Tonight, I continued my retreat from reality with another super-hero escapist film.\u00a0 I turned on the 2002 version of Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire.\u00a0 Now Spider-Man is one of the goofiest comic book characters.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 But this being a super-hero movie it has much more spectacular episodes than growing up, getting a job and winning the girl.\u00a0 He has to defeat a super-villain who also happens to be his best friend\u2019s genius scientist father.\u00a0 Well, of course he is!<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not going to review this movie.\u00a0 No one needs the plot of yet another Spider-Man movie.\u00a0 What I\u2019m trying to do is show that even something as silly as this movie can be a good movie.\u00a0 But maybe the most important part of the movie is when it was made.\u00a0 In 2002 it was still possible to make a movie where race and gender weren\u2019t the defining characteristics for selecting cast and plot lines.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Currently there is a quota system in Hollywood and that combination of ethnic and sexual choices would violate the intersectional imperative.\u00a0 Either Peter would have to be black or his love interest would have to be a boy.\u00a0 And that\u2019s just the way it is in 2023.<\/p>\n
And that sums up the problem with Hollywood today.\u00a0 They\u2019ve eliminated fun from movies.\u00a0 The new super-heroes have to be joyless women proving that they\u2019re every bit as good as Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones only politically correct, incredibly smug and completely boring.<\/p>\n
This has already been the undoing of the Star Wars franchise and from what I\u2019m hearing it\u2019s about to put the last nail in the coffin of the Indiana Jones saga.\u00a0 And the Marvel Cinematic Universe is also being transformed.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost as if destroying the fun for men is more important than making money.\u00a0 And it is.<\/p>\n
But the good news is that the old movies are still there to see and enjoy.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 After all people haven\u2019t changed.\u00a0 Hero slays the dragon and wins the beautiful princess has been around at least as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey.\u00a0 It certainly will survive the Woke Wars.<\/p>\n
I hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tonight, I continued my retreat from reality with another super-hero escapist film.\u00a0 I turned on the 2002 version of Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire.\u00a0 Now Spider-Man<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[628,913,335,4137],"class_list":["post-24259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-disney-converged","tag-hollyweird","tag-hollywood","tag-spider-man"],"yoast_head":"\n