Another Pass at Another Pass at The Amazing Spiders-Man

For some web slinging reason Case decided to do both of the Amazing Spiders-Man movies for the fourth episode of Another Pass. Check out Sam digesting (externally) all of the takes on the two awkward entries in the Wall Crawler's filmography.

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Transcription

(AI Generated. Subject to Error)

00:00
Sam
In the first movie, he takes his mask off way too often. Like, way too often. I understand they hired Andrew Garfield and they want people to know it's Andrew Garfield.

00:09
Case
Gotta show the moneymaker.

00:11
Sam
Yeah, but, like, he is Peter Parker, so, like, he is in most of the movie. So, like, his face is pretty prominent. Like, when he is Spider man, he should keep that mask on. Like, when he saved that little boy, he took his mask off to reassure him, and I was like, now you have to kill that child. Like, you.

00:38
Case
Okay?

00:39
Sam
You were trying to save him, and now he's got to die.

00:46
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to another pass at another pass, the podcast. I am case Aiken, and as I have been for the last two years, two plus years now, I am joined by my co host, Sam Alicea.

01:01
Sam
Hi.

01:03
Case
And this is another bonus episode as we walk down memory Lane, looking at the early days of the show and giving Sam opportunities to talk about all the tasty movies that I snatched up right when we started because I foolishly was like, hey, we should do all the ones that I really wanted to talk about now because I had no idea how long the show was going to go.

01:24
Sam
Right? Yeah, no, that's fair.

01:26
Case
So today we are looking back at episode four of the show, which is a weird one, because for whatever goddamn reason, I decided that we should talk about both of the amazing spiders, man.

01:41
Sam
Which I feel like one level is fair because they do feed into each other. The storyline, kind of the second movie really does feel like a continuation because you get more of the subplot with Peter's father. However, there is so much to critique about both of these films separately that they really could have been their own.

02:06
Case
And, like, there was a lot of dumb going on with this one because at this point, they had announced, or we had seen the trailer for Civil War. We were actually wondering about that in the last episode. So we had seen the trailer for Civil War. We had seen the costume for the new Spider man, and were all excited about that because it looked so, like, I think people forget how remarkable the Holland, like, Spider man suit looked when he first showed up in, like, you know, still has looked fine. But that particular costume, in terms of being, like, we got the eyes that are actually, like, lenses that change size, the piping, the extra details were, like, fine. Nothing looked too crazy. It looked all really good. We were, like, super psyched because the movie hadn't even come out yet.

02:49
Case
It was like, go, fuck, yeah, this is great. And were very excited about it. And I wanted to talk about both of these. And then the movie came out, and at which point I rushed it to get the Spiderman three episode in with Jeff. So that episode just came up real quickly. It was like, oh, shit. Well, yeah, let's do Spiderman three. So that it's, like, timed roughly to match up with the movie coming out.

03:14
Sam
Right.

03:15
Case
Which was so dumb because I could have easily done either of these instead or. Or just held it on something else. But for whatever reason, I was like, let's do both of them, because I was kind of down on these movies. And I think it's fair that I was influenced a lot by pop culture of the time. Listening back to it, I was surprised at some of that, but I think I was unnecessarily harsh with it. I'm just going to let everyone know before we go into it. But, yeah, this whole episode, I think it's a great conversation, but why did I do both of them?

03:56
Sam
I don't know.

04:00
Case
It's honestly just remarkable to me, and I think I just didn't want to talk about either because I was just very negative at the time going into it. But I do think the conversation we had is really good. I think we had a lot of fun ideas in it. So why don't we get into the episode? Unless you have anything you want to warn the audience about before.

04:22
Sam
No, I think you've warned them everything. And the sound quality is good on this.

04:26
Case
Oh, yeah. So heads up for everyone who's been tracking that one. So this one was done in studio. And in fact, I think at this point, were fully moved into the certain Pov studio at Addie and Jmike's when they had a house together. So quality is really good. Our rhythm is really good. It's me with Addie and Ben, and the flow is really good. For a while, there was, like, a running tally between Addie and Ben as guests versus Jeff as guests for who would have the most number of appearances because it was just like neck and neck for a while. And part of that is we recorded a bunch of these pretty back to back. This might have been on the same. We might have done this the same time that we did the Jedi one, now that I think about that.

05:11
Case
Oh, you know what? Actually, what's coming up is the Dark Knight rises. And I think that was the same night as Jedi because were pacing them out. Yeah, the show is evergreen, so we could kind of record whenever we wanted and then release them where it made sense. And I don't know why I thought this one made sense at the time. It did, but it did. But it's a fun episode. It's kind of quick, relatively speaking. It's a little bit longer than some of the really short ones we've had. It's not like the mall rats one where it's just like, get to the end.

05:40
Case
But I hope you all enjoy, and I hope you are ready for a lot of talk because we're talking about two movies and the format is still kind of finding its footing and the three of us really go back and forth. But it's a good conversation and I hope you enjoy.

05:57
Addy
Welcome to certain point of views, another pass podcast. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes. Just go to certainpov.com.

06:09
Case
Thanks, folks, for tuning in to another pass podcast. I'm Kay Saiken, and tonight with me, we've got Ben Milton and Addie Thomas. Hey, Shocker. I know. For everyone. And tonight we're going to be talking about the amazing Spider man series. What was good, what was bad, and how we would remake it to make it a bit better. Because I didn't think these were particularly good. I think there were some good moments in there and certainly a lot to talk about. So with that, I guess we've done a few series before where we've worked our way backwards. But I think this one, the movies are such, like weird, cluster fucky, one hundred and eighty s from each other. Like, the first one happened and the second one's like, how do I fix everything that happened and do a totally different thing?

06:50
Case
So why don't we start with amazing Spiderman one and talk about some ideas about it and then move on from there? So, Ben, do you have some thoughts? I have two thoughts for amazing Spider man. One, either change everything about it or change one thing about it.

07:06
Addy
What's that one thing?

07:07
Case
I would place it in college instead of high school. Every one of these actors is way too old to be in high school. It's completely similar. Note on that one. Completely unbelievable that any of these people are in high school. That Gwen Stacy is working in Oscorp and getting.

07:23
Addy
That was one thing that always bothered me, is that Gwen Stacy is a high school intern who isn't just answering phone calls at Oscorp coffee.

07:32
Case
Right. She's giving tours, like filing things, even a college. Here's our stack of old documents. We need to keep them for legal reasons. Can you make sure that they're all alphabetized?

07:42
Sam
Right.

07:43
Case
Yeah. So that was my biggest complaint about it because I went back and watched both movies today just to like, because I was like, I think I didn't like the first one, and I think there was things I really liked about the second one, and I came away with very different impressions. I actually really liked the first one. I thought it was a really great personal origin story. Now, look, I didn't necessarily want to see, and I don't know that I would make an origin story for Spider man, but when you consider that it's just man.

08:10
Addy
But do you think they're just Spider Man?

08:12
Case
Spider man, he's Jewish now, which makes sense out of, if he's. You're coming off of the Raimi series, and I guess you want to say that this is a totally different, this is a reboot, so it's not the Raimi series. So I guess you're kind of obligated to do an origin story, although I think that could have been done better. But for an Origin story movie, this one works really well for me. Yeah.

08:36
Addy
And I was fine with Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, Sally Field as Aunt May is fantastic. Yeah, I like that. I was fine with what they did in that aspect. I was fine with an origin story. I'd be okay with them not doing an origin story moving forward because I don't want it to get played out like the Wayne's death.

08:57
Case
Yeah. I mean, at this point now, Spider Man, I think, is the default. Like, oh, they're just going to do another origin story again. We don't want to see Spider Man's origin again, which we've been very refreshed that it sounds like they're not doing that with the new Spider man movies.

09:09
Addy
Right. Which I think we're at the point now where that's okay, but I don't think we got to the peak of.

09:15
Case
Like, all right, I'm tired of seeing Uncle Ben die. Origin is so simple and so pure. I got bit by a spider. Now I have spider powers, and I'm a hero because I failed to do something good. We don't need to embellish it. We don't need to modernize it, because no matter how modernized you make it's going to be ridiculous. It's not supposed to be like, oh, here's a really plausible excuse. If they wanted a really plausible Spiderman origin, they would do Spiderman 2099. They would do a different series. But the classic Spiderman is just like, this is a pure accident. Happens to person, and he's an average person. Now, what propels him from being an average person to being a hero? And that's the fact that he learns with great power comes great responsibility.

09:59
Case
Because the whole thing about his villains are always like, they're very similar. Like they're middle of the road people. Like, people who are just citizens. They're not career criminals with the exception of a few. And then they do something that pushes, like, they gain their powers and they make the choice to be bad. And that's to contrast with Spider man, who made the choice to be good. But it's not just, he's innately good and it's not just like all that. Yeah.

10:21
Addy
And my big problem with both of these movies, because my one big criticism of the first movie is really a criticism of both movies, is that Spider man, well, Peter Parker isn't necessarily an average person. There's a little bit of a predestination thing going on with him because of his parents role.

10:44
Case
Yeah. And that definitely muddies the nature of who Peter Parker is.

10:47
Addy
And I was not a fan. That was the thing that I didn't like. Especially because the payoff for that, the.

10:52
Case
Second movie, ended up being so bad. Let's refrain it to the first movie.

10:58
Addy
Though, for the moment. Coming back to the first movie.

11:00
Case
Just watching it in the first movie, though, as I would rewatch it today, it actually works pretty well.

11:05
Addy
It only works because if you have the relationship with him and Connors you can still have Parker's dad be involved with Oscorp but not necessarily making it predestined for Peter to be Spider man in some sense.

11:19
Case
But that's not revealed in the first one. Yeah, but I think you can put it as heavily.

11:24
Addy
Yeah, there's a lot of implications. There's a lot of intrigue around it. You have that little flash of the, was it mid credits or after credits scene with.

11:34
Case
Not the prison, the guy with the credits.

11:40
Addy
Yeah.

11:41
Case
I feel like Sony has not had the balls to do a true post credit scene. But for the main movie. Yes, there. But it's not like predestination, I think, is a really strong word for what happens to him. Well, here is the thing. In the first movie, everything is coincidentally linked. Like, Gwen is coincidentally the assistant to Connors, who coincidentally works at Oscorp where coincidentally, they have a Spider man or a Spider facility with super spiders where coincidentally, this happens to be the company that sells spider webs. That coincidentally. But it's not. That isn't how comic books work. It happens when one writer tries to do one story. But if you look at the history of Spider man, there's all these crazy things and then retroactively, sometimes they try to tie it together.

12:33
Addy
That's like making kingpin, the guy who killed Matt Murdock's dad. Oh, wait, they did that before, didn't they?

12:41
Case
Well, yeah, but more accurately, it's like making Joker in a bad person who killed, that goes, that starts to stretch the world that they live in to be unbelievable.

12:51
Addy
It's too small.

12:56
Case
In a comic book series where you have infinite number of issues that you can stretch things out and tell these stories forever and ever and we're perpetually in the second act. You can do that in a movie. You're confined to an hour and a half, 2 hours at the most to tell this story. I was, okay, I agree it does make the universe smaller, but I don't think at that point in time they were necessarily convinced that they were going to try and make a Spider man universe. Not in the same way that they had for the next one. Right. And I have thoughts about that for the next one. But talking about amazing Spiderman one. Yeah, I agree. I think the origin story was well done. I think it was entirely unnecessary, but I thought it was well done.

13:41
Case
The stuff with uncle Ben was good and what really good detail.

13:45
Addy
I like Connor's stuff.

13:46
Case
His shift from being a vigilante to being a hero, like coming to understand that vengeance isn't the driving force, that he goes from being Batman to being Superman. Yes. Taking that up and actually becoming an actor and having Gwen Stacy's dad being sort of the guiding force of. That was really good.

14:03
Addy
Yeah, I'm with you too. And that's why I said it's a minor issue for me in the first movie, but I actually really like the first amazing Spider Man. I don't think I would change, really.

14:14
Case
I would make them in college.

14:15
Addy
Yeah.

14:17
Case
Here's the thing. I do think coming out this movie, they were hurt by the fact that they did the origin story again because the audience, it was so mean. We're not talking about like if this was a standalone movie, but there is context. It's not Batman begins, where you had a bunch of really bad movies in between and a franchise that started and then flopped and then had, it was like eight years. We're talking about only a couple of years. Yeah. The stretch of audience time didn't feel like it was necessary. Agreed. So my thoughts on it, I agree about the college thing. I wouldn't mind if Spider man was kind of like James Bond where you could just pick up and do a story about the character and not have to set up.

15:01
Case
Here's all of his origin stuff, most heroes, most superheroes generally. But, like, Spider man is up there in terms of how recognizable he is to the average audience, especially after the Raimi movies. And so at that point, you could just have Spider man be a character. Yeah, sure. Spend a few minutes to set up, like, okay, so here's Aunt May, and here is our new iterations of all the characters so that we understand this is the world we're in now, but everyone understands who those players are. Right? And so I agree. I would do a college story. I've been battling or batting this idea around in my head. Do it as a midwell for the first Spider man movie. Don't be explicitly set in that timeline, but kind of the way that Incredible Hulk could be a sequel to the Angli Hulk movie.

15:50
Case
Like, set this one in college, because during the time in the Sam Raimi movie, there's that time jump, and it's not really explicit, but it could be a few years, actually, where he kind of becomes Spider man and is often about and being Spider man. And then the Green Goblin shows up and things are thrown awry. But during that stretch, you could do a story of him in college. Like, he could still be living at home. And there's some issue. They did his senior year in high school. You could easily change that to his senior year in college.

16:23
Addy
Yeah, but then you also have. So one of the things I find really good about this movie was the relationship and the chemistry with him and Gwen Stacy. If you try to set it in Sam Raimi's timeline, you technically can't because Gwen Stacy is in Spidey three and what's going on with Mary Jane?

16:44
Case
What's going on? I wouldn't really hold it too hard to it, except we're right now just, like, dissecting this movie and what's good and bad about it. If we're kind of trying to repitch it from a starting point. This movie came about because they tried to get the Raimi movie to have a fourth movie, and it didn't really come together because they couldn't pay them enough money. They were worried that it was never tainted and how is it going to go? And eventually it started to stall out, and finally they had to whip it together really quickly, otherwise they would lose the rights. So the question is, how far back do we want to go right now? Do we want to be like, all right, exactly. This is what I said.

17:23
Case
I would either completely redo this story completely from scratch, nuts and bolts up casting story, the whole nine yards, or I would change one need.

17:35
Addy
I personally don't think you need to burn everything down and mean, yes, there are some issues with, like, Andrew Garfield is definitely way too old to be a high schooler.

17:44
Case
So is. Right. Let's say we said it in college. You could theoretically cut out the origin story. I like it, but it doesn't need to be. It could be flashbacks. You could do it in flashback. What if the movie opened with the funeral for Uncle Ben? Right. And then the movie follows his initial period of time as Spiderman, which we didn't really get in the Raimi movies.

18:08
Addy
So it's like Spiderman Year one.

18:09
Case
Yeah, basically. Less so in this one. But an idea I had. Are you guys familiar with the series untold Tales of Spiderman? No. It was a really cool series that they did in the 90s by Kurt Buseick. And every issue was set during a time period of other Spider man issues. So the stories were all high school Spider man stories into, I think they ultimately got to the very beginning of his college career. But every so often, they would do a timeline just so that were clear where these fell in that chronology. And they did things to tie details together and sort of set up like, oh, this explains why this weird continuity issue happened there. Or here's a thing that would have happened because they had this time gap. Or here's a really extreme thing that happened in this really narrow time frame.

18:55
Case
And this is how we fit it all together. I think it's, like, basically a writing exercise that he came up with after doing Marvel's, where he had to do the wedding and then the mutant riots, or, like, the weding of the fantastic four and the mutant riots and realized that they had to happen on the same day and then was like, I wonder what else could happen in that kind of window? And it'd be kind of cool if you did this sort of as like. And their marketing did this too, where it's like, here's the untold story of Spider man. What their commercials were like, tell the story of Peter Parker going from, like, my uncle just like, I'm so angry, to being Spider man. Because in the Raimi movie, they just jump into him being. He was.

19:38
Case
He was the human spider before that, right? And it doesn't have to be the Raimi verse. You can divorce yourself from that. But this is a Spiderman story from the time where Spiderman is fresh off of his uncle's death before he's truly come into his own as a hero. And you could do that story. You could do him as a freshman in college who just lost his father figure. His professor could be Connor's. He warms up to Connors, finds out about stuff going on with Connors in a separate thing. But that's a natural relationship right there. They were setting that up in the Raimi series to be like, kirk Connors was his teacher professor.

20:17
Case
Yeah, and that was really implied, and that's why I think they went with Lizard, because they'd been working on scripts before that for lizard and spend some time with, like, they wanted him to be like, here's a new surrogate father figure, and then he betrays you to become, like, a monster. You could have worked with that. You could really develop that period. But have it be not an accidental connection. Have it be like, he is now hurting. He is looking for a father figure. And this professor right here shines to him because he is a smart kid and he's teacher's favorite student and is also, in his own way, hurting because he's without his arm, and he has these emotional problems as a result of that. Maybe some kind of PTSD.

21:04
Case
That could have been a thing in this modern era, like, talking about a post war on terror kind of thing. Like someone who went off to active duty and came back and that's missing a lamb. Yeah, I think that was his shtick. He was in World War II and lost his lamb. Was that the original story of. I mean, it was the lizard. It was definitely a war injury. Was it? I don't know that I ever knew how he. Well, because they had to recon that detail. But, like, all the 60s characters, it was just like, world War II was fresh, and so was Korea. Ben Grimm was, like, a fighter pilot. They all just went to generic colleges and had these kind of interactions. Captain America wasn't that far out of time.

21:46
Case
He was just someone who was, like, the leader of their people now.

21:49
Addy
It was like, what was it, like, ten years out or even.

21:52
Case
Yeah, I mean, that's why it was cool to have a hero like Reed Richards with, like, gray hair. He was just like, oh, yeah, he's a vet. Cool. It might have been Korea, and then it might have been shifted to Vietnam, but I guess I never knew the actual story of how Kirk Connors lost his arm. I think I've ever seen anybody even mention it. It was just like, he definitely lost it. I'm, like, 90% certain that it was a war wound initially, and they probably have done different versions. They may have done different versions between the first couple of issues. How about this as an idea?

22:26
Case
How about sort of the movie kind of from Kirk Connor's standpoint, starting the movie with him losing the arm and seeing him lose the arm and going through that journey with him of the PTSD and the trauma and being this brilliant scientist, kind of a Stephen Strange esque story of I can't do the thing that I've been so great at because now I'm half of a man with this missing have. That could actually be a fairly interesting story. Okay. Yeah. I mean, because we already know the origin of Spider man, we already know the history of Spider man. We already know that Peter Parker chooses to become the hero. Like you said, we don't need to see that again. Right. But what if you did a spiderman, a spider verse told from the perspective of the villains?

23:18
Addy
Which was. That's what I was kind of excited about with the idea, with some of their ideas for their expanded universe, the idea of a venom movie to finally see from the perspective of a villain rather than from a hero. I always thought a Superman movie would be interesting from Lex Luthor's perspective as the protagonist and Superman as the antagonist instead. But actually, coming back to Connor's real quick, he was in the US army. He was a surgeon who lost it.

23:47
Case
Thank you. Internet in a wartime blast. Yeah.

23:50
Addy
There you go.

23:50
Case
Yeah, that makes sense. And you could totally do that with Iraq, right? Yeah, exactly. And modernize it and make it interesting and relatable and maybe has a weird relation with how science works now because.

24:07
Addy
Was exposed to some weird cutting edge.

24:09
Case
Science while he was over fighting. I like the idea of him being embittered because that actually sets up a better reason for him to hate and to lash out, especially when he's given these lizard regenerative powers. Yeah, I mean, I think that's part of the problem. Lizards aren't necessarily like, I have a lizard at home. It's not really an aggressive animal.

24:28
Addy
Yeah.

24:28
Case
The thing is, the lizard that they present in this movie, he just becomes all of a sudden, I need to make everyone lizards because reasons. And then they don't really do much good with that. They had that scene where he infects a couple of cops and then we never cut back to them. That would have been a great. They've started to transform and attack people. We don't even get that. Which would have been such a. That's such a cliche, but still perfectly villain kind of thing to do when the reality is they're in New York and it's cool. At night, they probably just tried to find some heating lamps and just hung out for a while and waited for crickets because that's what losers.

25:05
Addy
They're hanging out with Mothman near some.

25:07
Case
Light bulbs, just hanging out underneath a street light, like shivering eyes barely able to. Not to steal plots, but you could do stuff like, say, like the things that they did with Manbat in the animated series, like on leather wings, where he's starting to have the transformation, but it's not permanent. And he just has this compulsion to finish it and come to his final form. And he's, like, stealing stuff that's like chemicals related to that. Right. Again, that's straight up stealing the plot of a Batman episode. But it's a good one. It works and it makes sense.

25:40
Addy
Yeah.

25:40
Case
And it makes sense for this character to be like, oh, I have my arm back. Especially if he starts off just having his arm back and isn't the full lizard, and he starts doing things related to keeping his arm because he can feel or he actually sees evidence of it starting to atrophy. Something like that would lead to him doing more and more extreme versions of whatever drug he takes. And that finally turns him desperate to say, to become a full human again. If he views himself as half of a man, he's not really a full man anymore because he's lost his arm.

26:17
Case
So his machismo is injured and his ego is injured, and so he gets his arm back and he feels like a whole human being again, but then he's seeing it decay and atrophy, and so he goes out and commits these crimes. No, he doesn't. He goes from, I got my arm back. And so he goes to stop the guy from Oz Corp from testing it out on VA, at the VA and changes on the bridge and attacks everybody on the bridge.

26:48
Addy
Right. I would have liked some transformations because.

26:50
Case
Think about this one. What if he had those PTSD flashbacks every time his arm withered away and he relived that same injury? That could drive a person mad, because if it happened a couple of times, we don't really see it that often. He transforms like, what? Like twice or three times. If it happened where he got his arm back, but it decayed by the end of the day and he was witnessing his arm fall off and feeling that pain. And it looked like the scene that we saw at the beginning of the movie, and then another time and another time, and he's taking harder and harder versions of these same drugs that could do some really interesting stuff with making him a compelling villain because right now he's a cipher. He doesn't have motivation. We get cool scenes.

27:33
Case
That fight scene in the library with Stan Lee as a cameo. One of the best Stan Lee cameos ever. Great scene. They do good stuff with all their characters. There's nice little moments there with some good action scenes.

27:45
Addy
And the physicality of that fight scene is fun.

27:48
Case
The physics are generally pretty good. Like, the web slinging is great in that movie. It'd be nice if he was wearing a good costume while he swung around in it, but, oh, no, I hated it. Really? Oh, yeah. What about the costume did you not like? Because I thought it was pretty good for what it was. Okay, so stepping back on a few details. So just the straight up costume? Yeah. I thought the line work was just, like, overdone. I thought it was like, we need to separate him from the classic Spiderman design. So we're just going to put a bunch of new random details all over you.

28:17
Addy
Like, at least that they went to the web shooters for as the organic webbing.

28:21
Case
I'm okay with web shooters. I don't like two key details about them in the movie that they did. One, he bulk orders the webbing from Oscorp where you're like, how does Oscorp and the FBI not just automatically know who Spider man is? Because he's the only civilian for this commercially developed aircraft carrier safety thing. It's like, look, if your plane's about to fly off the ship, you can web it. And if someone's falling from, fire departments can use it. Now this one high school kid ordered like, thousands of tons of this stuff. I thought that was so dumb. I hated the fact that there were muzzle flashes when he fired it off. That was so dumb. It was like, let's make this look, like, badass and cool. But it's a web shooter.

29:06
Case
Like, it's supposed to be kind of creepy and, like, a little, there's so many elements of, like, let's make Spider man cool. Like, that's why he's a skateboarder and he has to go thrash to let off some steam. It's like we're making Cullen and we're going to go with someone who looks like kind of that moody, bad boyish and he doesn't feel like a nerd and he doesn't feel like.

29:27
Addy
Like he has that weird nerd.

29:29
Case
Really. Like someone who's out. Like, he doesn't even feel antisocial.

29:34
Addy
I don't know if I go that far, but he's a little too cool.

29:39
Case
He's not. And he's a little quick. He is in the second movie. In the first movie. I disagree. No, I'm not talking about Spiderman. Sure. He comes out like, Spiderman should be the key for him coming out of his shell. I don't need him to be like a bookworm, complete nerd like stereotype of a nerd from the 50s. But he doesn't feel like a modern nerd that needs to come out of a shell. He's a loner. Yeah, I think they feel confident in that lonerness, most definitely. Because he faces flash in his very first scene. He fights flash in his very first. Yeah, he still has the. Was a. I thought that was a refreshing twist on Spider man after the syrupy, goofy interpretation of Peter Parker. Yeah. I'm not saying, like, let's just do like. I really didn't like Maguire as Spider Man.

30:35
Case
I didn't think he was good. I didn't like that iteration of Spider man. Really? No. Especially by the third movie, the first movie, I thought it was. Okay, which part are we going to get into right now? Here's the problem with comic book movies in general or movies in general is they find a pretty good tone and a pretty good story, and they keep it simple in the first movie, and then they go, we got top it, and so let's just do more.

31:06
Addy
Yeah, but the second movie didn't do that.

31:08
Case
It did a little bit well with the whole, like, he loses his powers because of his, sorry, we're talking about the Raimi. And then him relearning to be Spider man. Those scenes annoyed the hell out of me.

31:20
Addy
Yeah, no, I'm with you there. Because it's also weird for his. The moment he gets it back, too.

31:24
Case
I'm a defend the damn dance in Spiderman three right now. And here's why. Because Peter Parker being a nerd but being cut loose is like the drunk guy who's like, I think I can dance right now. He's not a good dancer. He's not actually that cool. He's doing jazz standards in a modern era. None of this should fit. But he's so damn confident in it because he's got an alien parasite clinging to his amygdala. That's the saving grace of that scene. Because it's not about him. All of a sudden, I've got my mojo. I'm cool. Now it's him being like, no, I got this. I've had a couple of shots, but I'm pretty good. I know what I'm doing just the overconfidence of that, taking it back to amazing Spiderman and back to this, because.

32:11
Addy
I'm sure we'll have another.

32:12
Case
I think amazing Spiderman one is a little small. That works for me. Sorry, it's a little small, which could be a huge strength. The personal stuff of Spiderman coming into being a true hero and not just a vigilante. And that exploration was one of my favorite things about it getting into, like, here's our deep love story that starts to make it feel like too much of an epic. The villain being kind of generic and not having really well enough developed motivations and then kind of getting the hinting of the chosen one. Stuff like this deep coincidence of everything, tying it all together kind of is trying to make it almost seem like he's destined for greatness, or at least he's destined to live out the story. And those are, I think, weaknesses of it. I can see where that turns you off.

33:11
Case
It didn't turn me off in the first movie. It definitely turned me off in the second movie. Let's get to that, because I feel like we dissected the first one. Let me just say this. For amazing Spider man one, I think you could get away without doing the full origin story. If you want to talk about the period right after Uncle Ben, I think that works really well. And then follow that story. You can do some more stuff with Connor's. I think that's the biggest problem ultimately with this movie, is that the villain just isn't very compelling and never has a good explanation for his, like, the stuff with him going to the VA. Don't test it. Those are almost moments of him being developed, but then it just goes away in the rest of the movie. And those are problems.

33:47
Addy
And before we get to the second part of this episode, don't forget, if you have other ideas, especially about the first Amazing Spider man one, you can go to our website, certainpov.com, click on another path and comment on that. See if you disagree on these ideas, especially the idea of him being the chosen one. Or is it strength being the Connor's.

34:10
Case
The typical marvel underdeveloped villain?

34:12
Addy
Right? Yeah, all of that.

34:15
Case
I'm going to throw this one last part about amazing Spiderman one. When I came out, I remember thinking, oh, wow, this is as close detail wise as you can get to a Spiderman 2099 movie because there was so much about it being like uptown where there was these huge buildings which are not the way that classic Spiderman was built to be around. There were a lot of extreme lights and there's cops around. And there were a lot of good details. And then this is very high contrast blue and red color scheme at multiple spots. It was a little dark, but it was still there. And I thought those almost had this look of like, oh, this is the future of New York instead of like the York we're almost there to the 2099 New York.

34:56
Case
And you could feel Spiderman almost getting there, which that was cool. And if anyone saw that too, I would love to hear about it. Or if you thought that I'm just crazy, but I just love Miguel O'Hara and I would love to see, I would eventually love an actual movie, but we're never going to get it. Some amazing Spiderman two.

35:14
Addy
What a piece of shit.

35:16
Case
All right, Ben started before Addie. No, I was talking about Addie right here, man.

35:24
Addy
There's so much wrong with this movie. All right, what would I change in it?

35:29
Case
Well, let's start with what we liked about it first and if we can keep it and then what we didn't like and if it makes sense toss it.

35:36
Addy
What'd you like about really? Again, I like the chemistry between Spidey and Gwen Stacy. The Gwen Stacy death actually works for me. I know it doesn't work for Ben.

35:48
Case
It worked for me. I just thought it was hilarious. I think the scene itself was fine. I think that the circumstances that created.

35:55
Addy
The circumstances that created it with Goblin because Goblin is so mishandled in this movie along with so many other things.

36:03
Case
Oh, yeah.

36:03
Addy
But I think the death was, I think that the idea of. I was actually fine with, I think you're not a fan of this, but the ghost of Captain Stacy being there, messing with Spidey, that actually works for me because this idea of this is why he doesn't want to get back with Gwen was, I thought, a good obstacle between in their relationship so that when he does make the choice, there is the consequence of her death. I thought that plot thread did work for me. But all of that is stuff of him being Peter Parker and not so much Spider man. It was all about her deciding to.

36:45
Case
Go off to school in, what was.

36:46
Addy
It, France or London or whatever it was.

36:48
Case
I think it was London, right? It was London.

36:50
Addy
It was London, yeah.

36:51
Case
So everything with Gwen constantly is like, you're not a real, like, these are not options that people just have in front of them where it's like, oh.

36:59
Addy
I'm going to be the very wealthy family.

37:02
Case
She is in a very wealthy family. But how wealthy is she really? Her dad's a cop. They live in a really nice apartment. They do if they want really nice downgrade. What, that top cop or, like, sorry, mom, must be loaded.

37:18
Addy
Yeah, maybe.

37:19
Case
But I mean, sure, if you're going to be a captain, I guess you might.

37:23
Addy
Maybe he was connected and that's how he got the job.

37:26
Case
Shouldn't come off as so blue collar the whole time. Yeah. Then you don't care.

37:34
Addy
That's fair. Collar before Jeff Foxworth.

37:43
Case
Wait, can you imagine that casting? Joy, I'm going to need you to step away from my daughter. You might be a Spider man. If you can shoot webs out of your legs, you let her die.

38:01
Addy
But again, that still worked for me. That conflict of not wanting to get back into that relationship and then the tragic consequence of it resulting in her death. I like that thread.

38:13
Case
See, I think the problem I had with that conflict stems from the end of the movie before not feeling like he was actually going to have that problem, that he was trying to honor the word, but he just really wanted to get with it and didn't really care. That was how the end of the movie felt, or the previous movie. And I think that the continuity between the two movies is sort of the problem. The fact that it is the sequel and they try to tie in these plot threads makes the fact that this movie is a complete 180 from the previous one. Everything that's good about this movie is the exact opposite things from the previous one, and everything that's bad about it generally are the opposite things. Plus some shared bad. Yeah. For example, I love the costume in it.

38:57
Case
I thought it was really. Well, it looked great. It was like the best classic Spider man costume. I mean, yeah, sure. With the Civil War one, there's all these great details, and we gushed about it on certain pov for quite a bit of time, just about like, oh, this is such a great Marvel universe version of this costume, but amazing Spiderman two, it really looked like the costume from the comics without really any compromises. It was just those details. And that I thought was great. I thought the fight in Times Square looked amazing. I think the reasons for it were horrible, but the fight itself was really cool. The effects were good. Yeah. Even the later fight generally looks cool. The effects in both of these movies are actually very good. I would say it's a stronger point for the second.

39:46
Addy
Yeah.

39:46
Case
Two, they really threw their money into it. The first one, they were like, get this out the door. Right. But it still looks really good.

39:53
Addy
It does. But there is something that's kind of.

39:56
Case
Inventive, more of a wow factor in the second one.

39:59
Addy
Exactly.

39:59
Case
There's more of a wow factor. Yeah, but the lizard, they do a really good job with the lizard. I didn't like the way he looked, but the effects were good. I don't think so. Watch it again. I thought his skin looked really kind of not consistent. Like, I thought the textures sort of were messy throughout. I thought it looked pretty good today.

40:17
Addy
When I watched it.

40:20
Case
How old is it? Not that old. It was like 2013.

40:24
Addy
Because that came out the same year as Avengers.

40:26
Case
Right?

40:26
Addy
The first Avengers, right?

40:27
Case
Yeah. So it's three years old, the first Avengers movie. Well, you just said 2013. Yeah, it's 2016.

40:34
Addy
It's earlier than.

40:36
Case
It's got to be earlier than 20.

40:37
Addy
When did Dark Knight Rises come out? That was the same.

40:39
Case
Sam. Summer, look it up. You got a computer right in front of you, man. There's no way. It's only three years old. No, it's not 2010. It was definitely 2012 at earliest. It looks good.

40:51
Addy
Twelve.

40:52
Case
It was twelve. Okay, summer. Good. Summer. Twelve. Okay.

40:54
Addy
It looks good.

40:56
Case
It looks good. I'm telling you, it looks good. They get away with a lot of lizard. Well, they do a lot of great use of shadow. Yeah, I was about to say they do a lot of stuff at night. Whereas the second or amazing Spiderman two, their night scenes are all really well lit, like it's Times Square and there's like a ton of neon. So then tons of night component doesn't play into it. Like, you can use shadow and darkness to make up for bad CGI. That's what they did with the angle E Hulk movie. They spent, like, the first half of it.

41:22
Addy
I mean, to be honest, darkness.

41:23
Case
So that the first time he comes out into the light, you're like, okay, I'm ready for it at this point. Yeah.

41:27
Addy
But who wants to see Spider man fight electro at visuals?

41:33
Case
The visuals definitely are more spectacular, if I can use that word in this. Spiderman.

41:39
Addy
Not amazing.

41:40
Case
No, but they're spectacular in the second Spiderman. You might say superior.

41:47
Addy
But the story is so awful.

41:49
Case
Definitely not sensational. No, it is anti sensational.

41:55
Addy
It is the worst.

41:57
Case
It is such a bad movie.

41:59
Addy
Yeah.

41:59
Case
Top to bottom. Electric in a web of. I love where we're going with this. I really do. I'm so proud of you right now. Spin off. Right. I sat down this afternoon as I watched this, and I tried to think of what I would keep out of this movie. And there's only one thing, the casting, other than that I would scrap this entire movie, it's just total garbage. Top to bottom. The love story is garbage. The electro story doesn't make any damn sense. And it's just completely ridiculous. The Osborne stuff, I thought, was. Although one thing that came out of it is, you know who would actually make a really good Peter Parker? Dane de Hahn, who plays Harry Osborne. Like, he actually would be a very good Peter Parker. He basically plays evil Peter Parker in Chronicle.

42:46
Addy
Yeah, but again, he's got an evil what?

42:50
Case
Yeah.

42:51
Addy
I don't know if I think he's got the evil quality going for him.

42:55
Case
I can see going gay for Andrew Garfield. I don't know if I could do it for Dane de Hahn. Yeah, maybe if it was dark. But he's got, like, that brooding sort of bad boy thing going for him.

43:08
Addy
That's what people thought about James Franco. Look where that went.

43:11
Case
I don't know where you're coming from.

43:13
Addy
I don't know.

43:14
Case
I've had at least two whiskeys.

43:17
Addy
You've had a little too much to drink. Do you want us to edit this out?

43:19
Case
No, I'm fine with it. Addie, take it. Like, I don't like Dane Dejanis as Peter Parker.

43:27
Addy
Yeah. I don't fight him. A trap he's too dark for is. There is a certain darkness to him, which is what works in Chronicle, which is why they cast him as goblin. And it doesn't work as goblin.

43:41
Case
But imagine him if he was the. And obviously, career wise, he was not in a spot to place Peter Parker when the first one came out. Imagine if he was. Nope. Hold on. Just imagine. Just to go back to amazing for a second. Imagine if he had been cast in that. But the story is about someone who is a little dark coming to embrace the light. Like he's a little too driven by vengeance. Coming to understand that it's not about catching the bad guy. It's about protecting the weak. But we already. My problem is story. My problem is I keep on saying you should recast him right the second, like in that movie. They should have flipped it. But I was saying that Dane de Hahn, I thought would have been a good Peter Parker type.

44:24
Addy
Yeah, I'm already seeing him as anakin. That would have been good instead of Garfield.

44:33
Case
Feels very Hayden Christensen to me.

44:35
Addy
Oh, really?

44:36
Case
Yeah, really. Like, I was, like, trying to picture.

44:40
Addy
Him when he's talking. That's really annoying to watch when he's Peter Parker.

44:44
Case
When I was doing my notes, I kept trying to picture him. And then I kept realizing I was doing pictures of Hayden Christensen in my head. I see. Oh, no. I see that they are similar. No, their style, the way they carry themselves and their build is similar. It is similar. I see that a thing I did like about Spider man and not Peter Parker was that he was quippy. I think they went too far with it. But I did like that he actually made jokes because that was completely the thing missing in the movies. Right. And in the first one, he wasn't very funny. He was hardly funny at all in the first.

45:21
Addy
He was a little bit more quippy, though, than.

45:23
Case
More than the Raimi movies. The Raimi movies. The big problem was that they never felt comfortable having him talk with the mask on. He makes a few jokes, but it's like muffled and it's like, wait, hold on. Aren't you. You're adring this. I'm pretty sure that's CGI right now. It's not like he's wearing the mask and talking. Get away with him being a little more verbose. Like, that's the character and they didn't do that. Yeah. Spiderman's appeal has always been how much he talks. So to stay away from that was off putting in the Raimi movies. And I missed it in Amazing Spiderman one. I thought they went overboard with it as a sequel because it was missing so much in Amazing Spiderman. All of a sudden.

46:08
Addy
The opening scenes were so bad, though.

46:11
Case
No, I'm okay with that. I'm totally okay. It doesn't have to be a good comedian. I don't want Louis CK writing his material.

46:18
Addy
No, but in terms of, it was so bad because you were making fun of something and you weren't enjoying it either. There was nothing to enjoy in that movie. He's making jokes, but you don't like electro, you don't like any of the characters. You don't like the story. So those jokes don't work because there's nothing to like in the story.

46:39
Case
So here's my big problem with the movie as a whole, which is that I feel like it's a kitchen sink movie at this point. Now, Marvel. So the first one came out. Avengers was just coming out. No one was quite sure if it was going to be a success at this point. They had Iron man. That was a huge hit. Hulk was not Thor and Captain America, neither of which were like, they were financially good, but no one really felt like, oh, the world is together yet. Avengers is what brought it all together after that. They then made amazing Spiderman two. And they're like, oh, shit, we need to catch up. And we know all about the Sony blueprints for all the different spin offs and multifranchises that they wanted to do with this really dense world that is Spiderman.

47:19
Case
Spiderman property has so many characters because it was the most popular Marvel series for a really long time. And even to this day, it's like a really popular character. So there's a lot of stuff attached to Spider man. You can do a full movie franchise on just Spider man characters, same way you can do it with X Men. And they got over ambitious. They were like, let's throw everything in there and get, we're gonna do the exact costume and, okay, that's cool. But they were like, okay, it worked for Iron man. Let's do the exact costume, and we're gonna do quips, and we're going to have a lot of villains out there. We're even going to do the death of Gwen Stacy scene. Everyone loved that scene. It was a big, emotional scene. We'll do it. Okay, cool. And they throw everything in there.

47:59
Case
That's the problem with the movie. They don't pause to be like, here's the structure that makes sense. It's just like, put as many things in one spot as possible. Agreed. Totally agreed. This has sort of been my critique of a lot of sequel movies of, we got to make it bigger. There was one villain in the first movie. So now we're going to have two, maybe three villains. Like, calm down. Just tell a goddamn good story. If you're going to build a universe. Let me finish. If you're going to build a universe, build it one character at a time. Build it one story at a time. So we care about these characters enough so that when there is a payoff and a big event, much like how comic books work. Comic books work. Small story, small story, small story, big event.

48:42
Case
This movie felt like it went from small, good told story and amazing Spiderman one to big event. I don't give a fuck about any of these people. None of this makes any sense. That was my opinion of it. I've got a counter pitch on this one, which is doubling down on the villains. So I agree with you generally, but I think one problem with superhero movies in general is that they need to set up here. This movie is about now the real threat emerges. And this person is such a colossal threat. How will they ever rise to the challenge of this one particular threat? And I think that every movie has to do this to a certain regard.

49:17
Case
But the way that the hype machine works for movies, that they're like, oh, now all your villains are circling you, and they're coming to destroy you. What would be really interesting is if they did a movie where they just doubled down on Spiderman, existing in the comic book Spider man world, where there's supervillains everywhere, and they kind of do that to a certain degree. Like, they set up rhino and they have other characters in there. But what if, and this is my big tie in for the untold Tales of Spiderman reference. This was a thing that was happening. The whole plan to create supervillains as being a teaser for here we're going to do a sinister six movie was actually, this was already happening. We've already missed a few villains because their stories aren't even big enough to talk about right now.

50:05
Case
Like, vulture just happened and he's in prison now. But kind of like the way they've sort of set up for Suicide Squad era Batman, where he's had villains already. He's already been doing stuff we haven't watched every step along the way. He didn't defeat two face and then retire because weren't watching a movie in that time span. So obviously, he wasn't doing right. Like, what if the movie really doubled down on that detail and had an Osborne setting it up behind the scenes? Why are supervillains showing up? What is happening?

50:36
Case
And the mystery of why there's all these things happening is that someone is actually setting the whole stage, and that allows for a Green Goblin reveal at the end of the movie to actually have payoff, because he's been like, we've been watching it, but Spider man has not been aware of him this whole time. And the final reveal of a Green Goblin is the culmination to the real villain.

50:57
Addy
I like that a lot. Yeah.

50:59
Case
What if Electro is just the one who can't capture because he's electric and he can disappear into the power grid? And so that's the one that keeps recurring. And so he's been trying to catch this one, and maybe he's being burned a little raw by all this. Like, the same way that nightfall Batman was worked so raw by fighting all the Arkham asylum criminals that when Bane shows up, Batman never had a chance. Because we're not talking about Batman with prep time at 100%. We're talking about Batman with zero prep time and about to pass out just because, let alone that he's about to get into a fight.

51:30
Addy
Right.

51:31
Case
If Dr. Octopus, if Green Goblin or not Green Goblin, if the executioner in Untold Tales of Spider man, they set up this idea that there were a lot of criminals who were stealing things that were instrumental to the Green Goblin like weapon suite and that some of them were testing out devices. So there was the executioner who had a green Goblin style glider and he had, like, a powered axe that he used. And he was just straight up a henchman for Green Goblin. There was scorcher, who had, like, a firebase suit. And it was basically like all of these were like, prototypes of one part of the tech suite that is the Green Goblin armor. Because he's got all these gadgets. It's not just one thing that does it.

52:09
Case
And at the end, it's not like a megazord of, like, here's all the supervillains you fought now all come together in this one villain. But Green Goblin is revealed to finally be the person who's been setting all this stuff up. And sure, we could do Harry, and Harry could have, well, the problem is Harry having any personal connection with Peter screws up the first movie. Everything they try to do in the second movie is bound by the first movie. And that makes it worse because it doesn't make any sense because the first movie was setting up like nothing. It was just like, okay, we need to do a Spider man movie and we'll do the origin story again. Which the reason why that's bad for that movie is because it wasn't setting up a bigger world. It was just like, here's a couple.

52:53
Case
I'll throw a few things out there.

52:54
Addy
But, yeah, the only setup it tried doing was the stuff.

52:56
Case
It wasn't like they had a grand plan which could have justified a new origin story. Right? The second one has a big plan, or at least it has, like, a marketing sheet. People have called it a trailer for the movies that Sony wanted to make. Right. Which is fair. Yeah. So imagine a world where it's Peter Parker really being Spider man and really trying very hard. And that way when yet another supervillain shows not because at this point he's now, like, the way the actual movies play out. He fights the lizard. It's implied he fights some criminals between then, including a russian gangster. And then he fights electro and the Green Goblin, all in a very short period of time. And then someone shows up in a powered suit of rhino armor.

53:38
Case
That would be a much bigger deal because it's only, like, number four in the actual list of supervillains out there. But if it was a world where supervillains were constantly attacking New York and they really embraced this idea that Spiderman lives in that world and, say, 50% of them were Osborne creations. It's not all Osborne, because that's too much. But electro could be, like, one of the non osborne ones, which is why it's so weird, why he's so elusive and why he's not tech specifically. He's actually a metahuman. But the tech ones are secretly all actually tied together. And maybe Spider man catches them and the police take them in and they die. Like, whatever tech implants are actually causing, preventing them from being questioned and interrogated. So there's this mystery about, like, why are supervillains existing?

54:26
Case
This isn't a thing that happened before, but now we live in this.

54:30
Addy
You would kill them off.

54:31
Case
Maybe some of them, like, the ones who vulture, would be dead. They'd put him in Rikers, and then he'd die. Potentially, yeah. Or maybe Vulture wouldn't because Vulture was just, like, someone who was working on this thing and went crazy and stole it. Like, this magnet thing that allowed him to fly. But that technology was. Then the weapon was stolen. The wing prototype, or whatever the harness was taken, and that became the basis for the gyroscope in the goblin. Goblin. Yeah. That's a great idea. That's a much better take.

55:04
Addy
And you also have the chance to finally see him kind of taking on three villains at once or at some point or another, because then you can.

55:10
Case
Do a couple of action scenes that don't have the stakes of, like, this is your ultimate threat, but you could do, like, a serious fight, like the action scene that everyone loved from the trailer where he webs the manhole cover and he's about to whip it into the rhino. They could have done a few scenes like that so that it doesn't feel so cheap that the end of the movie is, like, just what we saw in the trailer.

55:33
Addy
God, that's so disappointing.

55:36
Case
Yeah. There's only two scenes in this movie, as it stands, that I like.

55:40
Addy
The one that made you cry.

55:41
Case
There's one that makes me cry, which is rhino and the little kid. Yeah. Because at that point in time in my life, I was foster care parent for this little boy. So it hit me right in the fields. Caught me just right in the fields after sitting through just an awful movie.

55:54
Addy
And the setup for that scene when Spidey interacts with that kid earlier, so good.

56:00
Case
I really love that scene. And then I love when Gwen Stacy dies. Addie and I went to see this movie together.

56:07
Addy
I'm still horrified that you laughed. I laughed so loud.

56:10
Case
That, however, was not unique. I know a lot of people I.

56:13
Addy
Know, I looked at him and I.

56:16
Case
Was like, because the Green Goblin is not well set up. Like, yeah, sure, Harry Osborne is. But all of the logic for why he becomes Green Goblin does anything.

56:23
Addy
Not even Harry Osborne is really set.

56:25
Case
Up in the movie. He's at least around the whole, sorry, I don't mean to say that. But the conflict I'm saying, that's not well explained. I'm just saying that at least we know who he is. He doesn't literally just show up. But the Green Goblin does. Like, Harry Osborne is around the whole movie, but we don't understand why he would fight Peter. None of the reasons that they talk about in the movie make like the Sam Raimi movie set up three movies for a fight between Harry Osborne and Peter Parker. It still didn't feel like it was enough for them to really like. It felt like they should be friends right now he's a little like, why is he that pissed off? Is he drunk? He might be drunk. Okay. Yeah. And that could be the explanation.

57:04
Case
I've known all of you for almost ten years and honestly, I wouldn't fight you the way that Harry Osborne fights Peter. It just doesn't make any sense. There's no history there. And I probably hate both of you more than what Harry has recently. Certainly an amazing, it's like, oh, will you give me your blood? No, I understand. I get it. Okay. Yeah, it is your blood. It's radioactive, right? Yeah. It's probably not good for me. But why doesn't Harry Osborne know that he's Spider man? Because his dad's company sold him in bulk. All of the goddamn webbing he bought it with using Aunt May's card, so it's hard to track. And also, that's kind of the thing. It's like in the trailers they had. That's like, oh, you've been on file for a, like, why is that? Isn't that the question of the day?

57:55
Case
That seems not in the movie, so we don't have any of those scenes. If Norman Osborne was always going to go after Peter and he just happened to die from this disease first, that could be interesting too. Like, what if Norman Osborne was setting this whole thing up and then just died abruptly before he could be the Green Goblin, finish it off. It wouldn't make sense for Harry to become the Green Goblin. But at least these are interesting things you could do that are different. Did you like the blood disease? Oh, no, I didn't like it. It didn't make any sense. The big thing is that why is Harry that worried about it when his dad was like 60 and finally succumbing to it? It's like you've inherited the same condition.

58:37
Case
So maybe at some point in 40 years, you are going to start dying. He's got a lot of time. I don't know why they never explain why it would be a big threat for him. And it's definitely not just that he injected himself with Spider Man's blood, although that does stuff to. It's. It just doesn't make any sense. Right. It's a weak excuse for explained. It's a bad. Not. There's, other than those two scenes, there's nothing that I like about this movie. I hate the interpretation of electro in this movie. Okay. Hate it. Yeah. There's nothing I like about electro in this.

59:18
Addy
The look of him. Yeah, I'm fine with.

59:20
Case
I'm okay with the dubstep.

59:23
Addy
Well, not the itsy bitsy spider. Yeah, that was bad.

59:26
Case
But like, having dubstep kind of themes for doing electro kind of things. I like the scene of him suddenly realizing that he was on all the tv screens. That was cool.

59:36
Addy
Yeah. The discovery of himself in terms of.

59:39
Case
Him coming into his own. But the character before, it didn't quite make sense. The fact, again, he feels so betrayed by Spider man for a thing that no one would actually feel betrayed by.

59:49
Addy
Right. Yeah. Weird, obsessive. It seemed to like, well, the nerd that Andrew Garfield wasn't, they went like full on into a weird nerd stereotype that doesn't even feel like a real nerd stereotype.

01:00:02
Case
It's just like a 1980s movie.

01:00:04
Addy
Like a stereotype.

01:00:06
Case
Yeah. It was like really over the top. It was like the Jim Carrey Riddler. Yes. What if they open the movie again doing like, let's focus on the villain for a second. And he's super obsessed with Spiderman, with both Spiderman and Peter Parker. Or just like he's so obsessed with Spider man. And we follow the movie leading up to the transformation with that, in a world where Spider Man's fighting a lot of villains, and then he shows up as a villain who's not tech based, so he's actually a metahuman just like Spiderman, which is a little different than most of these supervillains. And then we create a world where it kind of is more compelling. But even then, we need to explain why he's crazy enough to fight Spiderman and what he.

01:00:45
Addy
Well, the thing is, he just needed to be a henchman. You didn't need it not every villain needs to be developed. Yeah, at the end of the day.

01:00:52
Case
Or he could just be a force of nature. Like, once he becomes electric, he doesn't have the reasoning. He just is a creature of chaos.

01:00:58
Addy
Uses his humanity.

01:00:59
Case
Yeah, like, slowly slipping away. But we don't get any of those scenes. And the fact that he links up with Osborne and then just becomes his henchman, it's so worthless it neuters him. Yeah. I mean, the fact of the matter is he's less well developed than a Power Rangers villain. And that's kind of depressing. I can't argue.

01:01:23
Addy
Exactly like Ivan. He's up there with the recent version of Apocalypse.

01:01:28
Case
Oh, yeah. Well, anyway, so this is my pitch. That world full of supervillains, Spider Man's, like, actually an active participant, and then Osborne's pulling the scenes behind the strings. That's my main pitch to fix this movie. Because they wanted to have a big world, we have to acknowledge what the studio execs would do. They wanted a big world. They wanted to set up potential spin offs and sequels. So all of these had to be dropped in there. But instead of disparate scenes to put those in, what if you had the.

01:01:58
Addy
Sinister six actually form in this movie? Like, right at the beginning? Sort of. These guys that are criminals, they're low level criminals, and they form a sinister six. They get access to tech, but they don't have any leadership. So that the end of the movie is them failing. But then getting the leadership of the Green Goblin to set up for future.

01:02:20
Case
Movie, that's not a bad idea either. My approach for it would be that you would again tell the story from the direction of Electro, and it would really be an electro movie. Sort of everything would be told through his eyes of what's happening. Because what we know about this universe was like, all the spin offs were, there was going to be a Venom movie, there was going to be a sinister six movie. And a Spiderman sequel. Yeah, and a Spiderman sequel. So we know that they were already kind of directing it into let's tell these stories through the eyes of the villain. And I think I actually would have started this movie there and I would have just made it just an electro movie.

01:03:00
Case
I think that we rush too quickly to have these team up movies when in reality, the team up needs to happen as like, an Avengers movie where it's a payoff of a bunch of other individual movies that can be told and stand on their own as an individual movie. So maybe would have had nods to some other things going on at that point in time, but I would have made this strictly an electro movie. All right, guys, thank you for listening. If you have any thoughts about either amazing Spiderman one or two, please feel free to put them in the comments. Ben, Addie, thank you for chiming in on these two. Ben, especially, thank you for slogging through Spiderman one and two today. Next time, guys, we're going to be talking about Highlander two. And until next time, stay scruffy, my nerf herders.

01:03:47
Addy
Thanks for listening to certain point of views. Another past podcast. Don't miss an episode. Just subscribe and review the show on iTunes.

01:03:56
Case
Just go to certainpov.com. And we're back. All right, so yeah, listening to this episode, I'm like, why did I do two? We could have easily spent way more time on either and we'd like blitz through both.

01:04:35
Sam
Listening to this. Full disclosure to people listening at home, I was not interested in seeing either of these Spiderman movies. And like they said during the episode, it wasn't a lot of time between the Raimi Superman or Superman. Oh my gosh, Spider man and this. I'm acting like I'm the one that just had a, like, there wasn't a lot of know from the last series to this, and this was just like a reboot to make sure that they didn't lose this character and they kept control of that. And I was just like not really interested. I wasn't interested in seeing Andrew Garfield play Spider man at all. And I'm going to say that I actually do not regret that I did not watch them. I actually think that the biggest issue for me about these movies is they're not fun. They're not fun.

01:05:39
Sam
There's some really great stuff in that. And I do think that all the performances are really good. But I didn't need a not fun Spider man, if that makes sense. Although I think that there were some cool things that they were working with and some awesome things, like some actual cool scenes in the first and even in the second film. I know that the universe and the Internet has come around on these movies, but I don't know that the first reviews of them were completely incorrect. I feel like we have a nostalgia, or there are certain people that have a nostalgia for it because Andrew Garfield is an incredibly charming person and the moments that he and Emma Stone are on screen together, they really do have amazing chemistry. There's really good moments. The library scene is, yes, hilarious.

01:06:42
Sam
I know, case, you mentioned that in the episode and there are some fun things working here. But I agree with what point that was made in this episode where making him predestined to be the Spider man is really hard. In the same way that I feel like one of the things, because I actually really do enjoy Tom Holland's Spider Man. I love those movies a lot. But one of the things that always bothers me is that since he's got a billionaire backing him, it never really feels like. One of the things that I like about Peter is that he's always struggling and overcoming and should they happen to make another Tom Holland film, I hope that while he's in his college years, we'll find him in that struggle that Peter is kind of known for.

01:07:33
Sam
Some of the things I like about the character and I think it's one of the things about the MCU, Peter that I kind of miss, right. Because Stark was basically sponsoring him. Right. The idea of financial woes or anything like that is not there. That tension that Peter has with being a hero and can you really afford to be a hero? Can you really afford to live your really. That doesn't really exist in the MCU. I think here the bigger issue is if you make him like the chosen one rather than some kid who happened upon this power and then has to deal with that power, you're taking away something that's actually really beautiful about the character. I think for me, those are the flaws between those two different variations of heater.

01:08:31
Sam
But with this film, I just feel like, I guess, number one, the city never feels really like New York to me. Ever. It just feels like studio lot. The second movie, they do a lot more on location things. Like even the Times Square scene and things like that. But the first movie.

01:08:55
Case
Yeah, midtown feels right. Yeah, I think actually in both because the big climax like the Oscorp building and stuff that's up by Eigth Avenue and 55th street roughly in setting. And those parts look about right. But the lived in areas, like the places where people go when they want to be there as opposed to when they are at work, not so much.

01:09:27
Sam
And I definitely agree with you that the actors are too old for the role that they're in for high school kids.

01:09:37
Case
The big one we kept talking about, it's not just that the actors are too old for the role of high school, but then the roles that they are playing in the movie don't make sense for high school. Which was like, even like, I was just, wow.

01:09:49
Sam
Like Oscorp really needs free labor because they're having a high school student give, like, don't get me wrong. I know that Gwen's supposed to be super duper smart, but also, she's giving tours. She's leading the tour. It's not even like she's assisting someone who's on the like I assume the high school student would be doing. Be like, gwen, can you press the button? And then she switches the slideshow kind of thing. So I think that is kind of not there. The only thing is, I know that you guys were really down on an electro, and I actually did not mind him. I actually felt like there was something really beautiful in the not being seen.

01:10:40
Sam
I thought it was like a very, like, I felt, and maybe it's on the other side of everything that happened in 2020, but I just felt like this is a man who is an outsider, and he's black, and people don't respect him, and they've stolen his stuff. And Spider man was the only one who said he needed him. And then it turned out that Spider man didn't even defend him from the, like, just everything's a lie. And I actually thought that for the very little that the script gave him, jamie Fox gave a lot. And I actually appreciated the character within this very flawed film that tries to do too much. And I wish that they had let him kind of explore some of those themes, more of this not belonging and what would make someone who seemingly just wants to be acknowledged. Right?

01:11:42
Sam
Because I think that's what makes the you see me line in Times Square so resonant for me. Because the truth is that he hasn't been seen, and he's always overlooked. And I think that the person that deserves, if there's redemption or finding redemption at all in these movies, it wasn't Andrew Garfield Spider man. It was actually Jimmy Foxx's electro. I will also say that Andrew Garfield's not funny. And I'm sorry, Andrew Garfield, your humor is too dry for a New Yorker. And you know what? I'm sorry, y'all. On the Internet, they kept telling me, don't hate on him. He's not a bad not.

01:12:25
Case
I'm not buying mean like, I am very excited to have this conversation because of the reckoning of Andrew Garfield post no way home. And it is fun. And frankly, that also extends to both the lizard and to electro spoilers. If you haven't seen no way home, that the characters that show up in the trailer are in that movie.

01:12:46
Sam
Also, you do not need to watch either of these movies to understand it because I saw no way home and I was like, oh, it's from there. I'm good. I only watched these movies because were discussing it today.

01:12:57
Case
I think that electro, I like the ideas behind him. And in the episode, I talk about both the look and there's a lot of things I enjoy about it. I think that the origin, I stand by being like, what the fuck, man? He's got enough animal themed villains. You don't need to make electric eels like MacGuffin to get to him having electric powers.

01:13:18
Sam
That's probably true.

01:13:19
Case
That was real weird. Especially the way they did it was really strange. And I think it's underwritten that component. I agree. The Times Square scene I'd rather like in that movie, just in general. And a lot of stuff with Spiderman in Spiderman two, I really like because he looks fantastic and he actually makes jokes. It might be a little over the top, but when he's wearing the fireman hat and using the fire pose and stuff, those are moments that feel a bit like a comic book. Spider man for me. And I like those bits in that second movie. And I think the second movie course corrects some of the issues I had with the first. And like I said in the episode.

01:13:56
Case
And it makes a bunch of new mistakes and then also doubles down on this whole shared destiny of Spider man kind of thing, which is all kind of weird. I think that Jamie Foxx showed in no way home that he can really make electro feel really solid and feel like a good character that you can understand and buy. And I think that there's a lot of elements there. It did rob me the wrong way that he's basically just doing the same thing as like the Jim Carrey Riddler from Batman Forever, which is also fine. I just think it's just underwritten in the movie that we got until he's actually electro and at that point he's already turned. Motivation is a big issue I have with all the villains in these movies. There's something to be said for that.

01:14:41
Case
The Sam Raimi villains are all like person who is manipulated by whatever their source of power is to go crazy and whatnot. Like there's the Goblin gas, and then there's the arms control, Doc Ock and then Sandman, lesser degree, but he's also arguably less of a villain. And then Venom is controlled by the symbiote into this rage thing. The three primary antagonists of those three movies are person who is being given power and controlled at the same time versus then in these movies. Why?

01:15:16
Sam
Yeah, listen, the Goblin is so poorly handled and the design is possibly the worst. Once you get to the end, which is just honestly, at this point, I know that. Well, clearly a lot of the people on this last episode liked watching Gwen die. But I will say that the movie.

01:15:42
Case
There'S also a difference between enjoying that they did the scene from the comic versus being like, I want her dead.

01:15:49
Sam
Fair enough. Yeah, very true. I will say that you could have ended it after you defeated Electro and just saved some of that other stuff for the end, for another movie and kept things going. And that's not to say that I thought the moment was interesting, and I thought that having him have that struggle and come back and blah, blah, comics, but kind of always hate when they kill.

01:16:27
Case
Yeah.

01:16:28
Sam
Like I always do. And especially if it's just, like, to motivate someone to be a better. Just a better. Like, I almost wish they had just let her go to London and he had decided that New York was where he needed to because I just hate that. But it was clearly part of the whole vision for the two movies, because this precursor that she was going to die happens in the first film, because her father specifically makes this request of Peter to get away from her because people that are close to him are going to get hurt. And we see the ghost of Dennis Leary all throughout the second film, just haunting Andrew Garfield. So we know. We know that it's going to happen. We know that it could happen, and it most likely is going to know.

01:17:24
Sam
I do think that talking about Peter's grief and watching him kind of put down the webs and not do this anymore is kind of nice. That end is batshit crazy. Okay, first of all, and I just want to say this, I've lived in New York all my life. If shit is going down, New Yorkers don't wait to find out if that's going to get worse. We are not standing behind barricades watching it. Yes, occasionally people will pull out their phones and record, but in general, if bullets are flying, people are not just standing there like it's a fucking parade. Okay? And this is the end of the movie. The rhino is out there. Cool suit. It's actually really coolly designed. And he's shooting, hitting the cups or shooting at each other. No one's going for cover. No one's running.

01:18:17
Sam
They're standing there behind those metal barricades that are open that you see on the Thanksgiving Day parade, and this child just gets away from. I was just like, why is she still standing there? Why isn't CPS called on this? Mom, what the heck is going on? And it's all for this moment where the kid comes out and it's like, I'm standing up, I'm Spiderman. Which is, like, cute, right? On some level, but it's just, like, not logical. It's just pure manipulation to be like, aw, even the smallest of us is a hero. No, kid, you should have been dead. The rhino should have killed you. You would have been hit with a spare like a flying bullet as you ran out, probably from the cops, friendly fire. It's just so silly now.

01:19:08
Sam
I do like that Spider man drops down and thanks the kid, and then he's like, hey, Spider man, go check on your mom. That was super. Was a cute moment. It was the kid who, he saved a science project before, and that was kind of cute too, but it's just manipulation. And I was like, kind of not down with it. I was like, I know I'm being forced to feel these things and I'm annoying.

01:19:34
Case
Yeah, man. Just looking at these two movies, I wish that I had spent more time with both of these and done a full episode on because I think that we raised really good points, but were just like, here's the change I would make as opposed to really kind of like talking through the structure, which certainly happens sometimes on movies where we have a harder time fully articulating it, especially if it's more of a bare bones one or if it's from the foundation kind of one, or if it's one where it's like, here's the simple change by itself. Reverse these scenes or do whatever. Man, I do really like the pitch I gave of have more villains.

01:20:19
Case
Just like in the second movie, have a world where Spider man is an active participant already and we're seeing a bunch of this stuff because that way, the last scene where we finally get this really cool shot of Spiderman swinging into action, doing the whole mantle cover pit. That's cool. If that was all over the movie with just, there's a bunch of villains that would have been awesome because they're starting to set that up and they could have really built on those kind of things.

01:20:46
Sam
Yeah, and they kind of have some of that stuff, but they don't spend enough time on it because there is a time where he sets up his camera and he's like taking pictures and he's telling because that's how Osborne kind of asks him. Harry asks him, hey, do you know, I'm like, can you talk to him? I want his bulld. Just such a kind of strange thing, I have to say. You also made a really good point. In this episode, I too, found myself wondering why the disease was progressing so much quicker in Harry than his father since his father was definitely a lot older.

01:21:28
Sam
And then just the like, I felt like they could mean I wasn't crazy about the disease in the first place, but they could have fixed that by simply putting in a line about something about him genetically, made it, something about it moving more rapidly through his body. And we're already talking about molecules and blood and radioactive shit anyway. So I don't think that it would have been so terrible for even the scenes between him and Peter discussing that he was sick. Him explaining to Peter like, yeah, unfortunately for me, it's progressing a lot faster than in my father because I think that would have just, even that one line would have made it a little, it would have removed that question in my head at least, because I was like, but his dad lived to, like, 50. He's got time.

01:22:31
Sam
Why is he so desperate right this minute, right now? And I feel like had somehow, or even if he had said he had already started experimenting with some know, since he was young to try to buck it and that, like, they had done the wrong thing and it had accelerated it, which is another reason why his dad also was so hungry to get the like and then make harry also the reason why his dad became as ruthless as he was. Because not only was it killing him, but it was killing his son faster. I think that would have kind of made it more acceptable that he would off someone who was his friend and who worked with him and spent time with his son because he was, like, saving his kid, not just himself, but his. Why?

01:23:30
Sam
Because I think the problem is that, you know, that Harry is desperate. And I think that the actor portrays that. But in the script, there's nothing to tell us why.

01:23:41
Case
Right?

01:23:42
Sam
Why is he so desperate? Why is it like, you have to give me your blood right now, Spider man, or I'm going to send this guy that eats electricity into the city to destroy it. You and the rest of Oscorp. Why am I going for full destruction right this minute? So I feel like that actually would have solved a lot of the issue. And then you could have even said, like, well, he's already got one thing in his system that genetically altered him. And then adding the spider venom turned him into Green Goblin and yes, again, blah, blah, very strange things that we're doing. But I think that in that case, it would have been like, oh, shit.

01:24:26
Sam
I just think we don't understand why Harry can't wait another ten years to do research and figure it out why he can't let Spiderman donate a little blood and then do some tests, like why he has to inject it right away.

01:24:39
Case
There's so many questions. And the blood situation where it has to happen immediately is so you brought up a great point of like, well, what if it, the dad kind of rushing through and they have an explanation for why Harry is progressing faster? Or it could have been a scenario where the dad's main goal was synthesizing something that occurred in nature, but they didn't have a lot of, and maybe the dads ran out and that's why he's now dying. And he never explained what the medicine was. But, hey, it's the last of what were able to carve out, and we've never been able to replicate it artificially kind of thing. I have this vision in my head of a dying panda or something that they're extracting a gland from.

01:25:18
Case
Now that I'm saying it out loud, which would be really fucking dark, but something like that. Like, here's the last of this breed of animal, or here's the last of this plant. And the plant now it's dead. And we've done everything we could to try to germinate new seeds, try to do anything, but we can't. It's, it, we can't figure it out anymore. Which could be like some sort of tie in if you wanted to build other kind of concepts there. Yeah, like, the Harry part is just so mind blowingly dumb that even once he gets the blood, it's like, why the fuck do you rush into this? Have the character in the background? I referenced the untold Tales of Spiderman series in the episode, and that was really cool because he never really confronts the Green goblin in that series.

01:26:03
Case
If he does, it's like at the very end of it all, it's that the character is in the background actually setting up and manipulating behind the scenes, stealing things that will eventually lead to the Green Goblin so that we can spend all this time with the character who had, by the 90s, had become very important to the Spider and mythos, but was introduced way later into the series than people give it credit for. Like, he's a much later villain than people think. And had Spiderman had been an active character for a long time at that point. And all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, here is Green Goblin. And then also he has a son who becomes Spider Man's best friend. Like, way more important in Retcon.

01:26:40
Case
So this was a great way of introducing that stuff way earlier and starting to build out that character. And you could have had Harry or Norman because, like, God, Chris Cooper, great casting choice for Norman and fucking wasted in this movie doing the exact same scene as Charlton Heston in the Planet of the Apes movie, the remakes, fucking great casting. I'm shocked that they had the balls to have a Norman Osborne in the sequel. And I guess they kind of had to because they have Harry, but he could have just been, whereas they at no point decided to do JK Simmons replacement as.

01:27:23
Sam
I think that you could have still had Gwen pass away. You could have still done that moment. You could have had electro do it. You could have had one of the other villains and you could have kept Harry in the background kind of orchestrating things because he felt that Spider man wasn't giving him what he needed. And he figured out that when was important to him and then actually had Green Goblin for another movie and also designed his costume so much better because it was shit and had an actual third installment. And I think just by having him be, like, a shadow villain, we're not taking away two villains but having him be the master manipulator behind it.

01:28:20
Sam
Like, kind of like what you have with kingpin or things like that, I don't see why it's not really that difficult, like a switch to kind of have harry be manipulative, have him know in the shadows, save it for one more movie. Because I just feel like having him, I think by the time Electro dies, it's like 20 minutes left in the film, right? So everything that happens after, including Gwen Stacy's death and the mourning of her and showing the green Goblin, all of that happens after this. You've got all this time left and it's like, wow, it almost feels like a waste because the Green Goblin is, like, on screen for maybe five to 10 minutes. And, yeah, he's like a fucking lunatic. And he does not look that great anyway because I do not like the character design.

01:29:21
Sam
And I cannot say that enough. I've already said it like four times, but it feels like a waste. It feels like a waste. It feels like a waste of a villain that people genuinely like and associate with Spiderman. And I know that there's, like, the after credit scene and he's there and he's talking.

01:29:45
Case
Well, the after credit scenes makes it even weirder because the after credit scene actually sets up him as the master manipulator. But it's like, well, you've already played your hand.

01:29:54
Sam
Exactly.

01:29:55
Case
You can't be working from the shadows that way if people know that you're already an active player.

01:30:01
Sam
Right. I understand that you have enough money to order people from prison to do things for you, but also, no, bro. I just feel like they should have just kept it where he destroyed enough to step in, take back, know Gwen can still pass away. Spider man can still be shut down, which was kind of his goal in trying to convince someone to off Gwen. He can still know that, you know, Spider man. You can still have that threat looming over. And then that's a great lead to a third movie where you get a bunch of villains and they're all being manipulated by the goblin and you bring him in as the goblin at least halfway through the film to reveal himself, and then you actually have a good fight with him that's substantial. Because this is not a minor character, right?

01:31:03
Sam
This is not like a henchman character. It was just kind of like, I feel like this is like, I felt like he was squandered. Not that Harry Osborne wasn't interesting during the film. I thought the actor did a good job, but I felt like the Goblin itself was just squandered.

01:31:23
Case
Yeah, it's wild to look back at these movies and try to remember where our minds were when these movies came out. Also, like, the fact that they were playing catch up to the Avengers movies. Avengers one had come out, two hadn't yet. Like, Age of Ultron was not there yet. That there was the whole talk of, like, we're going to do a sinister six movie and it's going to be all the bad guys and it's going to be its own standalone movie spinning off of the Spider man movies because we need our own superhero universe. Fucking wild man.

01:31:54
Sam
Yeah, definitely.

01:31:59
Case
And also remember how much we found out about Sony when the Sony leaks occurred and how much this is all ancient history now, which it wasn't even when, like, that was fresh in our minds when were working on this episode. But when the movies came out, it was like, oh, yeah, they had fucking no idea what they were doing. They were just playing catch up. They were shocked that something worked as well and that Disney then threw their weight behind it and it was like, oh, shit, how do we keep up? And they failed. They failed miserably. Both Fox and Sony completely dropped the ball in terms of setting up things that they had a huge lead on. They could have easily done way better. And both kind of fucked up in really different ways in terms of making it work.

01:32:44
Case
And it's just crazy to stand back and observe how those players just couldn't get it together. There are very clear things of both amazing Spiders man movies that I rather enjoy or I think were really good ideas. And it's interesting to look back and almost kind of see this perspective of the Raimi movies are kind of like the Ditko era Spiderman stuff. Spiderman is much more of a loser. Spiderman is much more. I mean, it's. It's like this loving reference to all the. There's the. It's the put upon stuff that's very much part of that era of Spiderman. And then the amazing Spider man films are more like the John Ramita era. And to the point that we get Gwen Stacy as, like, the main love interest in that character.

01:33:42
Case
John Ramita as the artist is the artist who, along with Stanley, wrote in quotes, he writes, the dialogue is the marvel method, but the storyteller first is the artist, and then he comes in and fleshed it out. And so Ramita is the one putting out this massive narrative about the college years of Spiderman and Spiderman. Because Ramita is coming from being a romance artist, like a romance comic artist. Spiderman is much more handsome. And Spiderman has a group of friends, and Spider man has all the things that people actually really love about, like, the villains, the rogues gallery. The concepts come from Ditko, but the supporting cast is really cemented in the Romita era. And so I think amazing Spider man does a really good job of getting a lot of those down.

01:34:32
Case
And Andrew Garfield actually works really well as a John Ramita style. Peter Parker. Like, we're starting to get there. He looks more like that. He's got this relationship with Gwen Stacy who is like the archetypal love interest of the era. And, like, we get the death of Gwen Stacy, which is like the tour de force book that Ramita drew. And they're doing all those things and they still are reductive and going back too far. Amazing Spider man one, I love the actual arc of Peter learning to be a hero and not just a vigilante. I think that is a really cool idea. I like that we get stuff with him, with Uncle Ben. What sucks is that we just did that.

01:35:16
Sam
Yeah, I think I was watching it now. I really did appreciate it. But again, if I had watched it when it first came out, I'd be like, well, we saw this story and it's longer.

01:35:28
Case
Right? And I like the way they flushed it out, but they didn't need to do that. And we didn't need that story. I'm shocked that I would have rather that they didn't do it here and I would have rather spend more time with that in the Holland era because the Tom Holland era feels kind of like the ultimate Spider man book even though ultimate Spider man heavily influenced the Spider man. Like, the movies, like, spending some time with an old, like, the decompression of story that Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley did. And Bagley is, if we're going to go off the artist metaphor, Tom Holland looks like a Bagley, like Peter Parker. And that actually all kind of works really well in terms of a way of looking at these movies.

01:36:11
Case
But the best thing they did was spend, like, seven issues before Uncle Ben dies. So it just fucking hurts when we get to that point because he has been with Peter. He has had all these moments where he's been consoling Peter. They've been dealing with Peter, like, growing up and maturing and all that. That's all incredible, that. But they did that because it's been a long time since we did that story in the comics. Like, Peter is a grown ass adult in the normal books at that point versus this, where it's like, let's just do a reset of the movies that we just did. And that kind of sucks. But I do like what they did. Martin Sheen, I thought did a great job as Uncle Ben. Like, Sally Field's great as Aunt May. I think that's great.

01:36:51
Sam
She's amazing. Especially in the second film.

01:36:53
Case
Yeah, it does set up the joke of Aunt May just, like, getting younger as each iteration comes around, which is really funny. So I do rather like that part. I think that's really cool. I mentioned the Stanley scene, which at the time was my favorite Stanley cameo in a Marvel property. It has since been eclipsed by the Guardians of the Galaxy two cameo, which will probably be, he's dead. He's not doing another one. Unless they find a way to have a really fun cameo of an image of him. It's still ranking as number two. That's fucking dope. That's great. And I think that there's some anesthetic to it that is really cool. I really like the idea of the Spider man power set. Works very well for specific types of layouts, specific types of geography.

01:37:49
Case
Like, swinging around doesn't work as well in a building structure that is a certain way. Like when the roads are too wide, that makes it more difficult for him or if the buildings are too short. And so that's kind of cool. I like that we play around with that. I think that there is a look to the first Spider man movie that I rather like. And overall, I think it's fine. But it was just sort of like, well, why was this here kind of movie? And then we get in, there's villain stuff and age stuff and relationship stuff, all that.

01:38:18
Sam
Yeah.

01:38:19
Case
Amazing Spiderman two. Best look of a straightforward Spider man costume ever on screen. People have pointed to the very end of no way home, where he's in a really comic, accurate costume. Also looks fine, but we haven't really seen. We saw a shot of it. We haven't really in motion and the Civil War. The main suit that he got looks pretty good, but it's deviating in ways that movie costumes have to deviate. This is the one time where we've got one that's like a perfect reconstruction that doesn't have some of the oddities of the Raimi Spider man costumes. Not that bad, but it was just like, it's so dead. Know, his build is know. Tobey Maguire is a little bit like.

01:39:04
Case
It's not like he's like a stocky guy, but he looks more like a normal person than kind of the string bean that Spider man kind of should be. So there's that. But I like electro in terms of his aesthetic. That's very ultimate Spider man. Like that sort of like, shaved head energy kind of look to him all as opposed to the classic electro with the weird face that I can't believe they fucking made work. Again. Mind blowed on that one. But I like that element there. I like Emma Stone as Gwen stacy. I think that's really good. No shade of Bryce Dallas Hallard for her portrayal before, but Spiderman three has a lot going against it. We'll talk about Spiderman three soon.

01:39:49
Sam
Yeah, so we'll save that because that's a special movie that some people pretend didn't even exist.

01:39:55
Case
Yeah. Again, the look of it's really good. The fact that Spiderman is quippy and whatnot, that's really good. We've seen better since then with Tom Holland. I think he does a better job of that. But that's because Marvel knows what they're doing on those kind of things. And having some of those villains is cool. Paul Muddy as the fucking rhino is, like, mind blowing.

01:40:18
Sam
I love it, and I wish I actually really did love it.

01:40:21
Case
I just wish we had a full scene with him as rhino. I wish we had full scenes with more. And again, this is just like, hey, this movie is actually really set up well, to be in a richer, the 1970s, kind of like Stan and John kind of doing this whole era of Spiderman kind of stuff. And it's kind of a bummer that we didn't spend more time there because this would have been prime Spiderman storytelling time. But like I said, there's things that I enjoy about it. I think ultimately, looking back, Spiderman one is probably better written. It's telling a story I didn't want them to spend the time telling because it was like.

01:40:57
Case
And Spiderman two is worse written or maybe worse edited because, holy shit, we know so much was cut from the Harry plot that, again, we can't even articulate what the hell it was because there's almost every scene of Harry from the trailers. It's not in the movie.

01:41:15
Sam
Yeah. And I was actually wondering about all of that. And I just feel like, again, I think that they should have just saved a lot of him for an opportunity at a different film. And I think they could have saved this film because I think it's just. They want to do too much. There's so much because this movie is, in essence, like the second movie, which I do think that the editing is weird. Do you think that the pacing in terms of getting going on the story is a little bit better? This movie is really the middle of a trilogy, this movie. They should have saved a lot of stuff. This should just have been the center because basically, this is telling you what is happening to basically tying off the ends of the first movie. Right.

01:42:14
Sam
And then you're basically starting this new adventure, but you're starting it at the very end of this film. And so it feels really awkward and rushed. And you know that they just had to get rid of stuff because the time run for both of these films is quite long. I don't think the second one is quite as long, but they're still, like, long.

01:42:39
Case
But it feels long.

01:42:41
Sam
It does. And there's just so much information that's coming at you. There's some really great, like, Andrew Garfield is the best at emoting and feelings and feeling responsible in the first film for Ben was so well conveyed. And in the second film, his really heartfelt grief for Gwen is so there. His empathy for Harry when he feels sorry that he can't give so well put out there. And the scene where basically Aunt May is like, yeah, I know exactly what you're going through. And kind of talks him through is so wonderful. It's just such a good scene about grief and moving on and learning to live past your pain, which I think is something that Spider man specifically and his character kind of. That's part of Peter. Right.

01:43:42
Sam
But I do think that in general, there were a lot of quippy things that they tried to add to make it more fun because the first movie was less fun, and some of it landed and some of it didn't. And then there was just so much that was confusing about Harry's story, and probably because it ended up on the floor of the editing room. And I think there's just so much going on because you have to talk about the story. You have now you have two villains, one that connects to the subplot from the first movie that we're tying off about his dad, plus the premonition that Gwen is dying. So we have to have Leary. You know, you've just got so much going. Know that it's just like, I think that the movie's just bogged down with too many big and good ideas.

01:44:38
Sam
You just can't execute them all.

01:44:40
Case
Yeah, well, and then there's the element, again, bringing up the chosen one part. So there's the Richard and Mary Parker are super spies kind of element that is from the comics. But, man, fucking people hate it, which is funny to me because there's so many things that are based on, do you hate it based on, when did you get into a specific thing? And so me, born in the 80s, really came into comics in the very beginning of the, got into Spiderman with maximum carnage with this era. So actually, during the arc, right after Harry had died. And if you're not familiar with this part from the comics, it is so fucking mind blowing. So during the 90s era, maximum carnage timeline, you might be like, oh, that's weird that Richard and Mary Parker are around.

01:45:31
Case
And that is because the chameleon, as working for Harry Osborne, arranged for two robot duplicates to be created of Peter's parents, who were, in fact, super spies back in the time, but at this point were actually dead and that they had been pretended to have been, like, pows in some sort of russian prison, because, again, this is like, early ninety s. So it's like, right after the fall of the Soviet Union. So it isn't that weird that they're just getting released now. And timelines are weird, really. Up until you get to mid 95, it actually kind of works. The slow time Marvel projection kind of works in terms of like, oh, I guess it's not that long since the 60s stuff was going on. All of a sudden it becomes, like, a little too far. But, yeah.

01:46:18
Case
So Spiderman actually had to deal with both the fact that his parents, in fact, were really super spies that had been working for S-H-I-E-L-D. There's a really dope issue of untold tales when they did a flashback across the Marvel line. And since untold tales was already Spider man in high school time, they went back to his parents doing a secret mission, which was really fun. And then also, again, robot duplicates made by the chameleon. And when Spider man found out who was responsible, it was Harry. But Harry was already dead. And so even though Harry had already given him in person, he had to watch a video of Harry being like, I got you one last time, fucker. That was recorded before he had become. Before he'd forgiven him and become know.

01:47:01
Sam
As you do, you record one last. You make a friend's parents robot.

01:47:09
Case
And. And so he had to go through his parents dying in front of him again because even though they would go crazy at the very end, they had all those memories. They had a loving relationship. It wasn't like a short story arc. It was like several years of, like, I think, four Spiderman books at the time. There's amazing spectacular, just blank Spiderman and then web of Spiderman going. And then there was Spiderman Unlimited, which was a quarterly book. Comics had a lot of books, like big properties had a lot of books in the 90s, which sounds insane to say out loud. There's a big chunk of fandom that hates that. But for me, it was just like the status quo when I got into it. So it was like, I can kind of live with it. It is kind of annoying.

01:47:51
Case
More the he's destined to be Spider man part I find frustrating. And what is really funny, looking at this movie now, because this movie, these two movies came out, and we did this episode before Spider Verse came out. And that movie is entirely the flip of what this movie is trying to present because it is a story where it's not about destiny in any way. Even though there are a bunch of Parker's, they're not all Peter Parker's, that there's just a shitload of Spider Men out there. And that the point is that anyone could be Spider man. But part of the story is you going through this whole process and coming out on the other side a hero.

01:48:33
Case
And that's the whole Spider man ethos with his villains, where they're all normal people who make the wrong choice, and Spiderman is the only one who keeps making the right choice because, yeah, life sucks and everything sucks for all of these people. And they keep on dealing with all this shit, and eventually there's a little bit of tragedy, but you have to keep your head up and keep going. And they do such a good job in that movie explaining that all these Spider men have gone through this stuff and that by the time you get to Miles, he's going through the same shit too. Even if his is like a different, like, all of a sudden you're like, oh, it is still, your uncle died, and it is your responsibility, and it is partially your fault, even though you're trying to do right.

01:49:11
Case
And even if it wasn't the same selfish act, it all kind of all fits together. And even though you thought that you would have someone kind of show you the way, that all doesn't change the fact that ultimately you want to be a good person and you want to do right by everyone, and that's what makes you Spider man. Even if your powers are different, know Peter B. Parker's, which are different than Penny Parker with her mech suit, they're all slightly different. And that's like, that's kind of the perfect Spider man movie. And it might not be about Peter so much.

01:49:48
Sam
I agree with you. That's my far.

01:49:51
Case
By far.

01:49:52
Sam
Yeah.

01:49:52
Case
So you can see with this movie, they're just ass backwards trying to do it. You know why? As with the last time we looked back at a movie that I have mixed feelings about for another pass, guess who the writers for these fucking movies were.

01:50:08
Sam
Oh, no. Who are the writers?

01:50:11
Case
Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orchie. And it's the same people as the fucking Star Trek movies. And that's the same goddamn problem where they don't know how to fucking write a story that isn't, like, a chosen one narrative.

01:50:22
Sam
Yeah. What? Guys, they don't need to be chosen. It's actually really nice when people are just, they just rise to the occasion. Makes rest of us feel like we could rise to the occasion. It's actually heartwarming. Please stop writing chosen one stories.

01:50:41
Case
Yeah, because how much better would this movie have been if we didn't have, outside of the fact that they always write stupid fucking plot points that don't make any fucking sense and then cause your head to just get so. The flames. The flames on the side of your face. Like the whole, like, I'm going to order all my web fluid from fucking Oscorp.

01:51:03
Sam
I mean, that's like the only smart thing to do.

01:51:07
Case
Oh, as a military contractor, you can just privately order this shit and, like, jesus fucking Christ. Like, he used a credit card.

01:51:16
Sam
It's so weird that he wouldn't have, like a. I feel like he should have actually made it. I think it would have been better if he stole a Sample from the Oscorp at some point and then remade it because Peter is smart, he's a scientist. He can make that shit. That would have been better if he had actually broken in, stolen some stuff, and then gone home to make it. You do get a little bit of that in the second movie where he's testing out how to ground himself, which actually, I really do like that. Like, him in the shed testing out the best way to ground his web shooters from Spiderman.

01:52:08
Case
Science scenes are, like, part of why we love Spiderman.

01:52:12
Sam
That's actually so well done in the second film because it's like, oh, I have a problem. Yeah, I got to solve this. So I think it would have been great if you had seen him steal some and then even if it's just like a small scene of him with a couple of beakers or whatever and then just being like, I did it, and then he made it. It doesn't even have to be a long scene, but it would have been better than him just ordering. That's if you have a secret identity. Also, in the first movie, he takes his mask off way too often. Like, way too often. I understand they hired Andrew Garfield and they want people to know it's Andrew Garfield.

01:52:53
Case
Got to show the money maker.

01:52:55
Sam
Yeah, but he is Parker, so he is in most of the movie. So his face is pretty prominent. When he is Spider man, he should keep that mask on. Like, when he saved that little boy, he took his mask off to reassure him, and I was like, now you have to kill that child. Like, you.

01:53:22
Case
Okay?

01:53:22
Sam
You were trying to save him, and now he's got to die.

01:53:26
Case
I hope I remember to make this the pre roll. Yeah, that's also true. And that's the problem with superhero movies in general. But Spiderman ones are particularly difficult because it's like a full head mass that comes on and, like, you know, like, can kind of look kind of goofy and, like, isn't something that naturally will just recede back with nanotech or whatever.

01:53:53
Sam
Yeah.

01:53:56
Case
That'S real rough.

01:53:59
Sam
I'm just saying we really trust that. That kid never said anything to anyone. I don't know.

01:54:08
Case
Well, I mean, I get just a kid. Not. It's the whole, like, well, you see a face, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can even identify him in a different circumstance.

01:54:16
Sam
I mean, I guess you could say, like, a trauma response might make it so that he wouldn't recognize him later on, not kill him. But he takes it off so often, and I'm just like, how do people not know who exactly you are?

01:54:34
Case
Yeah. And you can kind of pretend in the Raimi movies where it does happen a lot there too, but it's like a couple of years earlier. And so we didn't all have smartphones at that point versus by the time we're looking at the amazing movies. And the amazing movies have a level of modernity that is just not in the Raimi movies. The Raimi movies feel like a pseudo sixty s. So looking at these, everyone has smartphones because we all had fucking smartphones. It's just a different era. And the movie kind of embraces that aesthetic. There's security cameras all over the place. It's a world of modernity that would catch all those moments, and it's just kind of ridiculous. On that note, why don't we talk about how the Amazing Spiderman one, in addition to having awkward writers, comes off of the Raimi trilogy?

01:55:30
Case
So there's elements of it that's coming off of the script that they had prepared for Spiderman four that never actually came about, which is why we get the lizard. And this movie comes out, I think, a little bit before, you know, the panel that is the meme on the Internet of Spider man talking to Sauron the dinosaur or the villain, where it's like, you could have cured cancer with your scientific know how. I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs, which is like, such a funny thing that is the lizard in this movie. But the problem is we don't see any reason why. And then we even get moments where he's like, turning people into lizards, but we don't actually get the fallout from it.

01:56:10
Case
So not only do we have this dumb plot of turning people into lizards for the sake of it, which is admittedly a lizard plot, except you kind of need to sell why he wants to do that, being like, oh, we're the superior creature, or we're about to have a cataclysm of some kind or whatever and work with it, do something with it. Then we don't get the fucking scenes. Jesus Christ. That should be the third act like, stakes raiser that, like, all of a sudden he's turning people into lizard people and he has to deal with that. We don't even have scenes of them almost dying or being in pain or like, we just kind of cut away and never come back to them until it's like, oh, we cured it.

01:56:48
Sam
I have to say, I don't remember who said it in the episode, but someone was just like, they're lizards. It's New York, it's cold. They've been finding a heat lamp. I was laughing so loud and I was like, yeah, no, actually that's true. Yeah. No, there is no real motivation for him doing it other than we're given. It's a eugenics argument that he thinks that lizards are superior. That's about it. He's going to turn everyone to the more superior creature, which are lizards, which I guess if you're really crazy, maybe, but I don't know. There's not enough in the first half of it. There's respect for how lizards can grow their limbs back. Right. That's expressed deliberately, but there's not like a line where he's just creepily like, man, if only I was a lizard.

01:57:49
Sam
Which would have been lame, but it would have been better than no explanation at all for why you would go too far and just be like, not only am I going to be a lizard, but you're all going to be a lizard. He literally was like, I feel like being a lizard is so superior. No one else has a choice in the matter. This is now a city of lizards. Yeah.

01:58:14
Case
Even if he just needed to mate and he wanted a society of lizards that he could live in, that would have been like some kind of thing. But there's fucking nothing. It's like, why are you doing this? And then when you're doing this, why don't we get it? Why do they teach?

01:58:28
Sam
I just want you to know that now, I imagine him love, like, in some sort of, like, why does no one love me now? He's like, I don't know why, but he's like Bane from Harley Quinn. Like the animated series. Yeah, like, why don't you appreciate me? I'm going to make my own people that like me. We're all going to be lizards. And still that would have been a better explanation because there was zero as to why he was turning everyone into lizards.

01:58:58
Case
Yeah, we just have a villain, like, running around just stroking his chloeka all the time because he's just like, so fucking horny.

01:59:06
Sam
I need relief. I am touch starved.

01:59:11
Case
Yeah. So, yeah, that's just like the thing with the lizard where it's like, oh, not only does it not make sense, it also is a wasted opportunity for what should have been in the third act. And that's just a bummer. It's a waste of a villain in that regard, because if you want to go with the super spy plot, there are better villains. You could have done a really fun one would have been, you could have used the chameleon. You could have done a whole spy thing like Spider man stumbles into it and then has to deal with the fact that there is this person who's infiltrating Oscorp. He could have been an intern and dealing with that whole thing and find out that it's connected to him.

01:59:50
Case
If you want to go down the super spy route from his parents or save that for the next movie. But Spiderman, being a 60s superhero, has plenty of russian villains because that was just 60s America. So you could also have done, like, craven. You could have done fuck, do Craven's last hunt in some way. Now, that's not a first movie. That has to be too. But you could have easily had that as a story. And I'm glad that we got electro, I'm glad to see the Lizard on it, but it does suck that we didn't get to see what was clearly being built up as like, the Lizard is going to be in Spiderman four in the Raimi movies. Shit's over and it's fine, he's fine.

02:00:33
Case
The look is fine again, it's a little bit redeemed by him actually kind of working okay when we get to no way home. I really wish that his snout wasn't just like he looks like Killer Croc, but with a tail. I wish that he didn't Quite look like that. Or maybe like, I could have accepted it better if it was practical effects, if it wasn't cg that doing that whole look, but as a result, he kind of doesn't. I don't know if you're going to do a CG like the lizard. Make him look more like give him a snout, make his face look like a lizard and not just like a human, but with lizard features. Because otherwise, why not just at least have special effects, have prosthetic makeup going on?

02:01:17
Case
Because then you could do cool, because you could do cool stuff with it. I'm way more like looking at the original Fantastic Four movies from the late 90s, early two thousand s, the Michael Chicklis thing. Even though he doesn't look like the thing from the comics, the fact that he's in that fucking suit makes me way more forgiving of that than the CG fantastic thing because, hey, it just looks a lot better. And I wish that we got more shit like that.

02:01:48
Sam
Yeah, I mean, we're big proponents of practical effect on this podcast. I just think that they generally hold up better over time. I will say this. I know that filmmakers, sometimes they feel like with all the advancements of CG, like, oh, well, we'll just go with it. But practical effects have improved so much because of makeup. Artists have met the demand. And I just think you can have a makeup artist on set. Just have one. Just do it. Let's get people back into makeup. Less 3d capturing and more like humans emoting with their face behind piles of makeup. Not torturous, though. Let's not torture them.

02:02:43
Case
And it could have been like, you don't need the actual actor playing the part. You could still dub it and have someone who's more comfortable in prosthetics be like, lizard. Imagine Doug Jones doing that role. He would have fucking killed it. He would have done an amazing job in that part because he would have looked great in that role, and he would have looked like they would have done amazing makeup. You'd be able to tie it into, like, oh, you know, Pan's labyrinth. You know how everyone fucking loves labyrinth? Like, that same fucking actor is doing this fucking part too, because he's so good at wearing shit on his face. Apes. Like, and that was a dubbed role.

02:03:23
Case
Like, you can have, well, at least the first Hellboy movie because it was David Hyde Pierce for the first one, and then the second one was himself. But you could have had the actor dub the part for the lizard, but have a person in the suit, and then you can have the more humanoid kind of look to it and it would look okay. Or if you're going to go CG, have him look a little bit more like a fucking lizard and do the things that you can't do with special effects makeup. And then that also works really well because at least you're doing something cool. But it's also kind of comics accurate, and it's like, comics accurate.

02:04:02
Case
It's like an uncanny valley kind of element when we're talking about stuff in a movie too far away, and it doesn't look great because you're not really doing the thing that you're coming to see. You're making a movie that just happens to have a property attached to it, but there's no actual connection to it. And if you get too close, then it starts looking, like, implausible or not fitting quite appropriately. So you kind of have to scale up until you drop down precipitously. So you have to find that exact point where the tangent is perfectly flat before it crashes. And so you could have done that with the lizard and have the lab coat and have the effects and really leaned into it, and people could have really dug it, but.

02:04:54
Sam
They didn't. I mean, hindsight is 2020.

02:04:57
Case
Yeah. And that is kind of the challenge with our show where it's like, there's so much that we could talk about because it's such a different animal right now. Even the passion about the Spider man movies feels different now because we've had into the spider verse, arguably the perfect Spider man movie. We've had the Tom Holland trilogy so far, which each one of them surprises me with how much I like. Like, Spider man movies are itching towards the same sort of level that the Ninja Turtle movies have for me, where it's almost impossible to do one that I truly dislike. And now with the amazing Spiderman movies, in hindsight, with more successful properties since then, it's easier for me to be like, yeah, they were fine. I walked out of the first one being like, yeah, that was fine.

02:05:47
Case
And the second one I walked out of and then did a really long vlog that you can find on my old YouTube channel with some of my friends where we talked for, like, two and a half hours about all of our thoughts on it. What's worse is that the video quality is terrible and the audio, it's so bad. I can't believe we made that thing. Or rather, I can't believe I posted it. But there are things to like about both, and the fact that we've gotten more successful ones since are even more impressive, and the fact that both the main villains of both of these movies, and then also Andrew Garfield as Spider man, has all had a chance to really kind of get a little bit of redemption is great. I don't think we need to go back to that world ever.

02:06:36
Case
I don't think it provides anything that the other ones don't. Unless we want to say that the Tom Hardy Venom is set in that reality just so that we can do whatever with the continuity.

02:06:51
Sam
Yeah, well, you definitely could do that. And I will say that I think that by the end of the second one of the Amazing Spider man movies, I did feel like Andrew Garfield had more of a rhythm to Spider man. And I think in no way home. The three Spider Men together were just so charming that I have seen people be like, oh, we need another amazing Spider man movie. No, if that's true. But I do think that the scenes with the three Spiderman together were very good, and it was really nice to see all three of them on screen together make jokes as Spiderman from different universes, and I do think that's fun. So if there was reprising his role for a Venom movie, like a cameo or part of that to establish that universe, I wouldn't mind that at yeah.

02:07:47
Case
If the Sony Spider man universe continued, I would be very happy with that. If they wanted to do something interesting, that's its own sort of can of worms right there. But I don't know. I don't mind getting more Spider man stuff again. I was shocked at how much I liked no way home, considering that I went into it being like, well, do I need this movie? Because we had into the Spider verse, I was like, I'm pretty sure it's going to be fine. I'm pretty sure we don't need another multiverse Spider man movie. And they pulled off doing a sinister six movie pretty well. It's not quite right numerically, but it works pretty close. And those are good things. And Andrew Garfield is fine, and Emma Stone was fine as Gwen.

02:08:34
Case
And it's the only time we got the Gwen Stacy death, which is such a big moment in comics. Like, it was crazy that they did it and they had a nod to it in the Raimi stuff with MJ and with Gwen, but with MJ especially, and that's cool. It's fine that we had it here. It's so dumb that it was like a hand reaching, like the webbing turned into like fingers reaching for her. I know why they thought that would be interesting, but it's not. It's in a movie. You need that movie to have a lot less of us rolling our eyes before you get to that point. But I don't mind them as much as I used to. I've cooled on it a lot and it is easier for me to stop and think about the stuff I really liked to it all.

02:09:21
Case
I do think that man, with that cast and the way they wanted to write it just shouldn't have been high school. And with the second movie especially, it should have just been like, hey, Spider man is a rich property that can do a lot of stuff. And let us show you how we can support that by having lots of stuff in this world. And instead of at the very end being like, we're going to use a sinister six movie because we're going to look at all the Oscorp harnesses for different types of superpowers. They just build out that world. Spiderman is a very rich property. He has a lot of villains. He has a lot of allies and characters who are Spider man adjacent characters more than they're Marvel characters as a whole.

02:10:03
Case
It's not quite as much as the X Men, where I would argue that the X Men can fully live by themselves, and we will feel only marginal loss from MCU. And arguably, they'll be in a better place in some regards. I think that Spider man, it's definitely nice to have the Fantastic Four out there or something kind of like it that he's not completely by himself, but you can certainly just say, like, well, we've got Spiderman and maybe Silver Sable and the Prowler, the new warriors. You could throw a bunch of those characters out there if you wanted to have Spider man adjacent New York characters for him to be around.

02:10:40
Case
You certainly could build that out and have him be like one of many, but still kind of like a smaller world of it and have all these villains, because the villains are really rich in know. Keith, I'm sorry. Spider man is the best rogues gallery. I'm sorry. I love you, man. It's Spider man, like, as much as I love a lot of the other Rogues galleries, like, look, Spider man, then Batman, regrettably. And then, honestly, Flash and Superman are tied for me in terms of rogues galleries right there without getting into X Men, because X Men gets much messier in terms of, what are the Rogues galleries versus what are just their teammates.

02:11:18
Sam
Yeah, the X Men has a lot of frenemy stuff going on.

02:11:24
Case
Even Apocalypse is a frenemy these days.

02:11:28
Sam
I love you and I hate you, man, but it's a lot of that going on with the X Men.

02:11:33
Case
Right. When we get into it, all of the enemies of the X Men at some point have been an Eskimo sibling with Nightcrawler. And at that point, it's a different kind of conversation than when we're talking about 100%.

02:11:49
Sam
Yeah, 100%.

02:11:52
Case
That's more of a.

02:11:53
Sam
There's a lot going on in that universe.

02:11:56
Case
Yeah. Which movies are always just like, oh, well, are Xavier and Magneto going to kiss? Finally? Is like, the big question of every X Men movie that has come out, except for maybe know that's where we're at.

02:12:09
Sam
And that's just because Magneto didn't show up. Let's be had. It would have been like, are they going to kiss?

02:12:15
Case
Yeah. But I don't want us to circle back too much on this. This is already a much longer episode than I expected.

02:12:22
Sam
Yeah, me too. Because were discussing two movies. That's why.

02:12:27
Case
Yeah. Again, this should have just been fucking one movie. I still can't get over what the fuck I was thinking, being like, let's have both of these be the conversation for some fucking reason. So a little bit of housekeeping, as we noted, this is coming out right after we did the Star Trek episode of our retrospective and had the wonderful synergy that was completely unplanned, because sometimes things just work out for us. That we'd looked at a Chris Pine movie right before we looked at the Dungeons and Dragons 2000 movie, which is our most recent episode on the main channel or main. It's the same feed, the actual episodes as opposed to the bonus episodes.

02:13:07
Case
So that episode of Dungeons and Dragons 2000, where we talked with Ben and Katie from amateurs Productions, which was a really cool episode, I was really happy re listening to it, because I think we had a really good time with it. It's a bad movie.

02:13:22
Sam
It's a bad movie, but it makes for fun conversation.

02:13:25
Case
Yeah. And then coming up next, we've got a fifth episode. So we're looking at total Recall, which is really exciting. We've got Ryan Luis Rodriguez from the one track mind and from Reels of justice. So that's a really fun one. Paul Verhoeven is a lot of fun to look at. The weird productions. And total recall is, it's a Schwarzenegger movie that barely got made, but is also kind of seen as the end of 80s practical effect, strong man kind of action movies. And it went out with a bang with that movie. So it was a lot of fun for us to chat about that one, because that was a hard movie to get made. And then once Schwarzenegger had his whole full slate of production money going into it, then, yeah, of course it was going to happen.

02:14:14
Case
It was just like, is he the right guy for this every man kind of story? But it was a good show.

02:14:21
Sam
He is the person that got it made. So, yes, he is. Now, meanwhile, make it be right.

02:14:29
Case
Meanwhile, for the next bonus episode, we will be looking at Star Trek the motion picture. So we'll be back at Star Trek very soon. And that's going to be with John Broughton, who you have actually recorded with. John is the executive producer for Starship Farrogate. And so he was recently on talking about Star Trek three. But this one's honestly the episode that I'm most like. This could just be an edit. Like Star Trek. The most in picture is almost great. I hate the costumes, but whatever. Fuck. It's the 70s Star Trek movie. You get the Reds in the 80s, but the 70s Star Trek movie was like, all right, yes, okay, we are in what effectively is bell bottoms in space. But it is an amazing movie. But every single shot is like 4 minutes longer than it should be.

02:15:19
Case
And it's like, how is that shot so long? Can't get over it. But if you talk about it, and the Blu ray is a lot better. There is a recut that is a much tighter movie that the reputation of Star Trek, the motionless picture is very much theatrical cut. And so it's not even the best way to watch it. Now. There is a really good cut that you can watch that is high def and looks great and everything's fantastic. It's still a little long for what it is, but it's probably the best Star Trek as the show put on a movie ever done. The really good Star Trek movies after that have all been a bit more militarized, a bit more of an action movie. Wrath of Khan while. Yeah, sure. They're never on screen together.

02:16:07
Case
It is very much a submarine duel between Kirk and.

02:16:11
Sam
Yeah, absolutely.

02:16:13
Case
And first contact action movie. Sure. Like beyond. I really like. But it's an action movie. It's got a motorcycle sequence. The first Star Trek movie is slow and thoughtful Sci-Fi and I love it. And it's too long and you. Yeah. But again, there's a great cut for it that is going to be probably the worst of the audio ones. We had a couple of issues when we're recording it, so heads up on that one. We'll talk about it when we get to it.

02:16:43
Sam
Yeah, we'll talk about it.

02:16:44
Case
Combination of bad mics and kids coming in on us while we're recording a bunch. So there were a lot of lines where I had to rapidly mute because immediately after Daddy was happening, which sucks. Happened, honestly, the one I was most sad about in terms of getting my shit together on that one. And then after that, we start getting a lot better.

02:17:08
Sam
That's great.

02:17:08
Case
Yeah.

02:17:09
Sam
So just take one for the team guys next week.

02:17:14
Case
Yep.

02:17:14
Sam
For the next time we have this. The bonus episode. The next bonus.

02:17:22
Case
Yeah. But Sam, I'm glad that we could look back on these. I really wish that we had done full episodes for these. I can't get over it.

02:17:32
Sam
Yeah. Honestly, they kind of deserve to do it. But again, I will say I do understand because the second movie does feel like it completes the arc of the first when it comes to at least Peter's parents. So I kind of understand just shoving them together.

02:17:50
Case
Yep. Well, this was fun. And we will talk soon. And until next time, pass it on.

02:17:59
Sam
Pass it on.

02:18:02
Case
And then let's make sure that I remember how to do all this stuff right now. This is my first recording since baby.

02:18:12
Sam
Yeah, and I'm sure you're not really getting that much sleep.

02:18:16
Case
Oh no.

02:18:25
Sam
Are you tired of watching your beloved characters being tortured by careless authors? Are you sick of feeling like they could have swapped out all of the painful action and the plot would remain untouched? Subscribe to books that burn the fortnightly Book review podcast focusing on fictional depictions of trauma, we assume that the character's reactions are reasonable and focus on how badly or well they were served by their authors. Join us for our minor character spotlights, main character discussions, and favorite non traumatic things in the dark books we love. Find us on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts.

02:18:59
Case
Boom. CPOV, certainpov.com.