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Speaker 2: Welcome listeners to the third installment of movie Deathmatch. Sometimes
Speaker 2: the third entry is Goldfinger, and sometimes it's the Rise
Speaker 2: of Skywalker. We're hoping for the former. My name is
Speaker 2: Chris Clemic, and today my firm but fair cinematic jurisprudence
Speaker 2: shall determine which one of a pair of thematically linked movies,
Speaker 2: each represented by a passionate and highly credentialed advocate, shall
Speaker 2: be preserved in amber like a mosquito from the Cretaceous
Speaker 2: not Jurassic period, and which one shall dissolve into vapor
Speaker 2: like Spider Man's webbing after a period of roughly two hours.
Speaker 2: That's what Tom Hallen's webhead says in Spider Man Homecoming. Anyway,
Speaker 2: maybe one of our experts can tell me how canonical
Speaker 2: that is. Also. I don't know if that varies according
Speaker 2: to whether the webbing originates from organic or mechanical Webshooters.
Speaker 2: Because we're all excited about Spider Man brand new day,
Speaker 2: we're jitting up a rivalry among the two most beloved
Speaker 2: of the many Spider Man movies, Sam Ramies two thousand
Speaker 2: and four Blockbuster Spider Man two. No matter what I do,
Speaker 2: do you love me?
Speaker 3: No matter how hard I try, I love Spider Man.
Speaker 4: It's the ones I love who will always be the
Speaker 4: ones who pay.
Speaker 3: I can't keep thinking a value. I'm getting married.
Speaker 4: I want my life on my own.
Speaker 3: I'm Spider Man no more.
Speaker 2: And Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, and Bob Perisketti's animation credits
Speaker 2: are weird. They're twenty eighteen Oscar Winner into the Spider Verse.
Speaker 3: My name is Males Morales.
Speaker 4: I'm the one and only Spider Man.
Speaker 3: At least this is what I thought. Yeah, you hear
Speaker 3: the super coolina. You all love this.
Speaker 2: You're like, man, that's impossible. How many more Spider people
Speaker 2: are there?
Speaker 4: Hey, fellas, this could literally not get any weirder. It
Speaker 4: can get weirder.
Speaker 2: Okay, Tonight we shall determine for all time which one
Speaker 2: is the most amazing, the most Spectacular, the most Ultimate,
Speaker 2: the most web of the most twenty ninety nine. And
Speaker 2: I know at least one of our passionate and highly
Speaker 2: credential advocates gets what I'm doing here. So let's meet
Speaker 2: them now in this corner and the blue trunks and
Speaker 2: the big glasses representing Spider Man two is a man who,
Speaker 2: sometime during the first Clinton administration, was bitten by a
Speaker 2: radioactive film critic and subsequently learned that with great penmanship
Speaker 2: comes great legibility. He is the longtime editor of Screen
Speaker 2: Crush and the host of Film Spotting SVU. He is
Speaker 2: a man who has repeatedly placed his own gastro intestinal
Speaker 2: and cardiac health on the line to sample movie tie
Speaker 2: in menus at Denny's. He is the author of the
Speaker 2: excellent History Opposable Thumbs, How Ciskel and Ebert Changed the
Speaker 2: Movies Forever, and the imminent History Funny Business, the old
Speaker 2: school wedding Crashers and knocked Up Virgins who changed comedy Forever.
Speaker 2: I have no doubt it too is excellent. Comes out
Speaker 2: October sixth, Most Germaine to Today's About. He is the
Speaker 2: author of Marvel's Spider Man From Amazing to Spectacular, the
Speaker 2: definitive comic art collection. He is Matt Singer. Matt, I
Speaker 2: say unto you.
Speaker 4: Excelsior, excelsior, true believer, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say thwip when I say also acceptable.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yah, it's a greeting conversation as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is an intimate question, Matt, but you're recording.
Speaker 2: This is to let listeners know from an intimate place.
Speaker 2: Have you ever abruptly lost your superpowers while swinging among
Speaker 2: the concrete and steel canyons of New York City.
Speaker 4: Hasn't happened yet, but I'm always on guard that it
Speaker 4: could happen at a moment's notice. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: I'm still waiting for the powers to activate. I guess
Speaker 4: that's the important first step that hasn't happened for me yet,
Speaker 4: But you know, someday, maybe someday. I do recall one
Speaker 4: time I was My wife is a public school teacher
Speaker 4: here in New York City. This is now many years ago.
Speaker 4: She was a young teacher, and I was a less
Speaker 4: old and haggard nerd, and I was like a chaperone
Speaker 4: on a school trip with her, and one of her
Speaker 4: kids looked at me and said you look like Peter Parker,
Speaker 4: and I said, thank you so much. That's the greatest
Speaker 4: compliment I've ever been given.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yes, that was the moment I peaked, was being compared
Speaker 4: to the nerdy pre superhero version, and it's all been
Speaker 4: downhill from that point.
Speaker 2: Basically, well, we can agree it's your wife, then that's
Speaker 2: the true superhero, right. I'm the public school teacher doing
Speaker 2: the lord's work. Welcome Matt and in this corner in
Speaker 2: the red trunks and the curly hair, representing the twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen hit, though it was even more embraced by critics
Speaker 2: than audiences, which is just one of the ways this
Speaker 2: animated movie was unlike any superhero film that had come before.
Speaker 2: The film is spider Man into the Spider Verse, and
Speaker 2: It's champion is my frequent Pop Culture Happy Hour co
Speaker 2: panelist Daisy Rosario. Daisy is Senior Supervising Producer of Audio
Speaker 2: at Slate. She has been a featured storyteller on the
Speaker 2: Moth Radio Hour. She once told me two thousand and
Speaker 2: one A Space Odyssey is her favorite movie, which speaks
Speaker 2: to her taste.
Speaker 5: Welcome Daisy, Hey, thanks for having me, Chris, I am
Speaker 5: excited for a reason. To talk about this movie.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you an intimate question too. Please,
Speaker 2: have you ever attempted the shoulder touch?
Speaker 5: I mean I think I have, actually, and I just
Speaker 5: didn't realize that it was called that. You know, I
Speaker 5: was just trying to be smooth in general.
Speaker 2: Are you willing to share with us what the result was?
Speaker 5: Not good?
Speaker 4: Not good?
Speaker 2: Your Letterbox four Daisy is the previously mentioned two thousand
Speaker 2: and one A space so far, so good. Odyssey's are
Speaker 2: very hot right now? Then Paddington too. I am nodding
Speaker 2: vigorously my agreement. And then like the Mark Web Andrew
Speaker 2: Garfield Amazing Spider Man saga, it just it just stops
Speaker 2: after two movies?
Speaker 3: What's it?
Speaker 4: Just?
Speaker 5: Really does? I just get overwhelmed by user interfaces, is
Speaker 5: really the problem? Like I get excited about something like Letterbox,
Speaker 5: and I get like, oh, I'm going to rank all
Speaker 5: of these things, and then it's more clicks than I realize,
Speaker 5: and I just peter off. So I end up reading
Speaker 5: a lot more of it and clicking through and checking
Speaker 5: out other people's lists. But to actually go in and
Speaker 5: type these things up, I just shut down.
Speaker 2: Well, don't say you're peter off because I feel like
Speaker 2: you're you're seeing a point to Matt, then if you uh,
Speaker 2: all right, well you're you're open to having two more
Speaker 2: you know, slots filled on your letterbox top four. I
Speaker 2: just want to say to you, that's a knock.
Speaker 4: That's a knock, sure, And Jim Katta that.
Speaker 3: Would be the other.
Speaker 2: Gymnastic skills, karate kills.
Speaker 4: That's close to the skill of gymnastics and the kill
Speaker 4: of care.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: That makes Jim Kata.
Speaker 2: How is your relationship to Flash Thompson these days, Matt?
Speaker 2: Is he stopped bullying you now that you're a husband
Speaker 2: and father in your forties or.
Speaker 4: The amazing thing is I haven't been inside a school
Speaker 4: in years, and yet he still keeps finding lockers to
Speaker 4: shove me. And I don't know where he comes up
Speaker 4: with these things, but you know, I.
Speaker 2: Feel like you should remove them from your home, Eugene.
Speaker 4: One of these days, Eugene is gonna run out of
Speaker 4: lockers to shove me inside.
Speaker 3: Daisy.
Speaker 2: I was so glad you were willing and available to
Speaker 2: do this, because the movies we seem to end up
Speaker 2: discussing on PhH together run More to the Fast and
Speaker 2: Furious Presents, Hops and Shaw that's true.
Speaker 5: We get action movies Deadpool two, that was a time.
Speaker 2: That was a movie. We did dissect one other unconventional
Speaker 2: entry into a franchise that started in the early sixties,
Speaker 2: the James Bond finale No Time to Die, the one
Speaker 2: where he does eventually find the time. So it makes
Speaker 2: sense that you are here discussing the movie where Spider Man,
Speaker 2: or at least a Spider Man, ends up meeting a
Speaker 2: noble end saving New York City. I think I can
Speaker 2: say with confidence that Spider Man two and Into the
Speaker 2: Spider Verse are certainly the best movies you and I
Speaker 2: have ever had the opportunity to talk about on a podcast.
Speaker 5: I mean, they're both great. I'm excited about this in
Speaker 5: part because, probably until Into the Spider Verse, Spider Man
Speaker 5: two was my absolute favorite Spider Man movie. So you know,
Speaker 5: I've got affection for both. But I'm proud to represent.
Speaker 2: Yes, we look for the hard choices, the questions no
Speaker 2: one else dare ask, because Matt has a whole book
Speaker 2: about Spider Man art, so some ione I want to
Speaker 2: ask you, Daisy, how did your relationship with this character begin?
Speaker 2: I mean after he descended on a line of webbing
Speaker 2: in an alley one night and you've lifted his mask up,
Speaker 2: and you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't think he could grow up being a
Speaker 5: millennial without knowing about Spider Man. And then also, I
Speaker 5: am a native New Yorker. You may have noticed when
Speaker 5: the Knicks recently won Nick Time five that people were
Speaker 5: just dressed like Spider Man all over the city, Like
Speaker 5: you really has been such a huge part of the
Speaker 5: identity of the city, at least in my lifetime. And
Speaker 5: then when the Raymy Spider Man movie started coming out,
Speaker 5: it really was like just I was the right age
Speaker 5: to be super enthusiastic about where this idea of superhero
Speaker 5: movies was going to be going. I was finishing up
Speaker 5: time at NYU, where I was, you know, attempting a
Speaker 5: film degree as part of my time there, and I
Speaker 5: would actually end up reading more Spider Man after that
Speaker 5: period of time. I certainly don't have the history of
Speaker 5: the comics the way that Matt is going to, but
Speaker 5: I do have, you know, some eras that I really
Speaker 5: enjoy and got to know, So I really just have
Speaker 5: real affection for the character and have always appreciated as well,
Speaker 5: like you know, as much as I love comics in general,
Speaker 5: like these aspects of Spider Man, and how the realness
Speaker 5: of like Marvel in New York versus DC being in
Speaker 5: like fictionalized cities. Yeah, Spider Man, of all of the characters,
Speaker 5: really is the most special to me in that way.
Speaker 2: I have a big, big problem with the apparently canonical
Speaker 2: idea that Gotham City and Metropolis are like across a
Speaker 2: bay from.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: They can't stop thinking about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I mean I just always I was like,
Speaker 2: Gotham is New York, Metropolis is Chicago, Like they can't
Speaker 2: be close to one another, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all of a sudden and the right there, Like
Speaker 5: I hate crazy short distance that makes no sense and
Speaker 5: all it is deeply confusing.
Speaker 2: Matt, do you remember your first individual Spider Man periodical
Speaker 2: and which number?
Speaker 4: I would have to look up the number? I mean,
Speaker 4: my obsession with the character predated being able to read. Also,
Speaker 4: like for me, it began with his appearances on the
Speaker 4: Electra Company. That was the thing that first captured my imagination.
Speaker 4: Ironic because then I grew up and turned into this
Speaker 4: very Peter Parker esque figure, minus the intelligence and the
Speaker 4: superpowers and the heroism, the bravery, all those sorts of things.
Speaker 5: How's your back though?
Speaker 4: It hurts real bad, So I guess you're right. I
Speaker 4: have that one too. So I've got two things, glasses
Speaker 4: and a bad back.
Speaker 2: Lucrative sideline selling photographs of yourself.
Speaker 4: You haven't. Nobody wants them. I keep putting them out there,
Speaker 4: but nobody's buying them. Nobody's buying them. So for me,
Speaker 4: it was really I don't know. It's like, it's interesting
Speaker 4: to try to figure out what does like a two
Speaker 4: year old, and I've seen it with my own kids.
Speaker 4: Why do like children just spark to some of these characters,
Speaker 4: don't I couldn't explain it then, I can't explain it now.
Speaker 4: But I was absolutely obsessed with Spider Man as a
Speaker 4: little kid. My parents I don't remember this, but my
Speaker 4: parents swear that one of my first words after like Mama, Dad, Dad,
Speaker 4: was memo, which was Spider Man. That was how I
Speaker 4: referred to Spider Man. That's how early it was. And
Speaker 4: then yeah, I would once I got a little older,
Speaker 4: I would. Anytime my mother would need to bring me somewhere,
Speaker 4: the only thing she would have to do is like,
Speaker 4: if you're good, I'll buy you a comic book. And
Speaker 4: that was the way to get me to behave at
Speaker 4: the grocery store or on errands anywhere we would go.
Speaker 4: And there's a couple that I really vividly remember. There's
Speaker 4: one issue that I was just looking up recently, and
Speaker 4: I do not remember the number, but it's an issue
Speaker 4: of Spectacular Spider Man, and the cover of it it's
Speaker 4: like Undead Spider Man and Gwen Stacy like zombified, like
Speaker 4: rising out of a grave, and the tagline on the
Speaker 4: cover is Night of the Living Ned, meaning Ned Leads,
Speaker 4: the supporting Spider Man character who was dead at the
Speaker 4: time I may still be dead, although he's also the
Speaker 4: character played in the new movies like the Best Buddy
Speaker 4: is Ned, so he's you know, no one's ever dead
Speaker 4: or alive. I guess at this point in comics they
Speaker 4: exist in both places at once. It's a Schrodinger Spider
Speaker 4: kind of situation or something. But in any event, that issue,
Speaker 4: I had no idea who Ned Leads was, and I
Speaker 4: didn't get the Night of the Living Dead pun. I
Speaker 4: just thought, this is the most exciting thing and terrifying
Speaker 4: thing I've ever seen, and I have to read it.
Speaker 4: And that's the first one I really remember owning and
Speaker 4: like reading and rereading and trying to make sense of it.
Speaker 4: And if you go and read it now, it's like,
Speaker 4: how could like a I don't know, five six year
Speaker 4: old read this. It wouldn't have made any sense to me,
Speaker 4: but I didn't really care. I was just like so
Speaker 4: taken with it.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to thank you both for being really
Speaker 2: the first two to help us truly stress test this
Speaker 2: movie deathmatch concept, because our prior to episodes, we did
Speaker 2: two Spielberg movies made five years apart, two Nolan movies
Speaker 2: made four years apart. And now we're really getting into
Speaker 2: a like are we even comparing apples to apples here?
Speaker 2: You know, we have an animated film and a live
Speaker 2: action film Sam Raimie versus. I guess I'm gonna ascribe
Speaker 2: Spider Verse predominantly to Phil Lord and Chris Miller. Phil
Speaker 2: Lord has a writing credit on it. I think Miller
Speaker 2: just has a producing credit. You know, these guys are
Speaker 2: not quite a full generation, but significantly younger than RAMI.
Speaker 2: You know, their sensibility is totally different. So this is
Speaker 2: where it gets complicated. So thank you. Let's get into it.
Speaker 2: So comic book movies had not yet taken over Hollywood
Speaker 2: when Sam Raimi Spider Man became the biggest hit of
Speaker 2: two thousand and two. Batman was in limbo after two
Speaker 2: Nipples and Codpiece forward Joel Schumacher installments, the Tim Burton
Speaker 2: Superman had collapsed on the Marvel side, We'd had two
Speaker 2: good Blade movies, Brian Singers, X Men had been a
Speaker 2: big hit, and then in the summer between the first two,
Speaker 2: Raymi Spider's Angle's Hulk comes along and sort of confounds
Speaker 2: audiences by trying some of the same sort of split
Speaker 2: screen editing techniques evocative of the way comic book panels
Speaker 2: are laid out on a page that wouldn't really be
Speaker 2: pulled off successfully until Spider Verse about fifteen years after that.
Speaker 2: So we had spent all this time starting I guess
Speaker 2: with the first Donner Superman in seventy eight, trying to
Speaker 2: achieve the dream of photo realism of a superpowered being.
Speaker 2: And I feel like Spider Verse is the moment where
Speaker 2: we're we're deep enough into this genre that superheroes cinema
Speaker 2: is just going to yank the wheel back in the
Speaker 2: other direction. You know, we're going to embrace the graphic,
Speaker 2: abstract visual language. We're gonna have on screen text boxes
Speaker 2: and on a monopoetic and that spelled behind me in
Speaker 2: vivid letters, So thank you for that, Lord and Miller.
Speaker 2: But attempts to even like sort of replicate on screen
Speaker 2: the sort of limitations of the four color printing process
Speaker 2: of the early Marvel comics, where you see individual dots,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes instead of solid color. So it's this
Speaker 2: paradox in Spider Verse where it's one of the most
Speaker 2: vibrant films ever made, and yet we're trying to recreate
Speaker 2: visual techniques that resulted from the limitations of printing forty
Speaker 2: years earlier. So that's just an expression of the difficulty
Speaker 2: of our challenge tonight, Spider Man two into the Spider Verse.
Speaker 2: Both amazing, both spectacular, both web of et cetera. Which
Speaker 2: is greater, which shall endure once the ritual of justice
Speaker 2: by verbal combat we perform here today is complete. Those
Speaker 2: are the stakes. That's why this is a movie death match.
Speaker 2: Are you ready, Matt?
Speaker 4: I'm terrified, but yes, I guess so.
Speaker 2: Good. Good, It's good to be scared, Daisy. Are you ready?
Speaker 5: I am? I am ready?
Speaker 2: Okay. Our opening statements, Matt, I'm gonna start with you
Speaker 2: because I think you maybe have the more difficult assignment here,
Speaker 2: and I just want to sort of acknowledge that, just
Speaker 2: by the nature of the multiversal milieu of Into the
Speaker 2: Spider Verse, presumably Into the Spider Verse includes the Raymi
Speaker 2: version of Spider Man, along with every other iteration past
Speaker 2: and present that could ever exist. So Spider Gwen, Peter, Porker,
Speaker 2: the Spectacular Spider Ham, They're all part of it. And
Speaker 2: you're advocating boldly for one specific, finite iteration. So I
Speaker 2: salute you for taking on that challenge. Tell us why you,
Speaker 2: as a lifelong Webhead ride for Spider Man two.
Speaker 4: Well, first off, I do want to say that I
Speaker 4: love Into the Spider Verse, and if you had asked
Speaker 4: me to argue in favor of that movie as the
Speaker 4: greatest Spider Man movie of all time, I would have
Speaker 4: done that happily and with very little difficulty. This is
Speaker 4: not a case of I'm going to be angrily arguing
Speaker 4: against Into the Spider Verse, but I will say and
Speaker 4: I do believe that Into the Spider Verse would not
Speaker 4: exist without Spider Man two. So one could say that
Speaker 4: Spider Man two web crawled, so that Into the Spider
Speaker 4: Verse and many other subsequent superhero movies could run up
Speaker 4: a wall and then web swing down the canyons of Manhattan.
Speaker 4: And one of the reasons that I love it is
Speaker 4: it is this is really a perfect marriage of subject
Speaker 4: matter and director. And I know a lot about this movie,
Speaker 4: but to this day, I actually do not know how
Speaker 4: Sam Raimi, a guy whose highest grossing movie prior to
Speaker 4: the first Spider Man made just forty eight million dollars,
Speaker 4: I do not know how he convinced Marvel and Sony
Speaker 4: to put him in charge of this enormous franchise. But
Speaker 4: I do know however he did it. I don't think
Speaker 4: anyone could have done a better job directing that movie
Speaker 4: at that particular time. And that is because Sam Raimi
Speaker 4: is the perfect director for Spider Man. And that is
Speaker 4: because Sam Raimi is a sadist. When you think of
Speaker 4: Sam Ramy's movies, you think of him torturing people. You'd
Speaker 4: think of him chasing Bruce Campbell through that cabin in
Speaker 4: the woods. You think of him blowing up Liam Neeson
Speaker 4: in Dark Man. You give me a Sam Raimi movie,
Speaker 4: I will show you him torturing the hero of that movie.
Speaker 4: That is his passion in life, and Spider Man works
Speaker 4: best at his most tortured. And that is the secret
Speaker 4: sauce to every Stan Lee and Steve Ditko story, the
Speaker 4: fact that nothing ever works out for Peter Parker as
Speaker 4: long as he is Spider Man. Any good thing that
Speaker 4: happens to Peter invariably causes a problem for Spider Man,
Speaker 4: and vice versa. Spider Man's greatest enemy is not Doctor
Speaker 4: Octopus or the Kingpin or anyone else. It is his
Speaker 4: double life. It is the finite number of hours in
Speaker 4: a day that he has to do everything he needs
Speaker 4: to do as Spider Man and everything he has to
Speaker 4: do as Peter. And Sam Raymie understands that, and with
Speaker 4: Spider Man two, he made the movie that captures the
Speaker 4: essence of that unresolvable dilemma from the very first scene, Bada,
Speaker 4: you're late, Man, always late.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, mister disease. There was a.
Speaker 2: Disturbance, disturbance, another disturbance. Oh, this is a disturbance with
Speaker 2: you come on twenty one minutes ago. Incomes order Hamilton,
Speaker 2: Button and Smith eight extra large deep dish pizzas in
Speaker 2: eight minutes. I am defaulting on Joe's twenty nine minute guarantee.
Speaker 3: Then not only by.
Speaker 2: Deceiving no money for these pizzas, but I will lose
Speaker 2: the customer forever to pwizza.
Speaker 7: Ye.
Speaker 3: Look, you are my only hope. All right.
Speaker 2: You have to make it in time, Peter. You're a
Speaker 2: nice guy, but he's just not dependable.
Speaker 3: This is your last chance.
Speaker 2: You have to go forty two blocks in seven and
Speaker 2: one half minutes.
Speaker 3: Your ass is fired.
Speaker 4: Cool desperately racing to deliver pizzas at his day job
Speaker 4: while also trying to save people as Spider Man. That's
Speaker 4: the whole thing. In the microcosm. He saves a couple kids,
Speaker 4: it cost Peter Parker his job. That's carried through to
Speaker 4: the plot with Doctor Octopus, a wonderful Alfred Malina. He
Speaker 4: is a potential father figure to Peter. He is an
Speaker 4: antagonist to Spider Man, and it goes right through the
Speaker 4: whole movie with the subplot of Peter temporarily choosing to
Speaker 4: abandon his role as Spider Man and embrace this ordinary
Speaker 4: life that he thinks he deserves, and then grappling with
Speaker 4: the fallout of that decision. And that is to say
Speaker 4: nothing about all of the amazing craft in this movie.
Speaker 4: The visual effects the score, the costume design, and yes,
Speaker 4: Sam Raimi's direction, which is so tender in the scenes
Speaker 4: between Peter Parker and Kirsten Duns Mary Jane. And then
Speaker 4: it is, yes, incredibly sadistic. It is brutal. The operating
Speaker 4: room sequence with Doctor Octopus's arms, which could be an
Speaker 4: outtake from an Evil Dead movie.
Speaker 2: We're ready doctor, anybody here takes shop class.
Speaker 4: It's a funny movie, it's exciting, it's a tragedy, and
Speaker 4: it understands Spider Man at his core. And even more
Speaker 4: than that, it believes in Spider Man and what he
Speaker 4: stands for as this icon of power and responsibility. And
Speaker 4: when you watch the movie you feel that coming through.
Speaker 4: So for all of those reasons, that is why Spider
Speaker 4: Man two is the greatest Spider Man movie ever made.
Speaker 2: All Right, very convincing. Thank you, Matt, Daisy. Why is
Speaker 2: Matt's argument in your mind like Auto Octavius, you know,
Speaker 2: well intentioned but wrong?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, first of all, I just I have
Speaker 5: to say, you know, I think Chris, you really set
Speaker 5: this up accordingly because I I've been given the movie
Speaker 5: that has all of the stuff. Yeah, but Matt is
Speaker 5: them has all of the history so if you had
Speaker 5: given him this movie against anybody, it would have been
Speaker 5: totally handicapped. So wait to keep it even I appreciate this,
Speaker 5: I mean personally in general. I just love, love, love
Speaker 5: love when people take something that is both silly and
Speaker 5: take it seriously and keep it so human, which has
Speaker 5: also been part of what has made Spider Man such
Speaker 5: a magical character for so so long and so relatable.
Speaker 5: And this movie treats it with such affection and respects
Speaker 5: the history and the amount of references that there are,
Speaker 5: but they aren't there as band service only they are
Speaker 5: all part of the world building. Nothing is wasted in
Speaker 5: this movie, and it is probably the best, or at
Speaker 5: least to me, feels like the most accurate Peter Parker
Speaker 5: that we actually really get to see because we'll get
Speaker 5: into it, I'm sure, but Toby, as much as I
Speaker 5: love Spider Man, leaves a bit to be desired, right,
Speaker 5: And so there is just magic in this movie from
Speaker 5: minute one, I mean even early in the movie when
Speaker 5: you find out that the Crispine Peter Parker has died,
Speaker 5: and the idea of like New York City finding out
Speaker 5: that their hero has died was like, oh my God,
Speaker 5: like that hit me so hard, even hits me hard.
Speaker 5: Now on rewatch, you know.
Speaker 4: We interrupt this broadcast for a special report sad news tonight,
Speaker 4: the hero known as Spider Man has died after.
Speaker 2: Injuries related to another powerful earthquake in from.
Speaker 5: The Multiple sources are confirming that Peter Parker, a twenty
Speaker 5: six year old grand.
Speaker 6: Operating, we all have powers of one kind or another,
Speaker 6: but in our own way, we are all Spider Man,
Speaker 6: and we're all counting on you.
Speaker 2: They're counting on me, probably not you specifically. I think
Speaker 2: it's a metaphor.
Speaker 5: Even when it is something that somebody might call him
Speaker 5: easter egg, you realize later on second watch, third watch,
Speaker 5: fourth watch, it has purpose.
Speaker 4: There is just.
Speaker 5: Nothing wasted, and yet it is thrilling, It is sweet,
Speaker 5: it is super funny. It makes you cry. I think
Speaker 5: I remember when we talked about this in Pop Culture
Speaker 5: Happy Hour. I think I had counted that I had
Speaker 5: cried three times or something like that. There is nothing
Speaker 5: unsatisfying about this movie in any way. And they don't
Speaker 5: do that by abandoning anything about Spider Man. They do
Speaker 5: that by completely mining everything that has always made Spider
Speaker 5: Man awesome. I mean everything about it is just so fun.
Speaker 2: Agreed.
Speaker 4: I don't know about anyone else here, but when Peter
Speaker 4: tells Miles he's proud of him, Oh my god, Miles,
Speaker 4: Spider Wow, Wow, you're doing it after bath?
Speaker 3: I have time, right, I love you.
Speaker 4: I'm so proud of I don't know about you, but
Speaker 4: I mean, just hearing Spider Man. Can you imagine Spider
Speaker 4: Man telling you he's proud of you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Would there be anyone better to tell you they're proud
Speaker 4: of you? I guess maybe a parent, I suppose, But
Speaker 4: right below that on the list for me would be
Speaker 4: Spider Man. I mean, that's a good one. I think
Speaker 4: a lot of Spider Man fans would feel that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's there's a lot of talk about,
Speaker 2: at least initially, you know, comics were power fantasies aimed
Speaker 2: at primarily children who didn't have any agency yet or
Speaker 2: felt weak or felt But yeah, just imagining. I mean,
Speaker 2: we were all adults when this film came out, but
Speaker 2: I can imagine being a viewer of Miles's age or younger,
Speaker 2: and yeah, that that moment with I hadn't even thought
Speaker 2: about that, but yeah, that must be.
Speaker 5: Very very I mean I think that is part of
Speaker 5: it too, is like it takes me back to feeling
Speaker 5: that age right, even more than the other movies make
Speaker 5: me feel, you know, the age that Peter Parker is
Speaker 5: supposed to be in them. So I mean, it just
Speaker 5: it just really has something special. What can you do, guys?
Speaker 5: This is going to take a while, right, never mind.
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Speaker 2: All right, so we have our opening statements, we'll get
Speaker 2: into our first one round one the movies in their time.
Speaker 2: In this opening round, we'll discuss how these movies were
Speaker 2: received when they were new. Spider Man two was two
Speaker 2: thousand and four second highest grossing film in the United States,
Speaker 2: significantly behind that year's champ Shrek two just ahead of
Speaker 2: the Passion of the Christ some other.
Speaker 5: What a time to be alive?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it was a great time for Ip
Speaker 2: another guy who loves being tortured on screen, true, who
Speaker 2: directed the Passion of the Christ much I don't know.
Speaker 2: We already named Brian Singer on this Let's not make
Speaker 2: it anywhors rushed into theaters just twenty six months after
Speaker 2: Ramy's first Spider Man. Spider Man who got even stronger
Speaker 2: reviews than its precursor. John Dykstra, who had won an
Speaker 2: Academy Award for Best Visual Effects on the original nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy seven Star Wars, collected his second Oscar for the
Speaker 2: visual effects on the spider sequel. He will believe a
Speaker 2: Spider Man can fly or or at least swing great distances. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: by the time into the Spider Verse about in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: we were fully a decade into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Speaker 2: We had already had a half dozen live action Spider
Speaker 2: Man features in the twenty first century, not counting MCU
Speaker 2: movies like Captain America Civil War and Avengers Infinity War,
Speaker 2: where the Tom Holland Spider Man is a significant supporting
Speaker 2: player at this point, the MCU the biggest thing in movies,
Speaker 2: but even the Sony Spider Man movies regarded as disappointments
Speaker 2: like Raymy spider Man three or outright failures like The
Speaker 2: Amazing spider Man two, the Andrew Garfield Mark Web one,
Speaker 2: they were all huge moneymakers, even the ones we don't
Speaker 2: like far out grossing even good contemporaneous superhero movies like
Speaker 2: the Fox x Men series or Batman begins. You know,
Speaker 2: the Batman doesn't catch up to Spider commercially until the
Speaker 2: Dark Night, and then at the beginning of the year
Speaker 2: where into the Spider Verse will will come. At the end,
Speaker 2: we have Black Panther, which comes out in February, makes
Speaker 2: a billion dollars, proving that the demand for a black
Speaker 2: Marvel superhero was there in force. It's interesting to me
Speaker 2: that Spider Man two was an instant smash and Into
Speaker 2: the Spider Verse was more of a grower. It grows
Speaker 2: less than half what another Spider Man adjacent movie, Venom did,
Speaker 2: released just two months earlier. I mean, it does win
Speaker 2: an Oscar, it does win Best Animated Feature, and by
Speaker 2: the time the sequel Across the Spider Verse finally comes along,
Speaker 2: it more than doubles the domestic box office of the
Speaker 2: first one, which would tell us that audiences did catch
Speaker 2: up with it and embrace it.
Speaker 5: Well, nobody really wanted it into the Spider verse. I
Speaker 5: mean that was the thing. I remember seeing the trailers
Speaker 5: and people being like, why is this coming out? I mean,
Speaker 5: you rightly named that Tom Holland had taken over the
Speaker 5: role in the MCU, but I mean it really was
Speaker 5: back to back to back, right Like, it makes his
Speaker 5: first appearance in Civil War that's twenty sixteen, then they
Speaker 5: put out Homecoming that's twenty seventeen, So it's like there's
Speaker 5: been all this waiting for him to actually join the MCU,
Speaker 5: being Marvel's biggest character. And then on top of that,
Speaker 5: you have the fatigue of the fact that you did
Speaker 5: have the Andrew Garfield movies not that long before, which
Speaker 5: felt already like so fast on top of the rainy movies,
Speaker 5: especially by like Hollywood standards, and then here comes this
Speaker 5: animated movie that I mean, we all know how amazing
Speaker 5: it ends up looking, but I do you remember the
Speaker 5: trailers and being like, what what is this? Who asked
Speaker 5: for this? What's going on? That seemed to be the
Speaker 5: prevailing opinion at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I remember being baffled, you know, like I
Speaker 2: had heard that there was an animated Spider Man movie
Speaker 2: coming from the Cloudy with the chance of Meatball's guy. Right,
Speaker 2: but yeah, so it's a comedy, which I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: and everything else.
Speaker 5: And then it came out and just not people's socks off.
Speaker 2: So you want to learn to be Spider Man? Key teacher, Yes,
Speaker 2: I can't. Time to swing? Good to do it, double
Speaker 2: tap jourmy and quip it out again. Okay, where and
Speaker 2: really you're an actress.
Speaker 3: Where?
Speaker 2: Well, let's start by getting into these two screenplays specifically
Speaker 2: and Spider Man two original Spider Man screenwriter David Kepp
Speaker 2: from you know, Jurassic Park and Mission Impossible, all these
Speaker 2: huge nineties movies. Disclosure Day this year, he does not return.
Speaker 2: Sony hires Michael Chabon, who had just won the Pulitzer
Speaker 2: Prize for his magnificent novel The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier
Speaker 2: and Clay, which is in part about a comic book artist.
Speaker 2: And I see this now as being very similar to
Speaker 2: when Mario Puzo was hired to write the screenplay for
Speaker 2: Superman in the seventies, where he's this hot literary figure
Speaker 2: who turns in this bloated draft that Richard Donner said
Speaker 2: was completely unusable. There's not a trace of it in
Speaker 2: the movie, and by most accounts, nothing that Schabon wrote
Speaker 2: ended up in Spider Man two either. The Spider Man
Speaker 2: two shooting script is credited to Alvin Sargent, who is
Speaker 2: an old hand. He had won two screenwriting Oscars for
Speaker 2: Julia and Ordinary People. He was seventy seven years old
Speaker 2: when this movie came out. So not the guy who
Speaker 2: you'd expect to crack Spider Man, right, This is the
Speaker 2: guy who really understands Peter Parker and his problems. And
Speaker 2: I think that had they been subtitling the Spider Man
Speaker 2: movies then the way they are now, this one probably
Speaker 2: would have been called Spider Man No More. We even
Speaker 2: quote the John Ramita senior panel from The Amazing Spider
Speaker 2: Man number fifty. In the shot where Peter hangs it up,
Speaker 2: we see him walking down the alley and in the
Speaker 2: foreground his discarded Spider Man costume is in the trash can.
Speaker 2: So given all that Matt did, did Alvin Sergeant again
Speaker 2: a man who belongs more to j Jon to Jamison's
Speaker 2: generation than to Peters, did he write the best Spider
Speaker 2: Man screenplay?
Speaker 4: I mean a case could and perhaps will right now
Speaker 4: be made that he did. He and all those names
Speaker 4: you mentioned. I think David Kep did work on this
Speaker 4: movie at some point. Also probably and Alfred Goff and
Speaker 4: Miles Miller from Smallville I know worked on it to
Speaker 4: I'm sure there's probably other people that whose names have
Speaker 4: never been revealed or worked on it. These movies, there's
Speaker 4: always yeah, maybe who knows so, But I do think
Speaker 4: it is a very well written movie. I think that
Speaker 4: it's a movie that stands up to rewatching. And one
Speaker 4: of the things you notice when you rewatch it is
Speaker 4: just how lovely all the various elements of it play together,
Speaker 4: the structure of it, and the way that so much
Speaker 4: of the movie is built around that central dilemma between
Speaker 4: Peter Parker and Spider Man, that the internal struggle is
Speaker 4: just everything in the movie is kind of built off
Speaker 4: of that architecture in a lovely way, including the way
Speaker 4: that they use Doctor Octopus, making him kind of both
Speaker 4: a mentor and a villain, making him a figure that
Speaker 4: Peter Parker in the beginning of the movie can really
Speaker 4: look up to. He has a life that you think
Speaker 4: Peter would you know, aspire to have. He's a successful scientist,
Speaker 4: he's brilliant. He's got a beautiful and supportive wife who's
Speaker 4: like hanging out with him in his lab, pouring him
Speaker 4: tea and joking around. And it looks like he's got
Speaker 4: a pretty cushy setup. Yeah, And what does he say
Speaker 4: to him in that scene?
Speaker 7: He tells him, Parker, now I remember you, your Connor
Speaker 7: student tells me you are brilliant. He also tells me a.
Speaker 3: Lazy trying to do better well being.
Speaker 7: Brilliance not enough, young man. You have to work hard.
Speaker 7: Intelligence is not a privilege, it's a gift, and you
Speaker 7: use it for the good of mankind.
Speaker 4: Which is another way of saying, with great power comes
Speaker 4: great responsibility. And a moment later, he starts talking about
Speaker 4: his work as a scientist, and he's talking about harmonic convergence,
Speaker 4: and what you have in that scene are harmonic convergences
Speaker 4: between doctor Octopus's philosophy and the philosophy that Spider Man
Speaker 4: and Peter Parker live by. And little notes like that
Speaker 4: are sprinkled throughout the film, and you don't have to
Speaker 4: be paying attention. But if you are paying attention, you
Speaker 4: catch that stuff. There's lines like I think it's as
Speaker 4: if Manvi is the boss at the pizza place, and
Speaker 4: when he's yelling at Peter Parker, he says, to you, Parker,
Speaker 4: a promise means nothing. And the entire film is built
Speaker 4: around the promise he makes to a dead uncle Ben
Speaker 4: saying you know that he will kind of carry on
Speaker 4: and be Spider Man, to prove that he's grown and
Speaker 4: that with great power must come great responsibility. And then
Speaker 4: the whole element of Mary Jane's subplot in this film
Speaker 4: and her part of the story. She's appearing on Broadway
Speaker 4: in the Importance of Being Earnest, a play about double lives.
Speaker 4: The scene that we see her in in the film
Speaker 4: Spider Man two, she's in a play. This is a film.
Speaker 4: It's very confusing. But the line that's said in the
Speaker 4: scene where Peter finally shows up to watch her.
Speaker 8: Is I hope you have not been leading a double life,
Speaker 8: pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time.
Speaker 2: That would be hypocrisy.
Speaker 4: So again you're underlining all of the themes of the
Speaker 4: movie in this scene. That's also involves, you know, all
Speaker 4: of the stuff involving the play has there's all kinds
Speaker 4: of wackiness and Sam Raimi comedy built into that. Bruce
Speaker 4: Campbell playing the guy who refuses to let Peter into
Speaker 4: the theater late, but again harmonic convergences and residences with
Speaker 4: the theme and even just the name of the play,
Speaker 4: the importance of being earnest. That is like another way
Speaker 4: of talking about why this movie is good. It is earnest.
Speaker 4: It believes in Spider Man. This is not a movie
Speaker 4: that is It's not like the current Marvel product, which
Speaker 4: is so snarky and ironic, and characters are always like
Speaker 4: deflating big emotional moments, saying something cute and quippy. And
Speaker 4: this movie has lots of comedy in it, but it
Speaker 4: believes so sincerely and so intensely in the Spider Man
Speaker 4: character and him being a force for good and these
Speaker 4: ideas being valuable. And I think there was a period
Speaker 4: I can remember, kind of right before the Tom Holland movies,
Speaker 4: or maybe at the very beginning of them, where the
Speaker 4: Raymy Spider Man movies kind of fell out of popularity
Speaker 4: a little bit. They were starting to see kind of
Speaker 4: dated Spider Man three wasn't great, and people would say, oh,
Speaker 4: those movies, they're old fashioned. And I feel like now
Speaker 4: people again have kind of come around to them, and
Speaker 4: I think a big reason why. There's a few reasons,
Speaker 4: but I do think this is one of them, is
Speaker 4: that it has this kind of timeless love of Spider Man.
Speaker 4: And it's not cute about it. It's just so you
Speaker 4: can really feel it. Sam Raimi believes this Mischi goss
Speaker 4: about this kid wearing a Spider Man mask. He loves it.
Speaker 4: He believes in it. And I think a lot of
Speaker 4: the credit should go to the screenplay by Alvin Sargent
Speaker 4: and whoever else worked by the scenes kind of crafting
Speaker 4: that and really helping that really come through the film,
Speaker 4: not just in the direction, but in the writing, the dialogue,
Speaker 4: the structure.
Speaker 2: Well, it's an excellent point about harmonic convergence, and the
Speaker 2: scene about going to see the Oscar wild play, the
Speaker 2: one into the Spider Verse where Miles's parents take him
Speaker 2: to see Spider Man turn off the Dark. Really, to me,
Speaker 2: it was beautiful work. That was a little too much,
Speaker 2: you know, And thank God that Miles is mom is
Speaker 2: an e our nurse, all right, Daisy, where are you
Speaker 2: on Spider Man two? Story wise?
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't have anything to say an objection
Speaker 5: to any of those points about Spider Man two. I
Speaker 5: think that's all absolutely true. I think that's part of
Speaker 5: what makes that movie really lovely. I mean I have
Speaker 5: such a visceral memory of how much I enjoyed seeing
Speaker 5: it when I saw it, like how thrilling it was.
Speaker 5: And that was after really liking the first one and
Speaker 5: just immediately being like wow, like I didn't think you
Speaker 5: could make a sequel that was like so much stronger.
Speaker 5: I mean, it really was great. I love all of
Speaker 5: the things that Matt is rightly describing about Spider Man two,
Speaker 5: for sure.
Speaker 2: Getting into the screenplay of into the Spider Verse where
Speaker 2: this is I mean credited to Phil Lord and Bob pursqutti,
Speaker 2: so one of the producers, one of the three directors,
Speaker 2: but who knows. I mean, most comic book movies are
Speaker 2: more acts of synthesis than pure adaptation, right, where we're
Speaker 2: choosing elements from different eras of the character and you know,
Speaker 2: combining them in a new way. You and I spoke
Speaker 2: briefly about Supergirl, the current Supergirl, right, which is the
Speaker 2: rare adaptation of the specific limited comic book series from
Speaker 2: just a few years ago, right, which is quite unusual.
Speaker 2: But into the Spider Verse goes beyond even that. So
Speaker 2: I mean we were meeting the Miles Morales iteration of
Speaker 2: Spider Man, created in twenty eleven by writer Brian Michael
Speaker 2: Bendis and artist Sarah Picelli. So at the point this
Speaker 2: movie comes out, this character has only been in the
Speaker 2: comics for seven years, Yeah, which is fairly unusual. Every
Speaker 2: other superhero movie we'd seen was about someone who had
Speaker 2: been around for decades, so we don't only get the
Speaker 2: familiar superhero origin story arc or Miles is acquiring superpowers,
Speaker 2: finding a mentor figure in the form of Jake Johnson's wonderful, depressed, divorced,
Speaker 2: out of shape Peter Parker from yet another dimention. Yes,
Speaker 2: and they're constantly commenting on his gut rude. And on
Speaker 2: top of all that, he has to discover that he
Speaker 2: lives in a in a multiverse and that there are
Speaker 2: variants of everyone he knows, all the heroes and villains
Speaker 2: of his own world. And this movie is still under
Speaker 2: two hours long. Like this is the astonishing feat of economy.
Speaker 5: I forget that all the time, and I'm shocked every
Speaker 5: time I go to watch it that it is so
Speaker 5: for all that is.
Speaker 2: Is this the best written Spider Man movie into the
Speaker 2: Spider verse?
Speaker 5: I do think it is quite the feat And there
Speaker 5: is just something amazing about as you said, it's under
Speaker 5: two hours. There is a density there that somehow manages
Speaker 5: to not be overwhelming. It manages to really just actually
Speaker 5: bring you in, right. I think they do an incredible
Speaker 5: job of leaving in the backstory, and instead of it
Speaker 5: being something that could be off putting because you feel like, oh,
Speaker 5: I don't know this, they approach it in a way
Speaker 5: where they're like, look, even if you don't actually know
Speaker 5: the specifics of Spider Man, let's be real. If you've
Speaker 5: been alive, you've probably seen something, and they like give
Speaker 5: you just enough of those references to kind of pull
Speaker 5: you in and bring you along. It is inviting instead
Speaker 5: of feeling like homework. And then on top of that,
Speaker 5: I mean for a movie, and I mean I do
Speaker 5: think this is part of the screenplay, this is part
Speaker 5: of what works. But for a movie that is telling
Speaker 5: you so much, this movie is a mastery of showing
Speaker 5: and not telling. Like everything is building upon itself. Right,
Speaker 5: it's an origin story, but it doesn't feel like it's
Speaker 5: dwelling in that even as you're completely aware the entire
Speaker 5: time that you're in an origin story. I mean, that
Speaker 5: was one of the major conversations around comics movies for
Speaker 5: a while, was like, Okay, well, they're going to bring
Speaker 5: out a new character that first movie is gonna have
Speaker 5: to be an origin story. Are we all going to
Speaker 5: suffer through the origin story? And even though this is
Speaker 5: an origin story and that is referenced in the movie itself,
Speaker 5: it doesn't feel that way. It doesn't feel weighty in
Speaker 5: that way of like, well, first I just got to
Speaker 5: get through this like information. I gotta get this backstory
Speaker 5: so that later there can actually be a story that
Speaker 5: has heart and steaks and all of that good stuff. No,
Speaker 5: it's all here. I also think that the characterization of
Speaker 5: you know, Miles is supposed to be in junior high,
Speaker 5: and he feels like a very believable, very smart, capable
Speaker 5: New York junior high kid.
Speaker 3: That's weird. My pants shrink.
Speaker 2: I think I hit puberty.
Speaker 5: But I mean they make jokes about puberty, but the
Speaker 5: actual like big feelings and the fact that he's reacting
Speaker 5: to so many things. Doesn't just feel like it's something
Speaker 5: that is happening because he's in a movie and they
Speaker 5: need him to react to them. They feel very true
Speaker 5: to being thirteen, fourteen years old?
Speaker 4: Wait, why is the voice in my.
Speaker 2: Head so loud?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 5: Oh? Are you okay? What?
Speaker 3: Why am I so sweaty?
Speaker 5: Why are you so sweaty?
Speaker 2: It's a puberty thing.
Speaker 5: I don't know why I said that I'm not going
Speaker 5: through puberty.
Speaker 4: I did, but I'm done.
Speaker 6: I'm a man. I mean.
Speaker 5: It really is just beautifully woven, and you have multiple
Speaker 5: characters going through really satisfying arcs that all feel very
Speaker 5: true for where they are in their lives, for where
Speaker 5: they are in this adventure, and for you know, if
Speaker 5: you are a fan of Spider Man, whether it's from
Speaker 5: the Ramie movies, or whether it's from reading the comics
Speaker 5: for years, or even if it's from seeing Turn Off
Speaker 5: the Dark, which, weirdly, the whole second act of that
Speaker 5: show relied on you having seen the first two Rami movies.
Speaker 5: They did not explain very much. It was not a
Speaker 5: good show. This actually manages to get all of that
Speaker 5: in there, and then, like you said, like it's never boring.
Speaker 5: You laugh, you cry, you really are taken on this adventure,
Speaker 5: and it's all under two hours. I mean, how could
Speaker 5: it not be the greatest script and actually achieve all
Speaker 5: of that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I came into this without any prior relation.
Speaker 2: I mean I was aware that there was a new
Speaker 2: version of Spider Man in the comics, but I hadn't,
Speaker 2: you know, unlike Peter Parker, I was introduced to Miles
Speaker 2: Morales by this movie, and my classical conception of Spider
Speaker 2: Man was so much what Matt was describing. The guy
Speaker 2: who's poor. You know, he's in a terrible apartment. You know,
Speaker 2: Aunt May needs her medicine. You know, he's unlucky in love.
Speaker 2: And to see that, you know, Miles is he has
Speaker 2: two loving parents. He's in this magnet school. You know,
Speaker 2: he has a lot of self confidence. And I was like, wait,
Speaker 2: I don't know about this, you know can So the
Speaker 2: fact that the movie does find a way to still
Speaker 2: make him a vulnerable figure in an underdog pretty quickly
Speaker 2: is remarkable. And even though we do pick up this
Speaker 2: multiversal idea in the live action Spider Man movies a
Speaker 2: few years later with Far from Home, I feel like
Speaker 2: the closer live action analog to this is Deadpool and Wolverine, right,
Speaker 2: which I mean was a massive hit and a lot
Speaker 2: of people like it, and a lot of people find
Speaker 2: it insufferable, right because it's so self impressed and so
Speaker 2: self referential, And how is this not that? You know, like,
Speaker 2: even people who aren't wild about Into the Spider Verse,
Speaker 2: the objection I hear more is it's just sensory overload.
Speaker 2: It's too much to take in. No one says like
Speaker 2: it's too impressed with itself, it's too winky winky. It
Speaker 2: has that, you know, just that that Ryan Rend's quality
Speaker 2: that I'm sure that's a screen persona that Reynolds has
Speaker 2: decided to cultivate and lean into. But this doesn't have
Speaker 2: any any of that. This is for such a self
Speaker 2: aware movie. It is still tremendously emotional, and I don't
Speaker 2: know how they pulled that off.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think to even speak to Matt's
Speaker 5: point about Spider Man two and like you can feel
Speaker 5: that there is a love for Spider Man and the
Speaker 5: character in the movie, I think that similarly, the Into
Speaker 5: the Spider Verse has a love for not only the
Speaker 5: individual character Spider Man, but what Spider Man has meant
Speaker 5: to people and why and why for so long, and
Speaker 5: how that character is different than those other big heroes
Speaker 5: that come from these different, unrelatable backgrounds. Right, it really
Speaker 5: is celebrating that, and not just in the sense of like, yes, diversity,
Speaker 5: because it was twenty eighteen, and yes, we were like
Speaker 5: a year and a half into Trump's first presidency, even
Speaker 5: though when they started making the movie that is probably
Speaker 5: not where they.
Speaker 4: Thought would be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it doesn't feel like those things are done to
Speaker 5: be shoehorned. It feels like it is done with the
Speaker 5: e towards like, Wow, this is one of the things
Speaker 5: that really became special about this character over time, and
Speaker 5: we're going to lean into celebrating that. And I think
Speaker 5: that when you come to something with that desire to
Speaker 5: actually like celebrate it and share it as opposed to
Speaker 5: just making people feel like I see you because you
Speaker 5: like did the homework, like you know, like that's a
Speaker 5: whole different way of opening things up to people. So
Speaker 5: you can't help but feel that it is welcoming.
Speaker 4: I mean, as foolish as it would be to compliment
Speaker 4: into the Spider Verse, given my role here today, I
Speaker 4: do think that the Chris, the answer to your question
Speaker 4: is like Deadpool and Wolverine is just using the multiverse
Speaker 4: as an excuse to throw these two actors together, throw
Speaker 4: a lot of jokes together, Easter eggs for the sake
Speaker 4: of Easter eggs. Like it is really just the shameless
Speaker 4: excuse to create this movie in the first place. And
Speaker 4: what in the Spider Verse does so well is that
Speaker 4: it uses I mean, the multiverse here is an essential
Speaker 4: element of what this film is about and what it
Speaker 4: is saying. Another thing that makes Spider Man such a
Speaker 4: I think a reason that he does resonate in every
Speaker 4: form with people is again getting back to how frankly
Speaker 4: miserable he is as a person. Part of that is
Speaker 4: his loneliness. He is a lonely character, and I think
Speaker 4: a lot of certainly not me, I would have never
Speaker 4: felt this way as a thirteen year old boy, but
Speaker 4: would have been like feeling lonely and feeling like nobody
Speaker 4: understands you, and you're a weirdo, you're a nerd, you're
Speaker 4: a deep you're different, and you know that you're just lonely.
Speaker 4: And one of the beautiful things about into the Spider
Speaker 4: Verse is it uses that as kind of one of
Speaker 4: the most important themes of the movie. Over and over,
Speaker 4: when the characters, the Spider Men slash women slash Hams,
Speaker 4: introduce themselves, you know, they're always saying, I'm the one
Speaker 4: and the only Spider Man. That's how it begins. For
Speaker 4: the last however many years, I was the one and
Speaker 4: the only Spider Man. And then when Miles first meets
Speaker 4: the Peter Parker, the chris Pine Spider Man, the thing
Speaker 4: that he says to him is there, like me. I
Speaker 4: thought I was the only one.
Speaker 3: You're like me.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be. I don't think you have
Speaker 2: a choice, kid up.
Speaker 4: And that is the thing that every lonely comic book nerd, certainly,
Speaker 4: not me, but others, I suppose. I guess I'm not
Speaker 4: speaking from personal experience, but that is the thing that
Speaker 4: every comic book nerd thinks when they're or thought me
Speaker 4: when me, when I was in high school and comic
Speaker 4: books were not popular, and they were not big movies,
Speaker 4: and reading a comic book was you know, I might
Speaker 4: as well have put a big kick me sign around
Speaker 4: my chest if I was to be seen reading one.
Speaker 4: I hid it from the world. Nobody knew it was
Speaker 4: my secret shame. And then a new kid moved to
Speaker 4: school my junior year of high school, and he liked
Speaker 4: comics and he brought one to school and I was like,
Speaker 4: you should put that away. You don't understand what you're doing.
Speaker 4: And he's like, I don't care. I like comics. And
Speaker 4: I thought to myself, I thought I was the only one.
Speaker 4: You're like me. And so this sense of community, this
Speaker 4: sense of building an identity around beliefs and ideas and
Speaker 4: a love of Spider Man, is what the movie is
Speaker 4: ultimately about. And so the fact that how do you
Speaker 4: achieve that well through the multiverse by introducing all these
Speaker 4: other people who share this common beliefs and love, And
Speaker 4: that's why people love and admire Spider Verse. And at
Speaker 4: best they think dead Pool and Wolverine is an acceptable
Speaker 4: time waster, and at worst they think it is insufferable
Speaker 4: and annoying and smug.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I watched Deadpool and Wolverine on a plane and
Speaker 5: I still was like, I maybe like that time back,
Speaker 5: even if I'm sitting on this plane for a little longer.
Speaker 2: I recall you being higher on Deadpool two than I was.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I was. I mean, I didn't think it
Speaker 5: was breaking any new ground, but I appreciate its commitment
Speaker 5: to its own bit. I do appreciate commitment to the bit,
Speaker 5: but it has to be more than just making the money.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean just agree with everything Matt was
Speaker 5: just saying. I mean, like, that is it right? Like
Speaker 5: it is about being welcoming. It is about saying like, yeah,
Speaker 5: you're a part of it, Like you can be a
Speaker 5: part of this so easily, and that's part of what's
Speaker 5: beautiful about it.
Speaker 2: Well, as we come to the end of round one,
Speaker 2: I am going to score this one for Matt solely,
Speaker 2: not solely, but largely because of the phrase harmonic convergence,
Speaker 2: both about the way that doc Ox comments to Peter
Speaker 2: Parker present the theme of the movie without making it
Speaker 2: super obvious that they're speaking the theme of the movie,
Speaker 2: also echoed in the Oscar Wild on Broadway scene, and
Speaker 2: then what you're saying, now, this was actually a note
Speaker 2: you cited Matt from into this spider verse where one
Speaker 2: spider Man tells another, I'm proud of you. So take
Speaker 2: that away.
Speaker 4: I knew I shouldn't have said that.
Speaker 5: It's really just a point for Matt. It's less a
Speaker 5: point for Spider Man too.
Speaker 2: That's very very gracious of you. As we move into
Speaker 2: round two, the movies in our time, where we consider
Speaker 2: what these films have come to represent in the time
Speaker 2: since they were new, and this is there's there's some
Speaker 2: overlap with the screenplay category here, but I really want
Speaker 2: to dig into how each of these films stands in
Speaker 2: as a representation of Peter Parker or Peter Parker and
Speaker 2: Miles Morales. And you know, we've talked about this a
Speaker 2: little bit already, but it is very difficult to think
Speaker 2: of another fictional character where the screen interpretations have followed
Speaker 2: as hard upon or even in the case of Spider
Speaker 2: Verse and Tom Holland overlapped with one another. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: we just have a lot of examples, a lot of
Speaker 2: things that we can line up next to each other
Speaker 2: and try to assess which one is the most successful
Speaker 2: translation from one medium to another. And the way I
Speaker 2: want to go into this is, Matt, I think you
Speaker 2: said timeless. You said there was a period where the
Speaker 2: Raimy movies had fallen a little bit out of favor,
Speaker 2: and I see that, like they do feel unmoored in
Speaker 2: time to me, and not just because Spider Man three
Speaker 2: comes out two months before the first iPhone. I look
Speaker 2: this up. You know, it doesn't have as pronounced in
Speaker 2: anachronistic quality as like the Donner Superman where the daily
Speaker 2: Planet scenes might as well be his girl Friday, or
Speaker 2: in like the Burton Batman, where it's like it's nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine but it's also nineteen thirty nine and people
Speaker 2: are wearing fedoras on the sidewalk. But there is a
Speaker 2: like without making it a big design element. It does
Speaker 2: not feel like it's commenting specifically on two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: You know, it feels like this is an adult who
Speaker 2: is expressing his fondness for the initial lead Ditko era
Speaker 2: of this character from almost forty years ago. Do you
Speaker 2: see that as a strength?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Absolutely, And I think that the movie has aged
Speaker 4: really well. One of the things I am curious about
Speaker 4: is how well will into the Spider verse age. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think it still plays wonderfully right now. It is also,
Speaker 4: I would think, undeniably a cooler movie than Spider Man two.
Speaker 4: But cool does not always age well. Sometimes cool in
Speaker 4: one era can curdle over time, and I do wonder
Speaker 4: in twenty years how will it look. I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's an interesting thing to think about. It feels like
Speaker 4: Spider Man two and really all the Raymie Spider Man
Speaker 4: movies have already kind of gone through a cycle of
Speaker 4: them looking very kind of old fashioned and hokey, and
Speaker 4: that I feel like as people have seemingly gotten a
Speaker 4: little tired of the Marvel cinematic universe. You know, I
Speaker 4: still enjoy a lot of their movies, but the complaint
Speaker 4: that I hear from people who are not pathetic nerds
Speaker 4: like me are often that the movies all feel the same,
Speaker 4: they have this same kind of arch tone. And so
Speaker 4: the more that you hear that complaint, the more that
Speaker 4: the Raymy Spider Man movies they kind of hit better
Speaker 4: because it's like, you can they almost seem like an
Speaker 4: alternative to that. They come from a time before people
Speaker 4: felt like they needed to be making quips about how
Speaker 4: silly everything is, or is that really what you're gonna wear?
Speaker 4: Is that really your costume? Like that those kind of remarks.
Speaker 4: It would have been interesting if they were made just
Speaker 4: a few years later. To your point, Chris and Spider
Speaker 4: Man had a iPhone or something. You know, there are
Speaker 4: scenes involving payphones in this movie, and I suppose in
Speaker 4: some ways that dates them, but I don't know. I
Speaker 4: think that honestly, the first Spider Man movie is much
Speaker 4: more dated and kind of time stamped. It still has
Speaker 4: a timeless quality, but it is more time stamped than
Speaker 4: Spider Man two. The soundtrack is incredibly like nickelback heavy,
Speaker 4: really and you know, and some of the costuming feels
Speaker 4: very you know, like do the women all need to
Speaker 4: have bear mid drifts and tight shirts? And it feels
Speaker 4: much more like in that movie because it was the
Speaker 4: first Because, as we said, Sam Raimi was a guy
Speaker 4: whose biggest movie was like a fifty million dollar film.
Speaker 4: He didn't have the juice to do whatever he wanted.
Speaker 4: And there were some things like the soundtrack, like Kirsten
Speaker 4: Dunk's attire, where clearly the producers or the studio were like,
Speaker 4: this needs to be cool again. We got this is
Speaker 4: a movie for kids, We got to make this thing cool.
Speaker 4: And you can see the first movie was so successful
Speaker 4: that on Spider Man two they were like, you can
Speaker 4: do whatever you want. And the costuming has not dated.
Speaker 4: The music is much more kind of focused on the score,
Speaker 4: and it just it has a much more of a
Speaker 4: pleasantly timeless quality, all of this stuff in the Daily
Speaker 4: Bugle with j Jonah James and that could you know
Speaker 4: it's his girl Friday. You know, it's it's something out
Speaker 4: of a totally different era, but in a good way.
Speaker 4: It doesn't feel like it's tied to two thousand and
Speaker 4: four or anything. It just it feels like a distilled
Speaker 4: essence of Spider Man, you know, brought to the screen
Speaker 4: in live action. And I think that is the thing
Speaker 4: that I love about it when I watch it today.
Speaker 2: Well, and I mean to your point about how what's
Speaker 2: cool and one era will date that much faster. I mean,
Speaker 2: these movies, these first two Raimi movies are only coming
Speaker 2: out about a decade after the what becomes the Image
Speaker 2: era right of Marvel, where Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee
Speaker 2: and Eric Larsen and all these guys. Really I'm going
Speaker 2: to say, a dreadful era of comics, you know, where
Speaker 2: everything was extreme and totally the muscles and the guns
Speaker 2: and the breasts and everything got I mean, always exaggerated
Speaker 2: in comics, but took on this really like ridiculous kind
Speaker 2: of distracted quality. And maybe this is part of what
Speaker 2: goes around with Spider Man three, where apparently it's a
Speaker 2: avi Arod you know, one of the producers who is pushing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, Venom had to be in the movie. Sam
Speaker 4: Raimi doesn't care about Venom.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: He turns him into a total joke. It's part of
Speaker 4: the charm of the movie in a way, as they
Speaker 4: forced him to use this character. And what does he do?
Speaker 4: You know, like Peter Parker is dancing around like what
Speaker 4: does Venom do? It turns him into an obnoxious adal
Speaker 4: Like I do kind of admire the way he turned
Speaker 4: that demand into something like he did it his way right,
Speaker 4: he could only do it as a samuraimithing.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I salute Ramy for that, and I
Speaker 2: just like it. It's still I don't understand how the
Speaker 2: Venom movies have been so successful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they stink. Look, I will say this though, for
Speaker 4: all the timeless quality of Spider Man two, this is
Speaker 4: a movie about the dangers of allowing artificial intelligence to
Speaker 4: make decisions for us in the form of doc Ock's arms.
Speaker 4: It is a movie about a scientist being so confident
Speaker 4: that anything he creates will be beneficial for all mankind,
Speaker 4: and thus does not stop even when confronted by obvious
Speaker 4: dangers of their work. So it is timeless, but it
Speaker 4: still plays pretty well in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: I think this is the moment where I can interject
Speaker 2: my point of comparison about avi Arod's appearances on the
Speaker 2: behind the scenes material of these two movies. Like I
Speaker 2: watched the special features on Spider Man two, and he's
Speaker 2: I don't know, he's in his fifties or maybe early
Speaker 2: sixties at that point, and he's just wearing like a
Speaker 2: normal like golf shirt and just looks like a man
Speaker 2: of his age, and he's kind of like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we couldn't do doc Cock the first time is too complicated,
Speaker 2: but now we are doing DACA. And then you watch
Speaker 2: him on the promotional stuff into the Spider Verse fourteen
Speaker 2: years later, so he's got another fourteen years on him,
Speaker 2: but he is dressed like Miles Morales. He is wearing
Speaker 2: like a hoodie and a Spider Man T shirt and
Speaker 2: he's got like a Spider Man beanie cap on his head,
Speaker 2: and it is like totally hello, my fellow kids. It's like,
Speaker 2: you know, this is the Spider Man for today. Is
Speaker 2: totally hip and contemporary, and it is well, I mean
Speaker 2: I laughed, I was a used, So maybe maybe he wins.
Speaker 2: All right, Daisy, let's let's talk about that is there.
Speaker 2: I don't see anything dated now. I mean, admittedly into
Speaker 2: the Spider verses only a third as old as Spider
Speaker 2: Man two is. But I you know, looked at it
Speaker 2: again the other night. It's seven and a half years later. Now,
Speaker 2: there wasn't anything about it that seemed you know, a
Speaker 2: little naive or antiquated or whatever to me. What do
Speaker 2: you think?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean we're only, yeah, like you said, seven
Speaker 5: and a half years out since the movie came out,
Speaker 5: So I mean, yeah, to be fair, not as much
Speaker 5: time has passed, even as it feels like so much
Speaker 5: more time has passed than that just an life experience.
Speaker 5: But I was trying to pay particularly a course of
Speaker 5: attention to aspects of this kind of how do they
Speaker 5: use technology in the movie, you know, how do they
Speaker 5: do certain things? And I mean really like the biggest
Speaker 5: joke in terms of like tech that isn't like tech
Speaker 5: specifically for the movie is that they don't need to
Speaker 5: take a monitor with a desktop tower, which actually is
Speaker 5: really funny and plays well and also was kind of
Speaker 5: an older reference by the time it even happened in
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen. You know, Miles has a phone, but it
Speaker 5: is not something that is like over using plot points,
Speaker 5: So you know, as things continue to shift there, that's
Speaker 5: not necessarily going to be an issue. He's an artist
Speaker 5: who does use spray paint. He does tags on stickers
Speaker 5: that he sticks around town. That's been going on for
Speaker 5: decades at this point in terms of how kids tag
Speaker 5: up the city. So I do think that those aspects
Speaker 5: of the plot and that presentation of it will be great.
Speaker 5: The animation itself, as we've acknowledged, is like beautiful and
Speaker 5: very inventive, and they are calling back to the way
Speaker 5: that comics were printed back in the day. But that's
Speaker 5: not all they're doing. I mean, they're also mixing in
Speaker 5: other aspects, So I think the fact that they'd mixed those,
Speaker 5: I mean, it was just mind blowing to watch. And
Speaker 5: you know, when it first came out and when it
Speaker 5: was released, it was also released in three D, which
Speaker 5: I tend to forget just because I kind of forget
Speaker 5: about this whole push that we had on three D
Speaker 5: for a while. Really it was a beautiful three D experience,
Speaker 5: but it also still just looks great, and there are
Speaker 5: some shots where you see that you know, dotted part more,
Speaker 5: there are some shots where you see kind of a
Speaker 5: fuzziness more like they lean into all of it, and
Speaker 5: it's not only the one thing. I do think that,
Speaker 5: as much as I love the art, if it had
Speaker 5: been more of one of those than the other, and
Speaker 5: not so evenly and equally applied throughout the movie in
Speaker 5: multiple ways, that would be something I'd be worried about
Speaker 5: how age. But I don't think that that will age poorly,
Speaker 5: especially if I just think about it compared to like
Speaker 5: different animation, right, like, yes, you know, we have computer
Speaker 5: animation now that looks different than hand drawn animation. But
Speaker 5: the things that were the most stellar of their era,
Speaker 5: they might look a little older, but they usually still
Speaker 5: look really good. It's the stuff that they cheeked out
Speaker 5: on and didn't really take time that doesn't seem to
Speaker 5: age particularly well in animation. So I mean, visually, there's
Speaker 5: that I think of anything. The story itself, again is
Speaker 5: really welcoming of diversity in a way that feels really
Speaker 5: appropriate for twenty eighteen. But it's not hamphisted. Despite Spider
Speaker 5: Pig being in the movie that was not intended. I
Speaker 5: just realized what was happening as it happened.
Speaker 2: Do you float into the air when you smell the
Speaker 2: delicious past?
Speaker 5: I do? But I think the thing about it that
Speaker 5: that aspect of the movie that well age is really
Speaker 5: just more the belief that they would put that much
Speaker 5: money and time and attention into making a movie with
Speaker 5: that much diversity, right, Like, the story itself is not
Speaker 5: the problem. The delivery of the characters. You know, it's
Speaker 5: not like Miles goes and meets Obama, you know, like,
Speaker 5: it's not that kind of thing. But there is this
Speaker 5: heart that is kind of hard to believe. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's hard to believe that they kind of make anything
Speaker 5: good now with a big investment, But the idea of
Speaker 5: something like that getting green liked is probably the part
Speaker 5: that has aged the least believably right now.
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, I mean, I don't really know whether you
Speaker 2: know Sony image animation, image works or whatever correct sequence
Speaker 2: of those words is. I don't know if that's a
Speaker 2: totally separate Basically, are these the people who said yes
Speaker 2: to this the same people who said yes to Morbius
Speaker 2: and right Craven the Hunter?
Speaker 4: Like, I don't know I.
Speaker 5: Mean, here we are having you know again, it's twenty
Speaker 5: twenty six. Here we are having a conversation again about
Speaker 5: a movie like Supergirl and going like, oh, no, are
Speaker 5: they gonna now stop making movies with women, because like
Speaker 5: we're back in that, so, you know. I think the
Speaker 5: story itself is in its own like timeless. It may
Speaker 5: not be classic, but it is timeless, and I think that. Yeah,
Speaker 5: the part that is the most jarring is just realizing
Speaker 5: that it wasn't that long ago that they were able
Speaker 5: to make something this crash and beautiful and fun with
Speaker 5: a character that wasn't just a white guy right at
Speaker 5: the center.
Speaker 3: I love you, Miles, Yeah, I know, Dad, see you Friday.
Speaker 4: You gotta say I love you back.
Speaker 3: I want to hear it, hear I love you, I
Speaker 3: love you, Dad, I love you. That's a copy tire
Speaker 3: shoes please.
Speaker 2: Well we started to kind of segue naturally into this anyway.
Speaker 2: But the other subcategory that I had for round two
Speaker 2: was cinematography slash visual effects slash animation. Again trying to
Speaker 2: compare apples and oranges here, but starting with Spider Man two,
Speaker 2: this movie looks good, right. The cinematographer is Bill Pope,
Speaker 2: who had worked on Dark Man and Army of Darkness
Speaker 2: with Ramy. It just shot stend Helm for him. Last
Speaker 2: year he did Clueless, He did the first three Matrix movies.
Speaker 2: He did Scott Pilgrim Versus The World, you know, which
Speaker 2: is another comic book movie that has kind of an
Speaker 2: interesting comic bookie visual language doesn't push that to the
Speaker 2: extent that Spider Verse does, but you certainly see the
Speaker 2: seeds of it there. And again, like the one Oscar
Speaker 2: that this movie got was for visual effects, which I
Speaker 2: think pulled up really well right up until the very end,
Speaker 2: like this extended shot of him, you know, swinging down
Speaker 2: the avenue towards danger with these pretty bad looking helicopters
Speaker 2: in the frame with him and some fire trucks and things,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm looking at that and thinking you
Speaker 2: could just film real helicopters and put Spider Man in there, right,
Speaker 2: You don't have to digitally animate the whole thing, I
Speaker 2: don't think. But the thing that I really like among
Speaker 2: again these these Oscar winning visual effects is apparently most
Speaker 2: of the time doc Ox tentacles are puppets. I mean,
Speaker 2: they have to be CGI in some scenes, but they
Speaker 2: were practical on set puppets for a lot of it.
Speaker 2: And again, as you pointed out, Matt, that does bring
Speaker 2: some visual continuity with the Evil Dead, these satanic tree branches,
Speaker 2: who's whose pov were shown in these much less expensive
Speaker 2: but very inventive Sam Raimi movies. Why do you think
Speaker 2: this is the best visual representation of Spider Man live
Speaker 2: action movie?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, the live action is probably a good qualifier theifer.
Speaker 4: I think that animation certainly has an edge. It's a
Speaker 4: lot easier to represent Spider Man's powers and everything he
Speaker 4: can do in animation, not just because they're drawing the characters,
Speaker 4: but also you can control the camera in such a
Speaker 4: more fluid way, and that's something you really you know,
Speaker 4: like rewatching into the Spider Verse this week, just so
Speaker 4: awed by not just the movements and the fluidity of
Speaker 4: all the characters in scenes where there's like five Spider
Speaker 4: Men all on the screen at the same time, but
Speaker 4: also how the camera dances with them at the same time.
Speaker 4: I think is really really beautiful. But I do think
Speaker 4: Spider Man two holds up very well visually a movie
Speaker 4: that's twenty years old. I do think some of the
Speaker 4: visual effects show their age a little bit you mentioned
Speaker 4: Bill Pope and the movie that some of the images
Speaker 4: like the CGI reminds me of. I always think of
Speaker 4: the Matrix Reloaded and the Burly Brawl. There's something about
Speaker 4: and it's Bill Pope. I don't know if it's him,
Speaker 4: it's the visual effects, if it's just the time period,
Speaker 4: something about the like CGI. Human beings in both of
Speaker 4: those movies always they seem and look and feel very similar.
Speaker 4: Something about their proportions are a little off. They seem
Speaker 4: a little like a little squat, a little wide. Maybe
Speaker 4: they seem a little rubbery. They're just artificial in a way.
Speaker 4: They don't quite pass the visual test. That said, I
Speaker 4: do think this movie and the first Sam Raimi Spider
Speaker 4: Man movie do not get enough credit for what they
Speaker 4: established in terms of the visual language of Spider Man
Speaker 4: that continues to be copying in every single movie and beyond.
Speaker 4: The video games of the Spider Man world are so
Speaker 4: indebted to the look and feel of those scenes, including
Speaker 4: the one you mentioned where Spider Man is swinging through
Speaker 4: a wide avenue with buildings doing all these cool moves.
Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure it was the Spider Man two video
Speaker 4: game that was tied to this movie was the first
Speaker 4: time the game was like an open world game where
Speaker 4: you could swing around as much as you want and
Speaker 4: you had objectives and places to go. But also part
Speaker 4: of the fun of the game was you could just
Speaker 4: swing around Manhattan and it looked as best as they
Speaker 4: could make it at the time, and it gave you
Speaker 4: that feeling of freedom and excitement and fluidity and movement
Speaker 4: and kinetic energy that the movies have, which you could
Speaker 4: never get in even the greatest Spider Man comic by
Speaker 4: Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and John Romita and whoever else.
Speaker 4: As beautiful as the artwork is, it is inherently a
Speaker 4: series of static panels and static images, and they can
Speaker 4: do some amazing and spectacular and web of things to
Speaker 4: mimic and get as close as they can to movement.
Speaker 4: They have tricks and brilliant tools that they use to
Speaker 4: do that, but they can never move. The movement happens
Speaker 4: in your mind. That's what the reader brings. And the
Speaker 4: first I mean I can remember seeing as a huge
Speaker 4: Spider Man dork sitting in the theater watching the first
Speaker 4: movie and just being kind of blown back in my
Speaker 4: chair that that's what Spider Man looks like when he swings,
Speaker 4: and to this day, however, many movies later, they're all
Speaker 4: kind of cribbing it. It looks cooler and into the
Speaker 4: Spider Verse, but they are still kind of using the
Speaker 4: mechanics of it and the idea of it, you know.
Speaker 4: The end of Into the Spider Verse ends with a
Speaker 4: final kind of monologue from Miles as he's swinging through
Speaker 4: New York. It looks amazing. It looks better than Spider
Speaker 4: Man two. But the idea of concluding a Spider Man
Speaker 4: movie on that kind of an image and sequence comes
Speaker 4: from these movies, and that's how they all did it,
Speaker 4: and they're still doing it to this day, and it
Speaker 4: is kind of an if it ain't broke, don't fix
Speaker 4: it kind of thing, And I think Into the Spider
Speaker 4: Verse maybe iterated on it in a way that, you know,
Speaker 4: because the tools are just that much better and it
Speaker 4: does look better now. I think you have to give
Speaker 4: a certain amount of credit to Spider Man one and
Speaker 4: two for being so kind of groundbreaking in establishing this
Speaker 4: language that every single one of these movies since then
Speaker 4: has continued to use.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sorry for interrupting, but this seems relevant. I'm
Speaker 2: seeing here that Elon Musk has posted on x that
Speaker 2: groc will create a full length, historically accurate Spider Man
Speaker 2: into the Spider.
Speaker 4: App It's going to that's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 2: I can't I no more woke Spider Man.
Speaker 4: Better as long as it's still under two hours.
Speaker 2: So I did get to talk to when Into the
Speaker 2: Spider Verse came out. I did an All Things Considered
Speaker 2: piece where it was the only time in my entire
Speaker 2: career where everyone that I asked the interview said yes.
Speaker 2: So I had this problem that I have never had
Speaker 2: before since of trying to fit all of these big
Speaker 2: wigs into a four minute radio piece. So I mean
Speaker 2: I had that's I actually listened the other night to
Speaker 2: this like twenty five minute interview that I did with
Speaker 2: Brian Michael Bendis that is like ten seconds of the
Speaker 2: radio story. But I did have Peter Ramsey was explaining
Speaker 2: to me technically to the extent that you know a
Speaker 2: layperson like me can understand. It was like, why does
Speaker 2: this movie look so different? What is so unique about
Speaker 2: the visual palette the animation of Into the Spider Verse.
Speaker 2: Why does this not look like any other animated movie
Speaker 2: that I've seen? And one of the things that I'm
Speaker 2: sure this was much simplified for my benefit, but he
Speaker 2: said that at least sometimes they were animating twelve frames
Speaker 2: per second instead of twenty four, which sounds like that
Speaker 2: would be corner cutting, you know, cost cutting, less work,
Speaker 2: But I mean it does have this incredible graphic effect.
Speaker 2: Another thing that's more amusing to me now than it
Speaker 2: was then, as they said that apparently motion blur was
Speaker 2: a standard part of the digital animation palette and they
Speaker 2: just left that out. They didn't do that. So as
Speaker 2: with your parents' TV, when you turn off motion smoothing,
Speaker 2: Spider Man cartoons look a lot better. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: this feels like you know, gilding a radioactive lily here.
Speaker 2: But so, Daisy, yes, is this the best that Spider
Speaker 2: Man has ever looked on screen?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think so. But you make some great
Speaker 5: points about the visuals, and I was already speaking about
Speaker 5: how I think the animation itself will hold up. But
Speaker 5: let's talk a little bit about the choices that were
Speaker 5: made instead, right, and focus on that for right now. So,
Speaker 5: as you're describing, they made very specific choices in terms
Speaker 5: of how they did the animation to make it have
Speaker 5: a different look and feel. It's very layered. I think
Speaker 5: that that layeredness also really plays well to the idea
Speaker 5: of being in a multiverse to begin with, right, it
Speaker 5: makes that much more real and textured. I mean, if anything,
Speaker 5: that's one of the that's honestly one of the big
Speaker 5: complaints about the fact that we are being eaten over
Speaker 5: the head with multiverse movies that show us different places
Speaker 5: that don't actually look that different from each other. That's
Speaker 5: not even the focus of the movie, right, We're not
Speaker 5: really spending time in the other Spider people's worlds. But
Speaker 5: when those worlds are colliding, the art of what that
Speaker 5: looks like really feels the most viscerally true to what
Speaker 5: it might be if all of these overlapping universes were
Speaker 5: just coming upon each other. And then we can think
Speaker 5: about the visual representation of the characters right the way
Speaker 5: they chose to draw them. And again, we have more
Speaker 5: than one Peter Parker in the movie to begin with.
Speaker 5: The first Peter Parker that we meet, we only meet
Speaker 5: him briefly, but it comes across that like he's like
Speaker 5: a competent, confident Peter Parker who kind of seems to
Speaker 5: have it together and so much of that just comes
Speaker 5: across and like in the way they draw him. And
Speaker 5: then when we finally meet our Peter B. Parker, who
Speaker 5: we spend the rest of the movie with the Jake
Speaker 5: Johnson voice one, right, like they look like they could
Speaker 5: be brothers, but also you can see that he's had
Speaker 5: a rougher time of it. Yeah, right, Like that aspect
Speaker 5: of the visual storytelling is also just really beautifully thought
Speaker 5: out and executed so well. And again like in terms
Speaker 5: of making so that you don't have to understand everything.
Speaker 5: I mean, they don't go through the process in the
Speaker 5: movie of trying to explain to you that Kingpin holds
Speaker 5: Spider Man responsible for why he doesn't have his wife
Speaker 5: and son anymore. They don't make an effort to explain that.
Speaker 5: But visually you can tell that Kingpin is not necessarily
Speaker 5: supposed to be a good guy, and the type of
Speaker 5: imposing figure that he is and why he is able
Speaker 5: to have the effect that he has on the characters
Speaker 5: in the movie is sold in part by how they
Speaker 5: choose to show him. Right, Miles looks so realistic and
Speaker 5: not Uncanny Valley at all at the same time, right,
Speaker 5: like we are of a similar background we are both
Speaker 5: black and Puerto Rican. And when I look at just
Speaker 5: his face and the nose, the brows, all of it,
Speaker 5: like it feels so real in a way that's just beautiful.
Speaker 5: And so you see all of those details and they're
Speaker 5: just so fun and they are already in themselves doing
Speaker 5: a level of staring. You know, I said earlier that
Speaker 5: this movie has a lot to tell, but it actually
Speaker 5: it does. It shows so much. And the way that
Speaker 5: they chose to animate these characters, the way that they
Speaker 5: chose to tell the visual story of that also does
Speaker 5: such incredible work. And you know, we have seen so
Speaker 5: many Peter Parker's they make reference to all of these
Speaker 5: and yet the version that I'm following in the movie,
Speaker 5: I also I believe it. I believe that he makes
Speaker 5: sense as a Peter Parker, right, Like, so these things
Speaker 5: really sit with the character in a way that feels
Speaker 5: really really lovely and true and doesn't just feel like
Speaker 5: they were drawn like, oh, you know, they should be
Speaker 5: this kind or that kind. I mean, look at what
Speaker 5: they do with Spider Ham and Spider Noir. I mean,
Speaker 5: Spider Noir comes in and it does feel like an
Speaker 5: entirely different texture is happening, it suddenly feels like you
Speaker 5: are in a noir film Kenny Parker, I.
Speaker 2: Mean the anime.
Speaker 5: Yeah, anime, And they went more specifically with an anim
Speaker 5: may style, right, Like, there were actually other Asian characters
Speaker 5: like Silk that they could have brought in, but they
Speaker 5: went with something that would diversify the type of animation
Speaker 5: that they were doing. So just at every stage, I
Speaker 5: felt like they stayed very true so what the core
Speaker 5: intention seemed to be, and that just works out in
Speaker 5: this really beautiful mosaic. But again, further's the storytelling in
Speaker 5: itself while also being like just visually so pleasing. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's so so fun to look at.
Speaker 3: My name is Kenny Parker.
Speaker 1: I'm from New York in the year thirty one forty five.
Speaker 5: I have a psychic link with Excider, who lives inside
Speaker 5: my father's robot, and we're best friends forever.
Speaker 2: It really does kind of confound the work of writing
Speaker 2: and talking about these movies, because you know, we keep
Speaker 2: falling back on these cliches to try to describe visuals
Speaker 2: that we just don't have very good language to describe
Speaker 2: specifically what we're seeing. But I mean the difficulty of
Speaker 2: showing us five or six different Spider variants in a frame,
Speaker 2: and they're each drawn in their own style, and somehow
Speaker 2: it still reads, you know, it doesn't just look like
Speaker 2: a like a mess that you can't even process. My
Speaker 2: favorite visual from this movie, I think is miles like
Speaker 2: ill fitting store bought Spider Man costume, you know, where
Speaker 2: the hood is just like draping off of him and
Speaker 2: it's like not quite fully zipped up in the back
Speaker 2: and there's like a price tag hanging off of it.
Speaker 2: And that's contrasted with even the out of shape Jake
Speaker 2: Johnson Spider Man, who's half wearing sweatpants, he still has
Speaker 2: half of a a proper Spider Man costume. I'm at
Speaker 2: some point, after seeing this movie so many times, I
Speaker 2: do have thoughts like it's probably really hard to draw
Speaker 2: someone in ill fitting clothes, Like it's probably you know
Speaker 2: the way that superhero comics traditionally, it just looks like
Speaker 2: a naked person who has a logo over their chest
Speaker 2: or something and some different bright colors to indicate that
Speaker 2: they're wearing clothes. But that's probably really hard to draw, right,
Speaker 2: Like the drape of a shirt that that's two sizes
Speaker 2: too big for you.
Speaker 5: Well, and there's also this scurring natural way that they
Speaker 5: even go into the initial art, like the art from
Speaker 5: the comics itself. Right, Like you mentioned the artist Sarah
Speaker 5: Shelley is the one who drew Spider Man. They literally
Speaker 5: re enact the cover of that first book. I heard
Speaker 5: Brian Michael bundis like, and it's beautiful, and it isn't
Speaker 5: something that because of the way the story is being told,
Speaker 5: feels like they are now going, oh hey, everybody, look
Speaker 5: at this. Here comes the cover Like it is in
Speaker 5: and of itself a beautiful storytelling moment and feels completely
Speaker 5: like a natural transition from what has been happening in
Speaker 5: previous scenes. I mean, to be able to do that
Speaker 5: is just a level of mastery that is like so impressive.
Speaker 5: I just I love when somebody respects their medium and
Speaker 5: they just really went for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think we kind of look for
Speaker 2: that now. We look for them to quote famous covers
Speaker 2: or famous panels visually in comic book movies. I mean
Speaker 2: to the point that there's that montage and Deadpool and
Speaker 2: Wolverine where they do it several times in a row
Speaker 2: and it's like, Okay, too many you know this was
Speaker 2: funny if you know the first three or whatever. I mean,
Speaker 2: I remember the surprise of when we see the Kingpin
Speaker 2: in this movie, it's the Bill san Kevit's like painted
Speaker 2: Kingpin from a Daredevil graphic novel. It's not even I mean,
Speaker 2: I know it was. Kingpin is also a villain in
Speaker 2: Spider Man comics, but that just made me think, Oh God, like,
Speaker 2: what else am I missing here? Since that's such a
Speaker 2: specific I was like, there must be ten other of
Speaker 2: these that I'm not picking up on because I haven't
Speaker 2: read as many comics in the last fifteen years as
Speaker 2: I did, you know, between nineteen eighty eight and twenty
Speaker 2: ten or whenever. But I mean, I did like that
Speaker 2: feeling of there's more for you to catch up here.
Speaker 2: You know, you need to lean forward, you need to
Speaker 2: open your eyes wider.
Speaker 4: You do get the sense at the big final fight
Speaker 4: when I think it's Scorpion who says to Spider Ham like,
Speaker 4: what are you some kind of silly cartoon? And Spider
Speaker 4: Han's responses you got a problem with cartoons. You feel
Speaker 4: like he's maybe speaking for the people who made this
Speaker 4: movie and who believe that animation is a art form.
Speaker 4: Unto itself capable of much more than it is often
Speaker 4: given credit for or given the space to be. Much
Speaker 4: like comics, I mean so often comics are you know, were,
Speaker 4: but still are often kind of dismissed as juvenile and
Speaker 4: only superheroes and only this disposable thing for children when
Speaker 4: they are that is what they very often are, But
Speaker 4: they are quite capable of so much more and have
Speaker 4: so much more potential that is often unexploited. And that
Speaker 4: is often true of animated movies as well. But one
Speaker 4: of the things that I think people you know, really
Speaker 4: loved about into the Spider Verse is that it shows
Speaker 4: you just how much you can do with animation in
Speaker 4: terms of story, in terms of look. I mean, look,
Speaker 4: I have young kids. We watch a lot of Disney
Speaker 4: animated movies. A lot of them are wonderful. They all
Speaker 4: kind of look the same and they all kind of
Speaker 4: follow a lot of the same stuff. So just the
Speaker 4: fact that this movie, again using the multiverse as a tool,
Speaker 4: is able to be like because they're all from different universes,
Speaker 4: they're all going to be animated differently. It's such a
Speaker 4: beautiful use of animation that if it's not impossible in
Speaker 4: live action, it would be incredibly difficult, incredibly cost prohibitive.
Speaker 4: Here it's just a seamless element and a tool of
Speaker 4: a broader project. And I think Daisy's talked about how
Speaker 4: there's so much show don't tell in this film, and
Speaker 4: I think that is a perfect example of it. Is
Speaker 4: that you are using a fundamental aspect of this medium
Speaker 4: you could not you know, Spider Verse was a comic book.
Speaker 4: There was a comic book called Spider Verse. In concept
Speaker 4: of lots of Spider Man from other universes, it is
Speaker 4: like this, but in terms of story it is nothing
Speaker 4: like this. The story of the original Spider Verse was
Speaker 4: nothing like this movie. You could not tell this story
Speaker 4: this way in a comic book. It could only be
Speaker 4: done in animation. So you have to kind of give
Speaker 4: it its props for that, right.
Speaker 2: We keep reading about how these have been like the
Speaker 2: mad Max Fury Road of animated movies or something where
Speaker 2: animators are just dropping dead at their desks. I mean,
Speaker 2: I like, I again, I have a very limited understanding
Speaker 2: of what the pipeline for animated movies is. And I
Speaker 2: I mean we know that that Pixar movies are years
Speaker 2: and years of development and revision right, But I mean
Speaker 2: I wonder, like, is that the main reason for the
Speaker 2: delay is that just the fact that each character and
Speaker 2: each it like has to have its own there's no
Speaker 2: economy of scale, right, you can't apply this to the
Speaker 2: It's like you have to do as much work as
Speaker 2: you would for a full animated feature for just one
Speaker 2: small section of the movie. Maybe well, and.
Speaker 5: There's something to be said, I think for the fact
Speaker 5: that like they didn't have to do it the way
Speaker 5: they did it right, Like if I think about the
Speaker 5: rainy Spider Man movies, for example, I mean, there really
Speaker 5: was this thing of like, can these comic book movies
Speaker 5: even work? I think you're sot right Matt about how
Speaker 5: like you could see some of the stuff in the
Speaker 5: first one. He definitely had a lot more say in
Speaker 5: the second one in terms of making certain things happen.
Speaker 5: But like I was saying earlier, the people weren't like
Speaker 5: clamoring for an animated Spider Man movie, Like you know,
Speaker 5: people were not shaking the table going like we need
Speaker 5: this and you have to get it right. So for
Speaker 5: them to bring this level of care and attention to
Speaker 5: it something that just wasn't necessarily even really wanted outside
Speaker 5: of seemingly sony just expanding their Spider Man footprint is
Speaker 5: pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, well, so we need to come to
Speaker 2: an end of round two here and again I am
Speaker 2: just running up against the great difficulty of setting your
Speaker 2: comments and opposition to one another. But I'm going to
Speaker 2: score this round for Daisy. I think on the basis
Speaker 2: of what you said about just embracing the comic bookie
Speaker 2: aspects of this rather than shying away from them, I
Speaker 2: found very very persuasive. So we have a dramatically convenient
Speaker 2: one to one.
Speaker 6: That's why the.
Speaker 4: Spider games.
Speaker 7: Just like guys.
Speaker 2: As we proceed into round three, the movies for all time,
Speaker 2: where we consider how these movies echo through eternity iconic moments,
Speaker 2: let's let's tally up our our iconic moments. I almost
Speaker 2: want to take like the l train rescue from Spider
Speaker 2: Man two off the board, since we get that homaged
Speaker 2: so explicitly in in into the Spider verse. But I can't.
Speaker 2: So this is just a purely instinctive, subjective kind of
Speaker 2: throw them out. Matt, I say, Spider Man two, what
Speaker 2: moments do you think of?
Speaker 4: I mean it's funny, Yes, the train scene was you know,
Speaker 4: very that was got a lot of attention at the time,
Speaker 4: and it is really it's a great action sequence, and
Speaker 4: you know the ending where he's unmasked and the people
Speaker 4: on the subway.
Speaker 2: Kind of we won't tell nobody missing.
Speaker 4: Right When I think Daisy was talking earlier about Spider
Speaker 4: Man as this kind of living person in New York City,
Speaker 4: I really feel like, while he's always been associated with
Speaker 4: New York, I feel like the Raimie movies and the
Speaker 4: way that they are kind of these post nine to
Speaker 4: eleven narratives of resilience in New York City, and the
Speaker 4: way the new average New Yorkers in those movies are
Speaker 4: always on Spider Man's side, even when Jay Jonah Jamison
Speaker 4: is screaming he's a man ass that the no one,
Speaker 4: the true New Yorkers never buy it, and they're always
Speaker 4: defending him against the bad guys in these movies. I
Speaker 4: think is a big reason why you see people dressing
Speaker 4: up in Spider Man costumes at Nick's parades and things
Speaker 4: like that from now on. I don't think without those
Speaker 4: movies and the way that New York is portrayed in them,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure he would be considered so quintessentially a
Speaker 4: New Yorker and this like person that people would be
Speaker 4: dressing up as. If not maybe they would. But that's
Speaker 4: something I've thought about when I saw a Spider Man
Speaker 4: hanging out at Nick's celebrations.
Speaker 5: On top of school buses, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Exactly, and on hanging off of lamp posts and things.
Speaker 4: To me, though, I love there are so many wonderful
Speaker 4: little things in in Spider Man two are the things
Speaker 4: that I always think about. You know, there is a
Speaker 4: shot in this movie when Peter is thinking about going
Speaker 4: to see Mary Jane on Broadway and he opens the
Speaker 4: door to his closet and he has the suit and
Speaker 4: the Spider Man suit hanging in the closet side by side.
Speaker 4: I mean that is that one image is Spider Man.
Speaker 4: You don't need anything else Like that literally sums up
Speaker 4: the entire the drama, the melo drama, all of it
Speaker 4: is in that one shot, and I always like it
Speaker 4: always kind of makes me smile every time I see
Speaker 4: that image. It's literally a single image. It could be
Speaker 4: a panel in a comic. It's so great. I really
Speaker 4: like we haven't talked a ton about the Peter and
Speaker 4: Mary Jane's means In Spider Man two, I really really
Speaker 4: love the chemistry and the connection between Toby maguire and
Speaker 4: Kirsten Dunst. I know they were a couple in real
Speaker 4: life at some point around the making of the first movie.
Speaker 4: I know they were not together at the time of
Speaker 4: this movie, and I almost feel like it gives a
Speaker 4: little bit of like really pleasant friction to their connection
Speaker 4: in this film, where you can tell they have a connection,
Speaker 4: but they also have a lot of like scenes where
Speaker 4: like she's like, Crapper, get off the pot here, what's
Speaker 4: going on here? Like she's annoyed with him? And I
Speaker 4: love that aspect.
Speaker 2: The line is do you love me?
Speaker 5: Matt.
Speaker 2: It's not Crapper, you love the point?
Speaker 8: Do you love me?
Speaker 4: Look, I'm not, I'm not. I know, stan Lee, I'm
Speaker 4: no Alvin Sargent. What can I say?
Speaker 3: Kiss me, kiss you?
Speaker 5: I need to know something, just one kiss.
Speaker 2: I mean, when Stanley writes it, it's do you love me?
Speaker 2: Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I think of the first Raymie Spider Man as
Speaker 4: like the really very ditcho Y Spider Man, and I
Speaker 4: think of the second movie as the very John Ramita
Speaker 4: Spider Man. That's the one where the awkward teen emotions
Speaker 4: kind of flower into this big romance and melodrama. Mary
Speaker 4: Jane is now, you know, a beautiful leading lady on
Speaker 4: Broadway and what is this dork doing kind of chasing
Speaker 4: her around? But it somehow works. So I love all
Speaker 4: of their scenes. I love the you know, like the
Speaker 4: detail of her poster, like like her advertising poster is
Speaker 4: hanging all over New York, so that wherever he goes,
Speaker 4: no matter what he does, he's always reminded of her.
Speaker 4: He can't escape this woman that he's tried to like
Speaker 4: block out. I can't be with her. I have to
Speaker 4: be Spider Man. And everywhere he goes, it's like that
Speaker 4: naked gun line. You know, everywhere I look, something reminds
Speaker 4: me of her, And except in this movie as literal,
Speaker 4: because her face is staring at him from every construction
Speaker 4: site and every billboard where they're seeing, Yeah, a beautiful,
Speaker 4: lovely little touch. And then I guess the last thing
Speaker 4: I'll throw out as another thing that I just love
Speaker 4: that really marks it as a Sam ramiish movie is
Speaker 4: I think Daisy was saying she doesn't love Toby Maguire's
Speaker 4: Peter Parker Spider Man, and he certainly is not the
Speaker 4: funniest Spider Man. He's not a great wise cracker. But
Speaker 4: I think Sam Raimi really played to his strengths in
Speaker 4: Spider Man two. And I think what he does is
Speaker 4: he makes the movie around him very funny, and he
Speaker 4: makes Peter and Toby the butt of every joke. Again,
Speaker 4: he's a sadist. He loves to torture him. But like
Speaker 4: you think of the scene where he's hired to take
Speaker 4: photographs of what turns out to be MJ getting engaged
Speaker 4: to Jjo and Jamison's son.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, and I just want you all to
Speaker 2: know that the beautiful miss Mary Jane Watson just agree
Speaker 2: to marry.
Speaker 5: Me the astronaut.
Speaker 2: Yes, the world's youngest astronaut is astronaut spoiler alert.
Speaker 4: He also becomes a wolf man at one point in
Speaker 4: the comics, but really that's not important right now.
Speaker 2: Real real, boring, real boring.
Speaker 4: Physical astronaut stuff.
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm glad that that MJ's dumped him, like
Speaker 2: the moment that Peter just expressed any any reciprocal interest
Speaker 2: at all, because that guy is, come on, he's an
Speaker 2: empty spacesuit.
Speaker 4: But I love. In that scene, he is, you know,
Speaker 4: a tray of appetizers and he reaches out to grab
Speaker 4: one and someone always grabs the last time, and then
Speaker 4: a drink comes by on a tray. He's like, oh,
Speaker 4: a drink, but it's actually like the discarded drink and
Speaker 4: it's empty. And there almost every scene has a moment
Speaker 4: where Peter is getting beat up, getting knocked down, falling
Speaker 4: flat on his face, looking like a fool. And I
Speaker 4: think that it is the perfect use of Toby maguire
Speaker 4: as this kind of awkward, somewhat stiff, but very sincere guy.
Speaker 4: That's how you kind of build a funny Spider Man
Speaker 4: movie around him fighting with Bruce Campbell in the theater
Speaker 4: another example we mentioned, Like, all of those scenes I
Speaker 4: think works so well in a movie that at times
Speaker 4: is very touching and emotional, like it is also so
Speaker 4: much funnier than the first Spider Man movie. So I mean,
Speaker 4: I could go, I could literally just mention a thousand scenes,
Speaker 4: but I feel like I'm talking way too much, so
Speaker 4: I'm going to stop now.
Speaker 2: All right, Daisy, your iconic moments from into the Spider Verse.
Speaker 7: What do you got?
Speaker 5: We talked a lot about the visuals and I think
Speaker 5: you know again, moments like when Miles is fully, truly
Speaker 5: embracing himself in the beautiful animated shot that reenacts the
Speaker 5: cover of the first Miles Moralism. Things like that are
Speaker 5: incredibly memorable. But the other things that stick with me
Speaker 5: are things that just felt really true about the world, right,
Speaker 5: Like I love that so many of the jokes feel
Speaker 5: really right for New York. Right there's the part where
Speaker 5: right after Miles has met Peter B. Parker for the
Speaker 5: first time, and he's dragging him along, like they land
Speaker 5: on the ground and everybody's just still kind of walking
Speaker 5: around them, and Miles is like, maybe it could go
Speaker 5: around all right, thanks New York, because they don't, like
Speaker 5: it's just like it's such a great moment. And even
Speaker 5: that whole sequence where he's dragging him around, like, you know,
Speaker 5: it's the kind of joke that in an MCU movie
Speaker 5: would be played a little differently.
Speaker 7: Looks like a child drenched, like Spider Man dragging a
Speaker 7: homeless corpse behind a train.
Speaker 5: Then you're like, I believe that a New York cop
Speaker 5: would actually just be that way, Like that feels right,
Speaker 5: you know, So I love those aspects of the humor,
Speaker 5: and then of course you have just how fun those
Speaker 5: intros are, right every single time they introduce a character,
Speaker 5: every single one, you know, okay for the last time,
Speaker 5: just one last time, and then they give you this
Speaker 5: amazing little bit of backstory that tells you so much,
Speaker 5: that also pays so much homage and manages to actually
Speaker 5: get you like caught up. And they're really smart with
Speaker 5: the pacing of them. Right by the time we get
Speaker 5: to Spider Ham and Spider mar and Kenny Parker, you
Speaker 5: know they're doing them across the frames at the same
Speaker 5: time with the different pace. Like it is both beautiful
Speaker 5: in its storytelling and incredibly memorable in terms of like,
Speaker 5: oh what did I learn about that character? Like who
Speaker 5: was this? You actually have something quick that you can
Speaker 5: refer back to. It also uses the art of comic
Speaker 5: books in it, So, I mean, there's just so many
Speaker 5: incredibly fun moments in this movie. There's he took a bagel.
Speaker 5: It's so stupid, Like, there's just so many fantastic that
Speaker 5: guy took a bagel, Like, there's so many fun moments
Speaker 5: like that in this movie. And I truly do think that,
Speaker 5: like ultimately, because we are seeing kind of what Peter
Speaker 5: Parker would be like, you know, just if the story
Speaker 5: stopped for a minute and you just watched him really
Speaker 5: get beat up. It just feels like the truest Peter
Speaker 5: Parker to me, right, Like he is a sad tech,
Speaker 5: but he's still really funny. But you could see how
Speaker 5: those jokes are kind of like a deflection and a
Speaker 5: defense mechanism. But his anxiety and his lack of confidence
Speaker 5: is real even as his commitment is there. And so
Speaker 5: the way that they're able to play with that humor
Speaker 5: and then call back on those lines, right, I mean,
Speaker 5: it is the way these things call back on each other.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's tight. It might as well be Shawn
Speaker 5: of the Dead or they're just like, we basically told
Speaker 5: you everything that will happen. You did not realize that
Speaker 5: that's what we were doing, and now all of those
Speaker 5: things will happen in order. I mean a lot of
Speaker 5: that happens in into the Spider Verse. So I just
Speaker 5: think it's like incredibly merrole, both in terms of its
Speaker 5: place and its characters and its visuals, and then the
Speaker 5: when you tie them all together, the moments are just
Speaker 5: they really like pop and stick with you and make
Speaker 5: you want to make a reference. And then, of course,
Speaker 5: arguably I think the greatest post credit scene ever, which
Speaker 5: is the re enactment of a meme. Like somehow they
Speaker 5: still manage to surprise you by bringing out the Spider
Speaker 5: Man pointing at each other, which feels even better because
Speaker 5: you just watch a multiverse Ace movie.
Speaker 2: WHOA what, I'm Spider Man. I need you to come
Speaker 2: with the heck, I just told you that. Listen, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm from the future.
Speaker 4: Dare you point at me? You were pointing first, rude
Speaker 4: to point, you know.
Speaker 5: To pull that kind of Internet humor in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: and for to actually be appropriate and not just excessive.
Speaker 5: Is let's cherry on top?
Speaker 2: Right there, you're pointing at me right now, Look at
Speaker 2: your finger different than normal. I didn't want to come
Speaker 2: out of this missing twenty eighteen Twitter.
Speaker 5: But no, there was a time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was beautiful, all right, very very last point,
Speaker 2: since this is this is a game of inches here, Matt,
Speaker 2: are you going to tell me that the stan Lee
Speaker 2: cameo and Spider Man two is better than the Stanley
Speaker 2: cameo and into the Spider verse.
Speaker 4: No, that would be foolish to attempt such a thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, the Spider Man two cameo is a blink
Speaker 4: and you miss it kind of thing. I mean, it
Speaker 4: was from before that was like a you know, like
Speaker 4: a requirement, perhaps literally a contractual requirement. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So No, when they do it in the DC movies,
Speaker 2: it is where.
Speaker 4: Or in a movie like he had nothing to do with,
Speaker 4: like Big Hero six, where it's like you didn't create
Speaker 4: these characters. Doing year stan now the one and into
Speaker 4: the Spider Verse is vastly superior, especially because it kind
Speaker 4: of makes fun of Stanley a little bit, which is
Speaker 4: I think by that point was extremely appropriate to kind
Speaker 4: of poke fun at his huxtery ness. By that point
Speaker 4: I was all in favor of it. I really like
Speaker 4: that scene.
Speaker 2: All right, Daisy, what I don't know, would you like
Speaker 2: to would you like to graciously suggest that no, no
Speaker 2: Spider Man took that guy's pizza and is more the
Speaker 2: Bullpen Bulletin's excelsior essence of Stanley than telling.
Speaker 5: You, well, I mean I would if it really felt
Speaker 5: like there was some fun, little genisque that we weren't
Speaker 5: quite grabbing onto. But besides the fact that, I think,
Speaker 5: you know, like what Matt said about they show him
Speaker 5: as this little huckster also really feels right. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's just so funny. So he both is delivering the
Speaker 5: heart message of the movie right and at the same
Speaker 5: time they're like kind of making reference to like no refunds,
Speaker 5: don't mess with this guy's money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to miss him.
Speaker 3: Yeah we were friends. You know, can I return it?
Speaker 3: If it doesn't fit, It always fits eventually.
Speaker 5: Again, these are some deft hands that made this movie.
Speaker 5: It really shows that of like it both comes across
Speaker 5: as like completely loving and also like wink wink, Like, hey,
Speaker 5: before this guy was the old guy that we all
Speaker 5: had to pay homage to, like there was some stuff
Speaker 5: about him that people didn't well and the right.
Speaker 2: Like he took the checks and kind of kept his
Speaker 2: mouth shut, and you know, Steve did go and for
Speaker 2: a long time Jack Kirby like famously did not exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the movie pole with so much love to
Speaker 5: pull that off as well. Fantastic.
Speaker 10: Well, we come to the judgment here, and this is
Speaker 10: a this is a tough one. This is a real
Speaker 10: handbringing one. And I want to thank both advocates for
Speaker 10: the substance and passion of their their scholarship. But to
Speaker 10: my great surprise, I think tonight.
Speaker 2: The court is going to rule in favor of Matt
Speaker 2: because only because it is very difficult for me to
Speaker 2: imagine into the Spider Verse existing, as you said in
Speaker 2: your opening statement, Matt without the foundation of this sort
Speaker 2: of very solid type a satisfying superhero movie. It is
Speaker 2: the best example of the simple version, right, and it
Speaker 2: probably underserves it too, because that appearance of simplicity is
Speaker 2: the result of so many good decisions and so much
Speaker 2: so much hard work and a trial and error process
Speaker 2: in the form of the first film I love into
Speaker 2: the Spider Verse, and again, like presumably the entire Raimi
Speaker 2: Spider cycle is the Spider Verse. But I did not
Speaker 2: think there was any possible way that, given all those obstacles,
Speaker 2: that Spider Man two could triumph. And yet that is
Speaker 2: the court's ruling. I thank you both.
Speaker 5: You know, I've sometimes said that I believe the iPod
Speaker 5: is a more important vention than the iPhone because we
Speaker 5: wouldn't have gotten there about it. So I got it.
Speaker 5: I completely understand in.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty six, give me an iPod with no connectivity
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 4: But I think it's very fair to say that Spider
Speaker 4: Man two, you know, is the great Peter Parker movie,
Speaker 4: and it could not be improved upon, And into the
Speaker 4: Spider versus the great Miles Morales movie, and it could
Speaker 4: not be improved upon. And we need them both. That's
Speaker 4: that's the way I feel. To me, there are always
Speaker 4: one A and one B. And when I said I
Speaker 4: could have argued the other side, I easily could have.
Speaker 4: I love both of these movies very much. There is
Speaker 4: no there's no loser here. There are only winners for
Speaker 4: us for having both of these incredible movies and our
Speaker 4: lives and just rewatching them this week for this was
Speaker 4: like so delightful. I'm just just so happy rewatching Spider Man.
Speaker 4: What a joy. I hope I feel half this good
Speaker 4: watching the new one. I don't know if I will,
Speaker 4: but I hope.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 2: See, I thought you were spoiling it for us when
Speaker 2: you were talking about Gwen Stacy zombies and you.
Speaker 4: Know, Night of the Living ned they should have taken that,
Speaker 4: and that would have been the way to go.
Speaker 2: You New York critics tend to see stuff high are
Speaker 2: we do down here in the Sticks.
Speaker 4: So I didn't know, not this time, how much.
Speaker 2: Intel you you actually had Matt give us the title
Speaker 2: of your imminent new book again and anything else you'd
Speaker 2: like to plug please.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's called Funny Business. It's got a long subtitle that,
Speaker 4: honestly I sometimes mangled myself, so funny Business. And it's
Speaker 4: all about the two thousands era of Hollywood comedies, the
Speaker 4: frat Pack era, if you will. Although the members of
Speaker 4: the frat Pack hate that name, so don't say it
Speaker 4: out loud in their presence. They'll get angry. But that's
Speaker 4: what the book is about. It comes out on October sixth.
Speaker 4: You can pre order it now. And yeah, I'm still
Speaker 4: working for screen Crush green crush dot com and I
Speaker 4: do co host the sister podcast to this one, Film
Speaker 4: Spotting SVU. We restarted it earlier this year. It's me
Speaker 4: and Jordan Hoffman talking about streaming movies and it's a
Speaker 4: lot of fun. I'm really enjoying it. We recorded an
Speaker 4: episode this morning. I have been talking all day. My
Speaker 4: voice is so tired.
Speaker 2: Will you ever be released from that bathroom?
Speaker 4: Yes? I've been sitting in this bathroom for eight hours
Speaker 4: today and I just I'm very tired.
Speaker 2: I prefer to think of us as the secretly Evil
Speaker 2: Uncle podcast of Film Spotting SVU, rather than the sister
Speaker 2: podcast Daisy What would you like to plug? Where can
Speaker 2: listeners find your work?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I work at Slate where I'm working with
Speaker 5: two shows that I love. One is called Icymi and
Speaker 5: it's a show about the Internet and Internet culture. Our
Speaker 5: tagline used to be We're very online, so you don't
Speaker 5: have to be, but honestly, who among us is not
Speaker 5: very online these days, So we've really been just trying
Speaker 5: to keep the Internet fun because frankly, we do deserve it,
Speaker 5: and that is a good time. Definitely check that out.
Speaker 5: It comes out twice a week. And then I also
Speaker 5: work with the long running show Death, Sex, and Money,
Speaker 5: which used to be a part of WNYC and has
Speaker 5: since moved over to Slate. And so if you love interesting, strange,
Speaker 5: real stories from people going deep about their weirdest experiences
Speaker 5: and feelings, it is beautiful and fun. And we just
Speaker 5: did an episode called The Dog Detective, and we did
Speaker 5: another one earlier this year called Death, Snakes and Money,
Speaker 5: and it's for a show that talks about death and
Speaker 5: sex and money. It is just really fun. So those
Speaker 5: are beautiful podcasts that you can check out. And I
Speaker 5: am very proud to work on them behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: All right, well, I will look for you at the
Speaker 2: brand New Day screening. Shirley, Shirley, Yeah, will you be
Speaker 2: coming in costume?
Speaker 5: You know? I always try to, but I have too
Speaker 5: much hair. It's not easy to get a mask on
Speaker 5: over the big mound of hair.
Speaker 4: It always fits, events always.
Speaker 5: Fits eventually, but by the end of the movie, like
Speaker 5: I still got to see out of the ice.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you both for being here. This has been
Speaker 2: so much fun and the excuse to talk about these
Speaker 2: movies is welcome. When to invite listeners to join us
Speaker 2: for our next movie, death Match. When in advance of
Speaker 2: the September release of Don't Look Back and Anger, the
Speaker 2: documentary about Oasis' twenty twenty five reunion tour, two of
Speaker 2: the greatest concert films in history, both from directors who
Speaker 2: would go on to become critical darlings. Plug In It
Speaker 2: is the Mandalorian and Grogu star Marty Scorsese and the
Speaker 2: band in the Last Waltz, How He Shall Forever Be introduced? Yeah,
Speaker 2: versus Jonathan Demi's Talking Heads concert films stop making sense.
Speaker 2: Someone will be limping around on Cripple Creek. Someone's house
Speaker 2: is getting burned down. It'll truly be a case of
Speaker 2: life during wartime on our next movie, Deathmatch. Movie Deathmatch
Speaker 2: is produced by Chris Klemick, who is Me, and by
Speaker 2: Golden Joe Desso. Without Golden Joe, the show wouldn't go.
Speaker 2: It is executive produced by Adam Kempinar and Sam van Holgren.
Speaker 2: My quest to find rhyming nicknames for them both is ongoing.