DAC Episode 406 - Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Is Marvel back in 2026? Was it back in mid-2025, when Fantastic Four: First Steps hit theatres? If it’s back, where did it go? Under the ocean with the corpse of the Celestial from The Eternals? Off in some other numbered dimension of the multiverse? Is there, as we speak, another universe in which Marvel makes a blockbuster every other week, to such acclaim that society has reorganized itself completely around watching superheroes on giant screens? In other words, is there a 2019-iverse, forever suspended at the peak of Marvel popularity?

These questions do not get answered in Adam and Aidan’s discussion of 2025’s Fantastic Four. Mostly we just talk about how cool Ben Grimm and Sue Storm are. Listen below or follow us on your podcaster of choice!

DAC Episode 405 - The Stuff (1985)

nom nom nom

Sometimes you come up with a pitch-perfect satire of consumerism. Then you put Michael Moriarty in the lead role and give him a toupee. Life’s funny that way. Listen below as we wade through The Stuff, or find us on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 404 - Superman (2025)

a live dog with a live dog sidekick.

Joining us! On this week’s podcast! Is comics editor and writer D.J.! Kirkbride! D.J., our resident Superman co-authority (along with Adam) is following up on his triumphant appearance on our Superman (1978) episode. What did we think of James Gunn’s take on the big blue palooka? Find out by listening below, or on your podcaster of choice.

DAC Episode 403 - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S3

feels like a dead lion trying desperately to revive itself here.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 came and went (much like Captain Batel, heyyy-yo), leaving a lot of puzzled Trek fans in its wake. Holodeck murder mysteries? Zombie Klingons or something? Statue’d-up Marie? Sure, whatever.

Adam and Aidan discuss the third season of ST:SNW, ruminating on the highs and lows of this entertaining but messy season (a casualty of the WGA strikes), ranking the episodes and coming to a satisfying conclusion that in no way involves Melanie Scrofano being a statue. Listen below or find us on your podsculptor of choice!

DAC Episode 402 - Crank 2: High Voltage (2009)

this man will never be a dead lion.

What do you do after you make a movie about a man who needs constant jolts of adrenaline to keep his heart beating? You, uh… steal his heart and replace it with an artificial model that needs constant jolts of current to keep it beating? Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Crank 2 (or Crank: High Voltage, or maybe Crank 2: High Voltage) can’t quite match the impact that Crank had in 2006, but Neveldine and Taylor can’t be accused of phoning in the constantly escalating stakes. Most of the moments from the first movie recur, but with ever-greater levels of absurdity. Does Chev Chelios survive this installment? Find out below or listen to us on your podspreader of choice.

DAC Episode 401 - Crank (2006)

a live dog would like a word with you.

Many people claim that the cinema of 2007, with its countries not intended for seniors and forecasts of blood like satanic weathermen, is the peak year for 21st century cinema. Of course, those snobby cineastes fail to account for the previous year, which produced what may be the purest jolt of adrenaline ever committed to movie screens. I’m talking about Crank, the Neveldine and Taylor joint that proved movies don’t need high art, or logic, or coherence. They just need an outlandish visual style, a cameo from Maynard Keenan, and a dozen cameras following an absolutely unhinged Jason Statham as he tears his way through Los Angeles. The premise? Keep your adrenaline pumping or die. It’s Speed on speed. It’s a garbage film made by garbage minds, an endless spewing of high-velocity trash aimed right at our limbic system. Its like will not be seen again. Needless to say, it’s a personal favourite here at the Destroy All Culture compound.

Woo! That was a lot. Listen below to our perfect opinions or find us on your garbage centrifuge (podcasting app) of choice.

DAC Episode 400 - A Life Spent Watching Movies

Welcome friends (and enemies! We know you’re out there) to Episode 400 of Destroy All Culture. For this episode, we forgo our usual focus on a single movie to talk about our history with movies and media in general, from Star Wars and Wizard of Oz to the beclowned state of the current blockbuster. We try - oh, how we try - to sum up a life lived immersed in film, and we wonder what makes a great movie. Where do we split the difference between Andrei Rublev and Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter? And now that I write those words, I wish we’d answered that specific question. But you get the idea! Listen below or find us on your pod circulator of choice.

DAC Episode 399 - Miller's Crossing (1990)

when he’s raised hell you’ll know it, sister.

If you’ve listened to our previous episode on Rian Johnson’s Brick, you’ll already be aware of thematic and artistic touchpoints between Brick’s highschoolers-in-a-Hammett-novel premise and Miller’s Crossing, which could fairly be described as the Coen Brothers’ attempt at a Hammett pastiche.

The question is, how do you like your pastiche? Period-appropriate or -agnostic? Quietly sincere or extremely arch? Hey, do you want to see Sam Raimi get shot at? Whatever direction your tastes may lean, you could do worse than spend time with Adam and Aidan as they take Miller’s Crossing out for a walk in the woods. Listen below or find us your podplayer of choice.

DAC Episode 398 - Brick (2005)

he wants to see the ‘pin.

A cynical teenager in scuffed shoes gets a mysterious phone call. An enigmatic message is left in a locker. A blonde girl lies dead in a culvert. Oh, and everyone talks in the argot of a ‘40s noir film. After all, doesn’t high school feel like an unending crime scene for a monstrous act that is always about to happen?

Brick! It’s the hidden foundational text of Destroy All Culture! It’s the invisible yardstick by which all other movies on this podcast are measured! It’s also a pretty good film. Check it out some time. And then come back here and listen to Adam and Aidan talk about it.

DAC Episode 397 - May (2002)

a live dog beset by dead lion (maternal superego located in a doll).

It seems bizarre that it’s taken so long for this podcast to get around to Lucky McKee’s May, the 2002 cult favourite about a young woman who, faced with relentless imperfection in the world around her, decides to make something whole and perfect. Results are mixed. Are Adam and Aidan mixed on May? Listen below to find out, or come visit us on your podcaster of choice, murder us and sew us together into your perfect companion! We’re not busy.

DAC Episode 396 - White Nights (1985)

White Nights! The nights are white. The country is red. The politics are red, white and blue. The lives are separate and ongoing. The saying is you and me. The pirouettes are plentiful (11 in total). The Baryshnikov is Mikhail, the Hines is Gregory. The meet is cute. The couple is odd. The dances are amazing. The music is kind of lousy, tbh.

The Russian is restless. The American is regretful. The Soviets are sneaky. The Americans are cynical. The Mirren is magnificent. The Rossellini is righteous. The escape is tension-free. The resolution is strange. The picture could be better.

DAC Episode 395 - Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

sky dog and the lion of tomorrow

When Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow came out in 2004, much was made of the fact that director Kerry Conran had landed the job on the strength of a short film painstakingly made on his computer. The feature length film, starring a staggeringly audience-enticing combo of Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie, arrived on a wave of hype and positive reviews (Roger Ebert loved it) that few movies could reasonably bear.

We may not have known it in 2004, but Sky Captain does grant a vision of the future - not one of mid-century retrofuturism with a blast of steampunk and a sprig of Hollow Earth-style pulp - but a world of green screens and artificial backgrounds. The Star Wars prequels had already demonstrated what it looked like when actors interfaced with tennis balls on empty, green-draped sets (like crap), but Sky Captain threw its A-list stars into a sepia-toned digital landscape and let them suffer there.

Their suffering is not completely fruitless. Jolie is particularly fun as the crisply accented Frankie, and Paltrow and Law do a good job of delivering some screwball banter amidst the giant robots and dinosaurs. The weak spot here is Conran, who is incapable of maintaining the tone or coaxing a grounded reality out of the digital backlot. It’s probably too much to ask of a first-time director, no matter how talented.

But what did Adam and Aidan think? Find out below or listen on your podcatcher of choice.

DAC Episode 394 - Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

the definition of live dogs.

DAC Episode 393 (Valmerpalooza #4) - Tombstone (1993)

you know, i’m something of a huckleberry myself.

Sometimes a great performance turns an average movie into a classic. It’s hard to imagine Tombstone without Kilmer’s grand and tragic take on Doc Holliday, a man whose vanity seems to be consuming him from the inside throughout the film. Tombstone may be Kilmer’s crowning achievement. Listen to us talk about it below, or find us on your podhuckleberry of choice.

DAC Episode 392 - Road House (1989)

you know what, pain actually does hurt. Unless you’re dalton.

Never mind the remakes, here’s the original in all its glory. Adam and Aidan get a little rapturous about the bizarre Road House world of bar bouncers and the cooler so legendary that his name evokes hushed awe. A dirtbag John Wick. A bar brawl bodhisattva. A small town saviour. A man who really doesn’t want to rip your throat out, but he will if he has to. The name… is Dalton. Listen below or find us on your podthing of choice.

DAC Episode 391 - Purple Rain (1984)

dig if you will this picture.

Prince Rogers Nelson was a brilliant musician, a stylish-as-hell dresser and a singular person. He was not a great filmmaker or screen presence, but Purple Rain mostly functions as a concert film with a plot and some conflict strung between the numbers. And for that alone, this one is worth your time. Listen to Adam and Aidan make sense of the whole thing below, or find us on your purple podcycle of choice.

DAC Episode 390 (Valmerpalooza #3) - Willow (1988)

If you sit down and watch a run of Val Kilmer movies, eventually you will discover a sub-sub-genre that I call In It for the Val - that is, functional and mediocre movies that are only elevated by the presence of a Val Kilmer performance. Is Willow one of those movies?

Ha ha, yes. Despite the craft (especially the Phil Tippett creature animations), George Lucas’ script feels like a light scrubbing of Star Wars for a fresh fantasy setting. The best non-animated thing in the movie is Val Kilmer as Madmartigan, grinning and capering and winking his way through the story like a Han Solo with a sword. If you want to hear our complaints in detail, listen below or find us on your podeater of choice.

DAC Episode 389 (Valmerpalooza #2) - Real Genius (1985)

ADAM: Is there a movie more important to the history of cinema and my psyche than Real Genius?

AIDAN: Real Genius is a hall of mirrors in which a Conradian secret sharer may be glimpsed flashing through the ‘80s-era staple of the raunchy campus comedy, a proto-Ferris Bueller, and an advertisement for popcorn.

ADAM: Val Kilmer is a dancing god among men who should have shown up in White Nights alongside Nureyev and Hines. Imagine White Nights crossed with Top Secret.

AIDAN: Patti D’Arbanville wore overalls and a Clara Bow bob, spitting lines like a screwball heroine, and my 14 year old brain melted on the spot.

ADAM: Did you know Dean Devlin shows up in this movie?

AIDAN: Did he also appear in an episode of The Equalizer or Spencer: For Hire?

ADAM: What? No.

AIDAN: I’ll check.

ADAM: Stop that nonsense right fucking now.

AIDAN: While I’m doing that, you should tell people to listen to our episode of Real Genius below or find us wherever they get their podcasts. Dean Devlin did not appear in any episodes of The Equalizer, by the way.

ADAM: As god is my witness, one day I will fill your house with popcorn.

Valmerpalooza #1 - Top Secret! (1984)

This is the first installment of our series of episodes on the films of Val Kilmer. In accordance with Mr. Kilmer’s final wishes, we are calling the series Valmerpalooza.

In the wake of World War II, George Orwell wrote a searing novel of government repression and propaganda called Nineteen Eighty Four, in which the ideological polarity of the post-war order was satirized and refigured as a world of constant surveillance and terrible entertainment. Orwell was spot-on in some of his predictions - but crucially, he failed to predict 1984’s Top Secret!

What would Orwell have said if he had lived to watch this madcap comedy packed chockablock with sight gags and Cold War larks? Probably that it was occasionally inspired but largely silly and not particularly memorable, save a few set pieces and a wonderful performance from Val Kilmer. One can picture him turning to a stranger in a darkened cinema to say “that Kilmer fellow, he brings a surprising grace and physicality to the role. He really carries this film. This is a man who would have smirked at Big Brother and danced his way out of the Ministry of Truth.”

Anyway, why don’t you give a listen to Adam and Aidan’s discussion of Top Secret!? We do not mention George Orwell.

DAC Episode 387 - Superman (1978)

proof that superman has a special interest in railroads.

Dah-da-da-dah, Su-per-man
Dah-da-da-dah, SUPERMAN

For this week’s Destroy All Culture, we invite D.J. Kirkbride, late of our Robot Jox episode, to talk about Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman. Our hot take of a conclusion: this is a pretty good movie, despite how strangely it’s structured and how it whips back and forth across tones and genres. Listen below or find us your podcaster of choice! Even if you have to reverse the Earth’s rotation to do it.