ShadowsBeneathTheLight

Remember Mortynight Run where Jerry gets left in a Jerry Daycare with a ton of other Jerries. Well this felt like an overdue follow up to that where now Jerry gets to explore those other universes that are missing their Jerry. This episode was fun, easy going, and but also showcased the personal growth Jerry has made over the years. This episode was also the right balance of gags while having a self contained story. We see brief snippets of crazy alternate Rick N Morty universes as Jerry hops around, pausing on each just long that they never overstay their welcome or tire out their gag. It was nice seeing Jerry finally live a little after all the hard work he never does.

I was not a fan of Snyder's take on a dark, gritty superman that snapped necks, so I was hoping with Gunn we'd get a more a hopeful, charismatic Superman. But instead we just get a broken, crybaby Superman. Superman spends almost the entire movie either getting upset, crying (a lot of people cry in this film...) or just getting the literal S kicked out of him. That's not Superman. That's Superbaby.

I thought the acting was pretty good from David Cornswet. He could definitely be a great Superman if the writing allowed for a great Superman to exist. Likewise we good performances from Louis Lane (Rachel is 1000x better than Amy Adams) and Lex (Nick Holt also 1000x better than Jessie Eisenberg), but again the movie just did not allow for proper development of these characters. Which leads to my next problem: the bloat.

The film tries to cram in so much stuff in order to set up its new DC universe that it becomes a mess. People wanted a Superman movie, not a DC heroes simulator. And none of these heroes respect Superman which is just... why? It's Superman. He's supposed to be the leader of the Justice League, the Boy Scout, DC's Flagship character every reader knows and every hero looks up to. Why did Gunn feel the need to make Superman the joke of his own movie? I suspect he tried to correct from Snyders uber serious and dark tone (again which I did not like) but ended up over correcting to where Superman just becomes ridiculous and nobody takes seriously. I walked away liking Mr. Terrific more in a Superman movie than I did Superman. That shouldn't happen.

It's not a bad film, but it's not a good film either. It's mid with great acting but really hampered by poor writing/character decisions.

Go figure they'd do a whole episode about blaming the fans when creators make something terrible. I have a feeling this was the writers lashing out because some episodes have been pretty bad this season, but to make it even more cringe they bring in James Gunn. Groan. Nobody ever said making a movie was easy. Obviously it's hard and very stressful. But that shouldn't be an excuse for ruining a popular character or making something terrible, and certainly should not be an excuse to attack the audience because they didn't like what you made. That's like a chef serving you a raw chicken and then getting mad that the customers won't eat it.

You know what made Rick n Morty great? They made statements about society without directly bringing in current pop culture Twitter drama. But this legit felt like a really lame episode of SNL with James Gunn. I have no grievance with Gunn nor with Snyder, but ask yourself this, when has Rick n Morty ever done an episode all about a mainstream celeb complaining about their present day drama? Never.

A guest cameo or VA should be creative and fun where it's a total surprise and treat for the audience, not a direct mirror of that guest's real world problems and used solely to literally lash out at the audience while simultaneously trying to promote their new movie dropping next week. Now I'm curious if Adult Swim reached out to Gunn or if it was actually Gunn who reached out to AS and paid for them to make this episode just for him as a weird marketing strategy.