With a new Supergirl in theaters, the revisionist history is coming, and so is the inevitable claim that the 1984 Helen Slater film was secretly great all along. Adam watched it the night after the new release to head that off. Let's look at why the original is a one-star mess of missing urgency and plot-convenience, how its passive, paragon-of-femininity Kara has no agency in her own story, and why the new film's jaded, active Kara is a vastly improved character by comparison. Plus: why the Star Wars prequel rehabilitation probably won't happen here.

Adam revisits Captain America: Civil War as part of the Countdown to Doomsday and looks at why the movie was such an important turning point for the MCU. The episode covers how Civil War steadied Marvel after a bumpy Phase Two, introduced Black Panther and Spider-Man without derailing the story, and created the fracture that made Infinity War and Endgame possible. Adam also digs into the wider 2016 context, including the way Civil War arrived alongside Batman v Superman and helped turn Marvel vs. DC from normal franchise debate into a larger culture-war proxy fight. From the airport battle to the rise of Snyderverse discourse, this episode uses Civil War to unpack how superhero movies became more than just superhero movies.

Adam revisits James Gunn’s Superman one year after its release and looks at how it holds up as DC heads toward Supergirl. We discuss why the movie’s relentlessly positive take on Superman works, why the character needed to be rebuilt before being deconstructed, and how David Corenswet’s Superman fits into a modern, complicated world without losing the “big blue boy scout” core. Adam also talks through the film’s weaker third act, the Superman clone problem, the hypno-glasses explanation, and the standout Mr. Terrific sequence. From there, the discussion shifts to DC Studios’ bigger issue: the messy selective continuity left behind by The Suicide Squad, Peacemaker, Amanda Waller, Rick Flag, Harley Quinn, and the old DCEU baggage James Gunn’s reboot still has not fully escaped.

The countdown closes out Phase Two with the unlikeliest success in the run. Adam makes the case that Ant-Man works for the same reason the best MCU films always do, it follows Stan Lee's old rule and emphasizes the human, grounding a shrinking-suit heist in a father trying to do right by his daughter. Along the way: the eight-year Edgar Wright saga and the Peyton Reed handoff, the Quantum Realm and Sokovia Accords groundwork that paid off all the way through Endgame, and why Quantumania forgot everything this movie understood. A definitive Phase Two ranking and a full 5 out of 5. Next week: Civil War.

Adam revisits Lightyear, the 2022 prequel built on a premise it never delivers: that this was the movie a kid in 1995 fell in love with. A look at why the film feels nothing like a mid-90s kids' movie, how Buzz Lightyear of Star Command did the job better twenty years earlier, the Sox problem, and what Lightyear's absence from the Toy Story 5 trailer tells you. Plus the corporate context of the Investor Day that birthed it. As a standalone sci-fi it's a 3 or a 4, but chained to Toy Story, it's a 2 out of 5.

The countdown reaches the most divisive Avengers title. Adam makes the case that Avengers: Age of Ultron isn't a bad movie so much as a conflicted one, the first Marvel tentpole that put serving the wider universe ahead of being its own thing. Along the way: the tonal whiplash that kills every death scene, the Whedon dialogue problem, and a deep dive into how the Agents of SHIELD and Inhumans experiment, a Perlmutter mandate born of X-Men envy, was the original dry run for the "homework" problem that would later sink the Multiverse Saga. A solid but bottom-of-the-Avengers 4 out of 5. Next week: Civil War.

Two stories, one episode. First let's revisit Toy Story 4 seven years on, the weakest and least memorable entry in the series, and argue its real significance is strategic rather than narrative: this is the film where Pixar figured out it could mandate a sequel and have it work, the opening move in the inoffensive Pixar hit era. Then we turn to this week's box office, where an A24 horror movie made for ten million beat a four-billion-dollar Star Wars brand, Mandalorian and Grogu cratered seventy percent in its second weekend, and Masters of the Universe opened soft. I break down why creator-driven IP is eating corporate IP transplants alive, what the coming rush on YouTube properties will get wrong, and why the superhero movie is on life support rather than dead.

Succession Planning is available for pre-order wherever you get your e-books: https://books2read.com/u/bzE9g9

Another month down, another slot in the Best of the Year Tournament to be awarded. Who is going to take the spot? The Devil Wears Prada 2 or The Mandalorian and Grogu?