Should You See the "New" Spider-Man Movie?

Now we've all heard the radio ads about owing the IRS money. They try to scare you and frighten you in the calling. Well, tax relief advocates is different. If you owe the IRS $5,000, $50,000 or $500,000, TRA has a solution to resolve your tax problem. Don't lose hope. TRA could reduce or even eliminate what you owe. Their passion is taxes and helping regular people and businesses fix their IRS mess. They have over 1,000 five star Google reviews and an A plus with the better business bureau. You don't have to be afraid of the IRS anymore. Real tax relief programs are available that can give you a fresh start. So don't wait. Go to TRA.com. It's TRA.com or call 800-575-1753. Again, that's 800-575-1753 tax relief advocates. Real solutions for real people. As you may have heard, a new Spider-Man film was released last week. The movie has crushed box office records already raking in something like, though I haven't Googled this, $40 trillion in its first week. I think it was. Spider-Man has earned more money in a week than the GDP of every sub-Saharan African country combined or close enough. It would appear, sadly, that the reports of the death of the superhero genre were premature, a case of wishful thinking. At least they were wishful thinking if you heard those reports on normally reliable podcasts, such as, I don't know, the Matt Walshaw. Now, this latest film is the fourth in the Tom Holland series of Spider-Man films. The first three in that series, and I did Google this, were called Spider-Man Homecoming, Spider-Man Far From Home, and Spider-Man No Way Home. This latest iteration is Spider-Man Brand New Day. Now, if you're wondering what makes this movie Brand New, the answer is not much, except that it's the first Tom Holland Spider-Man film to not have the word Home in it. That marks the first, and as it turns out, only creative risk this movie will make. It's important that you don't confuse these four Spider-Man films with the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man series or the Toby McGuire Spider-Man series before that. Peter 1, Peter 2, Peter 3. Every about nine and a half years, and accordance with the prophecies, Hollywood executives go out and recruit the blandest actor between the ages of 21 and 32 to become the next Spider-Man. And rather than building on the work of the previous Spider-Man, they tear the whole Spider-Edifice down and start from scratch telling the entire story over again from the beginning. The upshot is that the origin story of Spider-Man has been told and told again and then told again. Jesus Christ only got two accounts of his origin story, the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke. Spider-Man has had at least three this century alone. Okay, that seems disproportionate if you ask me which you didn't. Now, you might be wondering why I'm talking about any of this. My antipathy for superhero movies is well established. And yet today, speaking of things nobody asked for or wants, I'm going to offer my review of the latest Spider-Man film. And I'm going to review this film because I saw this film and my suffering must mean something. As the old influencer mantra goes, if you can't at least get some content out of it, then what the hell's the point? Yes, I went and saw the new Spider-Man movie on opening night. I waited through the throngs of Spider-Man super fans, many of them wearing Spider-Man apparel or even full Spider-Man suits. These were grown adults, by the way. I had not felt so out of place somewhere since I went to the Women's March in 2022. But the latter was a scene for my documentary. What is a woman, which is a better movie, by the way? It was a sacrifice I had to make for the art. The trip to the movie theater last Friday was a sacrifice I made for love. Not love of Spider-Man, but love of my wife, who for some reason really wanted to see the new Spider-Man movie. Now, we've been married for 15 years. I had no idea that she's been a Spider-Man fan this entire time. She has kept that part of her life hidden, locked away in the deep recesses of her heart. And I wish it had stayed there. But last week, her Spider-Man fandom came floating suddenly to the surface, like some kind of dying creature from the depths of the sea. She requested out of nowhere that we spend our one precious date and night of the week watching this movie. And when she first brought that up, I said, you want to Spider-Man? Spider-Man is what you want to go watch. As you might imagine, I suggested that we do something else with our time, go to dinner, throw ourselves into a volcano. Really anything would be preferable, but then she pointed out that I always picked the movies, and she always watches what I want to watch. And I didn't admit this to her, and please don't tell her I said this, but she's right. I have probably picked 98% of the movies and shows that we've watched together through our entire marriage. I am the resident chooser of movies, the key master of movies in our household. I've always considered that to be a solemn responsibility, something I take very seriously. It is a burden that I carry for the good of our family. And most importantly, I never steer us wrong. The entertainment offerings I choose never disappoint. Now, my wife might disagree with that statement. Actually, I might disagree with the two. On second thought, there have been some unfortunate ones in there last year. We watched the Netflix movie Carry On at My Suggestion. That's an action film about a TSA agent who gets blackmailed by Jason Bateman into smuggling a bomb onto a plane. It wasn't very good. In fact, it was probably one of the worst movies ever made. But how could I possibly guess that based on the description? Which sounds great. Even though there are certain schools giving out worthless degrees in content creation or lesbian dance theory, that doesn't mean that there aren't degrees worth pursuing or subjects worth studying. Subjects like classical literature, where great works that stand the test of time or studied stories like the Iliad or the Odyssey. Not because they're old, but because they still have something true to say. It's one reason I appreciate what Hillsdale College is doing. They're offering a free online course on the Odyssey, top-by-professor Benedict Whaling. He walks through Homer's masterpiece, explains why it's remained one of the foundational works of Western civilization. It's about a man trying to get home. It's about duty, family loyalty, the temptation to choose an easier life over a meaningful one. Three thousand years later, the importance of those values has not gone away. If anything, they become even more relevant. If you've always wanted to read great literature or better yet understand it. Well, this is a great place to start. Go to hillsdale.edu/wallstoenroll. It's totally free. Start reading, learn the classics, rediscover the West. Start right now at hillsdale.edu/walls. Anyway, on our way into the theater, I warned my wife that we would be the only adults without children in the room. This is Spider-Man, after all. It's going to be a bunch of 13-year-old boys and us. My wife bet the opposite. She said it. She said the opposite would be the case. She said it'd be nothing but adults. And she was right about that too. It turns out we walked into our screening room to find an auditorium packed with childless 30 and 40-somethings. I felt relieved. And then I felt sad. And then I felt nauseated. And then I felt sad again. But then I felt relieved again because there's nothing quite like the comfort of discovering that other people are as big of losers as you are. Now, as for the film itself, I am heartbroken, though very far from surprised to report that it was extremely terrible. This is a very bad movie. Even worse than I expected. And I expected it to have all the artistic depth and merit of a cell phone commercial. Actually, this movie is a cell phone commercial. I have never in my life seen so much product placement. It is shocking. This was the QVC of movies. They might as well put a 1-800 number up on the screen. Spider-Man has a Samsung Galaxy phone, which is heavily featured in this movie. Spider-Man's Samsung Galaxy phone gets more close-up shots than Spider-Man himself, like it should be listed as a cast member on the IMDB page. You might be asking, how could you possibly get Spider-Man's cell phone into the movie? Well, they get it in there a lot. They engineer a thin excuse for all of these gratuitous, full-frontal cell phone shots. In the film, Spider-Man is apparently subscribed to some kind of app that alerts him whenever a crime is happening in New York City. The app pings Spider-Man, which is like this is way less cool than the Bat-Signal. Okay, first of all, you got the Bat-Signal. That's cool, not very practical, but at least that's cool. Right? The big light in the sky. Nice. Now we're doing an app, and anytime there's a crime, Spider-Man gets a little, it goes ping and he just looks at it, and it literally says crime is happening. That's what it said. No other information. It doesn't even tell you where it's happening. Just crime detected. So the app pings Spider-Man four or five times throughout the story, which is an absurdly excessive number of cuts to a cell phone, but it's also an absurdly low number of crimes to have happened in New York City. Because the other problem here is that if such an app existed in real life, it would be going off literally 300 times a day, which is the actual average for felony crimes in the city. But this Spider-Man movie is not just a long commercial for Samsung. Emphasis on long, by the way, this thing is like two and a half hours long. There is no reason on God's green earth for a flick about a guy with spider powers running around in red spandex. to be more than 90 minutes at the most. I mean, really 85 minutes and we should be out. But for some reason, it was decided 10 years ago that every theatrical release movie, especially if it features a guy in Spandex running around, has to be as long as Schindler's list. So the days of short and efficient blockbusters are over for some reason. But anyway, they take advantage of this gargantuan runtime by squeezing in commercials for, I'm not making this up either. Little Caesars Pizza and BMW and PlayStation and Liquid IV and countless other products. Apparently this movie set a record with a $309 million partner campaign, which is to say that Sony hoard this movie out to literally any company that would throw some money at it. Now you'd think a multi-billion dollar film franchise would have higher standards, but I guess money can't buy self-esteem as every only fan star inevitably learns. At one point, we randomly cut to a Little Caesars delivery guy dropping off a Little Caesars Pizza. That's a scene in the movie. And then we see Peter Parker going to retrieve the Little Caesars Pizza from his front door. None of this serves the plot in any way at all. Never mind the fact that Peter Parker lives in New York City. He can web his way to any New York Pizzeria in minutes and he's ordering Little Caesars. It's like having a scene in the Godfather where Vito Corleone orders Olive Garden to go with a close-up shot of the Olive Garden logo on the bag. And then he hops online to leave a five-star Yelp review with a close-up of the Yelp logo. But see, that would never happen in the Godfather because for one thing Yelp and Olive Garden didn't exist when that film was made. But for another, the Godfather is a film. It is a real film, it is a piece of art. A Marvel film is not a film. So much as a series of advertisements vaguely stitched together to resemble the general shape of something that may be mistaken for a film. Now this could perhaps be forgiven if the story surrounding the commercials was compelling or at least diverting and entertaining enough that I wouldn't spend the majority of the runtime praying for a fatal heart attack. Suffice it to say, on my way in the door, I had set the bar very low. Okay, I had set the bar for this movie at about the level of the Titanic. And I don't mean the movie the Titanic. I mean the actual Titanic 12,000 feet below sea level. Spider-Man brand new day wouldn't have to swing on a web or jump or even pick up its legs to make it over the bar that I had set. Yet somehow it managed to navigate itself below the bar in some kind of grotesque act of circus side show contortionism. Now allow me to attempt to describe the plot, which is a very generous term as best I can. There will be spoilers going forward, but then again, if you've ever seen a single superhero movie in your life, you already know everything that will happen. This movie does attempt to surprise you at a few different points, but it's kind of like my three-year-old playing hide and seek by huddling behind the curtain with his legs and arms and half his head still visible. So it starts with Spider-Man swinging around New York, fighting bad guys. And this is all handled by the way of montage. We see him fighting evil ninjas for five seconds, and then he fights the villain Scorpion, so called because he wears a mechanical suit that resembles a Scorpion, which by the way is a really impractical setup for committing crimes. What crime, what crime would, in what scenario would you be assisted in committing a crime by putting on a giant suit that looks like a Scorpion? Someone answered me that. And then we see him locked in combat with a sharp tooth bad guy. Sharp tooth guy tries to throw Spider-Man off a roof because obviously that's going to be an effective way to kill a mutant who shoots a web set of his hands and sticks to walls. What are you going to do next, drown Aquaman? Now, plausibility issues aside, all of the crime fighting we montage our way through is more entertaining and would have made for a much better movie than the story they eventually settle on. Another fact established early on is that Peter Parker's chubby Asian friend, I didn't catch his name, and his ex-girlfriend MJ have both suffered some kind of amnesia and no longer remember Peter Parker, apparently the entire world forgot about Peter Parker. And this is due to some kind of magical spell or whatever from the previous movie which I believe I watched with my kids, but I don't remember anything about it. Maybe that's meant to be like a kind of a fascinating meta commentary. Like the movie where everybody forgot about Peter Parker is also itself extremely forgettable. That's kind of an art, was that an artistic choice, baby? But the precise in universe reason for this amnesia isn't really important. The real reason for the amnesia is that it allows the filmmakers to repeat the same beats from the first film in the series. That's the only reason they did this. So Peter Parker gets to meet the chubby Asian guy again, which he's already done. He gets to try to win MJ's heart again, which he's already done. They had to repeat all of these beats because the one thing that can never happen in a Marvel movie under any circumstance is character development. Character development requires change and change suggests entropy. It suggests a finite temporal system where eventually things will reach a conclusion. Things will end, but there can be no conclusion. There can be no end, no point ever, in a Marvel movie. They need to keep all the characters alive and the same so they can keep the franchise going. They can keep the little Caesar's commercials going. They can sell more toys and more Samsung Galaxy phones. So if any character appears to be on the precipice of developing or changing, well, they can just snap their fingers and Abra Kadabra, amnesia. Or failing that, they can always bring in another version of that character from the infinite multiverse, which means that even if a character dies, it's still not over. Nothing has changed, nothing mattered. There are trillion other versions of that character in a trillion other universes. And you might think, well, you know, that means that there are no stakes in any of these movies. You might think that developing stakes for your characters is like the most basic entry-level requirement for storytelling. You might think that it barely counts as a story if there are no stakes. And if you think all of those things, you obviously have more artistic insight and higher standards than any executive at Marvel Studios. After the montage, we get into what is going to have to suffice as our central conflict, sadly. And the conflict is this. An evil psychic is on the loose who can jump into your mind and control your body. Now, I know what you're thinking, boring. I'd rather go back to sharp tooth guy. I'd rather go back to the scorpion guy. They were way cooler, I agree. But in fairness, there are some conceivable ways to tell a fun story or a superhero fights an evil psychic. Sadly, the filmmakers didn't conceive of any of those conceivable ways. Now, the logistics of the mind leaping are important to understand. So the psychic can jump into another person's mind from your mind like a kind of psychic leapfrog, but has to work with uncertain, rather convenient for the screenwriter, not for the psychic physical limitation. So the psychic can only jump from one mind to another at distances of 33 feet or less, or approximately two car lengths. So if you keep a social distance of 34 feet, then you're safe. Now, you might hear that and think, well, how would they figure that out? Like, that must be kind of interesting. They'd figure out that rule. Well, it's not interesting because Spider-Man discovers the 33 feet limitation, a pivotal piece of information by asking his computer. Yes, Spider-Man, along with having superpowers, also has a magical computer that can figure anything out and solve any problem in seconds. Now, you might think that a movie about superpowered beings wouldn't also need the Deus Ex Machina of superpowered computers. But if you think that, then you're simply expecting too much of Marvel screenwriters. I mean, as we've seen for many years now, Marvel screenwriters have the easiest job in human history. They can come up with any problem for their character to face and then having spent like four minutes trying to imagine a creative and logical way for the character to solve it, they can just wave their hand and say, you know, and then the computer figures it out. Spider-Man gets in a bind and what's he going to do this time? You know, the computer, whatever, the computer does a thing. Or they can have the superhero suddenly develop the specific superpowers that he needs to escape that particular jam, which is a device also used in this movie. The one thing a Marvel screenwriter will never do and has never done in this universe or any of the trillion others is devise a clever and unexpected escape route for the character that obeys the logic of the world they've created while not relying on the cinematic equivalent of the red easy button from those staples commercials 20 years ago. Today, we'll be performing a triple hop under the procedure. But you've never done that before. That's so care. - The staples, that was easy. - The computer serve another purpose too and you've already guessed it. Marvel had a brand partnership with the company that made these, I think it's a Zeus computers or something, a Zeus, I don't know. And the characters use those computers a lot. So if you're hoping to see an action movie where the action heroes spend like a quarter of the runtime fiddling around on their computers, you're in luck. I was just disappointed that we didn't get to see other household devices featured prominently. What about like a 12 minute sequence where Spider-Man loads his KitchenAid dishwasher? Maybe they're saving that for the next film. One can only hope. We should note here, by the way, that Peter Parker has no job and no source of income yet can afford all of the products that they're constantly showing off. He can also afford the lease on his apartment despite, again, having no income. And these might seem like nitpicks, but when you're spending $225 million dollars to make a movie and when that movie is hailed by critics. audience is alike. As this one has been, I don't think it's too much to ask that someone during the course of production makes some kind of effort to fill at least the most glaring plot holes. Now, it turns out that the psychic is a girl named Gene Gray, who is, or I guess, will be in the next Marvel movie, a founding member of the X-Men. Gene Gray is trying to break into a secretive government agency called the Department of Damage Control. And it's safe for a late reveal that this secretive government agency is you'll never guess it actually sinister. And this will come as a surprise to you if you've never seen any movie ever. But if you are familiar with movies, especially Marvel movies, then you know that secret government agencies are literally always sinister, which is the only point where Marvel movies resemble real life. Actually, that part is realistic. Now, Gray's go-to strategy for breaking into the agency is to mind-leap into a random old lady, have the random old lady steal a tank, drive the tank slowly and laboriously across town, slam it into another secret government building, kidnap the villain Scorpion who's being held there in custody, mind-leap into him, and then have him, I guess, break into the other secret government agencies building across town. Again, I'm not making any of this up. That's really the plan. I mean, you might wonder, like, why didn't she just mind-leap into someone who works in the building she's trying to access? Or at the very least, if you're going to slam a tank into a building, why not slam it into the building you're trying to get to? Why slam a tank into a different building kidnap someone and have them go into the building you want to go to? But apparently this woman with God-like mental powers never thought of that. After that plan fails, or plan B is to mind-leap into the Hulk and have the Hulk smash into the building. That plan also makes no sense, but it provides an excuse for the Hulk to show up, so, you know, they can put him in the trailer, which is only the reason he's there. Eventually, we find out that the evil psychic isn't actually evil at all. She's just trying to rescue her psychic sister who was kidnapped by, you know, the bad government guys. The problem is that, remember that tank I mentioned, after having the old woman hijacked the tank, she blows up the tank, no doubt killing dozens of people for no reason. It didn't advance her objective or achieve anything, aside from death and destruction. She also inhabits Spider-Man's ex-girlfriend, has her kiss Spider-Man without her consent, by the way, and then throws her off a roof and she causes another random guy, just some poor guy, some random guy, to step into traffic and get flattened by a moving vehicle. So, on paper, this is one of the most evil and murderous villains in the history of comic book movies, and yet she gets off scot-free. There's no justice at all. She's a good guy. We're meant to believe she has a heart of gold the whole time. Aside from, like, the murder and attempted murder of countless innocent civilians, she really means well. Now, Spider-Man does not defeat the psychic in a final battle. There is no final battle. Instead, the psychic leaps into Spider-Man's mind, where, in Spider-Man's mind, she meets the dearly departed Aunt May, who tells her, who actually sits her down on a bed and sits with her, like a scene from Full House, and tells her that she's a really special person, and then teaches her about the power of self-acceptance. Again, I'm not kidding. That's the climax of this movie. The villain is brought down from her murderous rage and turned into a good guy instantly, because somebody calls her special. Now, later on, the Punisher, apparently inspired by all of this weepy, speechifying, cries, and tells Peter Parker that he's his best friend. Sorry, I forgot to mention that the Punisher is in this. It didn't really need to be mentioned, because he serves no purpose and doesn't advance the plot in the slightest bit. How could he? His only superpower is that he has guns. What's your superpower? Oh, I have guns. Oh, wow. No one's thought of that before, and there's not much assistance that he can offer a superhuman indestructible being who also has a supercomputer that can do anything and solve any problem. Now, one thing these superhero movies have never figured out, aside from how to come up with a compelling plot or compelling dialogue or compelling characters, is how to make it so that their superpowered god creatures are vulnerable enough that they can be plausibly hurt or helped by other characters who aren't superhuman. This is a nut that Marvel has never cracked, and that's why they like, through a guy into the Avengers who's only power is that he's a pretty good shot with a bow and arrow. And he's somehow supposed to provide invaluable contributions to a group that also includes Thor, an intergalactic deity who has the unlimited power to do anything and doesn't even need the help of a Samsung Galaxy phone, much less a short guy with a weapon that hasn't been relevant in combat for 500 years. All that to say, the Punisher has no reason to be in this movie, but he's another selling point to put in the trailer, and that's all the purpose he really needs to serve. So the movie ends with Peter Parker and Jean Grey learning that it's okay to be different. Yes, that is very close to an actual line in this movie, a movie that is critically acclaimed and hailed as one of the best Spider-Man films of all time, which is a bit like bragging that the meal you just ate for lunch was the best gas station hot dog you ever had in Cleveland. Now that said, you know, I did feel inspired by the message in a certain way. After all, everybody else seems to love this movie. It has a 90% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 98% audience score, 98% of the comments under this video right now are almost certainly angry bordering on homicidal. And so that puts me firmly in the minority. It makes me different. But like Aunt May told the serial killer psychic with a heart of gold, it's okay to be different. If only Marvel Studios would take its own advice, if only it would ever make a movie that takes even the smallest risk or the slightest creative gamble or tries to say anything but the vaguest hallmark platitude. But why would it do that when it can put in no effort, expend zero creative energy and still make a zillion dollars? That's the real moral of this story. And the other moral is that in my house we need to go back to me picking the movies. It's Spider-Man? Just walk up to him and shoot him in the head, shoot yourself. Now, we've all heard the radio ads about owing the IRS money. Don't lose hope. So don't wait. Go to TRA.com. Again, that's 800-575-1753. Tax relief advocates, real solutions for real people.