WARNING: There are spoilers ahead for Rick and Morty Season 8, Episode 7! James Gunn and Zack Snyder finally confronted their differences when it comes to Superman this weekend, as both were guest stars on the new episode of Rick and Morty. Both filmmakers played over-the-top, fictionalized versions of themselves in “Ricker than Fiction” — an episode all about fan expectations and the Hollywood system. While the story revolved mostly around a fictional movie franchise called Maximum Velocitree, the two did crack some jokes about Superman. According to showrunner Scott Marder, Gunn and Snyder were both perfectly willing to poke fun at themselves, and would likely have gone even further if the script had called for it.
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An animated Gunn is ostensibly the “villain” of Rick and Morty this week, as the titular duo is dissatisfied with his work on the Maximum Velocitree franchise. They confront him at the Warner Bros. lot, where we see Gunn encounter Snyder in the cafeteria. Even Snyder’s appearance is a gag — he’s depicted with a cartoonishly muscular physique, and he carries a tray with nothing but protein powder on it.
“Saw your latest cut of Superman,” Snyder says to Gunn in this scene, “and a word of advice: he’s the ‘Man of Steel,’ not the ‘Man of Conversation.’ Do more shots of him punching! And here’s a secret move, start the punch at regular speed, and then you can ramp it down.” Gunn responds: “It’s not a f—ing secret!”
Funny as they are, mentions of Superman are more or less tangential in this episode. The story is more broad than that — Maximum Velocitree is a loose parody of both the Transformers and Fast & Furious franchises, but Rick and Morty’s plot could be applied to just about any series in geek culture. On top of that, the show pulls no punches on its own parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and by extension the whole corporate studio system. Meanwhile, Rick’s invention, the “Movie-lizer,” appears to be a stand-in for generative A.I. software and other filmmaking shortcuts.
On a more personal level, Marder told Variety that this concept was inspired by fans’ complaints about Rick and Morty itself. “You’re always hearing how everyone could do it better and how it seems so easy,” he said. “Rick and Morty think they can make a better movie. They’re given the keys to the kingdom. And it’s not as easy as it seems. Writing is really hard. It’s a lot easier to sit on your couch and nitpick something than it is to do the heavy lifting of doing it yourself. So that was all the stuff that we tried to do in a really fun, quick, kinetic way in this episode, without being too up on a soapbox.”
Marder also confirmed that Gunn and Snyder came to the Rick and Morty recording studio together, and even took a selfie there which went viral on social media. Marder suspects they stopped by on the very day Gunn finished principal photography on Superman. Both he and Snyder expressed their love for the animated series, and Snyder even offered to appear on the show again anytime.
Rick and Morty Season 8 has three more episodes to go, premiering on Sundays at 11 p.m. ET on Adult Swim. Superman hits theaters on July 11th.
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
