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Should You See the New Spider-Man Movie · The Matt Walsh Show

0:00
Speaker 1: As you may have heard, a new Spider-Man film was
0:02
Speaker 1: released last week. The movie has crushed box office records,
0:06
Speaker 1: already raking in something like, though I haven't Googled this,
0:08
Speaker 1: $ 40 trillion in its first week, I think it was.
0:12
Speaker 1: Spider-Man has earned more money in a week than the
0:14
Speaker 1: GDP of every sub-Saharan African country combined, or close enough.
0:18
Speaker 1: It would appear, sadly, that the reports of the death
0:21
Speaker 1: of the superhero genre were premature, a case of Wishful thinking.
0:26
Speaker 1: At least they were wishful thinking if you heard those
0:28
Speaker 1: reports on normally reliable podcasts, such as, I don't know,
0:31
Speaker 1: The Matt Walsh Show. Now, this latest film is the
0:34
Speaker 1: fourth in the Tom Holland series of Spider-Man films. The
0:38
Speaker 1: first three in that series, and I did Google this,
0:41
Speaker 1: were called Spider-Man Homecoming, Spider-Man Far From Home, and Spider-Man
0:45
Speaker 1: No Way Home. This latest iteration is Spider-Man Brand New Day. Now,
0:50
Speaker 1: if you're wondering what makes this movie brand new, the
0:52
Speaker 1: answer is not much, except that it's the first Tom
0:54
Speaker 1: Holland Spider-Man film to not have the word home in it.
0:58
Speaker 1: That marks the first, and as it turns out, only
1:01
Speaker 1: creative risk this movie will make. It's important that you
1:04
Speaker 1: don't confuse these four Spider-Man films with the Andrew Garfield
1:07
Speaker 1: Spider-Man series or the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man series before that.
1:12
Speaker 1: Peter 1, Peter 2, Peter 3. Every about nine and
1:16
Speaker 1: a half years, in accordance with the prophecies, Hollywood executives
1:19
Speaker 1: go out and recruit the blandest actor between the ages
1:22
Speaker 1: of 21 and 32 to become the next Spider-Man. And
1:25
Speaker 1: rather than building on the work of the previous Spider-Men,
1:28
Speaker 1: they tear the whole spider edifice down and start from scratch,
1:32
Speaker 1: telling the entire story over again from the beginning. The
1:36
Speaker 1: upshot is that the origin story of Spider-Man has been
1:39
Speaker 1: told and told again and then told again. Jesus Christ
1:43
Speaker 1: only got two accounts of his origin story, the infancy
1:46
Speaker 1: narrative's in Matthew and Luke. Spider-Man has had at least
1:49
Speaker 1: three this century alone. Okay, that seems disproportionate if you
1:53
Speaker 1: ask me, which you didn't. Now, you might be wondering
1:56
Speaker 1: why I'm talking about any of this. My antipathy for
2:00
Speaker 1: superhero movies is well established. And yet today, speaking of
2:05
Speaker 1: things nobody asked for or wants, I'm going to offer
2:09
Speaker 1: my review of the latest Spider-Man film. And I'm going
2:13
Speaker 1: to review this film because I saw this film and
2:15
Speaker 1: my suffering must mean something. As the old influencer mantra goes,
2:20
Speaker 1: if you can't at least get some content out of it,
2:23
Speaker 1: then what the hell's the point? Yes, I went and
2:29
Speaker 1: saw the new Spider-Man movie on opening night. I waded
2:33
Speaker 1: through the throngs of Spider-Man superfans, many of them wearing
2:38
Speaker 1: Spider-Man apparel or even full Spider-Man suits. These were grown adults,
2:43
Speaker 1: by the way. I had not felt so out of
2:45
Speaker 1: place somewhere since I went to the Women's March in 2022,
2:48
Speaker 1: but the latter was a scene from my documentary, What
2:50
Speaker 1: is a Woman? It's a better movie, by the way.
2:52
Speaker 1: It was a sacrifice I had to make for the art.
2:55
Speaker 1: The trip to the movie theater last Friday was a
2:57
Speaker 1: sacrifice I made for love. Not love of Spider-Man, but
3:01
Speaker 1: love of my wife, who for some reason really wanted
3:05
Speaker 1: to see the new Spider-Man movie. Now we've been married
3:08
Speaker 1: for 15 years. I had no idea that she's been
3:11
Speaker 1: a Spider-Man fan this entire time. She has kept that
3:15
Speaker 1: part of her life hidden, locked away in the deep
3:18
Speaker 1: recesses of her heart. And I wish it had stayed there.
3:22
Speaker 1: But last week, her Spider-Man fandom came floating suddenly to
3:26
Speaker 1: the surface like some kind of dying creature from the
3:30
Speaker 1: depths of the sea. She requested out of nowhere that
3:33
Speaker 1: we spend our one precious date night of the week
3:37
Speaker 1: watching this movie. And when she first brought that up,
3:40
Speaker 1: I said, you want Spider-Man? Spider-Man is what you want
3:44
Speaker 1: to go watch. I objected, as you might imagine. I
3:47
Speaker 1: suggested that we do something else with our time. Go
3:51
Speaker 1: to dinner, throw ourselves into a volcano. Really, anything would
3:55
Speaker 1: be preferable. But then she pointed out that I always
3:58
Speaker 1: pick the movies and she always watches what I want
4:01
Speaker 1: to watch. And I didn't admit this to her. And
4:04
Speaker 1: please don't tell her I said this, but she's right.
4:07
Speaker 1: I have probably picked 98% of the movies and shows
4:10
Speaker 1: that we've watched together through our entire marriage. I am
4:13
Speaker 1: the resident chooser of movies, the key master of movies
4:17
Speaker 1: in our household. I've always considered that to be a
4:21
Speaker 1: solemn responsibility, something I take very seriously. It is a
4:24
Speaker 1: burden that I carry for the good of our family.
4:26
Speaker 1: And most importantly, I never steer us wrong. The entertainment
4:30
Speaker 1: offerings I choose never disappoint. Now, my wife might disagree
4:35
Speaker 1: with that statement. Actually, I might disagree with it, too.
4:39
Speaker 1: On second thought, there have been some unfortunate ones in there.
4:41
Speaker 1: Last year, we watched the Netflix movie Carry On at
4:44
Speaker 1: my suggestion. That's an action film about a TSA agent
4:47
Speaker 1: who gets blackmailed by Jason Bateman into smuggling a bomb
4:51
Speaker 1: onto a plane. It wasn't very good. In fact, it
4:54
Speaker 1: was probably one of the worst movies ever made. But
4:57
Speaker 1: how could I have possibly guessed that based on the description?
5:00
Speaker 1: which sounds great. Well, even though there are certain schools
5:03
Speaker 1: giving out worthless degrees in content creation or lesbian dance theory,
5:06
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that there aren't degrees worth pursuing or
5:08
Speaker 1: subjects worth studying. Subjects like classical literature, where great works
5:14
Speaker 1: that stand the test of time are studied. Stories like
5:16
Speaker 1: the Iliad or the Odyssey, not because they're old, but
5:18
Speaker 1: because they still have something true to say. It's one
5:20
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5:23
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5:26
Speaker 1: Benedict Whalen. He walks through Homer's masterpiece, It explains why
5:30
Speaker 1: it's remained one of the foundational works of Western civilization.
5:33
Speaker 1: It's about a man trying to get home. It's about duty, family, loyalty,
5:36
Speaker 1: the temptation to choose an easier life over a meaningful one. 3,000
5:40
Speaker 1: years later, the importance of those values has not gone away.
5:43
Speaker 1: If anything, they become even more relevant. If you've always
5:46
Speaker 1: wanted to read great literature or better yet, understand it, well,
5:49
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5:52
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5:56
Speaker 1: Rediscover the West. Start right now at hillsdale.edu slash Walsh. Anyway,
6:02
Speaker 1: on our way into the theater, I warned my wife
6:04
Speaker 1: that we would be the only adults without children in
6:06
Speaker 1: the room. This is Spider-Man, after all. It's going to
6:09
Speaker 1: be a bunch of 13-year-old boys and us. My wife
6:13
Speaker 1: bet the opposite. She said the opposite would be the case.
6:15
Speaker 1: She said it'd be nothing but adults. And she was
6:18
Speaker 1: right about that, too, it turns out. We walked into
6:21
Speaker 1: our screening room to find an auditorium packed with childless
6:26
Speaker 1: 30 and 40-somethings. I felt relieved. And then I felt sad.
6:32
Speaker 1: And then I felt nauseated. And then I felt sad again.
6:35
Speaker 1: But then I felt relieved again, because there's nothing quite
6:37
Speaker 1: like the comfort of discovering that other people are as
6:39
Speaker 1: big of losers as you are. Now, as for the
6:42
Speaker 1: film itself, I am heartbroken, though very far from surprised,
6:46
Speaker 1: to report that it was extremely terrible. This is a
6:50
Speaker 1: very bad movie. Even worse than I expected. And I
6:53
Speaker 1: expected it to have all the artistic depth and merit
6:56
Speaker 1: of a cell phone commercial. Actually, this movie is a
6:59
Speaker 1: cell phone commercial. I have never in my life seen
7:03
Speaker 1: so much product placement. It is shocking. This was the
7:07
Speaker 1: QVC of movies. They might as well put a 1-800
7:09
Speaker 1: number up on the screen. Spider-Man has a Samsung Galaxy phone,
7:16
Speaker 1: which is heavily featured in this movie. Spider-Man's Samsung Galaxy
7:21
Speaker 1: phone gets more close-up shots than Spider-Man himself. Like it
7:26
Speaker 1: should be listed as a cast member on the IMDb page.
7:30
Speaker 1: You might be asking, how could you possibly get Spider-Man's
7:35
Speaker 1: cell phone into the movie? Well, they get it in
7:39
Speaker 1: there a lot. They engineer a thin excuse for all
7:42
Speaker 1: of these gratuitous, full frontal cell phone shots. In the film,
7:45
Speaker 1: Spider-Man is apparently subscribed to some kind of app that
7:51
Speaker 1: alerts him whenever a crime is happening in New York City. Okay,
7:56
Speaker 1: the app pings Spider-Man, which like this is way less
8:00
Speaker 1: cool than the bat signal. Okay, first of all, you
8:02
Speaker 1: got the bat signal. That's cool. Not very practical, but
8:05
Speaker 1: at least that's cool, right? The big light in the sky. Nice.
8:13
Speaker 1: Now we're doing an app and anytime there's a crime,
8:16
Speaker 1: Spider-Man gets a little, like it goes ping and he
8:18
Speaker 1: just looks at it and it literally says crime is happening.
8:23
Speaker 1: That's what it said. No other information. Doesn't even tell
8:25
Speaker 1: you where it's happening. Just crime detected. So the app
8:29
Speaker 1: pinged Spider-Man four or five times throughout the story, which
8:32
Speaker 1: is an absurdly excessive number of cuts to a cell phone.
8:35
Speaker 1: But it's also an absurdly low number of crimes to
8:38
Speaker 1: have happen in New York City. Because the other problem
8:41
Speaker 1: here is that if such an app existed in real life,
8:43
Speaker 1: it would be going off literally 300 times a day,
8:47
Speaker 1: which is the actual average for felony crimes in the city.
8:50
Speaker 1: But this Spider-Man movie is not just a long commercial
8:53
Speaker 1: for Samsung. Emphasis on long, by the way. This thing
8:56
Speaker 1: is like two and a half hours long. There is
8:59
Speaker 1: no reason on God's green earth for a flick about
9:03
Speaker 1: a guy with spider powers running around in red spandex
9:07
Speaker 1: to be more than 90 minutes at the most. I mean, really,
9:11
Speaker 1: 85 minutes and we should be out. But for some reason,
9:14
Speaker 1: it was decided 10 years ago that every theatrically released movie,
9:17
Speaker 1: especially if it features a guy in spandex running around,
9:20
Speaker 1: has to be as long as Schindler's List. So the
9:23
Speaker 1: days of short and efficient blockbusters are over for some reason.
9:28
Speaker 1: But anyway, they take advantage of this gargantuan runtime by
9:30
Speaker 1: squeezing in commercials for I'm not making this up either.
9:33
Speaker 1: Little Caesar's Pizza, and BMW, and PlayStation, and Liquid IV,
9:38
Speaker 1: and countless other products. Apparently, this movie set a record
9:41
Speaker 1: with a $ 309 million partner campaign, which is to say
9:45
Speaker 1: that Sony whored this movie out to literally any company
9:50
Speaker 1: that would throw some money at it. Now, you'd think
9:52
Speaker 1: a multi-billion dollar film franchise would have higher standards, but
9:57
Speaker 1: I guess money can't buy self-esteem, as every OnlyFans star
10:00
Speaker 1: inevitably learns. At one point, we randomly cut to a
10:04
Speaker 1: Little Caesars delivery guy dropping off a Little Caesars pizza.
10:09
Speaker 1: That's a scene in the movie. And then we see
10:11
Speaker 1: Peter Parker going to retrieve the Little Caesars pizza from
10:14
Speaker 1: his front door. None of this serves the plot in
10:17
Speaker 1: any way at all. Nevermind the fact that Peter Parker
10:20
Speaker 1: lives in New York City. He can web his way
10:23
Speaker 1: to any New York pizzeria in minutes and he's ordering
10:28
Speaker 1: Little Caesars? It's like having a scene in The Godfather
10:31
Speaker 1: where Vito Corleone orders Olive Garden to go with a
10:35
Speaker 1: closeup shot of the Olive Garden logo on the bag.
10:38
Speaker 1: And then he hops online to leave a five-star Yelp
10:41
Speaker 1: review with a closeup of the Yelp logo. But see,
10:44
Speaker 1: that would never happen in The Godfather because for one thing,
10:47
Speaker 1: Yelp and Olive Garden didn't exist when that film was made,
10:49
Speaker 1: but for another, The Godfather is a film. It is
10:52
Speaker 1: a real film. It is a piece of art. A
10:54
Speaker 1: Marvel film is not a film so much as a
10:56
Speaker 1: series of advertisements vaguely stitched together to resemble the general
11:00
Speaker 1: shape of something that may be mistaken for a film. Now,
11:03
Speaker 1: this could perhaps be forgiven if the story surrounding the
11:06
Speaker 1: commercials was compelling or at least diverting and entertaining enough
11:11
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't spend the majority of the runtime praying
11:14
Speaker 1: for a fatal heart attack. Suffice it to say, on
11:16
Speaker 1: my way in the door, I had set the bar
11:19
Speaker 1: very low. Okay, I had set the bar for this
11:22
Speaker 1: movie at about the level of the Titanic, and I
11:24
Speaker 1: don't mean the movie the Titanic, I mean the actual Titanic, 12,000
11:28
Speaker 1: feet below sea level. Spider-Man Brand New Day wouldn't have
11:31
Speaker 1: to swing on a web or jump or even pick
11:34
Speaker 1: up its legs to make it over the bar that
11:36
Speaker 1: I had set. Yet somehow it managed to navigate itself
11:40
Speaker 1: below the bar in some kind of grotesque act of
11:43
Speaker 1: circus sideshow contortionism. Now allow me to attempt to describe
11:48
Speaker 1: the plot, which is a very generous term, as best
11:51
Speaker 1: I can. There will be spoilers going forward, but then again,
11:55
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen a single superhero movie in your life,
11:58
Speaker 1: you already know everything that will happen. This movie does
12:02
Speaker 1: attempt to surprise you at a few different points, but
12:05
Speaker 1: You know, like, it's kind of like my three-year-old playing
12:07
Speaker 1: hide-and-seek by huddling behind the curtain with his legs and
12:10
Speaker 1: arms and half his head still visible. So it starts
12:12
Speaker 1: with Spider-Man swinging around New York fighting bad guys. And
12:16
Speaker 1: this is all handled by the way of montage. We
12:18
Speaker 1: see him fighting evil ninjas for five seconds, and then
12:21
Speaker 1: he fights the villain Scorpion, so-called because he wears a
12:24
Speaker 1: mechanical suit that resembles a scorpion, which, by the way,
12:27
Speaker 1: is a really impractical setup for committing crimes. What crime, what,
12:33
Speaker 1: what crime would, in what scenario would you be assisted
12:37
Speaker 1: in committing a crime by putting on a giant suit
12:40
Speaker 1: that looks like a scorpion? Someone answer me that. And
12:43
Speaker 1: then we see him locked in combat with a sharp
12:45
Speaker 1: tooth bad guy. A sharp tooth guy tries to throw
12:48
Speaker 1: Spider-Man off a roof because obviously that's going to be
12:52
Speaker 1: an effective way to kill a mutant who shoots webs
12:54
Speaker 1: out of his hands and sticks to walls. What are
12:57
Speaker 1: you going to do next? Drown Aquaman? Now, plausibility issues aside,
13:00
Speaker 1: all of the crime fighting we montage our way through
13:03
Speaker 1: is more entertaining and would have made for a much
13:05
Speaker 1: better movie than the story they eventually settle on. Another
13:09
Speaker 1: fact established early on is that Peter Parker's chubby Asian friend,
13:12
Speaker 1: I didn't catch his name, and his ex-girlfriend MJ have
13:15
Speaker 1: both suffered some kind of amnesia and no longer remember
13:18
Speaker 1: Peter Parker. Apparently the entire world forgot about Peter Parker.
13:21
Speaker 1: And this is due to some kind of magical spell
13:23
Speaker 1: or whatever from the previous movie, which I believe I
13:26
Speaker 1: watched with my kids, but I don't remember anything about it.
13:29
Speaker 1: Maybe that's meant to be like a kind of a
13:30
Speaker 1: fascinating meta commentary. Like the movie where everybody forgot about
13:34
Speaker 1: Peter Parker is also itself extremely forgettable. Was that an
13:39
Speaker 1: artistic choice? Maybe. But the precise in-universe reason for this
13:43
Speaker 1: amnesia isn't really important. The real reason for the amnesia
13:46
Speaker 1: is that it allows the filmmakers to repeat the same
13:48
Speaker 1: beats from the first film in the series. That's the
13:52
Speaker 1: only reason they did this. So Peter Parker gets to
13:54
Speaker 1: meet the chubby Asian guy again, which he's already done.
13:57
Speaker 1: He gets to try to win MJ's heart again, which
13:59
Speaker 1: he's already done. They had to repeat all of these
14:01
Speaker 1: beats because the one thing that can never happen in
14:04
Speaker 1: a Marvel movie, under any circumstance, is character development. Character
14:09
Speaker 1: development requires change, and change suggests entropy. It suggests a
14:14
Speaker 1: finite temporal system where eventually things will reach a conclusion.
14:18
Speaker 1: Things will end, but there can be no conclusion. There
14:21
Speaker 1: can be no end and no point ever in a
14:23
Speaker 1: Marvel movie. They need to keep all the characters alive
14:26
Speaker 1: and the same so they can keep the franchise going.
14:28
Speaker 1: They can keep the Little Caesars commercials going. They can
14:31
Speaker 1: sell more toys and more Samsung Galaxy phones. So if
14:34
Speaker 1: any character appears to be on the precipice of developing
14:37
Speaker 1: or changing, well, they can just snap their fingers and abracadabra, amnesia.
14:42
Speaker 1: Or failing that, they can always bring in another version
14:44
Speaker 1: of that character from the infinite multiverse. Which means that
14:48
Speaker 1: even if a character dies, it's still not over. Nothing
14:52
Speaker 1: has changed. Nothing mattered. There are a trillion other versions
14:56
Speaker 1: of that character in a trillion other universes. And you
15:00
Speaker 1: might think, well... You know, that means that there are
15:03
Speaker 1: no stakes in any of these movies. You might think
15:06
Speaker 1: that developing stakes for your characters is like the most
15:09
Speaker 1: basic entry-level requirement for storytelling. You might think that it
15:13
Speaker 1: barely counts as a story if there are no stakes.
15:17
Speaker 1: And if you think all of those things, you obviously
15:19
Speaker 1: have more artistic insight and higher standards than any executive
15:23
Speaker 1: at Marvel Studios. After the montage, we get into what
15:25
Speaker 1: is going to have to suffice as our central conflict, sadly.
15:30
Speaker 1: And the conflict is this. An evil psychic is on
15:33
Speaker 1: the loose who can jump into your mind and control
15:36
Speaker 1: your body. Now, I know what you're thinking. Boring. I'd
15:40
Speaker 1: rather go back to sharp tooth guy. I'd rather go
15:43
Speaker 1: back to the scorpion guy. They were way cooler. I agree.
15:47
Speaker 1: But in fairness, there are some conceivable ways to tell
15:50
Speaker 1: a fun story where a superhero fights an evil psychic. Sadly,
15:55
Speaker 1: the filmmakers didn't conceive of any of those conceivable ways. Now,
15:59
Speaker 1: the logistics of the mind leaping are important to understand.
16:02
Speaker 1: So the psychic can jump into another person's mind from
16:05
Speaker 1: your mind like a kind of psychic leapfrog, but has
16:09
Speaker 1: to work within certain rather convenient, for the screenwriter, not
16:13
Speaker 1: for the psychic, physical limitations. So the psychic can only
16:16
Speaker 1: jump from one mind to another at distances of 33
16:20
Speaker 1: feet or less, or, you know, approximately two car lengths.
16:23
Speaker 1: So if you keep a social distance of 34 feet,
16:26
Speaker 1: then you're safe. Now you might hear that and think, well,
16:29
Speaker 1: how would they figure that out? Like that must be
16:31
Speaker 1: kind of interesting that they had to figure out that rule. Well,
16:36
Speaker 1: it's not interesting because Spider-Man discovers the 33 feet limitation,
16:39
Speaker 1: a pivotal piece of information by asking his computer. Yes,
16:44
Speaker 1: Spider-Man along with having superpowers also has a magical computer
16:48
Speaker 1: that can figure anything out and solve any problem in seconds. Now,
16:53
Speaker 1: you might think that a movie about superpowered beings wouldn't
16:56
Speaker 1: also need the deus ex machina of superpowered computers. But
17:00
Speaker 1: if you think that, then you're simply expecting too much
17:03
Speaker 1: of Marvel screenwriters. I mean, as we've seen for many
17:06
Speaker 1: years now, Marvel screenwriters have the easiest job in human history.
17:12
Speaker 1: They can come up with any problem for their character
17:15
Speaker 1: to face and then having spent like four minutes trying
17:18
Speaker 1: to imagine a creative and logical way for the character
17:20
Speaker 1: to solve it, they can just wave their hand and say,
17:23
Speaker 1: you know, and then the computer figures it out. Spider-Man
17:27
Speaker 1: gets in a bind and what's he going to do
17:29
Speaker 1: this time? You know, the computer, whatever, the computer does
17:31
Speaker 1: a thing. Or they can have the superhero suddenly develop
17:34
Speaker 1: the specific superpowers that he needs to escape that particular jam,
17:39
Speaker 1: which is a device also used in this movie. The
17:42
Speaker 1: one thing a Marvel screenwriter will never do and has
17:45
Speaker 1: never done in this universe or any of the trillion
17:47
Speaker 1: others is devise a clever and unexpected escape route for
17:52
Speaker 1: the character that obeys the logic of the world they've
17:55
Speaker 1: created while not relying on the cinematic equivalent of the
17:59
Speaker 1: red easy button from those Staples commercials 20 years ago.
18:03
Speaker 1: Today we'll be performing a triple hop into the procedure.
18:05
Speaker 1: But you've never done that before. That's okay. Staples. That
18:11
Speaker 1: was easy. The computers serve another purpose, too, and you've
18:14
Speaker 1: already guessed it. Marvel had a brand partnership with the
18:19
Speaker 1: company that made these, I think it's Asus computers or something, Asus,
18:22
Speaker 1: I don't know. And the characters use those computers a lot.
18:26
Speaker 1: So if you're hoping to see an action movie where
18:27
Speaker 1: the action heroes spend like a quarter of the runtime
18:30
Speaker 1: fiddling around on their computers, you're in luck. I was
18:33
Speaker 1: just disappointed that we didn't get to see other household
18:35
Speaker 1: devices featured prominently. What about like a 12-minute sequence where
18:38
Speaker 1: Spider-Man loads his KitchenAid dishwasher? Maybe they're saving that for
18:42
Speaker 1: the next film. One can only hope. We should note here,
18:44
Speaker 1: by the way, that Peter Parker has no job and
18:47
Speaker 1: no source of income, yet can afford all of the
18:49
Speaker 1: products that they're constantly showing off. He can also afford
18:52
Speaker 1: the lease on his apartment, despite, again, having no income.
18:55
Speaker 1: And these might seem like nitpicks, but when you're spending
18:58
Speaker 1: $ 225 million to make a movie... And when that movie
19:05
Speaker 1: is hailed by critics and audiences alike, as this one
19:08
Speaker 1: has been, I don't think it's too much to ask
19:10
Speaker 1: that someone during the course of production makes some kind
19:15
Speaker 1: of effort to fill at least the most glaring plot holes. Now,
19:19
Speaker 1: it turns out that the psychic is a girl named
19:22
Speaker 1: Jean Grey, who is, or I guess will be in
19:24
Speaker 1: the next Marvel movie, a founding member of the X-Men.
19:27
Speaker 1: Jean Grey is trying to break into a secretive government
19:30
Speaker 1: agency called the Department of Damage Control. And it's saved
19:35
Speaker 1: for a late reveal that this secretive government agency is,
19:38
Speaker 1: you'll never guess it, actually sinister. And this will come
19:42
Speaker 1: as a surprise to you if you've never seen any
19:44
Speaker 1: movie ever. But if you are familiar with movies, especially
19:47
Speaker 1: Marvel movies, then you know that secret government agencies are
19:51
Speaker 1: literally always sinister, which is the only point where Marvel
19:54
Speaker 1: movies resemble real life. Actually, that part is realistic. Now,
19:58
Speaker 1: Gray's go-to strategy for breaking into the agency is to
20:02
Speaker 1: mind leap into a random old lady, have the random
20:06
Speaker 1: old lady steal a tank, drive the tank slowly and
20:10
Speaker 1: laboriously across town, slam it into another secret government building,
20:16
Speaker 1: kidnap the villain Scorpion, who's being held there in custody,
20:19
Speaker 1: mind leap into him, and then have him, I guess,
20:24
Speaker 1: break into the other secret government agencies building across town. Again,
20:28
Speaker 1: I'm not making any of this up. That's really the plan.
20:32
Speaker 1: I mean, you might wonder, like, why didn't she just
20:34
Speaker 1: mind leap into someone who works in the building she's
20:37
Speaker 1: trying to access? Or at the very least, if you're
20:40
Speaker 1: going to slam a tank into a building, why not
20:42
Speaker 1: slam it into the building you're trying to get to?
20:44
Speaker 1: Why slam a tank into a different building, kidnap someone,
20:48
Speaker 1: and have them go into the building you want to
20:50
Speaker 1: go to? But apparently this woman with godlike mental powers
20:54
Speaker 1: never thought of that. After that plan fails, her plan
20:57
Speaker 1: B is to mind leap into the Hulk. and have
21:00
Speaker 1: the Hulk smash into the building. That plan also makes
21:04
Speaker 1: no sense, but it provides an excuse for the Hulk
21:06
Speaker 1: to show up. So, you know, they can put him
21:07
Speaker 1: in the trailer, which is the only reason he's there.
21:09
Speaker 1: Eventually we find out that the evil psychic isn't actually
21:12
Speaker 1: evil at all. She's just trying to rescue her psychic
21:15
Speaker 1: sister who was kidnapped by, you know, the bad government guys.
21:19
Speaker 1: The problem is that, remember that tank I mentioned? After
21:24
Speaker 1: having the old woman hijack the tank, she blows up
21:28
Speaker 1: the tank, no doubt killing dozens of people for no reason.
21:34
Speaker 1: It didn't advance her objective or achieve anything aside from
21:36
Speaker 1: death and destruction. She also inhabits Spider-Man's ex-girlfriend, has her
21:40
Speaker 1: kiss Spider-Man without her consent, by the way, and then
21:43
Speaker 1: throws her off a roof. And she causes another random guy,
21:47
Speaker 1: just some poor guy, some random guy, to step into
21:50
Speaker 1: traffic and get flattened by a moving vehicle. So on paper,
21:54
Speaker 1: this is one of the most evil and murderous villains
21:58
Speaker 1: in the history of comic book movies. And yet she
22:01
Speaker 1: gets off scot-free. There's no justice at all. She's a
22:06
Speaker 1: good guy. We're meant to believe she has a heart
22:08
Speaker 1: of gold the whole time. Aside from the murder and
22:10
Speaker 1: attempted murder of countless innocent civilians, she really means well. Now,
22:16
Speaker 1: Spider-Man does not defeat the psychic in a final battle.
22:20
Speaker 1: There is no final battle. Instead, the psychic leaps into
22:24
Speaker 1: Spider-Man's mind, where in Spider-Man's mind, she meets the dearly
22:29
Speaker 1: departed Aunt May, who tells her, who actually sits her
22:33
Speaker 1: down on a bed and sits with her like a
22:35
Speaker 1: scene from Full House and tells her that she's a
22:38
Speaker 1: really special person and then teaches her about the power
22:42
Speaker 1: of self-acceptance. Again, I'm not kidding. That's the climax of
22:47
Speaker 1: this movie. The villain is brought down from her murderous
22:51
Speaker 1: rage and turned into a good guy instantly because somebody
22:55
Speaker 1: calls her special. Now, later on, the Punisher, apparently inspired
23:00
Speaker 1: by all of this weepy speechifying, cries and tells Peter
23:04
Speaker 1: Parker that he's his best friend. Sorry, I forgot to
23:07
Speaker 1: mention that the Punisher is in this. It didn't really
23:10
Speaker 1: need to be mentioned because he serves no purpose and
23:12
Speaker 1: doesn't advance the plot in the slightest bit. How could he?
23:15
Speaker 1: His only superpower is that he has guns. What's your superpower? Oh,
23:20
Speaker 1: I have guns. Oh. Wow. No one's thought of that before.
23:28
Speaker 1: And there's not much assistance that he can offer a superhuman,
23:31
Speaker 1: indestructible being who also has a supercomputer that can do
23:35
Speaker 1: anything and solve any problem. Now, one thing these superhero
23:37
Speaker 1: movies have never figured out, aside from how to come
23:40
Speaker 1: up with a compelling plot or compelling dialogue or compelling characters,
23:45
Speaker 1: is how to make it so that their superpowered god
23:47
Speaker 1: creatures are vulnerable enough that they can be plausibly hurt
23:52
Speaker 1: or helped by other characters who aren't superhumans. This is
23:56
Speaker 1: a nut that Marvel has never cracked. And that's why
24:00
Speaker 1: they threw a guy into the Avengers whose only power
24:03
Speaker 1: is that he's a pretty good shot with a bow
24:05
Speaker 1: and arrow. And he's somehow supposed to provide invaluable contributions
24:09
Speaker 1: to a group that also includes Thor, an intergalactic deity
24:13
Speaker 1: who has the unlimited power to do anything and doesn't
24:17
Speaker 1: even need the help of a Samsung Galaxy phone, much
24:19
Speaker 1: less a short guy with a weapon that hasn't been
24:21
Speaker 1: relevant in combat for 500 years. All that to say,
24:24
Speaker 1: the Punisher has no reason to be in this movie,
24:27
Speaker 1: but he's another selling point to put in the trailer,
24:29
Speaker 1: and that's all the purpose he really needs to serve.
24:33
Speaker 1: So the movie ends with Peter Parker and Jean Grey
24:37
Speaker 1: learning that it's okay to be different. Yes, that is
24:41
Speaker 1: very close to an actual line in this movie, a
24:44
Speaker 1: movie that is critically acclaimed and hailed as one of
24:49
Speaker 1: the best Spider-Man films of all time. Which is a
24:53
Speaker 1: bit like bragging that the meal you just ate for
24:55
Speaker 1: lunch was the best gas station hot dog you ever
24:58
Speaker 1: had in Cleveland. Now that said, you know, I did
25:00
Speaker 1: feel inspired by the message in a certain way. After all,
25:05
Speaker 1: everybody else seems to love this movie. It has a
25:08
Speaker 1: 90% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It has a 98%
25:13
Speaker 1: audience score. 98% of the comments under this video right
25:17
Speaker 1: now are almost certainly angry, bordering on homicidal. And so
25:22
Speaker 1: that puts me firmly in the minority. It makes me different.
25:27
Speaker 1: But like Aunt May told the serial killer psychic with
25:30
Speaker 1: a heart of gold, it's okay to be different. If
25:34
Speaker 1: only Marvel Studios would take its own advice. If only
25:36
Speaker 1: it would ever make a movie that takes even the
25:39
Speaker 1: smallest risk or the slightest creative gamble or tries to
25:43
Speaker 1: say anything but the vaguest hallmark platitude. But why would
25:48
Speaker 1: it do that when it can put in no effort,
25:49
Speaker 1: expend zero creative energy, and still make a zillion dollars?
25:55
Speaker 1: That's the real moral of this story. And the other
25:58
Speaker 1: moral is that, in my house, we need to go
26:01
Speaker 1: back to me picking the movies. I mean, Spider-Man? Just
26:06
Speaker 1: walk up to him and shoot him in the head.
26:07
Speaker 1: Suit yourself.