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.