#15: In this episode, Ariel and Stef go back to the movie theaters and watch the long-awaited Black Widow film, starring Scarlett Johansson. They dive into their very different theater experiences, analyze how feminism is explored in the newest Marvel cinematic entry, and the new era for The Avengers.

Read the blog post for this episode for additional references and resources.

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Stefanie Bautista 0:11
Hello, everybody, welcome to the Happiest Pod On Earth. I’m Stefanie.

Ariel Landrum 0:15
And I’m Ariel. And we’re Disney fans. But we’re really so much more than that.

Stefanie Bautista 0:19
Yep. I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help my students grow and learn about themselves and the world around them.

Ariel Landrum 0:25
And as for myself, I’m a licensed therapist who uses clients passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and obtain mental wellness.

Stefanie Bautista 0:33
Happiest Pod is a place where we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens. Why do we do this? Because just like you we are more than just fans, we expect more from the mediums that we consume every day.

Ariel Landrum 0:43
So Stef… What Disney medium or experience are we dissecting today?

Stefanie Bautista 0:51
Today we are talking about Black Widow.

Ariel Landrum 0:54
What!?

Stefanie Bautista 0:54
The movie that we have been waiting for for so so long.

I feel like…

Ariel Landrum 1:00
So long.

Stefanie Bautista 1:01
Not only because the pandemic made it longer, I feel like we’ve been waiting for this for what is it more than a decade now? Marvel celebrated its 10 year when again? Like a year ago?

Ariel Landrum 1:12
Yeah…

Two years ago?

At least that that long.

Stefanie Bautista 1:16
Yeah. I mean, when they took that picture, Scarlett Johansson had brown hair.

Ariel Landrum 1:22
Yes. Yes.

Stefanie Bautista 1:23
She had long brown hair. So definitely not Endgame. She didn’t have the short blonde bob right?

Ariel Landrum 1:31
No.

Stefanie Bautista 1:31
She had. I mean, she changes her hair all the time. But I don’t remember seeing that after or before I saw the 10 year anniversary. But Black Widow back to the movies, Marvel really stated that this was their big return to the movies. And how did you feel about that?

Ariel Landrum 1:50
Yeah, I was actually really excited. I genuinely miss our theater experiences. Well, in the before times…

Stefanie Bautista 2:00
Yeah. Yes.

Ariel Landrum 2:01
We used to get those midnight showings, we would we would stay up late, we would stay all the way to the end credits to make sure we got every scene that they put in there and every Easter Egg and I often I would rent an entire row. And so it was it was a gang of us. Like we had we had the squad 20, 30 seats.

Stefanie Bautista 2:21
Deep.

Ariel Landrum 2:22
It was great.

Stefanie Bautista 2:23
We would hang out beforehand, have dinner and drinks. Pregame. Kind of like we were tailgating for a game or you know, pre gaming before a concert, we treated it exactly like that. So I’m sure many of you guys did the same thing. Preparing for all of these movie releases these Marvel releases that were so important to us. Are so important to us.

Ariel Landrum 2:43
Yeah, yeah. So it’s so it was, it was nice to sort of have that back, but not really. And since since I lost I last saw this movie versus like what’s happening now. The LA has mask orders again.

Stefanie Bautista 2:59
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 3:00
And wearing them inside. We were that delta variant is no joke.

Stefanie Bautista 3:05
Yep. It’s no joke.

Ariel Landrum 3:05
So this was a pause in the pandemic that I got to embrace.

Stefanie Bautista 3:10
It was a hard pause. A positive that was gonna be a longer pause. But you know, we we had a little too much hope for that. But I know both Ariel and I saw Black the Black Widow in theaters, but we sought separately due to our schedules and everything else that’s going on in our lives. So we would like to share with you guys are 2 very different experiences, apparently, of going back to the movies, because, I mean, this was not my first movie back in the theaters. Although this is my first large movie back without there being many restrictions. Was it the same for you, Ariel?

Ariel Landrum 3:48
So this is my This was my first movie back during the pandemic. I did go see the Trolls movie? I hadn’t even seen the first one. But it was playing at an outdoor movie theater. So I saw it in my car.

Stefanie Bautista 4:02
Oh, right. Yeah, yes.

Ariel Landrum 4:03
Um, other than that, I had not stepped foot in a movie theater the entire shutdown.

Stefanie Bautista 4:09
Yeah, I went to see a drive-thru movie too. I saw. I’m forgetting the name of it. It’s the one with Shia Labeouf and he’s like a cholo?

Ariel Landrum 4:18
Oh, yeah. I don’t remember the name of that.

Stefanie Bautista 4:21
No, it’s not the negotiator. It’s something like that.

Ariel Landrum 4:26
Help us Dr. Google.

Stefanie Bautista 4:27
Yeah, help us doctor… And I saw it at Mission Tiki just like you did.

Ariel Landrum 4:31
Yeah MIssion Tiki.

Stefanie Bautista 4:31
You went to Mission Tiki. Yeah, pretty far away. And it was technically the first ever movie my son went to as like a 6 month old. Which is really funny. It was not very memorable. Shia Labeouf was cool. And I’m glad that he had a lot of dedication to this movie, but it was it was not it y’all. Definitely not my first movie back. My first movie back was Demon Slayer. And for all you anime fans out there, that was a fantastic movie to see in theaters especially for it being an empty theater at the time. But Black Widow was definitely my first big Marvel movie release full capacity theater. Back to the movies and yeah, I saw it at Burbank 16 which is a very popular place in LA to watch movies. It’s a huge cineplex. Very central to a lot of people who live in LA Valley area, and plenty of parking and we would normally see our Avengers movies all of our Iron Man’s, Captain America’s, Batman vs. Superman, all of our real big comic book theaters. If we couldn’t dish out the money to go see it at Arclight and the Cinerama, we would go to Burbank because a little bit more affordable and it was part of the AMC A List that many of us were a part of.

Ariel Landrum 5:45
And they had Dolby so…

Stefanie Bautista 5:47
They have Dolby

Ariel Landrum 5:47
You’re not missing out too much.

Stefanie Bautista 5:48
Yeah.

Ariel Landrum 5:49
And and now everywhere you choose seats, so…

Stefanie Bautista 5:53
Yes.

Ariel Landrum 5:53
That was that was we… We used to go see it at the AMC that was the one in Winnetka maybe?

Stefanie Bautista 5:59
Oh my gosh, yes. Ariel would drag us all the way over there way out yonder in the deep Valley.

Ariel Landrum 6:05
Because of the prizes and the fact that I could get tickets.

Stefanie Bautista 6:08
Yes, but we could have done the same thing at Burbank, which we started to do. So

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