Revenge of the 90s: A Movie Podcast
Sep 1, 2026 · 53 min · 10 segments
Dick Tracy is Warren Beatty's lifelong obsession, and though he maintains a death grip on the rights to the character to this day, he did give us one of the most visually striking comic-book movies…
You read about the production of this movie, which hilariously was given, I think, $25 million or something like that.
So it's like a $100 million budget in 1990, which might as well be Avengers Doomsday budget.
I don't know why they assumed the Dick Tracy movie would be a global phenomenon on par with Batman.
the matte paintings that they had for 150 matte paintings maybe of the cityscapes and all the design of the city just some nondescript type of noir city and then the color schemes which was like a it was like seven distinct colors that were basically the colors used during the printing Sunday pages back in the day when they would only have very limited colors that they could utilize the movie basically mimicked those types of colors the really bold green pink red the colors that pop and so much care was given to that and then the makeup and the costumes and the music and insane stuff like i said at the beginning it's a pop art masterpiece it's so beautiful to look at it's like like i really appreciate it and this is like one of the things that makes film so great as a medium is it just doesn't have to be a great movie i don't have to look at it and say oh the plot was like kind of ridiculous or the character sort of sucked or whatever you want to say which I have plenty of gripes about maybe the script and like the characters in it.
And even like Dick Tracy, but in general, but damn, if it's not a great movie to look at and fun to watch, it doesn't have to.
I think so many times now today we get, we box ourselves in with criticism and, About like plot points and like really trivial bullshit when sometimes the movie just operates on the vibe of being cool.
And basically said the same thing is that one of Scorsese's thing is like you don't have to... always pay such close attention to the plot itself and if you can just do that with Dick Tracy you're gonna have a great time
yeah And I think it's okay to have movies like this where they're just visually cool and you're creating this super special visual medium.
You read about the production of this movie, which hilariously was given, I think, $25 million or something like that.
So it's like a $100 million budget in 1990, which might as well be Avengers Doomsday budget.
I don't know why they assumed the Dick Tracy movie would be a global phenomenon on par with Batman.
the matte paintings that they had for 150 matte paintings maybe of the cityscapes and all the design of the city just some nondescript type of noir city and then the color schemes which was like a it was like seven distinct colors that were basically the colors used during the printing Sunday pages back in the day when they would only have very limited colors that they could utilize the movie basically mimicked those types of colors the really bold green pink red the colors that pop and so much care was given to that and then the makeup and the costumes and the music and insane stuff like i said at the beginning it's a pop art masterpiece it's so beautiful to look at it's like like i really appreciate it and this is like one of the things that makes film so great as a medium is it just doesn't have to be a great movie i don't have to look at it and say oh the plot was like kind of ridiculous or the character sort of sucked or whatever you want to say which I have plenty of gripes about maybe the script and like the characters in it.
And even like Dick Tracy, but in general, but damn, if it's not a great movie to look at and fun to watch, it doesn't have to.
I think so many times now today we get, we box ourselves in with criticism and, About like plot points and like really trivial bullshit when sometimes the movie just operates on the vibe of being cool.
And basically said the same thing is that one of Scorsese's thing is like you don't have to... always pay such close attention to the plot itself and if you can just do that with Dick Tracy you're gonna have a great time
yeah And I think it's okay to have movies like this where they're just visually cool and you're creating this super special visual medium.
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