking about stuff and they had, talking about the blip, it was just like so many connections going on. I was like, man, that was just in 2019. That was only five years ago. Marvel was cooking baby. They could do no wrong. They could just whatever.

And I was like, damn, just like that. It's like their hopes are hinging on this movie that comes out next week Deadpool and Wolverine to revive them because it's DOA right now. So I guess it makes sense to bring back the guys who orchestrated this to get people excited again.

I hope so. Obviously the big plans for Kang is probably up in smoke now because of not just, John and majors incident, but also just in general, because. Man sucked. And quantum mania sucked, even though we all had high hopes for that. So now they're trying to reconstruct this, what is this multiversal storyline going to be and how they gonna wrap it up to get to the next version of this, whatever this is, so I hope they can do it.

I don't know. Like I said, I thought they were really good. Did you watch a lot of those? I thought the Captain America ones, be honest with you, the first, the not the first Avenger, but the the one You Not civil war. What was the other one? The winter soldier. That was excellent, man. That works almost like a spy thriller, man.

Just, finding the winter soldier and all that. I thought that was like an excellent piece of filmmaking. And then when they got to India, civil war, that was just the prelude to. In game, and all that. But so I don't know if they have it in them to start this high up again, can they start something small and some kind of quirky if they were doing black American Falcon, captain American four. And then that led up to something. I think that could work. I don't know. Can they start from this top layer down? Does that make sense? So we're just going to jump in and just do. Avengers again, right? I don't know. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. Yeah. 

Marvel's Struggle with Hero Narratives

Mr.Benja: Okay, here's my take on this whole Avengers thing.

The next era, you've got a problem with character and in general, you have what I call the fundamental hero narrative. It's aspirational and it's what all the kids run for. You gotta. In some situation, it's not an ideal situation, some bad crap happens, and then they assign that bad crap to a villain, and the hero goes after the villain and takes him out.

Basic, right? Somehow, they've started to mess that up. And now, when I look at the next set of Avengers, anybody who they might be putting forth, I don't see the narrative. That fundamental hero narrative. I'm like, how are you going to save the world? How are you going to keep the band together? How are you going to save the city?

How are you going to keep your aunt from dying? How are you going to protect your best friend? There's always some fundamental hero narrative where somebody has to step up and do something because something went wrong or something is going to go wrong. And. Say that with Captain America four, we talked about the trailer a little bit.

I like that vibe, but

I'm not feeling that fundamental hero narrative. And I think that's what needs to resonate with a lot of the people to get behind this stuff, no matter what they decide to do. Deadpool Wolverine, Fantastic Four, whatever. I need the fundamental hero narrative. I need Spider Man to save the day.

I need Tony Stark to save the day. I need Thor to save the day. I need captain Marvel to come flying out the clouds, punch Thanos in the mouth, save the day. That's the kind of hero narrative I'm talking about and I don't see it yet, so I'm worried. 

Theo Harvey: You make a good point. I think we're in a situation that hero narrative is.

Is that even resonant anymore? We talked about the election. In some people's mind, the bad guy may win this election season. And can the bad guys win? We just, I just mentioned the boys, right? The whole premise is yeah.

These guys we put up as heroes who have these superpowers they're basically the villains. And so is that the, that's what Marvel's up against. They create this whole world where we understand what he was about. The average layman understands superhero concepts. Now, when we, we grow up, no one knew about this crap.

Just us as nerds and a little, little room together, get, talking about it. But now everybody understands the basic concepts of what it, what, what it means to be a hero and the origin stories of all these guys, because Marvel was so popular, now does that hero narrative still resonate in the society anymore?

That's why I'm questioning. I think he can. And I think that's their struggle, right? 

Deadpool and Wolverine: Marvel's Last Hope?

Theo Harvey: With Marvel is okay, that's why they're using Deadpool and Wolverine. Let's be honest to anti heroes. Very loosely saying that. These guys kill people. Let's be honest. They're not typical. The hero's journey, this, these, and it's a rated R movie.

So this is the movie that's going to save Marvel and bring back the hero narrative. 

Mr.Benja: Okay. So it doesn't matter if they're an anti hero, if they're playing close, no powers or not, the narrative is still the same. You could have the enemy could have the super suit on, Could be whatever, and the hero could just be a regular human, or, you could have the hero be the alien.

The hero could be the foul mouth talking person. I'm just saying the structure of, and when I say hero in this case here's where I should correct that. The protagonist that the viewer puts themselves into. There's a protagonistic force that's you know what, I relate to that character, not necessarily on the demographics, where they come from or anything, but there's that core empathetic theme that I relate to, that protagonistic force that says, I'm that force, I'm going to go save something, I'm going to be the hero in this story.

That's what I'm getting at. Not necessarily spandex. 

Theo Harvey: Okay. But again it's going to be spearheaded by two characters who let's it's hard pressed to figure out what they're fighting for. I can't recall, I think it was his girlfriend Deadpool. What was his angle? What was his hero's journey?

In the first one, the second one, it seems it's all jokey. And then I haven't watched any of these trailers. It's just it's just. Oh, we're going to have, I think the latest one, they're going to have lady Deadpool and they already introduced this. I was like, okay guys, it's just, I don't know.

It's just the weight of this expectation is just I, yeah, look, I got my ticket. I'll be there. What? Wednesday night or whatever. First one to watch it. See was I have a feeling the expectation is so high for this movie. Yeah, they're gonna have some. Some probably some camp will definitely have some cameos and callbacks and all this stuff.

But what's gonna be that through line to get Marvel reignited again, right? And I'm hard pressed. The only thing I'm seeing is if they could potentially say that he's going to save the, this is the multiverse is in danger to collapse on itself. And then he's got to put together something, it's still, 

Mr.Benja: I don't know, we discussed this a while back, but no matter how good it is, Deadpool is still, I was about to say a side 

Theo Harvey: character, he's still Deadpool, 

Mr.Benja: a joke 

Theo Harvey: character, a joke, let's be honest.

He's a joke. He talks to us. Page. He breaks the fourth wall. It's just, if people hated what's that show? She hawk, right? That's what she, they did. That's pretty much Deadpool stick to. So it's if you don't like that, man, so anyway, so like I said, man Kim marble.

So I guess this all kind of started from the Russo brothers coming back to marble. Can it, reignite the Marvel passion and fan base again. And I'm basically saying, I don't know if they can, since they haven't started, with something like Captain America to light that torch and build that character up into something in the storylines a little bit better, because they're going to jump into something that's going to be started from a totally different character, Deadpool potentially.

And I don't know if that. You may need a different type of director for that. That's all I'm saying. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. I could totally see him being a catalyst for something, but like you said, you mentioned the torch. I was just thinking that the concept of the torch bearer, the person that's going to be out front their class, there are many classic stories where it's like, Hey, listen, I was the quote unquote hero, because I got you this far, but I can't be the one to carry you over the finish line.

It's just not in my nature. Yeah. I'm 

Deadpool. 

I can't be the face of Marvel. I'll definitely be the guy out there that everyone talks about, but I can't be the face guy. 

Theo Harvey: He just said he's a Marvel Jesus in the trailers.

Mr.Benja: And now we got TV Jake's, 

Theo Harvey: oh Lord.

Yeah, I don't know. We'll see, man. Are you going to be in that number next week to watch? Deadpool. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, I might do it just because, I don't want anybody to spoil anything for me. Exactly. So that's one of those things. Hey, I've been 

Theo Harvey: avoiding trailers like the plague, man. It's just too much.

I was like, just get this movie out. Stop talking about it. Jeez. Go ahead. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah, we've definitely gotten a shorter attention span for trailers. But speaking of audience versus critics, man, I got through. 

Tyler Perry's Polarizing Productions

Mr.Benja: Tyler Perry in there, man. Tyler. The guy just put out this movie called Divorce in the Black, scored an ever before seen 0 percent goose egg, zilch, nada, nothing, blank, null set, nothing.

And, admittedly, it's not a huge amount of critics running out to watch this movie. But that's the headline I heard. It got 0%. I went and looked into it. It's last I checked, 77 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from the audience. So I was like, Oh, we got a big split here. 74 percent now. Is this how we're going to be in the rest of the for the rest of humanity, audience and critics never to agree.

Theo Harvey: Yeah. And then you also put here is number one on Netflix. And oh no, it's not, it was, it's not on Netflix though. Actually it's on prime. It's on prime video. It's on Amazon. But he, but that's the power Tyler Perry. He's on Amazon, he's on BET and he's on Netflix. So he's, he's getting around, man.

So to his credit my wife watches these and she always complains about it after the fact. I said, why do you keep watching this? It's she said it was terrible. It was the least common denominator. He had another one that came out on Netflix with Kelly Rowland. I can't remember that one, 

Mr.Benja: but, 

BET.

com, they said Netflix, they got it wrong. 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, they're wrong. Go look up Prime. Divorce in the Black. 

Mr.Benja: I'm going to send them an angry letter and have them correct this. All right. 

Theo Harvey: The internet got it wrong, Mr. Benjamin. Oh my God. How are we going to live in society? Something you read on the internet was wrong.

Mr.Benja: Yeah, I'm not gonna give that guy the author any credit there. 

Theo Harvey: All 

Mr.Benja: right Yeah, yes carry on. 

Theo Harvey: So anyway yeah, my wife watched that and the other one she always is disappointed I'm like, why you keep watching these show? I mean I gave up on Tyler Perry a long time ago, but she you know just like Everyone else, you just hope this is the one that's going to change it around for you, Tyler.

And it's never this, it's always the same stupid tropes, a black man beating on his wife or terrible to his wife. It's, just, it's just the same, lowest common denominator is almost like, and I think they'll talk about this last time or maybe I talked about it with someone else, but I said, it's almost if you watch the BET awards, you see all these Female rappers like sexy red or the folks.

She just are these people plants? It's almost like, how does the industries. Yeah. How did they get there? It's they're not rapping. Are they talented? It's I don't know if they are. And it's tyler Perry, you would think he would be talented. He's been doing this for over 20, 30 years or at least.

I have seen, he has not gotten better or even wants to get better. 

Mr.Benja: Dawg you had a, that was a seriously inquisitive face. Like dawg, I really don't know, how 

Theo Harvey: is that? Mr. Benji, you would do something for 30 years, right? You would think. You would try to get better or try to do something different and not saying he hasn't tried to done some things different.

But it's getting to a point where it's he's purposely doing this now because it's I can get this out. People eat, watch it and let me move on to the next thing. But then it's trash. You don't, it's I got to stay once or twice, like every so often here's some trash stuff.

Mr.Benja: Look, I was about to say I went and checked the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and Latoria says from beginning to end, this movie was eyeopening and heartfelt while managing to keep me at the end of my seat, blah, blah, blah, blah. Alicia H says, Oh, wait, that's a bad review. What a POS movie.

Nevermind. But yeah, a lot of these are good. Lakeisha, great movie. If you ever dated a narcissist I thought it was a really good movie. Patricia says it's a Tyler Perry movie. I love this formula. Keep making them. 

Theo Harvey: There you go. Formula. And it's basically the formula is bashing black men. And I hate to say it, but it's true.

It goes back to what's that one? I can't remember, but all the movies back in the day, just black men does wrong, right? Yeah. Black women's, vindicated and stuff like that. And it just goes over the top. And my wife, she watches every one of them. And then she always mad at the first, it's almost like hate watching it at this point.

So I don't know, like I said, it's, It is what it is. I guess people just Tyler Perry gonna do what he does, but it's just almost becoming sickening a little bit that he's just keeps, and guess what? He gets so much money to do this, man. He's matter of fact, he's got so much content now that BET is actually creating a two separate.

BET apps for him. Like he's going to have his two channels for his content now. Isn't that crazy? And he already has deals with Netflix and prime. And let's be honest, you'll probably be able to, once they spin off BET, he's probably going to buy it. So it's I don't know, man it's unfortunate.

I wish, like I said, I wouldn't mind every now and then, he has some stuff that's fine. Look, everybody's got to. Get paid. But it's like consistently is almost to a point where it's dude, and the fact that every one of them says produced, written and directed by Tyler Perry.

So there's no one influencing you or are you not bringing anyone else up to do something different 

Mr.Benja: documentary. 

Theo Harvey: I'm going to watch it. Yeah. Have you seen it? 

Mr.Benja: It's actually worth watching because. It almost shows like this dichotomy that is Tyler Perry. It's he always seems like such a nice, sweet guy, but then you hear stories of man, Tyler Perry don't play.

That comes out a lot in this movie where he's like directing people. Is that okay. You guys stand over there. Okay. Give us 10 minutes. We're going to need to film that over there. Come on, make it quick. And he's just being very calm. Then all of a sudden he like goes to the side of the room. I need you to get over there.

And then everybody starts to see his angry face and then you see people like snapping to it like, Hey, let's get this. And, all of a sudden he takes the camera guy into the hallway. Yeah. So what I'm trying to do is, and dude, it's comedy. Cause this guy is intense, big dude, with this face that looks not completely sane all the time, like he could just snap on you.

I don't know if he's ever actually snapped and physically put hands on anybody on set But he looks like he could. Shout out to Tyler Perry. I love you. Please don't put hands on 

Theo Harvey: me. Yeah, man, it's just interesting to see man, so so yeah, anyway, thanks for sharing that Mr. Benjes, so let's end it on a pretty controversial note.

The Acolyte and Star Wars' Decline

Theo Harvey: So the acolyte, Mr. Benja just finishes run. I know you haven't watched it yet. So maybe we'll do a deep dive when you have watched it or have you watched it? I don't know. I always got to check with you first. 

Mr.Benja: I have not watched it. You can spoil all you want. I have not watched 

Theo Harvey: it. You should watch it, man, just for sake, so we can definitely dive into a very controversial show.

I would just say this, my, my opinion of it I wanted to give it a chance, just like a lot of folks I think did, I think. They tried a lot to do a lot of different things. And since it was set in a time period of Star Wars that we never seen before on movies or TV shows, the higher Republic area of era of us, the Jedi, I think they had a chance to do some unique things.

And I think they missed it a little bit, I think an A for effort, but man, this show got lambasted on the internet, right? I think, that too, right? It just, people were, Didn't even watch it. We're probably just hating on it. And it's just one of those things that's just very interesting to me.

And we talked about this. The fandom is very toxic right now for Star Wars. 

Mr.Benja: Yeah. That one actor said Anakin blew up the death star and everyone was like,

if you want to see a meme, search that on YouTube. 

Theo Harvey: I would definitely search that, just, from a man, la. I gotta say her name, and Manla, is that my, am I saying it right? 

Mr.Benja: I'm on list. 

Theo Harvey: Stenberg. Yeah. It's from her controversy and her Juneteenth dance off to Leslie Headland, the director, being a lesbian and saying, we're going to make it look different to anyway, so it's just a lot of stuff going on with it.

And I like what they're trying to do with it. And so when you watch it, Mr. Benjamin, we'll dive into, what's going on. The concepts of it, but let's talk about what the brass tacks, right? The the ratings, right? How does this compared to the other ratings of star Wars? And so I have some ratings data here from luminate, which is a rating Basically a TV ratings type service. They do a lot of analytics, determine, how many people actually are watching these type of streaming shows, which is hard to get data, as we know. So if you look at the numbers the Mandalorian season three by far was one of the top ones.

And so they said within the first 12 weeks, so that means basically seeing, all three. Was it eight episodes or so of the Mandalorian that came out? We got 18. 2 million views by far, some of the highest views for TV shows on Disney plus at least. After that, the other ones didn't get as many.

High views. So Ashoka cumulative over the first 12 weeks got 11. 3 million views. And then they may have and so that's cumulative. So maybe if the first week they got five many views next week at too many views. So over time, they got 11. 3 million views, but it was like not as big as the Mandalorian.

Obi wan, it came out the gate hard, right? The first It got 19. 3 million views total in the first 12 weeks. But most of that came through the first episode. And that the first one in two days is 7. 5, 2 million views, but it started to decrease over time. And they said by the third episode it dropped off by 37%.

And in the last episode only have about 3. 9. 91 million views. People fell off on OB one, right? We got a big push. I think we all watched the episode, but then think we all were disappointed. So the ratings bear that out. And so it goes to show you that a lot of these Star Wars properties, they start some of the star well, but they just drop off over time.

And when you look at a last but not least, the acolyte, the total view so far, I think they're still looking at it, is only it premiered at 2.94 million views. So that's way less than, Obi Wan, but let's be honest. That's higher. That's the biggest views so far for Disney plus for original TV content.

So even though Star Wars cumulatively is going down with every successive new TV show, it's still some of the highest content that's on Disney plus. 

Disney's Star Wars Dilemma

Theo Harvey: So what do you say to that? Mr. Benji, if you're a business executive, you're like Star Wars is going down, but it's still doing well for us. Okay. What would you do with this?

When it comes to the content that you're putting on Disney plus when it comes to Star Wars type. 

Mr.Benja: So for a Disney play, I think you cannot ever decide that you're just going to ride on your laurels for something this classic, this intense, this core of an, a concept idea, brand machine. I don't think there's, you just have to have a certain level of care made with it.

And. I was talking to a friend. I'm like, yeah, I'm not sure what Disney is doing with now. Dude, you can't say that Disney, whatever I was like, okay, maybe. And then I went to target and I saw. Princess outfits. I saw there's the Disney section in target. Now, I don't know if you've got them all over where you are, but there's like a big Disney section in target.

They're playing all this stuff. They've got all these plushies out there. And it's like the star Wars section used to have pretty much its own aisle. Like a few aisles down now, it's off to the side of the Disney section and it's touching in my target. It's touching the, what do they call it?

The bedding and the sheets. So somebody is searching for bedding and sheets and it's Oh, what's this? Who's this Boba Fett character, it's like it's just a weird setup and it doesn't look like it's being supported at all. And I think a lot of it comes down to Disney, not really backing it and I can.

I don't know if you've seen this article. Let me just put it in the chat right here. Disney's 4 billion gamble on Star Wars still hasn't paid off. People are running the numbers on it. In case that, sent you another one in case that person gives you issues. But yeah, it's it just hasn't paid off for them.

I haven't gone through all those numbers. But, what do you do with that now? 

Theo Harvey: Yeah, look, I don't know. It's sad, but the next movie that's coming out, I'm not sad, but it's this heartening Star Wars is a blockbuster movie franchise. Let's be honest, right? But now it's.

The evolved to a television type franchise and I don't think. It has enough content to justify that right there for Louisiana, the best he can with Shoka stuff, they try to introduce and, or with, the inner machinations of the empire. And now they try to go to this high Republic era, to build that up. But let's be honest it's not like a game of thones where there's like histories of history. So stop making this stuff as they go along. And so now they finally, what been, what, six years since we had The last five will be six years when the next Star Wars movie, which will be the Mandalorian Grogu coming out.

That's crazy, man. This is, we need to have more movies and I don't know. I think it'll do good, but I don't know if it's going to do a billion dollars worth of content. That's the question. Is it going to be a billion dollar franchise put Mandalorian on in the movies? I don't know.

So it's scary time right now to be a Star Wars fan. 

Mr.Benja: To round it out, Disney, I got a free one for you. You need to bring back the quality series. I'm not talking about Andor. I'm talking about make Band of Brothers, except make a band of Wookiees. Put the Wookiees in there. Have a whole show. Something people never seen before all your furry fans are gonna love it.

It'll be great. That's all I got to you 

Theo Harvey: Real quick. Oh that bad batches something like that, but it's you know animated not like the yeah I think so. That's a great point. I think they need to this opportunity here man. We can make Star Wars great again They just got to put their mind behind it.

Concluding Thoughts and Farewell

Theo Harvey: So Anyway, mr. Benji, I think we're gonna end it here everyone Thank you for the time. As always, please subscribe and comment at show versus business on X, YouTube and Instagram. We do read your stuff on YouTube, so check us out when we read your information and your comments. Love them. Listen to iTunes, wherever you listen to podcasts.

And you want to check us out more who we are and what we're about. Go visit our website show versus business. All right, Mr. Benja. Peace.