Can HBO's The Franchise save us from superhero fatigue?

Ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of a superhero movie shoot?

A new series called The Franchise takes you there — with a heavy dose of satire. According to HBO, the series follows an assistant director, played by Himesh Patel, trying to keep the cast and crew of an "unloved franchise movie" on track while they fight for their place in a "savage and unruly" cinematic universe.

The show drops weekly in the coveted Sunday night schedule on Max. It features guest stars like Daniel Brühl, who Marvel fans may remember as antagonist Zemo from Captain America: Civil War, and off-screen talent like Veep creator Armando Iannucci and director Sam Mendes. But will it speak to those who are tired of superheroes, or will it just add to our collective Marvel fatigue?

Today on Commotion, film critic Rad Simonpillai joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to explain why he's glad the show exists.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Can we talk about the origin points of The Franchise for a moment? Because I think we've needed a show that skewers the MCU and skewers the Marvel-ization of cinema for a minute. People have said that The Boys does that. I don't think The Boys does that at all, or not as effectively as this does anyway. So, talk a little bit about the origin points of this show.

Rad: Sam Mendes is a director on the show. He's one of the executive producers. You might remember that Sam Mendes was the caretaker of the Bond franchise for two movies. He made Skyfall, which was really amazing, and Spectre, which kind of fell apart. And so a lot of the grievances that we're feeling in the show, I think are rooted in Sam Mendes's grievances of feeling the corporate franchise branding, dictating what he needs to do with this franchise.

My favorite episode of The Franchise is the third episode, when they're trying to deal with "the woman problem," which is not a new problem. We see how cynical Hollywood does this before. But basically, these guys are trying to virtue signal … so then they put it on the one female producer, who then her solution is give that one female character a bigger stick. But why this episode works so well is because Katherine Waterston plays this woman superhero figure, and she wants out. She doesn't want any of this emotional torment anymore because the toxic fandom that is very real keeps bullying her because all the virtue signaling is put on her shoulders. So the emotions of that performance are what nail that episode.

Elamin: I love that episode you're talking about. But it also references a very specific and real scene in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is at the end of Avengers: Endgame — which I know as a movie you're never going to see. But there is this moment where one of the heroes needs to accomplish a thing, and then Marvel was like, we've got it: we're going to put every woman character into this one shot so you can never criticize us. And you literally have a progression of all the women characters in the movies. The moment is alternatively kind of held up as like, isn't it wonderful that Marvel did this? And also, oh my God, it's so horrible that Marvel would tokenize these characters in this way.

Rad: Has anyone said it's wonderful, sir?

Elamin: Listen, some people have certainly shared that moment being like, oh my God, look at this powerful instance of woman power in Marvel movies.

Rad: They were Marvel bots. That's what they were.

Elamin: I apologize. Of course, that's who they were. But that's, anyways, referencing a very real scene, a very real reaction to that scene. Last word to you, pal. Do you like The Franchise? Is it working for you as a show?

Rad: Look, I appreciate its existence because you can only express this stuff in this guise of fiction, right? If you think about when David Simon wrote The Wire, cops would only tell him about the real stuff that goes down under the veil of fiction, when he wasn't being a journalist. So I appreciate that this show exists on that front. At the same time, this show doesn't have any jokes beyond what we've been making fun of on film Twitter for the last five years. And so I feel like a lot of us who are in these conversations are kind of three steps ahead of the show.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Rad Simonpillai produced by Jess Low.