Sidekicked Podcast Vincent Powell and David Gimnich

Awesome show. Replicated a comic book store feel without all the BO and uncomfortable stares. I hope I’m right. Seriously, these guys are awesome at their podcast and have a diverse voice in the podcast world.

Amongst the cluttered field of geek-centric podcasts, here’s yet another one run by a couple of grown men angrily ranting like man-children the whole time. Listeners turned off by this brand of nerd rage expelled from the mouths of smug self-appointed experts, nitpicking every detail of every movie like perpetually unsatisfied brats, operating under the impression that they are more hilarious than they really are, will likely find this show to be a poor effort at best and a waste of time at least.

The two hosts, Powell & Gimnich, come off as the worst kind of spoiled fanboys, whiny and impossible to satisfy, evidenced by their nonstop complaining about pretty much everything, and are generally a pain to listen to, immaturely dropping f-bombs every few words or so. They spend entire episodes trashing movies they admit they didn't even watch.

Worst of all, this show regularly ventures into blatantly offensive territory. For instance, in their Rogue One review, one of these guys honestly rants against the inclusion of Asian actors. In his own words, "it just didn't bode with" him to hear "Asian accents in a f**cking space movie.” How disgustingly racist can you get? That remark alone is more than enough to warrant this show a 1-star rating. Apparently Asian accents in a space setting are unacceptable; but all the American, British, or countless other alien accents spoken throughout the Star Wars movies are not problem.

There’s a repeated pattern throughout the show of expressing praise for simple fluff entertainment and disdain for the movies that aim for complexity and maturity, as if aspiring towards something greater than spoonfed shallow simplicity is a bad thing. They constantly launch snobby attacks on movies that try to achieve greater levels of detail, deeper themes, and extensive backstory. The repeatedly say “Who gives a sh*t?” on things such as complicated details, origin stories, motivations, and so on.

They don’t seem particularly knowledgeable of all things outside of comic book culture either, putting their ignorance of all things on full display over and over on all topics of discussion, such by referring to Donald Trump’s wife as “Ivanka,” not to be ironic, but apparently because they honestly don’t know any better. They don't know what "titular" means. They claim that Siskel & Ebert are still alive. And what on Earth are “cinnamon seeds on hamburgers?” Pretty sure the correct term is “sesame seeds.”

Way too many contradictions, hypocrisies, falsehoods, & inaccuracies to list them all. Here's just a few:

They spout out baffling, unsupported viewpoints, such as “Historically, Superman has not been that successful of a character,” without any hint of irony.

They criticized Batman for shooting people with a shotgun in Batman V Superman. No such thing ever happened in the movie.

They criticized how stupid it was that one character in Rogue One couldn’t run to escape an explosion, even though the movie clearly established that he had mechanical legs and could barely walk.

They loved one of Black Panther’s lines in Capt America: Civil War, quoted as “Once I understand my enemy, they become my friend.” They went on and on about the brilliance and deep meaning of this line. But... just one problem: Black Panther never said any such line in the movie.

They rant about being sick and tired of martial arts fight scenes in movies... All right, seriously, who complains about martial arts scenes?

They love that so many Avengers, such as Falcon and War Machine, are military trained, instead of simply being some unqualified nobodies who simply stumble upon their powers; but to illustrate this point, they used Green Lantern as an example of simply some random guy who found a power ring, apparently unaware that that most versions of Green Lantern are, in fact, military trained characters.

They blurt out unsubstantiated factoids such as the Christopher Nolan Batman tends to be the version of Batman that “most people remember”...Most people? Why are you trying to speak for most people? Where’s the evidence or justification for such claims?

They accuse Suicide Squad’s opening montage as being “100% stolen from Guardians of the Galaxy.” What?? I've seen both movies many times, but I've no idea what montage they're talking about in either movie.

They devoted a major chunk of their Age of Ultron review to praising Hawkeye’s inclusion among the Avengers, gleefully gushing about how they love that he has no superpowers. But then in their Suicide Squad review, they attack the movie for including non-super powered members on the team, as if it makes no sense, blatantly contradicting themselves.

They describe the DCEU movies (which they refer to as the “DC Sh*t-verse”) as “F minus” failures that are “hemorrhaging money” and need to be rebooted. How dumb can you get? Opinions are subjective, so you can freely hate whatever movies you want, but you don’t get to invent your own reality where your personal opinions overrule the facts. The DCEU has comfortably earned $3 billion dollars in its first four movies alone. Each movie opened above $100 million opening weekend. Each were in the top 10 highest grossing films for their release years. If you’re going to act like these movies are flops, because you personally don’t like them, that’s self-delusional.

They denounced the sexualization of the movie version of Harley Quinn, claiming that her character was “never sexualized” in the cartoon. Another weak attempt at smearing the modern DC movies. Harley Quinn is a character who’s *always* been portrayed as sexy, even back in the cartoons, e.g., once in the old cartoon she was shown dressed in lingerie telling Joker “Don’t you wanna rev up your Harley?”

And what’s up with Powell’s weird pronunciation of “Suicide Squad?” It’s Suicide Squad, not “Shrew Site Squad.”

Weirdest of all, they refer to their listeners as “viewers,” despite this being an audio podcast

Always learn new comic stuff from the episodes and enjoy the commentary. You are both Nerd Jesus.