Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) — "Are you Peter Parker, or are you Spider-Man?"

Weary way losing a kid. You can hit me with a vance right, put your wind. This is the haunt. What are you gonna do? Tackle in the desert?

Spider Man Brand New Day, Red thirteen July thirty first Well, welcome to the Projection Booth. Time your host Mike White joined me for a special crossover episode with the culture cast is mister Chris Statue. The letter of the day is M for Mutagia. We are digging into Spider Man Brand New Day, the new Tom Holland MCU film that just came out and borrows its title and a chunk of its DNA from the classic Peter Parker Mary Jane Reset comic era, along with the elements of the other storyline, Chris. Before we get into what this movie is and into some spoiler territory, I want to know, is this movie worth the bucks?

So? I feel like you and I, according to some people in your reviews, tend to drag new movie, which I find to be amusing because I don't think that big budget, one hundred million dollar movies need fans defending them. If they're not good, they're not good. They don't need your defense. If you like the movie, cool just because I didn't enjoy the movie doesn't devalue your ability to enjoy the movie.

Just want to put this out there because again, like it doesn't seem to be anything with the older movies we watch or the non modern films especially, but new things, people tend to get bent out of shape. And it was funny because we were getting taken a task what Supergirl and Deadpool and Wolverine. And I would wager someone coming into this podcast, Michael, well, they're going to have disliked the Spider Man movie, except not. I actually don't dislike every new movie I go see. I enjoyed this movie a fair amount.

Is it worth going to see in theaters? I would think so. I think it is a worthy entry into a Spider Man franchise that is on its fourth film now as opposed to its third. And this feels like a fourth film in that it kind of resets some things, branches out in some new directions, does some things that Spider Man movies have never done before, and I think for me, in a lot of ways, it's Look, I don't know how you feel about last Spider Man movie because we didn't talk about it together. I don't think but I was not the biggest fan of the last Spider Man movie for the same reason I wasn't the biggest fan of Deadpool Wolverine.

It was just a bunch of cameos, like it was a bunch of fan service, which is fine for the first time you watch it, But has anyone gone back and rewatched those movies like more than maybe once? Deadpool Wolverine doesn't hold up. And the best part of that Spider Man movie is Willem Dafoe genuinely, which is not surprising given that he was the best part of the original Spider Man movies he was in. So the fact that this movie doesn't rely on any of that, doesn't rely on any multiverse nonsense, it doesn't have any of that. This is a and I've seen this this kind of review mentioned, or this kind of point mentioned several times in other reviews.

It's a more grounded Spider Man, and I think it is. This is this is the Spider Man that I grew up with in the comics in a lot of ways, like he's just out of high school. He's a young adult ish still kind of doing ground level Spider Man work. And then there's more inrigue beyond that, so I enjoyed it a fair amount. I would say it was worth it.

I don't know if Marvel is going to be two for two this year with films, because obviously we have Doomsday coming out at the end of the year, which you and I will cover. But I think so far this year they're one for two or one for one, I guess, because again I can't speak to the other one yet. But one for one, this movie's great. I've seen some reviewers say it's as good as Spider Man two. I don't hold Spider Man two in as high regard as everybody else.

I think, for me, this might be the best Tom Holland Spider Man movie. I definitely think it's better than the last one. The Jake Jillenhall one is pretty good. The first one, I think is predicated on some things like not knowing that Michael Keaton is her dad throughout most of the movie is kind of like part and parcel to what really makes that movie work. So for me, I think this is the first Tom Holland Spider Man movie that I'm like, Okay, we have escaped the old Spider Man storytelling.

We've escaped the Spider Man of two thousand, twenty tens, and this Spider Man is firmly now his own thing. And there are moments in this movie that we have not seen with Spider Man before. There are things in this movie that again are so unique and novel and fun and interesting that for me, I would say, not only is it a worthy film to watch in theaters, but I think that this is the now the best Spider Man movie that we have gotten in the cinematic spider Man era, which would have started with Raymie spider Man. So what about you, Mike, Well, I'm curious you said that this film does some things that no other Spider Man movie has done, and I'm curious what you were thinking of for that. All of the mutant stuff, like actual mutant stuff anything with I mean, again, I don't want to spoil that stuff because I think that's like the main spoiler of the movie.

Uh, But I mean, we've seen the We've seen Spider Man as a organic spider in the movies, but we've never seen it where he doesn't start out that way as Spider Man, but he's still Spider Man and he becomes that we've never seen. That's a comic book thing. We've never seen that in the movie, and so I guess I was more speaking to having not seen it in the movies, not so much the comics, because most of this is just a millunge of things from the comics kind of worked into a script that works better than I would have expected, because again, to go back to forcing a bunch of villains into a movie Spider Man three, both the Toby Maguire one and the Tom Holland one both had a lot of villains, like replete, an abundance, a plethora, even a villain, and this one has a lot of villains as well, but I think it definitely kind of manages them in a way that makes sense, and the through line I think with Jean Gray also makes sense.

I feel that he has more friends than enemies in this. One, right, which is weird. Yes, Yeah, we really manned Spider Man situation almost where he's interacting with the cops, which we have not really seen. We saw that sort of with Dennis Leary's character sort of. But the less I think about those Andrew Garfield Spider Man movies, the better.

Personally. Yeah, I'm trying to think of what his relationship with the Cops was in the previous films. It feels like it was more dealing with high school than anything else, and you know, the school trip and all that, and the second film, the trip down to Washington, d C. I think that was in the first film, and then with the last one, I really don't remember any cops. It was so much about the whole let's reset the universe type of thing, and I feel like the Spider Man films have not necessarily suffered because of the rest of the MCU.

I mean, we've got our introduction to Tom Holland via one of the bigger MCU via one of the Avengers films, that Civil War that we got was. That was Captain America Civil War, which is technically not an Avengers movie, but it's half of an Avengers movie. It so feels like a Reorders. An Avengers movie. I mean, in a lot of ways.

For me, it's as much an Avengers movie as Ultron is. I guess it's just like the Stakes. I guess it's the they're not world ending steaks in Civil War in Asia, Ultron their world ending steaks. So I guess that's kind of the line of demarcation. I would agree the Spider Man movies have suffered because he's had to be part of the grander MCU framework.

The picture work that is, the MCU relies a lot on Spider Man, which, again, Spider Man was a singular entity up until this point. He was in his own movies, doing his own thing. There was no crossovers, there was no you know, the most we ever saw was Venom. That was it. Yeah.

But in the comics, I mean, he was very interactive with other people. That was the thing I always enjoyed was that he had his little area of New York, mostly queens that he would deal with. You had, you know, Daredevil over in Hell's Kitchens. Like everybody had their own turf, right, you know, like fantastical for yeah, exactly. So you had all of these people that had their own area, and he would team up with them occasionally.

I mean, I remember, especially when he got the Symbiote suit that he broken to the Baxter building, which was great that he could just bypass their securities pretty easily in order to have read Richards help him with this whole problem that he was having with the you know, waking up and he'd still be tired. He didn't know that the symbiote was controlling him, taking him out for a ride at night, those kind of things. So I always enjoyed when he would do team ups, especially with the Human Torch. I like that he he doesn't team up with anybody really other than the Punisher, which I haven't watched any of these Punisher TV shows, the mini series whatever they're doing, that weirdo movie thing that they did last time with that yeah one shot with that really bad special effect that was making the rounds out on Weddit.

And Marvel's glad that that's all we know about that Punisher thing if you haven't watched it is John Burnhal falling backwards off of a roof and it looking like a video game. But I thought that the relationship between him and Frank was fantastic, and especially I love the parallel now that Spider Man is forcing himself to be alone. He doesn't want to be alone, but he has to be alone, and there's that whole thing. I think it was at the end of the first Spider Man movie, the Raimy one. I can't remember if it was the first or second, where he's basically like, I'm putting all my loved ones in jeopardy, I have to stop this here.

In that third movie, he really was like, no, no, I have to make sure that nobody knows who the hell that I am, and thus wiped everything. But yet he's so desperate for any sort of friendship that he's now friends with Punisher. I love that moment at the beginning where there's the girl who recognized him, Oh, we live on the same floor. He's like, well, not anymore, and he moves up to the basically like the attic and creates his own lab up there. There's no mention of iron Man in this film, which I kind of like because there were moments, especially in the first Spider Man film, where it was in danger of becoming an Ironman film because Robert Downey Junior's personality is so big and the Ironman character was so big.

It's like Spider Man doesn't need him, but he did need that tech. I like that he's got the tech in this one, that he's kind of proven himself that he can do all of these things on his own. He's got ev instead of you know, needing Friday or anything like that. I really like that he's in this position now of you know you're talking about how this is the Spider Man that you're familiar with. This is also the Spider Man I'm familiar with.

The Only thing that's missing from this is taking photos for the Daily Planet, right, And I kind of appreciate that that's not in this. It was actually better that he doesn't need to worry about that job at this moment. Like I don't know how he's making his money. It's not pizza time, but you know, he seems to be doing okay right now. I think for me, you know, they and this was kind of the thing right with the end of that second movie where they're like, my god, look it's JK.

Simmons again, which by the way, never has come back like since I guess. I thought it was the third one. No, No, I'm not talking about I'm talking about in this. Film, oh right, which I was kind of glad for. Right, which which I think to my point, like I think now it would be a little unbelievable to have Spider Man Oregon Peter Parker going and taking pictures of Spider Man people bele like you're Spider Man, like knock it off, like it's it would be hard, I guess in this version of the MCU, because everyone in the MCU and genuinely a lot of moments in this movie.

There's a lot of moments in this movie that have to do with Spider Man's secret identity being found out or Spider Man's secret identity being in danger. And I like that, Like you said, we don't have something that's forcing us to suspend disbelief every time we deal with it, which is I work for He's my friend. Like, okay, why is in every villain in the city just going after Peter Parker? Then, like again, that's to go back to this. You know why the stories of Spider Man have been the way that they are.

They've had to ret con everybody knowing that Peter Parker was Spider Man multiple times. And I mean here the movie is doing that as well, because they kind of backed themselves into a corner with that second movie, and then in the third movie they did this, you know, complete forget with Doctor Strange. I think they actually nailed it in the landing here because this is kind of the landing as it were from that third movie, from the fallout of the third movie. I think it works. I like that, like you said, we have Spider Man as is as he has ever been his own agent with nobody else other than maybe the Punisher and the Woman from the Bear, which I loved by the way.

I was just like, oh, so, now we have Spider Man kind of interfacing with the cops in kind of an interesting novel way. It's not like a Jim Gordon Batman. It's more of a it's more like some of the things I've seen in other Spider Man entertainment, like Spider Man video games or stuff where he's kind of working no pun intended symbiotically with the cops to you know, help them out where you know, they can't really deal with a giant tank parading through New York City, but Spider Man might be. Right right, which is a great way again to introduce the Punisher into this. And I really was very happy when it came to I don't really want to call her Black Widow, even though they're calling her black Widow in this Yelena now of the Thunderbolt slash New Avengers, and I was so afraid it was going to turn into Thunderbolts too for a minute, but I like that she just is there to help with a little bit of information.

You know, this movie feels very much like a detective story, which I think I really appreciate this whole idea of what is going on. We introduced that mystery of this tank being driven by this old lady very early on in this I mean we've got the opening montage. Yeah, like I think we first see the tank at like eight thirty something like that. I don't know, but it depends on if you include the Marvel logo at the beginning. By the way, I came late to this movie.

I for whatever reason, thought that this started at one thirty, but it started at one. But thank goodness, my theater, which didn't used to have a long pre show, now has a very long pre show. You have about to say, it's double the length. So I missed the first five minutes, but thank goodness, there's already a right, yes, yes, so twenty five minutes a pre show. So I didn't see any trailers, none of the commercials, nothing, So I'm kind of happy about that.

So I walked in when the tank was already rolling down the street. So so what you're saying is you missed the nonsensical preview for doomsday that has no bearing on anything and has not gotten me excited for it. Okay, cool, well good, because I think that was the best. That's the best way to go into this movie is not being reminded that there are other Marvel things that are possibly not going to be good, because I for all of the success of the MCU, can we take a step back here and just have a conversation about what these movies would have looked like Without that, they would have looked like this. They would have looked like this movie where it's just we get to see the characters because Marvel owns them, but not everything has to be dialed into the grand mythology that is the MCU.

Part of me, now, with the success that Marvel has not been having, wishes that they maybe hadn't gotten so far so quickly with the MCU and flamed out as much as they had, because this Spider Man movie is really a like return to form of a kind of superhero movie that we haven't had in a while. I mean, you think about the last MCU movies we've had, They've all been like directly dialed into the main mythos of this kind of multiverse story arc. This movie has none of that like you said, with Black Widow and Punisher, like they're there, but they're not there to the point where it distracts from Spider Man. This is a Spider Man movie, and I you know, I know the last one had like four Spider Man it or three, but this one is so much more a Spider Man movie because I feel like, for the first time, it captures the tone of just he's just a kid.

He has these powers, and he doesn't even necessarily understand the powers, especially in this movie because we're getting the Man Spider story, but we get to actually see Spider Man just kind of dealing with what it's like to be a superhero in a world where the superheroes don't just have a meeting place to go hang out at. Yeah. I mean, we don't even see Avenger's Tower in this which I was pretty grateful for. It's so contained. Like you, if you hadn't seen some of the other MCU movies, you would not know other than like certain lines that they drop in this movie that there was a bigger world out there, like Hulk and Black Widow and Punisher, like we understand that they've existed within this framework.

This is not the first time they're being introduced, and I think even if you're just coming to this movie as someone who's never seen an MCU movie, I think you'd be able to understand what had happened to this point in some of their relations. But at the same time, because Spider Man is an unknown quantity as Peter Parker but only known as Spider Man, they have an interesting kind of concede that they can play with here to get away with that they wouldn't otherwise. Like if we didn't have that, we'd have to be oh, doctor Banner once again from like the eight million times. It's like, I don't need any of that. Like genuinely, I'm I'm so glad that this is such a singular Spider Man movie.

In the way that they've presented. It feels like this movie is comfortable in its own skin. It doesn't feel beholden to so many things. I mean, even with cam Urberfi was the last movie or the movie before. I think it was the second one where they were talking about the blip a lot.

That was the last one, okay, and but they also they had like I think it was either the first or second one with the Captain America stuff or it was second one. Okay, Yeah, I didn't go back and rewatch all of these. Instead, for whatever reason, I ended up rewatching The Fantastic four First Steps Yesterday. It's a good movie. It is a good movie and better than I remembered it actually, so, And I think it was just the idea of setting us up for them coming into the rest of the MCU, which was you know that also ties into Thunderbolts with them watching the footage at the end.

So I was trying to refresh my wife a little bit about that stuff and just like, Okay, this is where we're at with things. And once I started to get into the j Jonah Jamison stuff, she was just like, Okay, enough enough. I was like, well, and I was. I was glad because he didn't show up in here, and. I was just like, I don't even know how they would explain that anymore, Like I guess they could.

I mean, honestly, now would have been the way to do it, because Ja Jonah Jamison wouldn't know who he is, so he just be like that that pesky spider man whatever. Yeah, But honestly, I, you know, doctor Pearlmutter and I on my show Who You have not had the pleasure working with yet. We often talk about choices that you make when you're when you're making a film, but also the choices that they don't make and the fact that they don't lean on j Jonah Jamison, I think is impressive, Like we don't need it. It's again, there's just like I don't need Uncle Ben, Like I don't need Uncle Ben at all. Like an May I think has been instrumental.

Marissa Tomey has been instrumental at really helping ground Peter Parker and Spider Man in a like emotionally resonant way that the other Spider Man movies kind of never I mean that Andrew Garfield movies really never hit it. The Toy Maguire ones a little bit. I mean, Cliff Robertson was a pretty good Uncle Ben. But we get to genuinely feel like this Spider Man is a human being, and a lot of that comes from just them not doing the things you would expect, like no Uncle Ben, Marissa to May instead aunt May, like no j Jonah Jamison, just the city being appreciative of Spider Man and they're not being any kind of like wiggle Room. I mean, I know in our day and age, if a person like Spider Man existed, there would be all kinds of insane conspiracy theory shit.

But I like that in this movie, it's just like the city is pulling for Spider Man collectively. Like I like that, Like I genuinely think that for me, that gives me an idea in a sense that the people that are making these movies don't feel super tied to having to do constant MCU future proofing setup bullshit. Like this movie is just like, you know what, who knows if in the next movie they'll just love Spider Man as much as they do now. But in this movie it works, I think tonally where they're coming from, it worked absolutely. And that was one of the things I liked about the Ramie Spider Man was when it was Spider Man Day and they had the woman like playing the violin and doing the Spider Man theme and stuff.

And I always like how they will work in the Spider Man theme, like here for ned with his app and everything, having that as the little notification tone. I thought that was good. But yeah, it was very nice to see the whole city pulling for Spider Man rather than he's an outlaw. You know, We've we got that a little bit with the Dark Knight, you know, that that whole thing at the end where it's like, oh no, I'll take all the blame for everything, and he runs off into the shadows with his big ears flapping back and forth, and then they just fucks off. There is no outlaw Batman that we get to see in the third movie.

He just disappears into you know, Wayne Manor and never comes out again. He becomes I think he even makes a joke about how Hugh Hefner right now Howard Hughes so it. Yeah, and I think there's even a talk about keeping his urine and jars. But here, I like that everybody knows who he is and everybody's okay with it. Like that he is able to, you know, walk into Yolena's apartment building.

Nobody freaks out because it's Spider Man. They just know who he is and he's just part of the city, you know. And I do like that relationship he has with the cop. I think that's pretty nice. She's kind of a surrogate mom a little bit to him.

But yeah, Aunt May is so crucial, and that that is his core memory when are we going to get to the spoilers with this one? I think so yeah. I mean I think we have to. Okay, when I think we both agree, go see this movie in theaters. Yeah, like this is this might be if you see, if you see only one MCU movie this year in theaters, it's probably I would.

I would lean into it being this one. You're not going to have a bad time. When Jean Gray first tries to enter into his mind. The worst kept secret in the MCU since Toby MacGuire and Andrew Garfield being in another Spider fan movie. I'm very glad because I had no idea.

I honestly had no idea what was happening in this movie. I didn't watch any of the previews and none of the pershials. Hus they spoiled it by accident. On the red carpet last week, one of the people was like, my favorite part of the movie is Gene, and it's like that was the first time anyone had said anything publicly about it up until a week ago. So yeah, I loved that.

I didn't know who the bad guy was walking into this. I saw the hand, the red hand or whatever, for like a brief second. I thought I saw a Scorpion, and I really thought Scorpion was going to be our main villain in this movie with the way that he was introduced, which was just bizarre. But I liked when he shows up and I thought it was a really good suit and it's just nice to see a classic villain like that. So I yeah, when Gene tries to enter into his head the first time, that's the memory that comes up, and that's the memory that keeps going back to.

And that for me is basically the with great power comes great responsibility. But we don't hear that in this movie. And I was kind of glad for it. It's like we're breaking with tradition in all the right ways. For me, they're hinting at it, they're remixing it.

I mean, we have the Keith David kind of commentary that goes on during that Spider documentary that Peter's watching, which, by the way, I know, did you watch any of the previews for this movie. You didn't watch any of the previews. You should go back and watch some of the previews because the way that they use the Keith David narration is really good, Like it's really well done. It really makes you feel like the people that are making this movie are telling a Spider Man story like it in the Vein of Like in the Vein of Like the last great Spider Man story I think anyone told was the video games, like those Spider Man video games that have come out in PlayStation. Are the people who make those games get it.

They're able to really like you had the whole You have a whole cadre of villains and heroes to mess around with, but they really get to the idea of what Spider Man, this version of Spider Man is and what his story in this movie is, which is finding himself again and who he is? Is he Peter Parker? Is he Spider Man? By the end of the movie, I love that it's I'm both and I can be both, and I like that it's that moment and you know what, it feels like. It feels like the reverse I am Iron Man moment, and it feels like this is a like brand New Day feels more like a I would say for me, brand New Day seems more about the MCU as a whole and less just Spider Man, because for me, that feels like this movie's big, like I am spider Man moment, right, he could literally echo the I Am iron Man moment, but instead it's I am both.

And that is so important because Tony Stark he was either Iron Man or Tony Stark. He had a hard time being both. And I think we kind of saw maybe by the end, in an endgame, I mean even an endgame, he says I am iron Man. Like that ends up being like the whole you know, kind of ego, says Armantra, right, Like that's who Tony Stark is, right, Like he kind of he could have been Tony Stark at the end of that movie, and instead it was about being iron Man that one last time, and in him being iron Man that one last time, he sacrifices everything. I don't think Peter Parker wants to sacrifice everything to be Spider Man.

He wants to be both. And I like that this movie again, it's more emotionally in tune with what I was hoping a Spider Man movie could be than any Spider Man movie before, genuinely, like, this is an emotionally engaging Spider Man movie. Tell me the last time an MCU movie was emotionally engaging. Genuinely, I don't even think there has been maybe the Eternals, which I know will piss a shitload of people off, but it is the truth. I don't know for me, it's endgame.

I mean I really teared up when you hear Sam say on your left that whole and battle. There's a lot of great moments in there, so I was I was really into that one, and I would have to say the previous one with Infinity War when Thor shows up, I mean the whole audience, including me, was cheering ourselves out, and when Black Panther bit it, I was pretty emotional as well, not as emotional as some of the people in the audience, but it was really sad to see him go because he was becoming a favorite character, you know, rip Chedwick Boseman, But it was there were a lot of moments for me in that in this world. I think when Aunt may bid it in the last one, I was pretty upset and really could hoped that that wouldn't happen.

But yeah, there are a lot of moments in this where I was just like, oh wow, I could really feel the heartstrings being tugged, you know, especially with all the stuff with both Ned and MJ which was really it's I like those characters so much, and I liked the actress that played him so much, especially the guy that plays Ned. He does such a great job. I don't know if you've ever seen Reginald the Vampire, but he's the star of that show, really good show based on a book series called Fat Vampire. I think he plays the perfect fat vampire. And I just love what a fan of Spider Man he is without being a creep in this and I love his theories on who Spider Man actually is.

I think that's the only time we see Flash. I was afraid that Flash was her boyfriend when he showed up, but I was quickly dissuaded. I was like, oh wait, wait, no, that's just another guy with like longer black hair, an. Indian, another like Indian looking actor. It was very funny because I thought the same thing when he came on screen.

No, we only see Tony Revelori in the one like shot with him, and I think it's like Martin Starr because they were both from the last three movies. I mean again, like, there's not a lot from the first three movies. There's there's a lot from the the there's a lot of EMCU stuff. If there's EMCU stuff, but there's not a lot from the previous movies other than MJ and Ned, which I liked. I genuinely thought, like good reject the other spot.

I guess there's Scorpion, but again, like Scorpion was barely a part of those other movies anyways. Like it's not like Scorpion was a main villain. He was about as much of a villain in those movies as he is in this, which is to say, like he's being piloted by somebody else or has kind of a different engagement with Spider Man. That's not just a direct villain, because wasn't it in the first movie he was stealing the control like the equipment from damage control or whatever damage control was, or the cleanup. I thought that was Vulture, but he was part of like vultures gear.

See oh okay, all right, right, that's. Vulture's gear because they're all like so like it's all like, you know, kind of chatari tech. I'm pretty sure is what this all was originally. Yeah, And that's the thing, like there there are things that have fed into this movie that are deep MCU stuff. I guess when I meant emotional things like not characters dying or like big stand end up moments, but actually like engaging with the character as what it means to be a superhero.

And that's not something that these MCU movies have been interested in doing. The only time we've really seen that in a big budget movie is those Chris Nolan Batman, and I think this movie is in a lot of ways what those movies could have been, which is what does it mean for a person to give up their life to do this? Because it's kind of hard to have a normal life if you're doing this, And Spider Man is now taking upon himself to see what it is that he could do to balance those things out, because standing on your own by yourself is clearly not a viable option in the MCU. So I'm excited to see where they go with it, because they seem to be kind of getting at the fact that, like Spider Man, any future Spider Man movie will have more of this kind of stuff, more him engaging and interacting with other people.

It won't It'll be a Spider Man movie with other people, not so much like Spider Man in someone else's movie. Allah, you know, Captain America's a war because that was not a Spider Man movie. He just you know, happened to be in it, which still one of the smartest things they've done was introducing him in a movie that wasn't his own movie. Absolutely, him jumping onto the screen after the under rus thing was just that was. Still pay off.

It's still dang off to this day. The audience went fucking crazy for that man. Yeah, and I again, this is very much a detective story, him trying to find out what's going on at damage control. I mean he even gives a Colombo line as he's leaving the office of the guy who's running damage control. He literally does a one more thing and he's talking about the whole Vmax thing, And you know, ask me about that big vault.

You know what could be behind the door of that big vault. I like that. It's kind of a maguffin. I don't think there's anything inside that vault because they get in there, but she doesn't get what she wants. You know, there is nothing waiting in there.

When they kept talking about Vmax, I kept thinking, oh, venom Max or something like that. I was just like, oh God, I hope it's not the symbiote. I really hope we're not going that way. The other thing I was very surprised about is just the limits of the mutation that Spider Man is undergoing. I really thought we were going to see full fledged man Spider by the end of this movie.

I was hoping for it. As someone who enjoyed the cartoon in the ninety I always think of that Spider Man toy with the spider face and the six arms, you know, like I knew they were not gonna do it. They did. I guess they did as close as they were ever gonna do, right, Like, this is more like that story. And again, this was when I was reading the comics.

I've kind of lapsed on reading comics, but when I was well fifteen or sixteen, I guess is when the other came out. And that's that's more what this is is like, he doesn't turn into a man Spider, he just becomes more like a spider. The Spider DNA is becoming more reactive for whatever. Again mcguffin reason, let's add Bruce Banner to this movie of it all, which I think works. I mean, again, if if we're leaning into now, because then again I joked about it when we open the episode, like Emma's for Mutation, they say it a lot.

And if you didn't know X Men were gonna be in this movie, they gave it away like before gen Gray ever shows up, like he's like, mutant this and mutant that, and it's my RNA and it's my DNA and the mutation and it's like, okay. So they're trying to can we talk about how they've done this before, because they already did this right with Scarlet Wit. Right, the X Men have been in the MCU for like a decade now, but. They had to explain it all away. They couldn't use explaining it all the way here too, is my point, Like they're doing the same thing that they did with Scarlet Witch, where it's like we have them and we're trying to figure out their powers, and in us figuring out their powers, they are able to better understand and then have an amplified version of their powers afterward, which is literally what happens in this movie.

By the end of it. I don't know if Jean Gray could do that stuff ahead of time, but by the end to the movie, she's able to literally create a bubble like fifty miles or something. It's like a huge like one hundred and ten kilometers or something around her. What she hasn't been able to do open to that point. So it makes me think what they were doing in this movie exacerbated that, just like with Scarlet, which being who is she being?

Was it Baron Morto not Morto? No? Who the hell was it? Doctor? Not doctor Claw?

Right? Yeah, but that whole thing was because of the Infinity Stones, which didn't really make a lot of sense. I kept wondering if they if they destroy the Infinity Stones, or once the know skits his glove on the Infinity Stones, wouldn't all of their powers just go away? Like wouldn't even Captain Marvel's because you got to remember Captain Marvel quicksilver vision, Like all these guys are being powered by these for a time. Yeah, powered by the Infinity Stones, which is wild that that was the way we could explain all this stuff.

Weg we couldn't even use the word mutant. We had to use what over that stuff? The oh gosh that it was all over well, it was all over Agents of Shield, which tied into the not the Eternals, the that short lived TV show that was so bad, The Immortals. The Immortals, the one with black Bull. And right right, and the one with the CTGI hair.

Yeah. Yeah, so all in the project Kevin Feigy wishes we didn't mention in this book. So all that stuff was, you know, we we need to get around mutations somehow, We need another way to explain how people have powers. You know, it's a radioactive spider, it's gamma radiation. That was one way of doing it before we had the mutants.

And yeah, I kind of appreciate that we have mutations here. I appreciate too. Once she forms that bubble around herself, it really reminded me of the moment when Professor Rex has a freak out and Logan and everyone is paused, you know, can't move only like Logan, can you get through it because of his healing mutation. I like that a lot, And. It feels like this movie was made with that in that future proofing in mind, because we already have how they're going to have some of the mutants in the MCUB because they're just gonna be reformed versions of the X Men from the Fox Ones.

Because that's how Battle World is, right, It's just like everything gets mashed together and then we have new versions. So there's gonna be a new Tony Stark, is what I mean, like all sorts of new stuff. And the new X Men are going to be predicated on the old x Men. So anything in this movie is already more or less we've seen it. Like you said, in the other X Men movie, they literally have cannon to draw from.

And I'm so glad that we are finally at this point. I'm I'm sure everybody at Marvel is disappointed. It took fucking fourteen years or whatever it is to this point. Eighteen years. I guess it's eighteen.

Yeah, two thousand and eight was Iron Man, and we had stuff before him. Obviously, we had the Spider Men films, and I mean you go all the way, yeah, you can go all the way back to you know, the ground zero of like the Incredible Hulk, those kind of things. But and I know we had crossovers with that. I mean, Matt Murdoch was his lawyer in The Hulk and not Hulk thor was in the Old Hulk TV show, which was pretty embarrassing. Well, and that's and you know again, like I don't we don't know with Doomsday how far their net goes back, but I hope whenever we do see more of the Mutants, it's in this same vein that they've done with Geene Gray in this movie, which is giving us something we've seen before in some respects, but in a lot of other ways, mining things that have not been mined before in the comic books, because we've already seen certain things in the comics represented in the movies.

Like a lot of the things that work for me in this movie are things we've never seen in the movie before that has never been represented in Spider Man before. Now. You know a close friend of mine who I podcast with from time to time, Dustin, he's a huge Spider Man fan like you are, and you guys are about the same age, and he was one of his complaints about this movie was like, it's a lot of things mashed in that are not necessarily related in the comic books. And I know you would agree because that is the case, like these are not necessarily all going on at the same time in the comics. I think they make it work.

I could see, though, how one might take a little bit of umbrage with it, because they are kind of and they've done this with a lot of other things, Like this is maybe the one mcuie thing that this movie does. They're kind of clipping certain parts of the story off to make this story smaller to fit together. Fel good and bad. But if you like some if certain stories resonate with you more than others, I can see why you might be a little bit miffed that they're cutting parts of the story out to make way for another thing that isn't necessarily representative of the story in the comic books. But you know, we've had this conversation before.

I think that the movies are allowed to do whatever the hell they want, like remix and remaster and do whatever, Like you're not beholden to anything, really, Like I think there are some things you're beholden And I think that's why those Snyder movies fail so horribly, as like they don't understand the base idea of the characters. These characters, regardless of the setting, always feel like the characters off the page, which is the thing that the MCU has always succeeded at, which is making a character who is at least representative of the character from the comic books. Maybe it's not a wonder one, but it's it's a close amalgamation. I one hundred percent agree. I really, the comics are the comics and the movies are the movies, and I'm really okay with them being completely different entities.

I mean, if I got bent out of shape when it came to differences between the comics and the movies, I would never be able to sleep at night. And I just my time is more valuable than they're. Like that though, that's true, but I need to say unfortunately, like if you love something that much, I get it, like I I would be hard pressed to tell you don't. But at the same time, like you can like both separately, like they can be loved on equal footing without their being the overlap is the character and that's all you need to like really say, and that's it. I mean, just the comics themselves have been rebooted and reset and reinterpreted so many times in the comic books that if a movie wants to do it, as long as you're doing it, well, I'm okay with that.

I don't care about some of the changes because you have to make some of these changes. I mean, if I was so bent out of shape about stuff. I mean venom, like I already mentioned the symbio coming in from the Secret Wars, like that was changed so quickly. I think the first time was in the cartoon. And again the cartoon has its own you know, history and all that stuff.

And they mentioned of the cartoon too, right, so it's like, yeah, okay, rather than it being something from you know this uh like a battle world with the Beyonder, No, it's j Jonah Jamison's son is an astronaut and he brings back this thing with him. Okay, same diff you know, and like I've seen that in some of the movies. You know, just it comes in different ways. I really don't care, you know, it's it's yeah, okay, this is a different Geen Gray, and we're seeing her sister alive and all these kind of things, which is okay, book thing. Yeah, yeah, I'm really okay with the way that they're doing this.

I was just so grateful that we see her at the end on a bus and we don't see her pulling up to Xavier's School for Gifted Children. I was saying, there is a ranger in the north, fight him. That's always what I think of is that fucking scene from the end of the Hobbit. That's always what I think of because it's just so like unnecessary. We know where she's going now approximately possibly who knows, Frank.

We didn't need Wolverine on a motorcycle pulling up next door or something. You know, it's it's really okay. Yeah, I will say, you know, as someone who did know the Sadie sink of it all, uh, pretty poorly kept secret, given that she's a redhead in the comics, Like I don't if she's not Mary Jane. There are a several handful of famous Marvel redheads. And if you don't just disclose, I don't know.

I feel like this is one of these things we're just disclosed who the fuck it was? Don't do this like back and forth bullshit, Like I'm sick of this, Like just you know, what, what does it have to do with the quality of the movie? Nothing? And what you benefit from like one day's worth of people not knowing. I don't get it.

Let's like just stop, just stop with this secret casting nonsense. You get a lot more benefit out of surprising people at a con than you do when they're sitting down in the seats at the movie, like, oh my god, a movie that's gonna have Jeene Gray and Spider Man. And if that sounds crazy, you could have gotten a lot out of that too. There's there's nothing to be said that people wouldn't be as excited, if not more excited to go see this movie knowing that Dean Gray, an X Men character that we haven't seen in what ten plus years, is gonna be in another Marvel movie, which means we're gonna get more X Men. Now we have to hide it, like stop doing the con Noonian sing stuff.

Just stop. It's just it. We're in the Internet era. It doesn't work in professional wrestling. It doesn't work here.

Like I'm sorry, I'm I'm so glad that I knew nothing about it, right. So I'm just fucking annoying at this point. Like unless you're intentionally avoiding it, which is what you do, it's almost damn near improp possible to not like have it ruined. And so it's just like, well, just assume that it's gonna be ruined. Don't assume that everybody's gonna be able to like shut themselves out to the world.

Was it Like there's an episode of like King of Queen's where they're all trying to watch the super Bowl and not have it spoiled for them ahead of time or something like that. Like it's like that, Like it's you know, if you don't watch the movie after the first weekend, you can't complain if it's spoiled for you if there's something like this in it. So just don't have it be a spoiler. Just have it be part of the movie. Because again, like I think unlike and you know, I think that this goes into my criticism of a dead Pool Wolverine style movie where the whole movie is predicated on the fucking twist and there's no substance between any of it.

This movie actually does a lot with the fact that Jean Gray is in the movie and Sadie Sink is really good in this movie. She's a great actress. You know. Again, as someone who's watched a lot of Stranger Things, I can tell you that that was like the thing most people know her from, and towards the latter half of the show she's not really given much to do. But as someone who's seen her grow up as an actress from a like preteen to now, I guess in her twenties.

Like she's a great actress, She's a great dramatic actress. She gives the character of Jean Gray a lot of intensity that a character like that needs, because if we're going in the direction that I think we are going with that character, which is a Dark Phoenix story or a Phoenix story, you need to have a character that can have a level of aggression that the MCU has not seen before. It's like Scarlet Witch on steroid. I hope to god they don't do another Dark Phoenix story because we've seen it so many times. I mean I remember, right though, No, No, I mean, well the whole thing of the alien tech and all that stuff.

I mean, we've seen the Dark Phoenix story told so many times. I remember, like, I don't go to comic book conventions very much at all. I think I've been to a couple in Toronto because I was invited to host some Q and a's Mike, Yeah exactly. And I went to a Motor City comic con down here, maybe maybe just the one time. And I remember hanging out with my friend Mitch and we're going through comics and I'm just like, oh, look, it's a Dark Phoenix story.

Oh look, it's another Dark Phoenix story. And I had some nerdling kind of go off on me, like, you know, they've only done that storyline twice, and I was like, no, I think you're very wrong. And I went out to a website that had a lot of different comic book covers and I just found over and over and over again all of the Dark Phoenix storylines. There were probably twenty at least, and I'm like, kid, they've done this to death. And so even seeing it in the movies, I mean, that was such a major part of one of those first X Men, and I think it was even part of one of that whole James McAvoy world X Men.

Well yeah, I think. God go back talk okay, talk about things I'm not gonna rewatch in preparation for doomsday. Those movies, well, you know what, I might just to remind myself how bad they are, because I will say, as someone who is a Michael Fossbender fan, he is really good as mag He is good movies, which is I mean, to be fair, He's like, can I just call him white Idris Elba? He seems to be in bad movies, but he's always good in them, which is like Idris Elba's thing as well, like he's in bad movies all the time. He's not the bad part.

But I saw a dark tower in theater, I have a right. Plane Assassin's Creed, my friend. Oh yeah, there you go. Like it's It's interesting though, because again, like the X Men, we've heard about for years now that they're going to come into the MCU, And what's funny is in a lot of ways, they're just like Spider Man used to be. We heard over and over and over again that Spider Man was going to be in the MCU, because Spider Man didn't get introduced into the MCU until like twenty sixteen, which is eight years into the MCU.

So the X Men are like the next you know, it was the Fantastic Four. Again, the Fantastic Four, I feel like, are less of a big deal than the X Men, only because those Fantastic Four movies didn't have the legs that X Men did. I think those X Men movies were successful enough. They kept making the X Men movies because those movies were successful, not because just because they had the license like they did with Fantastic Four. X Men.

I think are so evergreen that they knew they were going to be able to get a lot of mileage out of a Spider Man movie. So it was smart to put an X Men character in here. And I think it's also smart to put an X Men character that's not one of the ones that you would expect. It's not a Cyclops or a Wolverine like you said, or a Professor X like Jean Gray, a character that, like you already said, Dark Phoenix is a story that they have done before. My contention is they haven't done it well.

I don't need to see them do it again. But it does seem like we're trending in a aggression as being output by Jean Gray. We kind of see the way it affects Spider Man because Spider Man starts going Symbiote, which I think is I mean, obviously there's a setup there in that as well. There's a setup for both of these characters as it were, to become these darker versions of themselves. I don't need a Dark Phoenix thing, but I do think it's smart that we have a character that doesn't have a massive, built in iconic fan base the way a Cyclops or a Wolverine or a Magneto or Professor X.

And I think beyond those four any character would have been fair game. I mean, that's why Deadpool used Colossus. That's the way I look at it, Like you can get mileage out of lesser X Men characters by it have them interacting with characters that are tonally very different from themselves. And what have we had so far? We've had Professor X show up in the Doctor Strange movie I always forget about.

And then we had Beasts show up in the Marvels. Yeah, which may or may not ever have anything to do in the field. That's the one that they've never readdressed and I guess technically they never readdressed the Professor X one I. And that was nice too because we had black Bull show up, which I think is probably gonna be one of the few times we ever see those guys. I mean, who knows the battle world, Uh you know, I I don't know.

I would assume so. But at the same time, maybe they recast that character and have somebody else play them. And it's actually a critical part of the next part of the MCU. Who knows, Like I would personally like to see the next part of the MCU have nothing to do with a lot of the characters we've already seen, Like have some characters that allow us to be grounded in that world, but don't give us like, oh new tone, he's dark, like I don't cares like no no good like, but give us a new Black Bult or a new you know somebody else. Like I know they're gonna give us Iron Man, because like that's I'm sure, but like there's there's a lot of interesting room and places to go, and like having a Geen Gray in this movie.

If you had told me they're gonna have an X Men character in a Spider Man movie, obviously I know where my brain goes immediately it's Wolverine, because Wolverine was a big part of Ultimate Spider Man in the comic books. But if you're gonna have a character that can like interact with a Spider Man who is searching for himself and at odds with himself, that's Geene Gray already as a character. So to have them on this parallel course in this movie where they intersect at the end with him and her in his mind and her interacting with Marissa tome like that seems really good. That's what I mean by the emotional core of this movie is unlike any other MCU movie I've seen that, Like, it's like it's not just a character dying, it's a character having an internal conversation with themselves about their place in the world and what that means for them as a person and as a superhero.

And none of these movies have really had enough time or slowed down enough to do that, like genuinely, And that's kind of a shame, because if you do it, you can actually do it pretty well. Like, there is a lot of emotionality behind these characters in the comic books. The people are invested in these characters not just because they beat the shit out of villains. It's because Spider Man is a teenager, and we were all a freak teenager at one point. You know, Jean Gray is at odds with herself because we all have an internal struggle sometimes with the person we want to be in the person we are.

Like, those are things that they understand in the comics that the MCU has always had a joke for. There's not a cutaway to a fucking joke in this movie, man, Like it's wild. I was so surprised that Hal Sparks was not the person in the elevator when he's wearing the girl's T shirt and dants. I kind of was hoping that he would say nice outfit. I I wish that's the crossover we needed, Right.

Where's how Sparks when you need this guy? I'm amazed that I can remember how Sparks's name. But I was a big queer as folk fan. I thought you were gonna say, you're a big fan of I love the seventies, I love the eighties. Oh my god, he was making money out of that.

Do you know who I feel the worst for in this entire movie is poor Bruce banner Man's the way they're carting him off to the hospital and they're just like, yeah, he's gonna be in Belleville, sorry, Bellevue now, And I'm like, who. Is sorry, folks, He'll get the help he needs. Like that episode of The Simpsons where they're carting Homer off and he's having the shit beating out of him. It's like, ye know, he's gonna go somewhere that will help him. Yeah, fucking right, the looney bin.

Like, oh boy, I felt so bad and well, that's that's one of the things that I think they bring up slightly and they don't necessarily mine it, maybe as much as they can. But I'm I'm I'm both. I'm ambivalent about it. This whole idea of the power suppression, you know, the stuff that is wearing it. At all, Right, this is the mutant of it all, because now Bruce Banner is a mutant too.

Technically I guess he always was, but ish. Yeah, ish, But this whole thing of being able to repress somebody's powers, I mean, we saw that in Deadpool two with those collars and the way that Deadpool was, you know, back to being riddled with cancer because his powers were turned off. We get a little bit of that there, but here, I yeah, I'm glad the ball of our trask is in this one. I have to say. One of the scenes that really worked the best for me was when Spider Man is having his problems and he's trying to use that power inhibitor on himself and he falls and there's this big explosion of webs.

The one guy comes up to him and starts talking to him, and I'm just like, who the hell is this? And then I realized, oh he's possessed. That scene, that guy who plays that possessed person, I thought he did a wonderful job. And then I really like how Jeane is bouncing from person to person not necessarily where they you know, fly forward and they have her spirit entering them. I'm talking about when the people on the street start all using her voice.

I thought that was really good. Yeah, it's very Elias Cotias of her very is it that movie at the Fallen? The Fallen? Yeah, time is on my side. Yeah, I was waiting for her to start saying it.

Man, I mean that's what it felt like, because it's just like that like reaction thing and they're like low Spider Man like, it's it works really well, and I think it's a fun power that we have not seen in the MCU. And how do you counter that power? Like, oh you don't like, I guess if you're Spider Man, it's like a solidarity of the mind, like the strong minded or able to keep Jean Gray at bay. But if you are weak mind and of weak will like and look you see the hand right like they are supposed to be these like Japanese assassins that are of you know, steely, steely mind and steel willed, and like here they are being taken over by Jean Gray. Her powers are I mean again, she took over the Hulk, so you know, it's one person at the beginning, and then it becomes like whole groups of people by the end of the movie.

So her power is just amplified more and more. Like she she is a terrifying character. Well and literally at this point in the movie when she's you know, using that guy, and when Spider Man starts to look at his own apartment and see her and see this guy using her voice, I still don't know who it is. So I mean, I wish that you had had that experience that I had where I did not know that Jean Gray was in this movie, so I just kept wondering, who is this person who is controlling all of this stuff? And so that twist worked.

Oh it worked for me so well, it worked wonderfully. And yeah, when even when he sees her in the car and takes that picture of her, I still don't know who that is. I'm just like, who is this girl? Who could this be? I honestly did not know for quite a while afterwards who that was.

So I thought that It's one of those where, like I always go back to because I'm old, I always go back to, what if people didn't know that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a good guy in Termina or two? And Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up in this movie with that box of roses and that shotgun inside of it, and you think he's there to kill Sarah Connor. Maybe this cop is here to protect Sarah Connor because we don't know anything. And when he pulls out that shotgun and turns to Eddie Furlong and says, come with me, if you want to live, that would have been a bring the house down reveal. But every fucking body that saw that movie knew what was gonna happen.

Were you seemingly the only person who win the reveal in this movie happened? Did you react? Did anyone else in the theater react? Andrew reacted because she also didn't know because she doesn't give a shit, So. Hell yeah, what's that?

Like? I wish I could be that person? Yeah? Does me fucking matter? You're fucking right, I mean, more or less broadly, it doesn't fucking matter, But I care, God damn it.

I don't even know, to be honest, if she knows who Jene Gray is, like if I said, like, oh, that's that was the one that Famka Janssen played, and whoever that chick from a Game of Thrones that what played the second Jean. Gray Sansa Stark Jesus Christ Sophie Turner had I said that, Oh boy, I can't wait to rewatch those movies. Mike had I said that she might have been like, oh, okay, that's the same character. That's the one who you know died in the first Avengers or Second Avengers, whatever that one was. I think it was the first.

Wasn't that Jean Gray died in the first one? She died in the second? Does she die in the second one? Oh? Yeah, she's the one that she's the one that's the flood that's great from the damn yeah, that's the second one, because the third one is she like she to use your parlance where she gangs Professor X.

Oh yeah's exciting that movie was Oh I sure do, Yeah, Christy, I'm the X Men movies. Man, are just you know, we're we're on the precipice here, right and and you you mentioned already like the hulk of it all, and I hope to god the whole gets like a better movie after, like after battle World happened, because they essentially said, like there's no more Marvel movies until like battle World, Like we get like this and like Doomsday and then there's like scanned Marvel movies and battle World happens. Then I think other things are happening, like the four or fives or whatever, if there are any. But why do you keep saying battle World? By the way, that's the sequel to that'soomste to Avengers Doomsday.

It's not gonna be called battle World, but it's I'm gonna be called Secret Wars. I guess like battle World is like the thing that is going to happen at the end of Doomsday, where like all the planets are mashed together into one big planet. Like they've again like they've ruined so much of this ahead of time because they're doing these stories because they have to reboot everything, even though they don't have to reboot everything. This is how you don't reboot everything. Imagine if Doomsday wasn't happening and this was just the next thing is they're introducing X Men and that's it.

Like I would have been so much more excited because I just I have such a real aversion to the Avenger movies after Endgame, because like Endgame was like maybe the last good thing that they've really done in an Avengers context. Like everything else, all these sideways Avengers movies are halfway of Ngrews movies have not been great. No, no, I can agree. There's been so many. And it was kind of surprising to see that some of the screenwriters on this also worked on Quantumania, but I think more importantly they worked on all of these other Spider Man films, which it's amazing when you have you know, I almost said Mary Jane, when you have MJ on the roof and she's recounting like, oh yeah, night Monkey and the thing at the Washington Monument and all this kind of stuff, which is interesting that later on you think about and you're like, oh, that's Geen Gray mining all of those memories.

Because I didn't realize that that was Geen Gray for the longest time, so like later on I was like, oh shit, she was. She got there before Spider Man even got to MJ's apartment, right, Like that whole thing I thought she was trapped in the helicopter with the helicopter pilot, and I was like, oh, okay, yeah, she can't jump anywhere, and not realizing that she can do that whenever she wants and to whoever it is, as long as they're within thirty three feet and then she could just make all those jumps. I really like that they make these references. I really like that Ned and MJ are such a massive part of this movie. The moment for me that touched me the most is when they It was two scenes one of Ned and Spider hanging out and just being friends again, and just the way that Spider Man is so happy to have friends one more times.

Just the way to use it right, like he made the Spider Man app so if Spider Man shows up, he will just lose his mind and there's your end, Spider Lace. Yeah. But then the handshake at the end, I fucking love that. Oh I got chills during that. Same It's such a it's such an earned moment, and that Peter like Jesus, no, I'm with you, Like that's what I mean.

Like this movie. The best part of the best parts of this movie are the emotional moments between the characters. It's not the big action scenes. The action scenes are great, but it's an MCU movie in twenty twenty six. Like, I don't expect the action scenes to be bad.

They kind of have always been pretty up to par. The thing that's nice about this movie is there's an eye for the comic books. We get those panel shots essentially where Spider Man is, you know, like recreating panels from the comic or covers from the comic. Oh yeah, the famous first cover with that criminal that he's holding. That was so good.

They do they do all of these things that make me understand that the people that are writing these Spider Man movies are fans of Spider Man, not just in a surface level way, they actually understand the character, because this feels like a Spider Man comic book in movie form. And that's because Spider Man is an emotionally driven character. It is about his relationships with MJ and Aunt May and obviously, I mean, we've never seen it in these movies, but you know, Harry Osborne, though we get ned as his best friend in this movie, or you know, again, we saw him with Tony Stark in the other movies as kind of the I guess the stand in for Uncle Ben in a lot of ways, but this is the first one where I genuinely feel like Spider Man is an emotionally grounded and real character.

And it took three movies to get to this point, and they've kind of snowballed to this point because he's Tom Holland is so good. I think like he's the best Spider Man like at this point, and I think that this movie cements it, like he went four for four. None of the movies struggle because of him at all, Like he's and ends and Da also fantastic. Not an actress I've seen in a lot of things up to this point. I've seen her in several things, but I saw her in the drama earlier this year.

She was also great in that. But Tom Holland and her and Jacob Battelon, the guy who plays Ned, are so good, just that the chemistry that they have. They feel like friends because I think they are friends in real life. And obviously Tom Holland and Is and Die are marriage, so you know also that. But Tom Holland is able to really be charismatic with anybody he's on screen with, and that Spider Man like Spider Man is PG Deadpool in a lot of ways.

He's not as meta as Deadpool, but he is cracking jokes and like, you know, he is stretching. At one point, he's like, I'm not a teenager anymore, Like great, Like this is what I want from Spider Man. They're nailing it, Like yeah, Toby Theguire got that, Andrew Garfield got that too, but this just this feels so much more earned because I really empathize with the character underneath the mask more than I ever have before. I completely agree. Yeah when he I can't even remember what the one liner is, when he pulls the piano at Scorpions.

Hits us out on a high note. Yes, yeah, there are so many good things and yeah, the whole stretching thing, I was like, this is really good. I like this, this is great. And that's what I loved about Spider Man was what a smart ass he was when he put on the suit. You know, when he's Peter Parker's endearing, nice, endearing, endearing, he's kind of quiet, kind of shop but then when he puts on that mask, he just it's balls out and he's been that way, you know, for forever you know.

And that's the thing when you get good writing and you get him being able to make those quips, you know, even just the stuff of him arguing with Frank Castle and and that whole thing of like yo, I say. Queens, yes anything, I'm not so good at all. For the most part, I really liked him in this, and like I said, it almost makes me want to go back and watch The Punisher. Not quite, but. You got made two thirds of the way there, maybe, Like I don't even think you're half this.

This movie I think is the best he's been The Punisher. I liked him in the account movies, both of them, and I'm trying to remember. I think he was in that one with Oh gosh, who's the guy that played Freddi or Mercury Rammy Malik The Amateur He I think he was in that as well, and he was really good in The Amateur. So yeah, I like him as a supporting character. I don't know if I like him as the main lead of stuff, but maybe when the days I'll give it a shot.

Well, and you know, we have the issue with a Punisher style character where he is an R rated character, so they can also, I think make that work we've seen now that you can have Deadpool in these movies you could. I think Punisher shows that that's a thing that you could get away with if you have the right people writing it and the right people directing it. I mean, again, like those are big ifs, but I think they can be done because that was again a thing that we know, Like there's a possibility that Deadpool is part of the MCU. Know, I think he obviously will be. But the Punisher, I think is a good test case to see, like you can have a character that uses guns and kills people and the things that he is doing being a rejected by the superhero broad because Spider Man's like, you can't just go around killing people.

It's like, I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want. Like, Okay, they can be at odds with each other, put work together. And I like that this movie shows that because I think the MCU has been too narrow in a lot of what it's been doing, and I think that this movie shows like you can actually tell a smaller story that has bigger implications on the Grand or MCU without the entire city of New York or the world being under threat. Yes, the entire world is technically under threat, but not really like I don't know, like yes and no and yes. I think that's what's interesting.

This movie threads that needle very very well, because it does feel like a grand threat, but it feels like much smaller scale, even even in the climax of the movie with Jean Gray, like, it doesn't. It's not a giant blue light pointing to the sky, you know what I mean? No, thank goodness. At the same time, though, like it does have the implication of that being the cave, it's. Going to be a lot easier to clean up.

I think we're not going to need damage to control to come in, even though there were some car wrecks, but it's not going to be as big of a deal as the big blue skylazer and the Chitari showing up again. Right. I was glad that we have that little joke of the partners sure about to swear and Spidey shoots the web over his mouth. That's very comic book to me. I also like that it's the punisher that is the one that ends up kind of breaking the spell but also fucking it up and shooting Spider Man at the end, Like It's like guns aren't always the answer, but they are, but they aren't, you know, just the way that he manages to have Jean stop with that moment, the way that Spider Man saves her and sacrifices himself.

And I really like that stupid moment where the Punisher puts on Spidey's mask and is dancing around like an idiot up in the hospital room and Spider Man gets to go out amongst the people as Peter Parker and see the love that he gets, which up until this point in all of these Spider Man movies, I don't I know, we had like Spider Man Day and like one of the I think it was the first Spider Man film. I don't think it was in the third one. But like you know, we've seen some celebrations, but this to see all of those people pulling for him, and him amongst the crowd, that little kid that makes eye contact with him and does the web shooter fingers, it all just hit perfect for me. I agree. I think that getting a genuine, like emotional moment out of the Punisher, one of the more gruff characters in the MCU, is really smart because you pair him opposite Tom Holland as Spider Man.

And you know what, I think there's always been this question like who is the analogue in Marvel for Superman in the DC universe. I would make the argument at Spider Man, we have a character who when he's not superpowered, is just trying to live a normal life, which both Clark Kent and Peter Parker are trying to do. And then when they are their superpowered versions of themselves, they are adored by the city that they live in. And you know, obviously Superman the whole world in a lot of those comics where he's saving the world, but you know, in the comic book of Spider Man like he's you know, friendly neighborhood spider Man, like he's adored by the city he is. You know, they give him the key to the city.

I love that, And you know, I think that this movie cements Spider Man as that character in terms of like the ability to bridge the gap between what the MCU was and what the MCU I hope is moving forward, which is character stories about characters that actually have some emotional resonance to him. We saw it with Thunderbolts. There was a whole the whole climax of that movie took place inside of a character's mind. We saw it a little bit in The Fantastic Four. The whole movie is kind of about four people learning to be a family together, and what does that mean?

Like, I think we might actually be trending in a direction with the MCU that is hopeful in terms of maybe not just being Joss Whedon quip equips like you know, like let's make a joke and then the quip afterwards, like we watched Supergirl. I watched Superman last year, Like Superman was good. I don't know if James Gunn can do another movie like that anymore, where it's like emotional moment and then equip like people are actually ready to have an emotional moment with these characters, stop undercutting them. And this movie doesn't undercut them. Like you said at the end of the movie, there's not some quip when Spider Man looks at that kid in the audience.

It is an earned moment, like the MCU has not gotten in a really long time. And I want them to continue that because with Doomsday, they have an opportunity with Doomsday as a character to pull the fanos and give us a villain to actually maybe not root for, but understand his motivations in a way that don't just make him be a mustache twirling villain. And my hope is with Doomsday is they are able to do that because Robert Downey Junior is that good of an actor. He's been able to do that before. And all of the actors in these movies are great actors in their own right.

Tom Holland is a great actor. You can't bring this level of emotionality and charisma and I think vulnerability to a character if you're not a great actor, and he is. Well, it's interesting with that third Guardians of the Galaxy movie, so much of that is the whole idea of the Gomora in that not being the Gomora that Peter knew and trying to re spark that whole thing. It's a little similar here with this Mary Jane, even though she is the same Mary Jane. But what I wanted to say was when Peter sees Doctor Doom without his mask, He's going to lose his fucking mind.

They all are, they. But especially Peter, especially Peter, he's the one. So I oh my god, I mean I think that's why I mean essentially the they I don't think they said tom Alin is going to be in so. And that's that's the thing that I almost said to my wife yesterday. But again, she's so far out of the loop that she doesn't know about Robert Downey Junior coming back.

So that's going to be her surprise when we go to see Doomsday. She's not going to know until the mask comes off, and then she's going to be like, what the fuck she doesn't? Oh, okay, So she doesn't know that Robert Okay, No, And I wonder how many people don't at this point because I know some people okay, which is I get. It's really weird to me that people don't know. But yeah, I was talking with I was talking with one of my coworkers and they were surprised that doctor Doom showed up at the end of the Fantastic Four.

And then when I said, oh, yeah, Robert Downey Junior, They're just like, what what are you talking about? And I was like, oh shit, I just ruined it for somebody. But I was like, this was after the press conference, this was after the empty chairs, this is you know, all of the stuff that was leading up to this. I was like, okay, I mean I was really surprised, and I think we talked about this on the Fantastic four episode. I was surprised that there wasn't a one quarter face turn.

So we've got to see a little bit of our DJ's face that could have been anybody and that cloak, you know. But I'm kind of glad now that there might be people that don't know who that is, and maybe they will be surprised though. I mean, we've got, however, many months before the the movie comes out, and they're gonna be just touting that like fucking crazy, it's going to be our DJ all over the place from now on. I don't know if that will be the case, because I get that it's seal that they are not gonna do that because the moment in the movie where that happens, I think, like you've already alluded to, is going to be a moment that needs to be seen in the movie and they won't spoil it in the trailers.

I think that that's going to be like the Jean Gray thing. They're just not like and you know, I joked about like the Doomsday trailer already, like it kind of looks the Doomsday trailer has no substance to it. It is all just it's really just a bunch of shots with no context. My assumption is that's intentional. I mean, I know it's intentional obviously, but I'm assuming that the intentionality behind it is because so much of the movie is going to be things that you have to see in the movie, because otherwise it's a massive goddamn spoiler, absolutely, like and things that I'm not even going to talk about here because I know you don't watch any of that stuff or keep up with any of that stuff, so I don't even want to possibly ruin it for you or anybody else, but to say that the things that have been talked about that have been confirmed just by the comic con of it all, with like certain actors being on stage, but other actors haven't been on stage, and like who knows who?

Who knows who is going to be in that movie that they haven't said, And I think that that's why so much of the movie has not really been shown in the trailers. And my hope is they don't show RDJ as Doomsday or as doom until the movie. I hope that we don't get that until maybe the week after, because they always do like a spoiler trailer right before the movie comes out. I hope that they we don't see a single shot of him sans mask until a week before the movie comes out, or if not, after the movie's come out, genuinely, because there's no point. No.

I really hope that as well, because yeah, they just bound and determined to ruin all of this stuff for everybody. I'm like, no, just let things be surprises, please. Your pearl Mutter says it best, like it's it's a study. It's faction known that American audiences don't want to feel dumb, which is why movie trailer houses do that. They don't want to feel like they don't know what's going to happen in the movie, so the trailers are just spoiling things ahead of time.

And for the rest of us that don't care about feeling dumb when you go into a movie, it then forces us to not watch trailers for things, because the trailer will show the entire movie. And if you're a discerning moviegoer i e. Someone who goes to a couple movies a year, you can pick up on the entire plot of a movie just by watching trailers at this point, genuine absolutely, like entire acts of the movie are kind of segmented in the trailer at this point, and it's just it it ruins things, it really does it? So does? I mean?

I just saw an article or listical the other day where I was talking about the biggest reveals in movies over the last I don't know, however many twenty years or whatever, and one of those was shutter Eyland, and I was just like, bitch, I know from the trailer what was going on with that thing? I didn't need to see that movie at all. Dream may yeah, that it was all him going crazy. And I like the idea that it wasn't all a dream. But that makes the movie somewhat more tolerable than it actually is.

Oh, I wonder if anyone's gonna have a hot take on that one. Listen, Like shutter Island, where's all your shutter Island fans going to bad for that movie? People doing that for Supergirl? Is it shutterheads? Well?

Yeah, yeah, the Supergirl fans. That's a different word with an S on it. Talk about a distinction between two movies starting with an S released within a month of each other. My god, this movie has made almost a billion dollars already. People will show up for your movie.

It has nothing to do with the fact that a woman is in it. I promise, I promise. It's not a well made movie. People showed up for Superman last year. That movie made a boatload.

This movie's made like nine hundred million dollars. This Spider Man movie is. If you put a good movie on screen, the audiences will show up. And this movie probably won't have a thirty to forty or fifty percent drop off next weekend either. It will probably have maybe a surge even There might be people who want to go see this again.

I don't know. This is a really good movie that I think will resonate with a lot of people, especially people that are big fans of Spider Man, which is most everybody who's into these kinds of movies. Spider Man really is kind of the character that crosses all boundaries. He's very bipartisan. I think people that like DC like Spider Man like how could you not?

Yeah? Well, and I'll tell you. Racially, it was very even in the theater yesterday, if not more black people than white people, which I was just like, oh, that's cool, you know that. I'm just very glad. I was surprised at how many kids were in the theater.

I don't really think that this was a kid's movie. Spider Man is a kid's character, though, I mean he's like, yeah, super he is, he is, but it was their little kid, like, who's your very superhero? They're probably gonna say Spider Man. I was surprised at how many people were wearing their spider gear, like not costumes, but like all the T shirts and stuff. It was really nice to see that, And it was nice that it was a really respectful audience, like everybody seemed to be into it.

There's a one time I had to yell at somebody for use in their phone, but yeah, it was It was a good theatrical experience. I think it was made even better by me coming in late and missing all the pre show, missing the MJR. Theme. That's our theater around here that we go to is MJR. And they play this trailer up front.

It's not as bad as the Nicole Kidman trailer, but it it's been going since the pandemic, and so that's that's like six years I've been seeing them. Well, take Away a year for the pandemic, but that's five years. I've been seeing this little trailer before the movie. Every time they send me a survey after a movie plays, I just go on and on and on about how they need a new pre show, but they have it to listen to me. Would you prefer to have one that's changed every couple weeks with a movie that's coming out so you get to see yet another ad for the movie with Greg Marcus of Marcus Theaters because that's what I get to see.

And as someone who lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, that only has to go to Marcus Theaters because the law of the land here in Lincoln is that you can't put a multiplex outside of downtown. So no movie theaters will come and put a multiplex outside of downtown because they literally can't. So the only movie theaters we can go to in Lincoln are Marcus because Greg Marcus showed up when they were gonna vote on it and asked them to make sure it kept going. So the only place you can go see anything other than maybe the most popular for movies is downtown. I would rather see the same thing for the last six years than him doing his little like minstrel song in dance show of like here are the super Trooper guys, and let me talk about horror movies, like you don't give a shit about any of this.

Don't even poose you're pretending so hard at showing. Who's whereas him? Or murraya manunas him? Okay, because he directly affects my ability to go to a movie theater that isn't Marcus in town and see something. Not that I would go to Alamo Drafthouse if they were in town.

That place blows chunks. But I would go to a cinemak or whatever goal or AMC. I would go. AMC has pretty good deals on the movie theater, like twenty bucks a month, see as many movies as you want, or something like Marcus is one of those bullshit ones where it's like, for twelve dollars a month, you get one movie ticket, twenty five percent off concessions. Like so you're giving me like a a percentage off of the concessions and that's it, Like cool, So they're not twenty dollars for a bucket of popcorn.

They they're such a small chain they can't even offer a good movie pass esque thing because they just don't care like it's I I would much rather have the same thing for the last six years than Greg Marcus's ugly mug chuckin' and jiving for whomever's new movie's coming out. There was a super Troopers one, and I was just like, oh, oh my god, this made me not want to go see the movie, knowing that they were doing exclusive ad real with Greg market Wow. I oh yeah, I'm glad I missed the pre show for that. I will miss the pre show for that intention. I went through and purposefully tried to find bad reviews of this film, just to see what people are critiquing criticizing about this.

Seems like people don't like how angsty Spider Man is. I find it to be a actually a good thing, especially that he's having a real crisis of faith and having the you know, being alone in this new world. I figure, if there's any time for him to be angsty, it's right now. The other thing was something that we've talked about is a good thing, which is the whole idea of him interacting with other superheroes. I don't feel that they do it too much.

No, I don't, but I guess the consensus among some of the online cognitive sentai is that there's too much of other characters in this movie. But to what extent you've ever read the comics and it's all self contained and he doesn't interact with other people or other superheroes in the comics. As long as the character can be drawn and is within the scope and license of the publisher, they can put Hulk in Spider Man comics advice versa. That's the only reason it's hard to do it in the movie is for a whole host of reasons, scheduling getting the actor there, Like unless you're just doing a abomination, and I don't mean like the look of it, but like a tim Roth thing where it's just like, oh, look, it's just abomination.

Remember when tim Roth played that character, like and then obviously they did it again because he wasn't in Shang Chi. Tim Roth wasn't abomination was but tim Roth ended up being in that Sheehole show. So you can do that in the movies of a certain kind, but it's so much harder than it is in the comics. So whenever people have said anything about that, my response, especially with the character like Spider man is have you ever read a Spider Man comic before? Other characters show up all the time, all exactly.

And that's kind of what got me into a lot of different comics, was going back to Secret War the very first one. And I didn't even know for a long time that they had done other Secret War storylines, because for me, it was a one and done. It was a bringing together of all of these different heroes and villains because there were all the villains there, and it was a way for me to experience other characters that it wasn't that familiar with. But the thing that really got me was reading the panels and seeing the little asterisk next to something and then down below it says see Daredevil twenty five or see Fantastic four, two fifty two, any of those type of things where you're like, oh, baby, exactly, and this is before.

Like at that point when I was reading comics, I think there were three Spider Man comics. There was Amazing, Spectacular, and then maybe Web of and I think one of those was just all repeat of his old issues that they were re releasing. Basically, I think that might have been web But then you would get spectacular and amazing and those stories would go back and forth, which I wasn't actually a fan of. I was kind of like, no, I just want to twice as much Spider Man. I don't need the same story just kind of stretched out a little bit more.

I mean that changed when it was like the Hobgoblin and everybody's trying to figure out who the hob Goblin was. But now it's impossible because you've got so many things, and they're constantly going across so many comic books, and it's just like I can't afford to buy every single one of these books. Especially I was buying comic books when there were sixty cents, seventy five cents. Once I got up to a dollar, which I know is cheap now for a comic book. I was out.

I don't even know where you can get a comic book for a dollar, maybe other than it like half rice books right, like the bargain bin, or like a garage sale. New comic books are like five to six bucks. I will tell you. If you want to read comic books the way I do it, get the Marvel app on your phone or iPad or I guess maybe it's on browser, and you could just it's like Netflix for comic books. You just read as much as you like and there's not any cap on it.

It's like ten fifteen dollars a months, probably more expensive than it used to be, like most things. But I you know, I don't think this movie leans too heavily on the crossover of it all. I think, for me, look like X Men is like the ultimate crossover movie in a lot of ways. Like X Men, the characters are all their own characters in their own right, and anytime they come together for an X Men movie, I'm like, oh, this is a massive team up movie because a lot of these characters could be their own thing. This is the first time Jean Gray has been in a movie without the other X Men.

Yeah, like this is it's it's such a wild way to use Geen Gray because she feels so novel and interesting, and I think that that's hopefully, hopefully that's one of the like the like like just from top down expectations from Kevin Figy with the new X Men is this needs to feel different. It can't just be Professor X and Magneto at the school together, like nobody wants to see that again. Give us something else, do something else with it, and I think this is a step in that right direction. I don't if you want to complain about that Jean Gray being in this movie, cool, but it just seems like a non issue. Maybe take Black Widow out of this movie.

But I like that we get to see Florence Pugh and Tom holland Cheriscene together. So shut up, Jesus. I'm the critical one here, Jesus. Fuck fuck me the people being I don't like the fucking c If you read a spider Man comic, the Ultimate Spider Man video game, there were levels where you fought Hulk and Venom and Wolverine and like all these other characters are showing up, like, chill the fuck out. If you've never read a spider Man comic, go read a spider Man comic, because he does not exist in a vacuum, none of these characters.

Do. You Know what the best thing about a crossover is, Chris, is that you of the culture cast get to join me on the projection Booth, or me of the Projection Booth gets to join you on the culture Cast, and you don't know which one you're listening. To, right, exactly right, it's technically both are you good. I was gonna say, I don't have a lot of issues with this movie. I actually don't think a lot of other people do.

This is probably going to be one of the best MCU movies that has ever come out, and I think you might agree, though it is a little recency bias. I think it's the best movie that's come out since Endgame. Well, I still like the last Spider Man movie. I think I like it more than you, which I feel kind of tied up Endgame a little bit more than Endgame allowed. You know, it was like that phase, whatever fucking phase we were in, it felt.

Like it ended under the second one, the one I'm talking. About, the one with all the Spider Man. It felt like that with Doctor Strange, like that came out right after Endgame? No, and did two come out right after Endgame? Yeah?

Because two has Spider Man dealing with the death of Tony Start. Oh shit, you're right. I was like, are you talking about the second one? Okay? Yeah, that was no, It's okay, Like That's why I was like, I want to make sure like you remember correctly because it seems like that.

But the third movie is actually the first multiverse that's right, because it's just fucking crazy given how much multiverse stuff they like ramped up. Oh I got it first stuff obviously, like Loki really was the first thing. But Loki was a TV show, so I as in terms of movies, it was Doctor Strange and Spider Man and it was I guess that was what like the same summer. Well and then and we got all geared up for Kane with that one. So I can't wait for him to come back, because I mean, he he was so great in that that last ant Man movie.

Should we tell him or do I need to tell Mike? Mike? I Mike, Now I have to tell you something. The dog is not coming back. We're taking the farm.

He has to go out to the farm. We're just going down the road a couple. We can go visit him on the weekends. But Jonathan, that's where he's gonna be and there's nothing wrong with him. What a fucking what a mess.

I do wonder what this all would have been like if we had just been doing Doctor Doom, and now we don't have because again think back to post Endgame, they still didn't have fucking X men. We're still we still they were like We're gonna do Kang and then we'll do Doctor Doom. That's what they were saying. I still remember you can go back and change history and whatever, but that was the thing. So maybe this is the best thing that could happen to the MCUs that they're gonna reboot everything.

Maybe that'll get rid of the bloat. Maybe that'll get rid of all the issues that we've seen and all the quippy, you know, moments that just seem unnecessary at this point. Like people are good, we these movies can change and get better. And I think if the next MCU movie is three quarters as good as this movie is, just seventy five percent of the way there, I think it will be one of the top ten MCU movies that's come out, because this movie really, I think sets the standard and the bar very high moving forward. And I also think Destin Daniel Cretin should be given a lot of credit here for how good this movie is.

He is a great director. I think he is going to have an opportunity now to go do whatever the fuck he wants, given that this movie has made a boatload of money. But and guess what, he's not just another white director hired by the MCU. He is a Hawaiian who has made his name doing other things and then did Shang Chi and then five years later did this and Wonder Man, which is canceled unfortunately. But I genuinely like I know people like to say we drag a lot of movies, but maybe drag us for being too effusive this time.

See how that fus. Well, Chris, thank you so much for joining me on this very special crossover. Do you want to tell the folks where they can hear us all the time? Yeah, they can hear us over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where our audio empire continues to expand with such great shows as the upcoming Harrison Ford show that's a crossover with my show, The Culture Cast, Mike Show, The Projection Booth, and Richard Adam's show The Paranormal Bookshelf Richard Adam, which is not the name of the show, It's Richard Adams's Paranormal Bookshelf. Boy.

I guess I lost fifty cents and then made a dollar in that in that phrasing right there, I lost the money that he normally gives me. But that crossover show is found a Weirdingway Media, along with Susan Lambert, Adam's Eighties TV Ladies, Jamie Bennings Filmentaries, Emily Intraravia's. Oh God, what the Fuck's the name of her show, Feminine Critique, Feminine Critique Boy almost made it to the end without another note, Emily Intraravia is the Feminine Critique, and so many more, along with new shows coming out towards the end of this year. And yes, Mike and I will be covering Doomsday when that comes out, obviously, and that's the next MCU thing. So yeah, that's where you can hear us.

As for other things, mypatreon at patreon dot com, slash culture cast and Mike's Patreon patreon dot com slash Projection booth where you can go to kick a couple dollars our way if that Harrison Ford podcast sounds exciting to win. It launches here in a couple of weeks. That's where you'll be able to hear it a month early ad free, So go do that if you're interested in that. And Richard Adams Patreon as well, So Richard Adam, I guess patreon dot com slash Richard Adam, So yeah, that's where you can go to find the three of us and yeah, make sure to come back for the next episode of either of our shows, and definitely in December we talk about doomsday, about