Tag: Spider-Man

Spidey Gets It Done, Mission Accomplished

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I went with my three youngest grandsons to see the new Spiderman movie; “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”  And shockingly, I actually enjoyed it.  We got there early enough to pick out good seats and let the kids buy mass quantities of popcorn and sugary drinks.  So reinforced by these provisions we took our seats and watched the half hour of advertisements and coming attractions for all kinds of useless products and awful movies.  Now it’s been a few years since we went to this theater and in the meantime, it went out of business and been refurbished by its new owners.  And they installed luxury pleather powered recliners instead of the usual crappy movie seats of yesteryear.  So far, so good!

So, I missed the previous Spiderman installment but I was told that in it another MCU character (Doctor Strange) performed some kind of magic-adjacent activity which eliminated knowledge of Peter Parker’s existence completely from the human race including all his friends and the girl (MJ) that he loves.  Now this seems particularly stupid but that is the situation.  So, one of the plots of this movie is Parker getting up the courage to tell MJ that she has forgotten that they were once in love.  Okay, that’s an even stupider plot element but let’s give the writers some slack to try and make that work.  Then there’s a plot element where Peter is having major problems with his spider powers.  His ability to shoot webs and other skills seems to come and go.  Okay, this is more of a standard superhero plot element so full speed ahead.

And finally, some telepath is able to take control of human minds and force them to attack a shadowy government agency called the Department of Damage Control (DODC) for some unknown reason.  I won’t give away any spoilers by saying that DODC isn’t a benign organization and the telepath controlling minds isn’t completely unjustified in these actions.

Well, before the end we have a whole sequence where Bruce Banner is telepathically controlled and forced to turn into the Hulk with predictable cataclysmic results and we find out that Spiderman has a quasi-working relationship with the comic book character “The Punisher” an Italian American New Yorker whose real name is Frank Castle.  Castle is a vigilante who doesn’t have as many scruples as Spiderman when it comes to using firearms to thwart criminals.  As an Italian American native New Yorker myself, I especially relished Castle’s extremely accurate Bensonhurst accent and vocabulary.  It felt like coming home.

Well, anyway, the plot moves along in a reasonably superhero-ish manner and naturally our hero comes out the other side with some progress in his personal problems but no permanent solutions so he can be just as conflicted in the next Spiderman movie sometime in 2028.  And that is all that can ever be said for a Spiderman movie.  Also, the special effects were especially deft and fun to watch.  So, the movie was quite entertaining and the boys enjoyed it thoroughly.  Or maybe it was the snacks.

Anyway, mission accomplished.  We returned home and Camera Girl loaded down a table with spaghetti and meatballs along with some biscuits that these grandsons especially love to dunk in a meat sauce.  What more could I ask for?

Comic Book Movie Redux

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Tonight, I continued my retreat from reality with another super-hero escapist film.  I turned on the 2002 version of Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire.  Now Spider-Man is one of the goofiest comic book characters.  Spider-human genetic mutations that render its victim enormously strong and able to shoot webs from his wrists that allow him to climb and swing from Manhattan skyscrapers is just about as absurd as anything imaginable.  But what you discover if you watch the film is that the movie has heart and despite the ridiculous premise and the even more ridiculous villains, it holds your interest and the characters are likable.

The plot as I said is ridiculous but it follows its own logic and the story arc is your basic quest by the young man to find his inner hero.  But this being a super-hero movie it has much more spectacular episodes than growing up, getting a job and winning the girl.  He has to defeat a super-villain who also happens to be his best friend’s genius scientist father.  Well, of course he is!

I’m not going to review this movie.  No one needs the plot of yet another Spider-Man movie.  What I’m trying to do is show that even something as silly as this movie can be a good movie.  But maybe the most important part of the movie is when it was made.  In 2002 it was still possible to make a movie where race and gender weren’t the defining characteristics for selecting cast and plot lines.  Peter Parker was still allowed to be a white kid from New York City and he could still have a crush on a good-looking white girl.  Currently there is a quota system in Hollywood and that combination of ethnic and sexual choices would violate the intersectional imperative.  Either Peter would have to be black or his love interest would have to be a boy.  And that’s just the way it is in 2023.

And that sums up the problem with Hollywood today.  They’ve eliminated fun from movies.  The new super-heroes have to be joyless women proving that they’re every bit as good as Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones only politically correct, incredibly smug and completely boring.

This has already been the undoing of the Star Wars franchise and from what I’m hearing it’s about to put the last nail in the coffin of the Indiana Jones saga.  And the Marvel Cinematic Universe is also being transformed.  When you eliminate Iron Man and Captain America and replace them with Captain Marvel and whatever other screechy girl characters they dream up like She-Hulk or Thor-ette it goes without saying that boys and young men will stay away in droves.  It’s almost as if destroying the fun for men is more important than making money.  And it is.

But the good news is that the old movies are still there to see and enjoy.  And eventually when Disney has finally committed cinematic suicide there will still be creative types who will know how to use these old films as templates for how to create entertaining and profitable movies.  After all people haven’t changed.  Hero slays the dragon and wins the beautiful princess has been around at least as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey.  It certainly will survive the Woke Wars.

I hope.