Kevin Smith says Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is like his Avengers: Endgame. More than twenty-fives years after his directing debut on 1994's Clerks, Smith has evolved into a fan-favorite filmmaker and staple of the online geek community. Onscreen, he's synonymous with his Clerks character Silent Bob, a generally silent fellow (he's gotten much chattier over the years) who lives with his foul-mouthed heterosexual life mate Jay (Jason Mewes). Together, the pair have appeared in all seven live-action films in Smith's View Askewniverse franchise to date, including last year's Jay and Silent Bob Reboot.
In spite of its title, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is actually a legacy sequel in the vein of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Terminator: Dark Fate. The movie follows the eponymous duo as they travel to Los Angeles to stop a film reboot of Bluntman and Chronic (the comic book superhero property modeled after them) from being completed and regain their legal naming rights. But if anyone's considering hopping aboard the View Askewniverse train at this point, they may want to reconsider.
As part of a Facebook Live Q&A (which he dubbed the "Jay and Silent Bob #Quarantinentary track"), Smith talked about Jay and Silent Bob Reboot's connection to the previous films in the franchise. In doing so, he explained how the movie is to the View Askewniverse what Endgame is to the MCU:
Adam Golberg [creator of The Goldbergs]... when he watched it, he was like "This is like your [Avengers: Endgame]." Like, we brought everybody from the bench out and stuff. Yeah, kinda like Endgame. If you just sat down and watched Endgame for the first time and never watched a Marvel movie before (maybe one), you might be like "What the f**k is going on?" Same thing with Jay and Silent Bob Reboot. If you've never seen... any of the stuff I've made, some of the jokes might be lost on you.
It's a fair comparison and one many reviews for Jay and Silent Bob Reboot made last year, when it started its traveling roadshow. The film is full of callbacks to not only Clerks, but also Smith's movies Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Clerks II. It's equally full of actors who appeared in those movies (including, A-listers like Ben Affleck and Rosario Dawson), as well as View Askewniverse newcomers like Supergirl TV show star Melissa Benoist. Even the marketing for Jay and Silent Reboot directly referenced Endgame's posters, as a way of driving home the similarities between them while also poking fun at the massive MCU crossover.
For the same reason, a lot of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (from its references and cameos to its in-jokes about Smith) will go over your head unless you're up on the View Askewniverse as a whole, much like Endgame and the MCU. Luckily, for those who're interested in streaming the film at home while they're self-quarantining because of the coronavirus pandemic, the vast majority of Smith's previous movies are available to stream right away. The only exception is Dogma, which is owned by the Weinstein Brothers and unavailable in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct conviction. Otherwise, if you need to catch up before giving Jay and Silent Bob Reboot a go, you should have the means to do so.
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is available on DVD and Blu-ray and is streaming on Amazon Prime.
Source: Kevin Smith/Facebook Live