‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Deep Dive

hello and welcome back to house of r i'm joanna robinson joining me today the luminous the effervescent the your friendly neighborhood podcaster if i could do the entire podcast with a spider-man mask over my sleep deprived corpse-like face i would but as always the only true restorative property for me in this world is being here to pod with you about things that i love and that the bad babies are hyped about i can't wait to talk about this movie we're going to take a swing through a little independent film called uh spider-man brand new day that i guess just a few people are seeing in the theater and we're going to talk about all of that right after this from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus okay before we got we get into spidey you know we we came back from san diego comic-con we talked about the big marvel panel that they did there in hall h so you can see that on our san diego comic-con sort of reaction pod that we did but news has come out since then that i just wanted to touch on really briefly before we get into spider-man which is that wonder man a wonderful marvel disney plus show which we loved which we loved which got a surprise i thought a surprising season two renewal yeah not because of quality but just because of whatever's going on at marvel these days got a season two renewal yes got an emmy nomination a much deserved emmy nomination and then marvel changed their minds and they said never mind and now there is no season two of wonder man and like if there had never been a season two of wonder man that would be one thing the emmy nomination coming in the in the middle of all of it is like super odd to be sort of discounted did you see yeah yeah uh instagram post which was very yeah very sweet uh like incredibly gracious very gracious and at the very end he's like see you at the emmys i guess you know so uh bummer this is just really this sucks it sucks the season one of wonder man was wonderful and we were all looking forward to being back in that world with those characters and with that very specific and assured tone yeah and intention and vision i was thinking back again i was like had an actual what when this hit the ringer verse group chat and then adam sent it to me and i was like in a bunch of meetings had didn't get to read the full article i'm like surely i've misread this headline this like cannot be true right and it's just such a shame because this is a wonderful little jewel of a show and i was thinking back then to our very brief discussion of this on the comic-con pod be like we're not here to talk about tv moment which now actually feels a little more keen to me he did so he mentioned vision quest the you know is the third part of sort of the wandavision trilogy but like what's coming after that yeah nothing well that would be upsetting i mean there's got to be a sweet spot between we have 15 shows a year and the quality continues to dip and we don't make season two of wonder man if the idea is to sort of like you know and brad winterbaum is certainly hoping this is the case the guy is in charge of marvel tv but like if the idea is to temporarily get to the end of the season two of wonder man if the idea is to sort of like cut down sure cut all the way back on that in order to pour all of their attention and focus into the the movie landscape which has needed some help has been quite shaky we spoiler really liked the spider-man movie that we're about to talk about so like you know that's that's a good indicator and they're certainly hoping doomsday uh hits as well if not better so um but when we talk about what we want from marvel we me when i talk about what i want from marvel yeah i want sort of weird strange different things and wonder man felt like a really like special different sort of swing uh inside of the marvel universe and i'm really devastated but i mean like dustin daniel cretin who did a great job in this movie is was one of the creative forces not like the main but one of the creative forces behind wonder man so like i wonder if this is a sort of a bittersweet weekend for him i don't know so anyway we just wanted to honor wonder man a show that we really loved program reminders yes odyssey mailbag that's right with love and respect guys we're full we're full i read i read so many emails we have pulled them down we have picked what we're going to talk about uh you can keep sending them yeah but and i love that for you but i just have to warn you we're full um and then house the dragon final two weeks of coverage uh is what's coming up we've got hopefully some exciting stuff coming up around the finale that we won't talk about until it's done and dusted uh as is my way but there we go how can folks keep track of that send me odyssey emails i may or may not read what do you think mally ribbon you'll read them i will you'll read them i will your your commitment to the inbox is just uh it's second to none here's what i would say spotify or wherever you get your podcast you can watch full video episodes of house of our and the midnight boys on spotify here's what else we'd recommend follow at house of our pod on instagram on tiktok we're having fun on our new ish social media handles obviously the ringerverse handle is thriving as well check that out and while joanna you know noted already that we've got a lot of odyssey emails keep the emails about everything else coming send us your hot d emails get the lanterns coming right around the corner yeah i mean it's going to be a lot of fun and we're going to are you coming to baltimore for our oriole event send us emails about that hobbits and dragons at gmail.com also we should maybe formally announce that we are doing a screening of labyrinth that's right as part of american cinema techs friend of the fest friend of the fest we're back baby do you have that date off the top of your head i believe it's monday august 24th it's definitely monday is monday august 24th let's see in the mid-20s because i will be out of town august 24th monday august 24th at 10 o'clock at night let me just say this increasingly as i age and wither in real time on camera for all of you to see my steady or rapid decline uh that is past my bedtime no it's but i will guys it's past everyone's bedtime it's not actually past my bedtime but it is in the hour where i just can kind of like i just my phone will be bricked what will i do it's the bricking it's the bricking hour for my phone and hang out no come and hang out we'll be delirious probably also i'm just like kind of true even though it's 10 o'clock at night which when i was younger did not see that late i'm madness screening is what this feels like on a monday are you kidding me i quite so listen break all the rules yeah coming out with us on a school night at 10 o'clock at night to see labyrinth the movie that mallory has never seen never she's never witnessed the glory of the david bowie the full glory of the david bowie bulge and i get to see it on the big screen on the big screen i saw i saw labyrinth on the big screen like i don't know like a decade ago and even though i'd already seen it a million times by then i was just like it's different seeing the bulge on the big screen honestly do you can see it on the big screen yeah i can see it on the big screen yeah i can see consider it a formative experience um i think the puppetry of labyrinth really did make an impression on me i don't know about the penis but definitely the puppetry for sure great exciting uh so come join us it's really just like a beautiful perfect wonderful movie that i'm really excited for you to see baby jennifer connelly what a treat to get to watch that with you with the bad babies on the big screen past my bedtime i think diana what yeah yeah oh my god that's exciting i know wow forget david bowie diana might be here uh spoiler warning for today that's right spider-man brand new day all of the spider-man movies yeah potentially spider-man comics sure uh all of the mcu i would just say if it's ever happened in a comic book or comic book movie it could potentially come up today it's a pretty sweeping spoiler warning the punisher film starring tom jane who's to say yeah maybe um maybe you've been warned let's go now to the opening snapshot this film was directed by dess and daniel creighton written by chris mckenna and eric summers who are credited on the other spider-man holland movies scored by michael giacchino 145 minutes yeah reception wise yeah as when i made these notes which was yesterday rotten tomatoes is 9198 split is that good it's it's an unreliable metric but guess what still good it's very good by the standards of the unreliable metric that is good folks very good yeah metacritic 66 box office tracking yeah uh it's going really well folks uh we got an update from uh arjuna right before we started recording that they are reporting that as of uh entertainment weekly has reported that wednesday early access screenings and thursday night screenings so we're not even to friday saturday sunday yet 72 million dollars in previews that beats avengers endgame which was 60 million dollars in uh the same window so that is man beats avengers endgame is for for anything just quite a sentence what another better thing to say will it have the same legs as endgame we'll find out uh together but if they get an opening of like 195 million or more it would be the biggest of the opening of the year and in the top 10 of the history of opening weekends pretty good listen uh 225 million dollar budget i think they're gonna recoup but it's gonna be great this is gonna be a hit a smash row hit uh all of the downtrodden feelings we were feeling coming out of supergirl different just night and day here with spider-man yeah uh quick overall impressions of brand new day we didn't get to sit next to each other because i wandered into the wrong theater very very very very strange full crowd one of the more active screening experiences we have we have ever uh quite strange it was an event they had to funnel the press into two different uh theaters and i thought i was following the crowd our team but i wandered in the wrong theater but sean fennison was there yeah and i was sitting there with sean i was like where's everyone else and he's like what theater did you have and i was like two he's like this is 14 dummy um well i got to sit next to arjuna and uh i can i can report and then he can decide if this stays in the pod that uh oh he missed you yes but he wept wept he cried when we're in spoiler territory now already right very end peter has walked out of in the crowd and i'm about to be a dad oh yeah so i have a little kid the dad stuff's really working on arjuna right now it is oh my god it's very sweet i love i just love it love it uh so this is our first without john watts's director yeah uh and i was just thinking a lot about i you know i re-watched no way i wait i re-watched all the holland movies but i re-watched no way home and i was just thinking about how early i'm going to be in the ringer that was yeah you know we were just sort of like tail end of covid it's like sort of just a very different uh time but we have now the the mallory duane administration has has uh survived two tom holland spiderman movies we're coming up on our five-year anniversary how will we celebrate um i think a really fancy dinner don't you think i think that sounds like something we should do no matter what whether or not it's an anniversary but yes definitely uh brand new day but we didn't sit next to each other but i did get to see you and i'm like oh my god i'm so excited to see you your beaming face as you walked out i did i marched up to you and i said that was great you loved it yeah you did come first i saw amanda different reaction then i saw you and you loved it tell me tell me more about your big picture sort of thoughts i i thought the movie was wonderful it honestly is like everything i i wanted it to be it was so touching and emotional and moving i found it to be like very sincerely affecting as a study of grief and change and i thought that as an evolution for this version of peter and this version of spider-man but also just more broadly a connection to spider-man as a character who has always been a portal for assessing change and growing up and what it means for something to be different in your life or about your body or about your relationships it did such an expert job of trying to figure out what was going on in your life and what was going on in your life and what was going on in your life and what's going on in your life and what's going on in your life and what's going on in your life and what's going on in your life feeling like it was part of this for movie now inside of the mcu progression for this character in a way that also felt rooted to what is like a day one experience that many people have with the character i thought that the action was uh breathtakingly good i thought that the like in a couple respects the actual choreography and just the feel the feel of porting you into the pages of the comics so many of the sequences looked like splash pages and gave you that i have this in my hand and i have fallen into the comics and i have fallen into the comics this world feeling but just the choreography the movement the way that like i i haven't played the spider-man video games but my husband adam our colleagues uh ben limberg the midnight boys like everybody we know who loves games one of the things i know they always talk about with that game is that when you're swinging you feel like you are swinging it unlocks something for you about what it would feel like to be to be spider-man and to watch this on the big screen like this movie did the i think the best job of capturing that yet you know why it did a lot of practical yes yeah and it just looked incredible the other thing that i loved about the action was the calibration the way that it was dispensed across the film the fact that we did not i mean we build toward a very um monumental conclusion in the film but we did not build toward steady drumbeat steady drumbeat steady third act just relentless action nothing else it was balanced and calibrated throughout with the emotional beats and the thematic resonance and the introspection in the conversation it felt to me perhaps on the heels of our mushrooms conversation the other day like the action was micro-dosed throughout the film we always had a little bit we never went too long without a really cool set piece but we also were never only in the action for such a stretch that we felt pulled out of the story and given the length of the movie i thought it was like incredibly propulsive and well-paced i never felt like it was dragging i also just thought that the visual evolution in addition to the character evolution was like very striking it definitely looked the most akin to the sony pure so obviously this is a sony uh disney collab right but the the mcguire that we're in just like manhattan and the glass and the skyscrapers and the taller buildings like that kind of graduation literally and figuratively too uh out of the the smaller scale like queen's brownstone high school setting into a different element of the city it just all felt really really strong and i thought that the tom holland performance was wonderful he's i'm on the record we had a delightful midnight court about this years ago i think andrew garfield is a sensational peter but those movies are obviously leaving something to be desired uh i think that tom holland is the best peter and i always loved like this is officially my favorite mcu franchise now it has been it had been cap and spider spider-man was next in terms of individual character franchises we have four good movies here and that is not the case with the captain america franchise anymore so this now goes just like the mcguire franchise it's just like the mcguire franchise it's just like the just ahead just kind of an interesting thing that i would not have anticipated uh obviously winter soldier is still my favorite mc movie and that hasn't changed but i've always loved these movies and i've always thought that tom holland was a wonderful spider-man and a wonderful peter and for me the tony mentorship and like porting this spider-man into the avengers always worked quite well in terms of the larger connected mcu story we were getting obviously it didn't work quite as well for certain spider-man fans who wanted peter to be in the mcguire franchise making his own suit and really working on a street level friendly neighborhood capacity and i think this movie feels like now this kind of like uh just gelling and cohesion of all aspects of the intention of this character in this connected universe in a way that i just find like really impressive so i thought it was great i love that people are excited about it and uh i'm really curious to see what they continue to do with the character and how they deploy him um moving forward in the avengers movies and beyond but yeah i thought this was just dynamite i loved it can you talk to me a little bit more something you had said to me before we saw brand new days that you had watched no way home re-watched no way home and you felt a bit different about it yes which was so about that okay so when we saw no way home i was trying to remember like exactly i had a slightly false memory of that being my first movie back in theaters which it wasn't eternals was before that so and i had seen very small screening room but i was like what was part of the euphoria around no way home that it was actually my first time back in like a full movie theater it wasn't um but it was still early in the days of returning to that shared experience and like i remember charles and van getting to meet for the first time in person it was such a moment of celebration for the team i thought the movie seeing it in in the movie theater for the first time was such a um the the balance and the degree of difficulty like i kind of couldn't believe they pulled it off and i thought it was amazing and i remember leaving that movie and then potting about it our pod potting about it on big pick um nerding out about so many different things like i have such a vivid memory of talking on big pick like sean and i were just like talking about matt murdoch and amanda basically had to be like guys there were three spider-men in this movie like get your shit together and we're like sorry this is just like this is nerd utopia yeah right um and so a lot of it was that and i thought everything was the three the three peters was just delightful recently you would have a better memory of when this was but maybe a couple months ago like as we were nearing the the brand new day window um a a ringer verse conversation was burbling it was bubbling up is no way home as good as we remember and i was like i just want to say on the record i was always a little lower than the rest of you on no way home i i was like i feel like it is impossible that i will return to that movie and not be as high on it as i was in real time and then just re-watching all of the holland movies to prep for our brand new day i was very astonished to find that that was also my experience with it and i don't know how much of it is just that it is not quite as rooted in the even though there's a little bit of the high school setting so much of the charm of of homecoming and even far from home which i think i like i like i'm a little higher on than most people i like yeah is there i think wonderful spider-man movies and wonderful mcu movies but they are outstanding coming-of-age movies yes and i just love that about them and that's the thing that i love about them is that they're not just like the That's not as centered in No Way Home. And so it just kind of can't measure up to the heartbeat that I love about those other two films but also just all of the villains and the balance of that like it just didn't work nearly as well for me returning to it with that distance as the like holy shit it's happening whoa doc ock did kind of in real time um and so that moved down for sure on my spidey power rankings and i think and could this change again will i have a different experience with it will i swing back flip back in the other direction maybe but right now i'm like homecoming and brand new day or like neck and back at the top for me and then far from home and then no way home last and i still think no way home is like a really uh solid film but i didn't have the same connection to it revisiting it i think the last hour of no way home which is the three spidey movie it's essentially a different movie and it is i think fantastic um yeah re-watching no way home i actually i actually think i liked it a little bit more just because i i like that last hour it's great i was just sort of like i can just focus on the last hour of this movie which i think is really solid i also think the mj and ned stuff like i just like love how involved they are throughout strange is just a character that has like always kind of eluded me and anyway so you know a lot of what you've just talked about is is sort of how the experience of seeing no way home in that theater with those people informed your enjoyment i don't think there's anything wrong with that because i think movies should be like communal experiences and i actually wonder if my experience with no way home would have been different if i had been sitting next to you in that theater which sounded like a much rowdier more raucous theater than the one i wound up in like loved sitting with our guys on fantasy i love sean and the guy the guy next to me on the other side of me was having like the time of his fucking life but he was sort of like an outlier not that the theater didn't enjoy it but he was like a vocal outlier and it wasn't like the theater you know that i was seeing it in and so i don't know if it's a good thing or not but i think it's a good thing i think it's a good thing i don't know if i would have had a different reaction because watching all of you guys walk out of the other theater and almost all of you except for amanda looked like you just saw god you know what i mean yeah yeah so you know that's interesting to me i really liked this movie and i liked it i i've grown to like it even more in the last couple days thinking about it than i did uh the experience of watching it i do think it's too long i do think the pacing is a bit off but i think when it hits yeah there are certain relationships aspects i would say the pun this is you know you're a much bigger fan of frank castle a punisher than i am i thought this is the by far the most successful punisher has ever been i thought this was a fantastic pairing of characters and pairing of actors tom holland and john berthal who have known each other for a decade like just playing off each other i thought it was fantastic i think the introduction of gene gray the entirety of the gene gray thing didn't like work perfectly for me but i think the introduction of her like how much we get of her before we meet we actually like see her even though we all know it's city sync but like all of that uh which is torn directly from the denzel washington film fallen um this way in which the antagonist is just hopping from person to person so you can't track them and you can't run from them and it's just like very scary and very wonderful like i thought that was like deployed really well uh i think the fight between spidey and the hand at the end is just like some of the best action i've ever seen like i thought that was fantastic there are other things that don't work quite as well for me um i think but i think as with no way home i think there's a fantastic movie in here i just think there's some for me there's some other stuff around it that isn't as uh successful and i think in the last few days as i've been thinking about and preparing to like pot about it i've just been dwelling more and more on the things i like and maybe that's something i'm just like doing more as i grow older and i don't have time to do more to be like really cranky about the things that don't work and i'm just sort of like you know what the last hour of no way home with andrew garfield and tommy guire fantastic so that movie great yeah you know and and what works well in this movie works really really well and what is undeniably true is that tom holland though i'm still not sure i'm ready to call him like my number one just because i'm such an andrew garfield loyalist but like tom holland is born to play this character yeah and i think it's really even more evident coming off of the odyssey where i think he's fine in the odyssey but then you can see what he can do as peter parker and it's just sort of like it's a different level entirely yeah i've been watching a bunch of dipping into friday night lights lately and this is like the friday night lights phenomenon when you think about zach gilford being like bored to play matt saracen or taylor kitch being bored to play tim riggins and then you see them in other things and you're like where is that perfect match of performer and character spark that you found in this one project that you don't have elsewhere and that is what tom holland is about and i think it's really important to be able to and peter parker and spider-man are it's just like the perfect marriage of like person and demeanor and character and evolution because you know when tom holland and zendaya talk about their experience making these movies they're like we were teenagers yeah now we're two of the most famous people in the world like we fell in love making these movies like we grew up making these movies you know i mean so the way in which a lot of this is tailored to their own life experience i think works incredibly well so so did i like is this my favorite tom holland spider-man movie no uh will i like it more the next time i see it probably and i'll probably like it even more like the more the more i watch it and i do think it's a very successful slightly overwhelming the movie but very successful introduction of gene gray which is something that they yes really i have to imagine felt that they needed to nail yeah you know for sure yeah um yeah i was curious to see because often media screenings are more like muted right than just going to see the movie with the masses but it was such a in a really fun way like when when you know we get the gene gray name on the screen for the first time even though and especially in that room do you think it's because there were like 20 people from the ringerverse in your in your screening i think it was across the the theater like people screamed you know there was a lot of laughter a lot of cheering whooping you know there was a lot of and that was fun and i was curious to see when i saw it again yesterday like if that would um if i would have the opposite experience that tends to be the case would it be like a quieter crowd would it hit as well and people were just having the time of their lives i have to imagine that it was so is that that public screenings are just i mean people were cracking up but the jokes they were like you could feel the collective breath being held in the key peter mj moments it was like so that was a wonderful experience and i think you're right that's difficult in the moment to disentangle it and i think it was a wonderful experience and i think you're right that's difficult in the moment to disentangle it and i think you're right that's difficult in the moment from the movie itself but i do think the film is like it works for me in three different capacities like it works as a superhero movie a comic book movie kind of period right it works as an mcu movie in a way that feels this is the thing i think we'll we'll want to assess most over time how much of the reaction and the joy is like this is just a dynamite movie and i feel that way no matter what and how much is like boy we needed this we needed it because it's like been such a run of a varied success now we love thunderbolt which was not that long ago and there's some delightful thunderbolts connective tissue in this movie which i'm excited to discuss my god um and then i think it just works wonderfully as a spider-man movie specifically so it's a superhero movie that that excels an mcu movie and a spidey movie is it spider-verse like will anything ever be spider-verse i mean no but i think it is one of the best spider-man movies that we have ever gotten on the mcu front yeah part of that is you know unfortunately the failure that we've had to deal with is that we've had to deal with the failure that marvel has had to launch a second generation that feels as a list as the first generation and and tom hall and spider-man is still you know one of the remaining a list from that first generation uh character actors that we're getting now we will have avengers doomsday and we'll see you know and that did i mean it didn't work for like thor uh in the last thor movie you know what i mean like that that didn't work out but like you know if the next generation that they have launched if if shang chi a movie i really liked or you know or if thunderbolts a movie i really liked had hit uh this way marvel wouldn't be feeling like it's in the place it's feeling but this is like yeah this once again a sony co-production we have to give and all of sony credit for this because they are deeply involved but like this is something marvel really needed and really wanted heading into and to sandwich it in the release in between the comic-con panel which has people like excited about the future of ghost writer and black panther etc etc yes for sure and d23 which is the disney centric uh event that's coming up in mid-august where we have to imagine they're gonna roll out a bunch of new x-men characters yeah this is energy and momentum like let's hope and pray that vision quest is a smash ola because i'm personally very excited for that dare to dream that bringing that energy and that excitement into um avengers doomsday sets them up uh to be in a better place than literally anyone is has been claiming they've been in for the last you know six months to a year to more you know from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible ♪ Why am I losing my ♪ - Don't miss the two episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest. Nothing bonds a family together quite like Mortal Jeopardy. Now streaming only on Disney+. Yeah. Let's go now to the deep dive. All right, we're starting with the section I'm calling Who Did It Better, Peter or Grogu? Grogu all alone, a stretch of a movie that we did not like, but we really liked the stretch, not the movie. Sweet baby Grogu. Peter all alone is a sizable chunk of the opening of the movie as Peter deals with the consequences of not only choosing to protect his friends from danger, but also deciding to not make any new connections. Bless her, blonde girl in the elevator really tried. Man, she wanted to fuck. DeWolf tried. Yeah. You know, and in a sort of more mommy energy tried. But he is, you know, like it actually gave me real COVID memories because he's just like in massive isolation. The sort of like, all my food is delivered by DoorDash that I don't answer the door for. There's just like a post-it there, you know, and no one ever, he's constantly masked. No one ever sees his face. Like no one ever sees his face. And that is just like devastating. And the thing about Peter, you know, you mentioned from the beginning, from Homecoming, Peter has always struggled with being just Peter. You know, we don't, we, because we didn't get to see this Peter Parker's classic origin story. We didn't spend time with pre-Spidey Peter. But what's clear from Homecoming is that, you know, nerdy, dorky Peter Parker is a person that, that he struggles being outside of the I'm also Spider-Man. Let's go to one of your favorite clips, I think, in all of the MCU to underline this. Delightful. Okay, it's not working out. I'm going to need the suit back. Okay. Forever. Yeah. Yeah, let's have it. No, no, no. Please, please, please. Let's have it. You don't understand. This is all I have. I'm nothing without this suit. If you're nothing without this suit, then you shouldn't have it. Okay? I mean, rich words from the mouth of a high tower. Rich words from Tony Stark on that front. A man who has trouble separating himself from his suit. I'm just a man in a can. But what do you think about this? About this being part of Peter's eternal struggle of how to, like, we had joked when we first saw this trailer, I was like, is this movie about work-life balance? Yeah. It kind of is, yeah. It definitely is. Yeah. But this absolute erasure of Peter Parker, not just from the memories of people, but just like in his own right, in his own mind. What do you think about this? Boy, I just thought this was wonderful. And one of, I think this was fairly quickly, this concern was fairly quickly erased by just the trailers and the marketing. It was clear this wasn't going to be a thing. But I feel like in the week of No Way Home and the passage of time over the years, this question of like, all right, so that like totally like makes sense or needs to happen, or when will they undo it, and how, and how, and then it's like, we see the first trailer and nobody remembers Peter, and he's. You know, who among us doom-scrolling Instagram instead of getting a good night's sleep watching other people who he loves be happy without him? Relatable content. Really tough. Oh my God. I was like, man, just a lot of pizza delivered to your doorstep, brain rot on social, missing people that you don't know how to forge a connection to, and debilitating headaches because all you do is work. It me. Alas, I don't have any superpowers to balance that out. I think you do, actually. I think you do. Um, I love that clip. I'm so glad you picked that. I have always loved that moment so much. Not only, I think, is like a bit of a counterweight to like, did we need this mentorship story to drive so much of the Holland versus Spider-Man stories, because I think that speaks to what it provides, right? But to find Peter in this spot where he had to make this choice and make this sacrifice, and sacrifice is always a through line of assessing a journey for a hero, right? What are you willing to give up? What did you have to give up? And then what did it mean? What did it mean for you and the other people? We'll talk about this later when we get to MJ, but the fact that the movie not only doesn't undo that decision, but really roots itself in Peter's loneliness and isolation, and then also gives us some time to spend thinking about like, oh, you made that choice for me, right? Really great. It's, I think, a really considered assessment of what the passage of time would mean if you had done this thing. And nobody remembered you. And so the way that that, that we find Peter, because the college years go by, right? He's what we're getting. And that was very deftly edited and structured in the film. Ned and these updates in these videos. Hysterical goatee in the sophomore year video. And MJ's like, you look like an assistant coach. Killed me. The way that very quickly we understood that this is every day for Peter. And the beginning of the movie did that in a few respects. We get the rogues gallery again. Very comic book. This is what every day is like. Fighting crime on the streets of New York and trying to keep his neighborhood safe. Friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. But also that then he goes home every night and he watches the people who moved on without him. And they didn't do it because they decided they didn't want him in his life anymore. They did it because they don't know who he is. And it almost doesn't matter. Yeah. Because I think this is just like such a universal. It's not just, it's what you're describing. This sort of like idea of FOMO of like watching people that you care about having fun without you or being unable to connect to them or whatever the case may be. That is just such, I hope it's a, actually I don't hope it's a universal experience. But I think it is a very common experience. Especially in the age of social media, which has just like really enhanced that idea, the FOMO idea. But there's also this idea, you know, and as you mentioned, there are different stages of coming of age. Yes. And, you know, there's the high school years and then there's this like, I'm a young adult. Or when am I an adult? Right. When am I supposed to be an adult? And Peter Parker moves to the, to Manhattan or, you know, becomes an adult, has a job, you know, is an evolution we've seen. Doesn't seem to have a job in this movie. I have some questions. I do have some questions about that as well. I have some questions where the pizza money's coming from. But like. All those fresh bouquets of flowers. Not cheap. I do have some questions about that. But he couldn't have a job because then he would have coworkers and then he would have some kind of, you know, Peter Parker life and he has no Peter Parker life. Right. But there's also the like, am I, you know, years ago when I took, I took longer to graduate college than all my friends did. Like I was there like another semester after they left. Actually, maybe longer. And I had like a lot of anxiety about that. Right. Because I was just sort of like, they're, they're done and moved on and I'm not, you know. And I had a really good friend to say like, oh, like, but everyone's path is at a different pace and it doesn't really much matter. And, and did I always like heed that lesson? I'm not sure. But it is. It is something that I've thought about every time. I'm like, am I on the right track? Am I doing the things at the speed you're supposed to do them? And so like this very distinctive experience of young adulthood of just sort of like, oh, they're doing the thing that maybe people think I'm supposed to be doing and I'm not doing it. So it's not just like they're living their lives without me or having fun without me. It's like they're, they're taking off these milestones that I am not and I'm behind. And, and, or maybe I don't ever get to eat or even have those milestones at all. Yeah. And I think that that was conveyed quite effectively for this character, but also just in a larger way, like the question of what you are allowed to maintain and give yourself and experience and what you feel you actually genuinely have to let go either to do the thing that you're supposed to do, to focus on the thing you're supposed to do or to protect other people as we hear Peter voice in this movie, right? Like there's the initial, the spell, the make them forget, the make them forget decision. And then there's the, I'm putting the letter back in my pocket. I'm going to protect them. Yeah. Seeing the cut on the head, et cetera. So there, there are degrees and waves of that, which I agree the end of, of No Way Home, even though it didn't overall as a film measure up to my like, the end is still beautiful. The Peters and the, the coffee shop, donut shop sequence. The idea that in order to be a hero, to be Spider-Man, to save New York, you can't let anybody love you or, or love anybody because it endangers them. It pulls your focus to watch, to find Peter in that place at the beginning felt completely right to me and like kind of important actually to show him there and to show us what it would mean that he had been there for a long time. And then to watch him work through that, not only because of the experiences with MJ and Ned, you know, something like the Lego building sequence with, with Ned, just the authentic, you can tell yourself every minute of every day that this shouldn't be a thing you have. And then you sit there and those pieces click into place and you're quoting Lord of the Rings to each other, quoting Fellowship. And like, how could you not feel the most fully yourself that you had felt in four years? You know, like, I just thought the, the movie really reinforced in a way that when Peter gets to the end, he's got the May visions, he brings, allows Jean to benefit from that same council and the idea, which I know you want to talk about later, of rooting and orienting in a familiar way. We don't have to follow the map of the notes. We can talk about it wherever you want. Slightly repositioning the idea of responsibility as like responsibility to your community and to your family and your friends, but also to yourself. Right. It's like really, I just thought very moving. So I was. so glad that we spent the beginning looking at this and again you get the little bits of humor to the elevator girl stuff was just wonderful um but it was sad it was sad it was sad i think what's tough for me you know and and you know well the way in which they tried to fix it or give us peter all alone but what is undeniably true about tom holland's peter parker is that like his relationships are what has always made him sure yeah a great character ned learns who peter is so early in home like earlier than i even remembered in homecoming you know what i mean like and so to have peter all alone is quite challenging so to give him punisher you know and and to give him moments with yelena like you know the most charismatic person in the entire mcu like that is really helpful i do think for me you know the movie suffered a bit in the opening because like i i do think some of the montage stuff was perfectly done i think the movie suffers in that first hour when we're not getting what is the best thing that peter parker can do which is to be in relationships and i understand that's the point of the story but by dint of premise yes you're robbing me of something i enjoy best out of this character in this performance you know what i mean i definitely and even like think thinking back across all of the films the while homecoming i think is just like a a gem of a movie and i adore it even going back to that your ned point is right i mean it's very early the dropping of the death star lego etc i'm gonna be honest peter i don't know if i could keep this secret like it's just the best it's the liz movie it's not the mj mj mj is not in that movie nearly as much as i think we remember in our minds the forging of that trio as like the holy trinity zendaya during one of the promo things they were doing like a quiz uh you know yeah i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know one of their endless quizzes or whatever yeah and it was sort of like identify your line from this or whatever yeah and one of them was one of her homecoming lines and she's like it's one of three lines yeah exactly she's like i know it i did only have three lines sketchbook connection coming back was nice but yeah so centering peter and dad peter and mj but also the three of them together is the heartbeat of this franchise undeniably and and peter and may too which like even though that type of loss puts peter and mj in a very good position i think it's a good thing that peter and mj is in the place he is with the other peters at the end of no way home and then certainly in a place here where his grief and his loss and mourning allows him to help reach somebody like jean and work like guide and actually be in the mentorship position of trying to help somebody else navigate this terrible despair um i'm i i yeah i think you're right that there's something like you can't help but miss because it is so seminal to this franchise i think for me it feels true that sometimes the thing that we love and the thing that roots us and that we feel is familiar and just like right about a relationship or a moment in your life is suddenly gone yeah and what i would just i would agree with you and and i think this is a conversation we had about house of the dragon the other day which is just sort of like it can be true storytelling and maybe not like the best storytelling that makes sense what i mean what's so devastating about where we find brand new day and then I rewatched No Way Home again just to sort of like get the freshest like that's where we left him moment and sort of some of these moments especially because I'm a Garfield girl like some of the the Peter 3 uh moments in that film hit even harder once you watch what Peter goes through in this movie uh the zero work-life balance let's let's see this clip from uh No Way Home you have someone hello I got no time for uh Peter Parker's stuff no do you uh that's a little complicated no I understand I guess it's just not in the cards for guys like us I mean sad Peter 2's like don't give up buddy and we all hope that Peter 3 goes home and like yeah figures it out but you know so so that Peter's like you know and this is an eternal superhero struggle right of like what do I have to sacrifice to be a hero what do I have to give up in in uh in my humanity and and you know this the slayer goes through this like you know there isn't there isn't a hero out there who hasn't gone through some version of this I mean the entire infinity saga you could make the case hinges on that assessment gonna go try some of that life Tony's been telling me to get like that that is the breakthrough for Cap allowing himself to live a little right and on the flip side Tony giving up sacrifice play I think you know you asked earlier the idea and it obviously connects that clip about the balance of Peter and Spidey and like you know one of the reasons I really love Far From Home um is that Peter who's a teenager and who is at this place in his life of like fuck I'm in like the Avengers and also like my best friend knows is that a band is that he's like I want to go to Europe and be a teenager and try to get a girlfriend and I'm like I don't know I'm not gonna be a girlfriend I'm not gonna be a I almost put that Mysterio clip up there when he and Mysterio are talking on the on the ledge about sort of he's like I had this plan yes girl I like yeah you know it's just hard the Mysterio clip is hard I really like that scene but it's hard because like Mysterio is full of such shit in that moment but that I think actually is like it frankly I think it makes the text even richer for Peter because he knows then that part of the way he was worked was by someone saying it's okay to just be Peter for a bit and it's like fuck is it right what would it be like for that to have been the thing that somebody tried to press I just man these movies rule so an idea that this movie deals with in terms of like Peter's calibration being off is the way in which the spider element the you know the mutation idea yeah which of course you know links to Jean Grey and links to Bruce Banner as well he's being overwhelmed by the spider side of him because he's not allowing time for the Peter side of him and the spider and the result of the spider thing which he will eventually end up with is that he's going to end up with a spider and he's going to end up with a spider as is the case in all good stories like this learn to make his uh his advantage not his disadvantage yeah yeah not the thing he's trying to repress but the thing that he uh uses to be his most powerful um but it but initially it makes him more rageful more violent more you know gives him these debilitating headaches all this other stuff but like the violence and the rage yeah once again let's go to my guy Andrew Garfield great try to keep going try to keep being the uh that friendly neighborhood spider-man because I know that's what she would have wanted but at some point I just I stopped pulling my punches I got rageful I got bitter I just don't want you to end up like like me they look like babies even though that was only a few years ago when Andrew Garfield cries he is just wonderful he's wonderful um okay so um so what's devastating about watching No Way Home in retrospect is that like you know Peter Peter 2 and Peter 3 uh you know do this have this moment at the end of the a movie where they stop Peter our guy Peter 1 from killing the Green Goblin out of vengeance and they teach him a lesson about you know it's not about the rage it's about you know processing the grief and moving on and and then you know the end of No Way Home was sad no matter what it was poignant no matter what but the idea that like the result is the very thing that the other Peters were worried about for this younger Peter and he just it happened to him anyway even despite their best efforts to teach him this lesson and have this like spider brotherhood uh sort of moment and so yeah that's just devastating on on rewatch but I am curious I want to ask you one thing I'm struggling with is I guess the clear through line of what the story is trying to tell us as it pertains to Jean as it pertains to Bruce and as it pertains to Peter about this idea of this other side of you and repress it or embrace it you know because Hulk has got his sort of repression uh routine down pat but he's also the one who's full of these uh I'm something of a scientist myself sort of uh words for for Peter aka Ned when he comes to him and talks about this sort of universal inhibitor libraries that way yeah but he's just sort of like how do you decide what is right to repress and what is not but then like how do how do you feel like that sort of works as it pertains to the Hulk inside of this I feel like that messaging got muddy for me in a way that I'm hoping you can sort of clarify it's not up to you but I'm just curious it's an interesting question so to connect it to the the two moving Peter three clips that you just showed which were lovely it all feels to me a little bit in the same brew because like what you're saying about the devastation of these other Peters who have experienced their loss and their trauma trying to provide this counsel and like it doesn't mean that the words didn't reach him but it means that it's not that easy right it means that it's not enough to just hear from somebody this is how it should be or this is the question you need to ask yourself you still need to walk the path of your own life or it's also possible that lesson could have landed if he had had his community around him but he had to then give up yeah the fact that peter three that garfield's peter is you know they have their uncle ben and aunt may shared with tweaks experience but he lost gwen right and so that is like you know the the thing that he has not allowed himself he has not absolved himself of that for a second and he has not been able to move on from that for a second and so to see the way i think that there's an interesting commentary there on like you don't forget loss you are shaped by it and you carry it with you but can you forgive yourself enough to allow yourself to live and try to be a full person and the answer to that is hopefully and hopefully you can find somebody whether it's mj or net or the other peters to help you do that doesn't mean it's going to be easy so to get to your to take it to your question about the film's kind of study and assessment of um the many wolves inside and these elements that you might fear about yourself or just actively despise about yourself and that actually might truly be dangerous like i don't think the movie wants us to come out at the end saying that there's oh there's nothing to fear from the hulk right or there's not like so but or from gene yeah or from gene who does some truly terrible damaging things in the movie i believe kills many people in this movie the street is littered let's just say it littered but the hulk has killed a lot of people and yelena belova has killed a lot of people and the punisher has killed a lot of people so you know she's in good company in this movie exactly and so i think the fact like if it honestly if the movie i think your question is a fair one in terms of whether it feels like um that worked character to character because i feel like the message for peter is embrace all of you the peter side of you certainly but also like don't fear the spider you know what i mean like you know when he goes full spider mode against the hand it is seen as a moment of like triumph and self-acceptance no question and for gene it's supposed to you know the message which is like slightly muddied off of that but the message of of may for both peter and gene which is just sort of like who you are outside of being quote-unquote special yeah is special enough and yes and people will love you just for you gene not for the phoenix or whatever you know however you yeah the x the x-men uh gene gray uh and then bruce is this has been an ongoing mess for him but it's just sort of like but do you know what i mean like but so yes totally and i i under i understand why you're bumping on that i think for me it felt like part of the point of asking the questions was to acknowledge that the answer will be something that is eternally just an inch away from grasping in full and like you're always going to the important thing is to be able to identify that it's something to take seriously and to ask and to think about and to consider i think that like hulk is so hulk and gene while the genie is a part of the genie is a part of the genie is a part of the genie of like and even just we talked about this with the trailer but the idea of having a mutant in this movie peter or spider-man's not a mutant but this idea of mutation and evolution and change the different cycles the comedy of peter like turn off that spider stuff but also the the track that we're hearing about adulthood and the idea like you said earlier that coming of age doesn't cease i love that we build toward a moment where peter can say at the end when he embraces the organic web shooters right okay there's a literal plot element of this where it's that was just incredible just so good um you know again spider-man has always just been about boy there's a lot of sticky white stuff coming out of me what do i do and it still is great the idea that there's the reckoning of oh you think you're a friend of damage control they have a whole task force waiting with special weapons just to stop the thing you do and it's like let me find a way through that and part of the way through that is embracing who i am so peter's not like i gave over to the spider-man in full and i let that consume me he's not rejecting it he has to embrace like you said the balance and the totality of who he is and so when he says i'm both you're like fuck yeah let's go and i think that hits to your point the hulk stuff to me is like okay bruce has actually always despite being positioned as a mentor and a leader and now he's a teacher always struggled with that and the idea that that bruce banner in a spider-man movie where peter is supposed to absorb that lesson suddenly stop being in a place where he's like actually it's not her it's the other guy would not have felt true to that character to me and so i think the ability to say peter makes progress peter takes the next step peter moves into the next evolution of being spider-man and being peter being an adult and also there are reminders that he won't have to stop facing those demons or asking questions of himself wheeled out on a gurney babbling maybe we over corrected one degree on that that was for some sort of like comedic effect front when ned is like oh so sad and everyone laughed in the theater i was like this is quite upsetting but you know the the same character who gives us the that's my secret cap i'm always angry has worked through the tech and the meditation and the training to suppress more than to balance so he's in some ways a guide in some ways also a cautionary tale on the one hand yeah i mean sure yeah it's fine to say two steps were one step back for these characters you know that's how they make decades of movies about them you can't just complete your arc you know but like but hulk story was that he had found in smart hulk had found balance and then you know he's back in bruce form here where do you where do you find jean and all of that uh in this story um i think that jean because we're at the beginning of our journey with her in this incarnation you know this form and this iteration i i quite i mean we're huge sadie sink fans we're stranger things fans uh we were delighted to hear that she was going to be in this we i think all had one moment of thinking she'd be gwen and then every single moment after that of feeling sure she'd be jean gray i thought she was wonderful i liked that again peter kind of got the opportunity to dispense some wisdom and guidance and let his experiences help somebody else while still also being in the position of needing to receive that from other people you know i think that's something like whole the whole saying the like well who decides is it good or bad the other thing that that achieved and this connects to jean obviously is not just sort of acknowledging that you can't just ask these questions in a vacuum they if you make these choices they there's a potential uncontainable cataclysmic effect because so much of this movie with the bill metzger character and damage control is like what do other people try to do with your power but also the ability to suppress your power and how do you become a tool for somebody else's agenda so i think that's something that i think is really important to look at and i think that's something that i think is really important to look at and i think that's something that i think is really important to look at and i think that's something that i think is really important to look at and i think that's important to look at and i think that's something that i think is really important to look at and i think the fact that hulk is like i have gotten to a place i need to be but then peter is asking all these questions and hulk despite living his life in pursuit of that outcome says to peter what you're saying is pretty dangerous right and so there's a little bit of the captain america civil war like the safest answer our own element to it yeah there's a little bit of that but then there's also just i think the recognition for somebody as seasoned as bruce banner who is been through as many um bouts of turmoil and despair individually and collectively literally mcu phases to know that like you can't make decisions like that without consequences and that you have to you have to be cognizant of something that you make not being yours to control in full including the thing that you can't control being yourself at some point oh yeah i mean what did you what did you think of all of the the peter gene stuff and just how he reached her no i mean i like that i love him being in a mentor role as you put it like i have not experienced as much agitation as you were describing around like i guess the debate of whether or not tony but like peter parker to me has always been someone who has a mentor whether that's sure octavius or you know um etc etc you know dr connor's like blah blah like there's always like an older yes you know professional person and you know and then it just wound up being tony stark and then it was mysterio and then it was dr strange you know what i mean like it's always it's always you know and in this movie exactly it's bruce banner you know so like those always exist but for him to get to be a version of that for gene i think is is very satisfying um and then also what is interesting and we talked about this with no way home that's something my friend dave gonzalez pointed out years ago is that the villains of the tom holland original trilogy it's always stark tech gone wrong it's always like the sins of tony stark or the consequences of tony stark tech going wrong uh coming back to haunt uh you know his men his mentee peter uh you know peter has to clean up the mess of tony stark again and again again yes um damage call damage control obviously also connected with vulture and yeah yeah at the very at the very beginning of of homecoming is is when we get damage controls uh intro to the mcu but um but it's it's parker tech yeah it's parker tech coming out of this movie that is no doubt gonna haunt the mcu going forward you know it's it's gonna haunt you know what i mean and i think that's really interesting to watch him step into the tony role of mentor but also the tony role of like inventor uh who loses control of their invention i think is is interesting but in terms of where gene lands i mean i think it's intentionally supposed to be kind of murky because you know she has she's the antagonist of this movie she gets this redemption you know punisher's like she's okay she killed a bunch of people but she kept you alive so she's fine and she's off on a bus up to upstate new york so like you know find some gifted enrollment school or something like that so yeah you know arc is just beginning so it's supposed to be messy and of course Jean Grey is like one of the messiest uh X-Men there is um but I I guess my like tidy puzzled brain was really trying to like lock these three arcs uh you know into a clear message and I don't mind your I'm I always benefit from talking to you about these things and I don't mind your explanation that like we're all three of these people are on different parts of their path and not only that but the paths don't always go forward yeah try to embrace all aspects of who you are and recognize that it will be hard it will be hard to do so I Peter another another thing that you know another value at this moment in time heading into this movie of watching No Way Home Again is that the plot of that movie we're talking a lot about Peter being forgotten the plot of that movie is let's help everyone even people who have done terrible things and then we get the moment with we get a couple moments where Peter's bringing Mae flowers all the time in the gravestone but we get the quote the inscription on her tombstone you help one person you help her agenda everyone exactly Mae you know what I miss her I miss her yeah one of the all-time same it felt very Nolan-y to have a dead woman haunted this movie but I'm glad she's here but it's Nolan season so it feels it feels like you're in a really good movie I'm glad you're dead you're so right um you know Peter his journey in No Way Home with like what level of forgiveness or help to somebody who has done something really terrible deserve is feels to me like true to his arc that he would carry that question forward with him for sure for sure yeah and so I like and be friends with Frank and be friends with Yelena you know what I mean right I mean I almost included some of that stuff from No Way Home about sort of you know these villains and every one deserves a redemption but I opted instead for two Andrew Garfield clips and I feel great you can only be who you are which again is part of the point uh they've got right on their ledger maybe you did receive the message of the movie there you go the they've got right on their ledger Punisher Hulk and Yelena uh oh we should see that we should say that uh because we haven't mentioned it yet Evie who is uh Peter's assistant is voiced by Naomi Watts um I miss Jennifer Connelly but um you know it's fun to have Naomi Watts here uh so yeah to make sure that it's not just Evie and DeWolf that he's talking to the first hour we have we check in with a couple allies here yes um let's talk about Yelena Belova I'd love to um this is a real in terms of like um I don't know it's never too late to change who you are or to go through a growth spurt or whatever my time at The Ringer has dramatically so when like we did No Way Home I was like oh I knew the entire plot of this movie and every single second before we went to go see the movie and you're like that's weird uh what a weird thing to do but it was like my old way of processing these things and uh I've shifted away from that in in in many respects just because of the way that we cover things and stuff like that I knew so little about this movie that I did not know Yelena Belova was in it I had maybe this makes it sound like we're like not online enough for people who will literally work on the internet I had no clue this was in the movie I had no idea and then I expected it to be this like big thing I was like wow I guess everyone knew that Florence Pugh I mean she's just not in the trailer I don't know I just like missed the Yelena Belova all the rumors that she was in this movie so when he's like I gotta go see someone and he walks into the bathhouse and it's fucking Yelena Belova I was like let's fuck that's to me this was the biggest yay moment in the movie for me of love and respect to my girl MJ um this was great what the fuck can't Florence Pugh do as Yelena Belova or just in general like she's per- every single second she's on screen she's perfect she's so funny the running potato gag just like endlessly funny the like new avengers uh gag her talking about like her important new avengers business the I've seen your belly button moment and the toe beans I mean just really incredible it is a good note like Peter if you're trying to you know he refuses to take the mask off defeats the whole purpose as he says yeah a lot of Peter on display there I but but she kept it Peter Parker friendly she said I've seen your belly button yeah you know yeah she could have said something else but she said I've seen your belly button yeah um who who does it better from the bath Orman Hightower or Yelena Belova both icons in their own right boy talk about work-life balance indeed uh I found Orman's I'm gonna conduct my uh business affairs from the bath while I make everybody stand here feeling super uncomfortable to be a a real this guy's a super big problem really Orman Orman Hightower's a problem not an aspirational figure a way to convey that to us and when Elaine when Yelena was like coming to the bath and then of course we learned later that she does the same with DeWolf I was just like goals life goals this is amazing incredible it looked so relaxing and so soothing hysterical when she's on the bench because I know that like the smudgy eyeliner look is part of her whole thing but like if she's she's got that like the black liner but blue that she had in Thunderbolts but if if she's gonna sit in a steamy bathhouse all day and it's not running down her I need I need the setting spray I need to know the powdering routine like I need to know all of it by the end of a podcast I've got like eyeliner rings or I'm well aware and so I just need some help from Yelena Belova get ready with me Yelena Belova should she become like a TikTok influencer she'd be great you would all benefit she'd be great I believe what else you want to say about Yelena I thought this was great it just felt like a kind of smartly calibrated way put other characters into this movie it's somebody you understand in a very like practical literal way right away she's like oh you're here to see if this is mind control like what happened to me and he's like yeah yeah she's like no so it all it makes sense you're not like why would this happen this feels really forced but it what like it actually wasn't introduced too fully into the plot the ability for her to glean something about who was hacking what system and what did they search for and how can Peter then use that information like it was all beneficial and helpful also comedic because she's such a charm a charisma bomb you know the great moment when Peter uh boots up zoom and checks in from Ned and MJ's apartment and Ned's geeking out and Yelena's not like why the fuck can randos hear this conversation she's like I'm so glad the sad boy has friends you know it's just it was perfect it was the perfect deployment information uh a little bit of that parallel text that you identified already and charm and humor and like this movie is upsetting there's a lot of really actually dark heavy shit we need a little bit of levity which Yelena provided um I I really agree I think that um you know when I was thinking back at um when we were in Hall H for Comic-Con Marvel panel that feels like a hundred it does that was five days ago is that possible it's not can't be true can't be true um and I was like you know they brought out all these people and I'm like does this feel as like yeah star-packed as it could and you know just in terms of like who they had there and I literally were like where's Pew I did yeah I said where's Florence Pugh and I was like where's Sebastian Stan like they're just like a few people that I'm just sort of like but like Florence Pugh would have gone a long way to like because she is along with Kamala Khan but actually I would say at this point just because they still don't quite know how to use Kamala I would say yeah Yelena is by far the most successful post-Endgame addition to the MCU like without question to that point having them in a scene together is a great and you mentioned earlier like the kind of carryover characters more broadly where we are and what has worked and what doesn't you know it's I think we all collectively it's very easy to think Endgame ended the Infinity Saga and it didn't Far From Home did because it was the coda and it was about grieving Tony and Cap and Nat and all of these characters we had lost but it was also about inheriting the mantle and what it meant to be like next up if you didn't want to be and so to have Peter and Yelena in a scene together amid a lot of other stuff in the MCU's multiverse saga that hasn't worked was a real like we made the right choice a long time ago some of the choices we had a long time ago were right and worked and like Tom Holland's Peter Parker can carry a lot of this and also which choices that we made after that should we build around you know this was a real just kind of soothing bomb on the one hand yes but and and like I if they're like we can put Yelena in anything we can put her in Hawkeye we can put her in anything and it works I agree it didn't work for the larger audience that Thunderbolts is like essentially Yelena Belova movie again we loved it and I think it really worked but like yeah you're right maybe she was just too sad girl in that movie and they just need her in potato bath mode uh instead I loved her uh Hulk yeah very minimally used in the film um we've already talked about a lot of the Hulk stuff I did really enjoy the humor in the classroom the idea that Bruce Banner the Hulk teaching at Empire State that this would happen that every single time a kid raised their hand in his class he'd be like do you want to ask me about quantum mechanics and they're like no I want to talk about Thanos why didn't Thanos just make more food and it's a great question laid in the theater oh yeah really wonderful really hit in our theater in my quieter theater as well um and then the Hulk smash moment was so funny Cindy Moon yeah uh you know a Marvel cameo here But, yeah, like, having her ask the, like, very Reddit question of, like, why didn't Thanos do this? And then to have the guy in green body paint that, like, Bruce is quite familiar. He's just like, let me hand off to this guy. So good. Yeah, it was great. You know, I love Mark Ruffalo. Wonderful. You know, Marvel has the rights to use this Sony character. They don't have the ability to put, still don't have the ability to put Bruce Banner's Hulk as the main character in a movie. So he has to show up as a supporting character in various things. And I'm always happy to see him. And here he is. I don't have much else to say other than that we've already talked about. I thought the conversation that he and Peter had, in addition to the kind of, like, thematic stuff we already discussed, just there was real chemistry between the performers. I thought it was lovely. It was, like, charming and sweet. And had real, like, dad mode energy in a way that I liked. And watching Bruce suss him out. Yeah. You know, figure things out. Yeah. That was all, like, very satisfying. And then even later, the, like, the universal word and what that triggers. And he's like, oh, right. Okay, this is where all the. When's the last time we had. Oh, never mind. In Ragnarok. I was like, when's the last time we had, like, Hulk, Hulk as antagonist? But it wasn't that long. Because I was like, Ultron. It's a friend from work. You know, but yeah, yeah. Ragnarok. On the action front. So we had seen at Comic-Con. A, now we realize, heavily edited to remove all of the Jean stuff. I was like, wow, the magic of movies. Oh, my God. Like, every other word. I was having a really fun time tracking it. Yeah. That was really something. They even, like, overdubbed a different word. Like, when they were talking about the inhibitor chip. Yes. I think they, like, get. They cut her out of, like, in a cutaway. They left not a trace that that was really about them going after Jean. That was amazing. But we had seen. We had seen Frank and Spidey fighting the Hulk. And Frank coming in with his machine gun. And then the incredible, like, I'm swinging Frank under. And the little humor of you just trying to get out of fighting the Hulk. Yeah. We had seen all that. And we were like, let's fucking go. Even better in the actual movie. The way that Peter is using when he's fighting. I didn't know you could get that. Big. The Hulk, again, just kind of bursting forth. This uncontainable, undamnable surge inside. The Hulk. Like, close up the zooming into just Hulk. Just Hulk. And his eyes taking over the whole screen. There was something euphoric. Hulk is one of my favorite. Spider-Man is my favorite comic book character. And Hulk is one of my favorite comic book characters. This was incredibly fun. And then I thought even just, again, and this is true in the action throughout the entire movie. When the tank crashes in to the detention center early. And then Peter uses his webbing to, like, swing the guys out of harm's way. The choreography was just, like, balletic and lovely throughout. Using. The webbing to connect. You know, it's like a string of balloons. But the concrete of the building. To drag him down. It's pulling Hulk down. Can't get the inhibitor chip in his skin. But we can see the webbing cutting through. Not actually breaching, but just pulling. Really cool and good. And then, yeah, Bruce was wheeled off in a gurney. And that part didn't work as well. But the fight itself, I thought, was great. And it's a fun way to show on the Frank Castle front, you know, how completely, as Peter points out, out of his depths he is. But also, you kind of need to understand that Frank is. But there's something so charming about the fact that, I mean, at MJ's insistence, that he goes barging in there anyway. Yeah, that was great. Even though he's outgunned out much. And then when Hulk is about to, like, squish Peter's head like a grape. And he's like, Bruce, Bruce, it's me. Like, I'm your friend. The ability, again, to reach. To breach through the monstrous thing that has reared its head and find the, like, humanity within. There's this sort of. For a second. An interesting track. You know, people are trying to. People are trying to figure out, like, who knew what when. I think very specifically as it pertains to MJ. Like, because there's, you know, there's the moment at the end of the film when Peter approaches Ned. And they do this sort of, like, handshake. And then Ned says, like, Peter. Yeah. You know. And there's some debate, which I actually think is incorrect. But that's okay. But there's some debate online about, like, whether or not that's Ned remembering. I think it definitely is. Yeah. The way that Jacob played it. And stuff like that. There's some people saying, like, oh, MJ said Peter earlier. So he's putting together some. I was like. I was like, I do not think that that's what that is supposed to be. But this idea that, like, the special handshake worked in a way that, like, quote, true love's kiss. Yeah. You know, was mocked by Jean Grey earlier. You know, a special handshake in Lego is, like, more powerful than true love's kiss. Love that idea. But when does MJ know and what does she know? You know, she reads the letter. There's the moment when Jean takes over the mind of, like, you know, this massive radius. This almost, like, Wanda-esque. Like, hex, sort of moment. Very hex-like, yeah. And you see Zendaya, you see MJ crying. Yeah. You know, and so a lot of people are wondering, like, is that a moment, just in the act of sort of taking over, does that shake loose some more personal memories for MJ in a way that the letter didn't? That's a fine theory. Yeah. But I like this idea that, like, Jean Grey messing with people's minds maybe opens doors, you know, into Strange's spell. And allows sort of memories to seep through. And if that's the case, her occupying, like, this battle for Hulk's brain, for Bruce's brain inside this fight scene, when Peter is able to slightly permeate, is that because Jean was occupying, you know, the brain for a little while? I don't know. I'm just asking questions. Okay, Punisher. And there was just simply nothing about this that wasn't perfect. That's my formal take on the matter. I just love to be allied with you on this because usually I feel like such a stick in the mud about Punisher. And I was just like, you know what? Guess what? It worked for me so well. That was great. The Staten Island Runner, like, the Staten Island Runner along with the Potatoes Runner, like, felt like real old school Marvel. Yeah, sure. Like, you know, now we just have this, like, Staten Island joke that we're just sort of like, we don't need to know what it means. It just, like, means something. And that's, like, really fun for us. Move over Budapest. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I do think, you know, and we'll talk about Zendaya and MJ in a bit, in a hot second here, but, like. Like, part of the magic of this franchise is watching Tom Holland and Zendaya as people fall in love along with Peter and MJ. You know what I mean? And it's just, like, so undeniable. And so to have, to be able to tap into a similar chemistry between two people in Bernthal and Holland who, like, genuinely love each other and will, like, vomit near each other on Hot Ones or whatever, you know. Like, whatever, whatever you need. And in retrospect, it's why a lot of that Menelaus Telemachus. This stuff worked so well in Odyssey. I think that's the most successful Holland section of the Odyssey. As you know, I loved it. Yeah. Right. So, like, what other Tom Holland friends can we put in movies? I know. Let's just get Bernthal in everything. Maybe. Maybe it's that simple. I don't know. I love John Bernthal. I love his Frank Castle. I have many of the same notes on the story around that Frank Castle as you do, though. Obviously, I've loved, loved, loved him in Daredevil. But this was not only incredibly entertaining and to see the, you know, like, even, like, a great little moment that captured their chemistry, I thought, was when we can't hear them. We just were watching. Jean is watching. We're watching, like, through the security cameras. And you just see them, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can hear it even though you can't because you know by then exactly how they're talking to each other. And Tom said that they improvised a lot of the stuff on the set. It felt that way. It really felt like authentically existing inside of their relationship. So that was great. We've talked a lot already about Hulk and Jean and what they unlock for Peter and what Peter unlocks for. What those three characters are unlocking in terms of this idea of, like, evolution and repression and suppression and what do you fear about yourself? Frank, to me, is an incredibly necessary additional element in the story because that's not his story. Frank not only doesn't, I mean, does Frank have demons? Yes. We'll talk about those in a second. He has a great, also great moment in the movie when she's like, Whoa. Yeah. This guy's got issues. That was, that got a real laugh. That was funny. Frank, this is part of why I love watching him interact with Matt Murdock. Red. Got a real, like, red energy with the blushing daffodil. That made me think of Matt and Frank for sure. It was really good. And, like, the way in which they, like, sort of cleaned up the Frank Castle. I mean, they lampshaded it. But, like, you blushing daffodil is a real Peter Parker friendly way of saying something. Yeah. Like, he might say a little more colorfully. Like, get out of here with that soft serve bullshit is, like, for a Spidey MCU movie, like, on the edge. And for Frank, like, positively G-rated. Yeah, exactly. But, so, Frank, who has these, has this terrible trauma and history. Wait, what happened? There's some helpful photos here in this little kitchen cabinet, but you're not allowed to look. Did he lose his family? He, this is what I loved about this. Really? Genuinely. Like, he, Frank actually always thinks he's right. And we get a lot of that energy, too. He's not like, is this horrible darkness inside of me something I need to stifle? He's like, everyone else is going to live in the world that I blaze for them with my bullets. I'm going to put skulls on everything. And then, you know, more recently in the MCU, has to confront, like, well, what does it mean if people you don't agree with put your sigil on their chest and on their bullets and stuff like that, right? But Frank is not, in terms of his own work. He's not. to show Peter is if you let loss and grief consume you in full this is where you find yourself well and I think you know um what's good for me is not good for you this energy coming off of Frank of like I will be a reclusive loner and a freighter uh you know that's booby trapped and I will cut myself off from the world and stuff like that but I don't want that for you Peter the way in which Frank can lean into sort of his dad persona uh and rather than like swallowing pills and sobbing in a graveyard uh at his ghost daughter he can like you know actually like do something with with this yeah I hated that very recent reference from an hour of marvel you love I hated it um you know and to see Frank even in like goofy mode when he's like playing the decoy for Peter like this is this is great shit and it doesn't soften or you know what I mean like uh that's totally fine I don't know what you mean but I don't know what you mean but I don't know what you mean but I don't know what you mean but I don't know what you mean but I don't know what that's totally fine I don't know what you mean but I don't know what you mean but I don't know still recognizably to me at least for sure Punisher diehards might disagree but that's still recognizably the Punisher to me I think so sitting by Peter pursuing the tank you're gonna take my one gun I've got another like we're gonna do it my way when the truck crashes and just like a million guns fall out into the the road classic really funny classic Frank but then like to your dad energy point they have this friendship they have this like who's in debt to whom and you know the story shot out the good place um the fact that Frank who's who you know the loss of his kids the loss of his wife's his wife their murder is the defining they died bullet in his brain as well but the one of the defining things in his life right and when he's sitting at Peter's bedside and he's not only like oh my god I fired that bullet and I meant it for someone else but it hit you and I have to think about that that when I pull the trigger something like that could happen is that happening in his mind maybe a little bit that I think it is he's sorry he's a apologetic but the thing that is really undeniable and at the four is you look exactly like I thought you were gonna like he's like you're like I'm talking to him like he's a nice kid yeah so the dad energy there and the thing that he lost and then wanting to send Peter back out into the world even the way when he when Peter brings MJ to the freighter cool really cool set like I love that the who who is she who is she to you he's Frank's not like get that girl out of your life don't let yourself fall in love you're just gonna lose that person you're just gonna be like full of regret Yelena and Frank are real yes and who's Ned let me tell you something that we deserve this Frank Castle and Yelena oh in the same scene give it to me now okay give it to me now um comic book references aplenty including Frank shooting Peter uh and then separately uh and then and then and then and then and then and then you know the shot of him carrying Peter into the hospital is sort of ripped from the pages of Civil War the Civil War comic um a lot of comic book visual references here a lot of comic book covers in that montage at the beginning and stuff like that they did a lot of that of that work here all right Sadie Sink as Jean Grey we've already talked about a lot of this I do want to uh talk about Sarah Sarah Grey yes and this flashback and where it comes in the movie um I don't know I I would not have minded like some flashes of this before we got to I will say I think there were a few like oh my god moments that were so heavily telegraphed like I thought the Jean Grey possession of MJ was extremely telegraphed uh which is fine yeah but it was just like a lot of people in my theater were like and I was like here's what here's my experience in real time watching yeah the possession sequence I was like either she's being possessed by Jean Grey right now or this is the worst written shit I've ever ever seen when she's like surely we know each other and I was like is this movie this bad right or is she being possessed and she's being a huge sigh of relief I was like okay it's supposed to sound like bad theater that's great okay fine um and then I think the Sarah stuff was like I mean because we know yeah that like even though Jean is the antagonist of this movie she's not going to be like a hardcore villain for in the future of the MCU it's a complete failure of a character I think anyway um so there has to be like she's searching for you know she's wronged in some way yeah we have to believe that so the Sarah stuff and then like Metzger's whole like lie about Sarah and stuff like that like it was so clearly a lie and we're just like we're just like way ahead of Peter on that and stuff like that yeah so I I wouldn't mind some like Sarah some of this like piece throughout the movie rather than just sort of like one long flashback here but yeah you know I I'm not I don't like hate it I just I just have a question about it yeah I I think in terms of placement and um what's dispensed when that I yeah when especially when we shift to like the park scene full-on flashback it is just a different feel in the movie yeah um we just press pause for a second in a way that I'm just like could we have to make you want mint chip and chocolate ice cream same I agree I love mint it's my favorite my favorite I could go for some now I'm pretty hungry actually I do have an uncrustable with me thank god we've got another pot after this I brought some pretzels too planned ahead today Adam packed it for me what an angel um he's just like try to make it home to me today you're a fucking mess um in terms of the so the part of it that's more successful it's a parallel for Jean and Peter in a couple respects one where does loss lead you right especially if you're alone and then can you be pulled out of that abyss like Peter saying you have me right that worked for me mm-hmm Peter crashing the party seeing you know he's been watching the reels and like little things like oh you know who can forget these seminal moments to swim in the river with these guys you don't know because they're not a part of your life and you're not a part of this that's mounting mounting mounting mounting steadily Ezra Bridger you go to the party and Ezra Bridger is kissing your girl yeah and you're like the spider has taken over yeah right my pupils my whole eye is my pupil I'm swinging through the rain it got real emo real fast so the idea that um Jean's power scaling the leveling up of her power we go from like six seven percent on the computer monitor we're watching it's like 267 percent it's uncontainable they can't even map it what is happening oh my god the fact that something is rising inside of Jean as she looks up and sees VMAX and realizes that her sister is gone those things felt uh much like the brain waves mapped on to each other in an effective in an effective way yeah absolutely um and in general I know this was something you want to talk about with Jean like I think finding out what's going on in her mind finding her in this place with her powers where we're like they have they are emerging yeah they're manifesting baby power I mean like she's already deeply scary yeah well I mean again legions legions dead when we meet her in this and then she scales up and she scales up even inside of this movie yeah so yeah uh very scary very fun incredible introduction of so a lot of caveats here I found I it feels like when people write headlines about box office and they're like oh here are the caveats so this is our first introduction to a 616 mcu version of the classic x-men seven years after disney acquired fox right we've met other mutants we have malakon namor uh we've seen the multiversal versions of like beast professor x gambit others and inside of deadpool and wolverine it's a mutant story in its own right etc etc but this is you know the first this is our version of this thing unless channing sticks around as gambit which I am not I really enjoyed him so I'm not wholly opposed but I don't think that's the direction they're going to go in but like they could um yeah I wouldn't be exposed I really liked his horrible accent I enjoyed all of it um yeah this is definitely the first like we're you're going to be watching movies with this person in this crucial key central role can I just say like and it's really fun because like so this is a young jean gray and um you know famke johnson means something very important to a lot of us who watch golden eye and also like lived through those original x-men movies right sure of course sophie turner love and bless yeah was a massive failure of casting for jean gray yeah uh yeah you know yeah has we have a lot of affection for massive whiff so to come through with sadie sink yeah who we just like who I think is the most talented young actor to come out with I think it's going to be a lot of out of stranger things like without question um and uh we're so lucky to have her here I just I just think this is, like, hugely positive for the forward-looking adventure. I agree. I mean, I'm just, I'm very excited to enter more fully and finally at last this stretch of X-Men storytelling, the mutant saga in the MCU. I'm hyped about it. This is the kind of casting and decision that makes me feel confident. Confident? And we should say, Samara Weaving, it was just announced that Samara Weaving has been cast. She's not in the studio today. She's been cast as Emma Frost. So we anticipate we're going to hear a lot more of this, but Samara Weaving, I love. Really fun. So that's a really fun. Yeah. With love and respect to January Jones. Actually, not in that role. Just sort of like, let's just do better and better and better. It's very exciting. We're doing a lot of, like, original, you know, so it's. And how much news will we get on this front in the next, like, few weeks, few months? It's very, that's an exciting thing. There could be more announced before we even drop this podcast. Guys, voice of God, if somebody else has been cast. Yeah. If we get the new Gambit while we're talking, let me know. But yeah, and then especially for Jean to be introduced in this capacity where there's the Sarah history, the powers are emerging, but rapidly evolving and changing. Peter is that mutating. You might say mutating. You might. I might. Peter is, but like the movie did. The movie didn't say mutants. They said special. Yeah. So we're like easing in. I don't know if that's a rights thing or not. Might be. Yeah. Might be. I definitely got the, at the, the stinger. No mid credits. We have a, thought this movie was dynamite. Pretty lame post-credits stinger. And I was like, oh, they just don't want to give them. This guy behind me was like, this guy behind me was like, here we go. And then he was like, oh, oh, yeah, that was definitely, there was a real air out of the balloon at the very end. But I kind of was like, I mean, and who knows? They don't want to give any more X-Men stuff in this part Sony movie, maybe? I don't know. I don't know. But. The, what if they had just had Gene get off the bus and you saw the, like, autumnal leaves of, of state New York. That's what I thought we were going to do. Not even like the mansion, not even, but, but, and then they did a little like, you know what I mean? Like, again, rights. That would've been great. The questions that Peter and Gene are asking, you know, that the, the damage control Metzger plot is asking, that Hulk is asking, this is not an X-Men movie. It's not an X-Men movie, but it sets us up for a lot of big questions about what to do with your powers and how to exist in the world as a mutant. It sets up Magneto and, and I feel like Xavier. It comes with a lot of responsibility. You know, I would say that I would, and I might write it and put it on my little board responsibility. We will have an X-Men clip coming in a second, but I will say I, I had to restrain myself to not make it a fast. Thunder Magneto clip. I almost did. Let me say this right now. Double Garfield. Never restrain yourself from putting a Magneto clip on this podcast ever. I'm calling this next section MJ wigged out. Okay. Zendaya is wearing a pretty strong wig in this movie. And by strong, I mean, I actually didn't really like it. I defer to you on wig watch matters always. I think, I mean, like, who am I to tell a woman how to wear her hair, but like, uh, I've always loved how, like what MJ's hair has looked like in the first three movies. And yes, like people should be allowed to grow up and go to college and figure out how to use a flat iron. All of that is fine. You know, like that's, that's great. Yeah. It's just like, so here's, here's this quote from Zendaya in, in entertainment weekly. Uh, she said, I remember reading a draft of, of brand new day. We wanted to mature the characters, obviously, but I remember when I read it, I was like, she's too, for lack of a better term, normal. I was like, where did all her weirdness go? We got to do like an MJ pass of the script to weird it up a little bit, to bring back some of those quirks. So like some of those quirks, I would say some emerged, but this is an MJ. I really, an MJ is one of my favorite parts of the trilogy. If not my favorite, like one of my, like, I think maybe the best comic book quote unquote love interest, the way in which she's just sort of like smart, actively involved, like a very distinctive person, just like, and, and in terms of like, like Zendaya performances, it's like MJ and Rue are tied for like my favorite, like thing that Zendaya can and has done. Um, this MJ is four years older, has gone to MIT, has dated as her bridger, has done a lot of things. So like, is she allowed to change? She is. Are we all allowed to mature? We are. Um, but there are many ways in which she shows up as a much more conventional, like character, despite Zendaya's claim that they did a weird pass on her. That was like slightly disappointing to me. And like, they, I still think she's very, incredibly strong performance inside of this movie. Yeah. Um, but I was almost wondering, like, if that was partially the point, if part of the point of MJ, and, and I'm struggling with this argument because I, I'm worried that if I don't make it correctly, it will sound like she needs a man to be like who she is. To become the cool, quirky woman that she, independent woman that she was. Hate that. Yeah. But is there a version of the story where like, MJ, who sort of relishes in her, her weirdness, finds an, an adoring fan in Peter Parker at a young age, doesn't have that going forward and sort of smooths out the edges of her personality to sort of like better assimilate into the world because she doesn't have a person being like, the weird way you are. Weirder the better. And she's like, I bought you this black Dahlia necklace. Because you love the murder. Because you love murder and I love that about you. And you are so fucking weird and I love that about you. And it, without that person, does she become a more conventional person? Now, again. Yeah. I hesitate to make that argument because I do not like, but, you know, they have talked in interviews about sort of like what, you know, Zendaya's talked about as an acting exercise. How do I pretend like I don't know who Peter is, who Tom is? Yeah. And who is MJ without this person in her life? And so by that argument, I can kind of accept that this MJ is slightly unrecognizable to me. But I didn't like, love that because I, I really like, there are ways in which she's still there when, when, you know, but, but when she talks about the letter. Yeah. And she refers to that person as her. Yeah. A different person. A different person entirely. And I can see how she, you loved her and she could love you, but I'm not her. Yeah. And that's like, got it. Yeah. You know, when he says, when he finally says, I love you, the thing that she said, wait and tell me when you find me. And he says it to her and she's like, I don't love you. I don't know who you are. Yeah. I got that killed me. Devastating. And there's so much about this, like yearning Peter stuff and his heartbreak that absolutely works on me. Yeah. But there are ways in which we see MJ once again, get fucking tossed off a roof, even though it's Jean. Great jumping her. But like, yeah, she went several movies without being a love interest thrown off a roof, which is a classic Spider-Man love interest thing to do. And here she is once again, being thrown off a roof. And it's just sort of like, I just, I, I miss that original flavor MJ and perhaps we will get more of her, you know, in the coming movies. But the way in which she was presented here, I think was a real missing element of something that I have loved about these movies. I mean, yeah, it's interesting. I didn't feel that way about it, but I don't really have like a counter argument to anything you're saying. And I'm not surprised. I won't be surprised if other people feel that way about it. I think that you're very carefully and well stated. I don't know that I know that. I think I do. I think I guess you're presenting it intentionally as a kind of like a slightly complicated argument to make, but something that feels like it's maybe there in the text. I agree. I agree. And I think there's like, you know, there's the element of it where broadly people change and that's obviously part of the movie is what is, what is, what, what, what is just like the change that is present in your life as you age anyway. From 18 to 20. Yeah, exactly. Like, is there a, a period in your life where more things every day feel like they're like, who am I now? Who do I want to be? So I think there's just broadly, this is a period of change and maturation and evolution for all of the characters. For sure. For sure. For sure. For sure. And then it's probably, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. It's probably, to me, it feels important actually to show us that with a non-superpower character, right? On one hand, yeah, but on the other hand, doesn't Ned just feel exactly like Ned? Ned is, I mean, some of it is, I guess, that Ned is in the movie less, right? So there's more, there are more scenes to kind of assess, is this our MJ? Right. I think some of it is maybe undeniable there with MJ in a way where we're like, we've got a few great moments with Ned. Shark fire energy. Seems like our guy's got a problem, so I'm concerned. That's really funny. It's like, it's hysterical. Yeah. And that did, to your point, feel like our Ned, because while we had not previously seen Ned addicted to energy drinks, Ned was like, let's go to a fucking party. And also, like, we're young American men in Europe. Like, Ned wanted to fuck. Ned wanted to party. Like, you know, that feels right. He wants to experiment with hats. Yeah, exactly. Ned wants to experiment with hats. Exactly. Ned is ready after a couple days of, like, his first girlfriend, time with his first girlfriend, to be like, Peter, when adults are in love, you know. Impeccable. But, you know, also. frankly, like a young man. having matured less than a young woman doesn't feel totally off to me either deeply fair but also aren't they having i don't know what you were like when you when you left college and got your first apartment in the city but first of all my apartment did not look like that and second that's some like friends level where did the money come from for this apartment and secondly a very mature party for like we just got out of college uh sort of energy anyway yeah no not the first time that young ned had purchased a mini keg you could tell correct um i so i got i think the we need to do a weird pass like when i when i saw that quote in the doc after having seen the movie i was like oh yeah i see that and you could almost feel the couple moments that maybe were introduced to account for that right and they were i think without them i would have maybe felt more of what you're saying but because it was just enough in there for me i think to fend off maybe that um uh sense of like a lack of familiarity i loved for example the like there are like 50 people in our apartment so statistically speaking at least two of them are sociopaths i'm like mj you know the um uh the like you know yo you taught me about brain control well you're lucky i believe in this stuff because it does happen mostly with the french mj there's just enough i guess of that for it to feel like the weird quirky uh conspiracy theorist character who we know and love is there but has just grown up and also has done it without this central aspect and i think to your very carefully and well stated point um it's not even i don't even think it has to just be and so who are you if like this dude and this like boyfriend you loved uh wasn't there to tell you it was okay to be like a weird chick it's also just like what if a part of your brain was fucking zapped out of your head you know these are formative seminal experiences in a young person's life and they're gone she doesn't remember that they happened to her right and there's a disorienting aspect of that the fact that they do mention and this was an interesting bit of clarity like we knew coming out of no way home that it was like spider-man is a thing but peter is blasted out of people's minds but they have all these memories of like spider-man rescuing yeah being on the european trip with us yeah which is why they have a few prime suspects for who spidey might be incredible moment just hysterical i missed you in this movie martin star but i'm glad your face isn't that was so funny so it's not even to me i'm like i i don't know what would even be more disorienting if all of those memories completely were gone or if you it was edited over yeah yeah exactly like wouldn't something about who you were and how you conducted yourself be different edited like a like a san diego comic-con clip you know one word yeah pulled slice one sliced out um i will say i thought both of i thought all of the like more emotionally raw moments between the characters worked really well for me and i thought the two the kind of mega scenes in particular them on the other side of the curtain oh that was just wonderful incredibly good that was great also was interested to learn about mj's major and you know what she switched into and out of that was that was fascinating um so to your point from earlier about okay we we like can probably suss out that jean gray is in mj's mind are we supposed to be surprised my theater was there was like a gasp yeah so my experience and i think what i felt more around me in the theater both times was less like there was there was a it was more like a oh yeah like the devastation of it yeah and so whether or not it was supposed to be a surprise or whether or not more importantly landed as a surprise if that is the intention i think it still hits because peter is surprised peter is like i have taken the mask off and you have kissed me and i have sobbed in your arms and i have told you that i love you and miss you and that this is the thing i needed and then you say hold her peter touch her and it's like yeah it is so cruel she killed a lot of people but she killed peter's soul was that the worst thing yeah and so that was just like i thought that hit so hard as like a jean moment but also just like i was like oh my just when peter was like what you're doing is cruel and wrong and evil like i that all really worked and to also kind of reinforce what it means to have your mind taken over that was all i thought effective right but then to underline the mj's portrayal of like you made a decision for me yes yeah like how different is this this decision you made for me not just like yes you had to do this spell but you you did not keep your promise to come find me yeah and like tell me is it like that and you want to keep me safe but is that what i want i don't feel safe i've almost been killed five times in the last 24 hours that was great i do feel like peter parker learned a tiny lesson about consent though when he later admitted he's like i kissed you when you were uh you know he's like i i did not honor the consent uh that that you made about getting your mind erased but i did kiss you when you were and i just thought you should know and then she's like well i don't remember that he's like wait what uh-oh sarah oh bill billy billy boy wow um i thought that the letter moment though really sad i don't know like really sad i don't i don't have that in my mind the single most important thing to you in your life other than ned and i'm really proud of the restraint of this movie well i actually think the real killer that was a tough oh that killed when jean gray said no thoughts of you in there at all brutal nowhere in there i thought that was really tough yeah um that was great you know so when she comes out with the letter i'm like jean already told us there's like no thoughts of you in there at all nothing of him in there i do admire the restraint of this movie to not have them get back together inside of this movie you know i mean yeah she's on the roof yeah she's she's holding the necklace she's thinking about him yearning tendrils it's happening i think it's gonna end up there depending on how many movies zendaya wants to do yes um but uh but we didn't get there right away and it shouldn't be easy exactly this is like the bold but i think right and more potent choice the the challenge of working back to that place not just kind of undoing this thing that should be monumental but it also it's just kind of dagger after dagger it made for such an emotionally devastating ride inside of the film for both of them and i don't know i'm like i was impressed by that choice as well because i think we it makes us a little bit complicit in our desire and expectation like we're being gently in a way i appreciate it mocked with the love's true kiss line yeah you know but then to not actually be able to do that i think it's a little bit too much for me i think it's a little bit too much for me and i think it's a little bit too much for me and i think it's a little bit too much for me and i think it's a little bit too much for me assholes for wanting that with the ned thing because he the handshake does feel like it's just that muscle memory and something maybe there are things that just simply cannot be suppressed and maybe it takes time or maybe there's a rhythm maybe it's bros before hoes i guess maybe it's maybe it's just bros before hoes it could be that so yeah i just i don't know i i thought the restraint is a great word i really admired that choice yeah i really did i loved it um i also want to like so i want to go into the next section to talk about the action a little bit we've already touched a lot of this so we don't have to dwell too long here but um to to transition into this section that i'm calling web slinging um yeah i i do want to say that like the various times we saw mj and peter uh sling through the city uh like the first time when it's when it's uh jean yeah and so she's quite calm which is not something that mj would be and i was just like what's going on here and she's like i don't know i don't know i don't know what's going on here um but then i think the really sad can you give me a ride home one but like just the somber and and the way that the film stayed with him anyway so something that kevin feige said at comic-con about this clip that he showed us was like he never thought he'd see this and and uh you know some people interpreted that as the the whole punisher spidey clip some people interpreted that as like feige the comic book fanboy never thought he would get to see these three characters together but the fun fact about kevin feige is he's not a lifetime comic book fanboy he came to this late in life as a sort of like way forward in the film industry or to poke about it but um but from a business point of view right spidey is a sony character hulk is a universal character punisher who was at lion's gate for a while and jean gray who is a fox character yeah all come home all the chickens have come home to roost and now there's no room for tv we're not here to talk about tv did you have we've already talked about these fight scenes is there anything else you want to say i mean i just i really thought the mind controlled hands up a lot of people have you know are not loving that section because it feels it is very odd that the hand is like working for damage control and stuff like that i don't disagree and it does i think to some people feel like it doesn't belong in this movie but like there's also the like they may be in their mind controlled so you're not going to remember anything stage but peter still took his mask off when there are like cameras everywhere like there's some of that great point a member of my household who shall remain nameless who fucking loved the movie thought it was wonderful let's ask that question it's a you know it's a great question we're asking adam um but you know this desolate daniel cretin the the the director of shang chi like really showing off his uh adept work with with martial arts and this and i i just thought this like you know we saw shots of in the trailer but i just thought this was like so beautifully done it was gorgeous yeah i mean i think we've hit a lot of the particulars already but just in that big picture sense you know one of the things i really love about early spider-man movies is that even though peter or miles has these powers it's still fucking terrifying to jump off a building for the first time you know there's like the Washington Monument moment in Homecoming like Peter's like whoa I'm really high and has to be like coached into how he's gonna do what he's gonna do the you know iconic like maybe can't be topped by any movie ever like that's why we call it a leap of faith yeah Miles Peter B moment you know it's scary to do this thing and so to put Peter in a spot at the beginning of this movie we always love like an upside down you know cityscape shot but just the the height and the speed and the ability to he loves a beam loves a beam to operate at the height of like his uh the capacity and craft and then to so we we feel that evolution but then to reset us because of the organic web was just like so so so smart because then he's not comfortable with them he doesn't know how they work he's trying to suppress his own what his body is telling him you know oh well those aren't going to be you can't use the organic not going to be compatible right like that was all great and then what's impression thank you I do I'll be here literally all day the to your MJ point and how we we have the the gene clue the mind control clue by how MJ is behaving there's also the Peter behavior part of it where he is like so unfamiliar and uncomfortable with what is happening to him the only the time he find he's smashing into buildings the webs are jizzing out of him and then exploding you know they are they are the time he gets it under control is to take care of MJ like the action we talk about this probably most of all with Star Wars but it's it applies across the board the action really told us something consistently about Peter in those moments how he'd been spending his time but also what he was what was top of mind for him then and I think that's a really good point because I think that's a really good point about Peter in those moments how he'd been spending his time but also what he was what was top of mind and I just thought it was great and also it just fucking looked awesome it looked awesome a critique I have seen of this movie is that people felt the ending the sort of de-escalation with Jean was too similar to the de-escalation ending of Thunderbolts let's remind ourselves by watching that moment in Thunderbolts I'm here you're not alone and you know what I don't disagree but also we love Thunderbolts so I'm not mad about it I'm also just not I think it's interesting let's think about this moment this era of Marvel storytelling like you know again thinking about like Wanda and Agatha these these shows that I really liked the you know a critique of MC movies in general and certainly like Homecoming specifically is like how boring you mentioned this earlier how boring sometimes those final boss fights can be and how it's just sort of like who can punch the hardest is how we like sort of end these movies um so for it to be sort of like theater of the mind and a sort of you know reaching your hand out I I do think that that people right now in Hollywood they're not a monolith but I do think there is an interest in telling uh stories about how to reach people rather than how to defeat people and um and I think that's a really beautiful message to sort of dig into I love that certainly feels like uh a necessary and cherished and prized thing to center in mass culture and and blockbusters that are going to make a billion plus dollars right now I think also like we talk a lot about how Marvel at its best one of the things that Marvel can do that the Marvel machine has done is correct and so I yeah I agree I like the idea that like uh the Marvel has a third act problem reached such a fever pitch that it's like let's take that seriously you know not every guess what guys like Doomsday is probably going to have a lot of punching at the end of it we're not done with that no but also we got um you know dozens and dozens and dozens of movies that ended similarly so like with love and respect I think that's a really good thing to do I don't mind two two films having a a bit of a shared strand of DNA if you will in them and I thought the Thunderbolts ending was wonderful I you know I don't know these also feel like appropriate films to re-watch Thunderbolts if you didn't give it a chance it's a great movie it's so good great movie great it was just great to see Bob there it was wonderful Lewis Pullman had quite the San Diego Comic-Con with both baseballs and uh showing up for the Marvel panel um we already talked about what is this a Nolan movie the Aunt May stuff uh it's great to have her here but I did pull a clip uh this is the aforementioned promised X-Men clip and just sort of about fighting your powers versus embracing your powers uh so let's watch this clip so much pain it's not that pain you're afraid of it's yours Charles and as frightening as it may be that pain will make you stronger if you allow yourself to feel it embrace it that will make you more powerful than you ever imagined another one of my guys James McAvoy's here also a fan uh big fan Xavier talking to Xavier days of future past but you know obviously Charles and Jean uh share a lot in common in terms of their own lives and their own lives and their own lives and their own lives and their own lives their skill set and uh you know there before the grace sort of ideas and um I don't know just this idea of like watching Jean unlock this power set which comes from a place of pain right but how can it be channeled and the the message that may gives to both Jean and Peter inside of this theater of the mind memory sort of moment of um you know you yourself are enough but also like what can you gain embracing the harder parts of your of your power set and wear it like armor wear it like armor baby yeah I loved this I thought you know again just welcome to have Marissa Tomei's May here I think the idea that for Peter like there's the you know even just the oh you can see me no one else there's the okay we're braced for he's gonna be the one who can push her out like even Bruce couldn't do that even Hulk couldn't do that right the instant kind of I see everything there's nothing oh boy there's no trace of you in here MJ thing that you noted um the boy this guy's got issues Frank thing this like idea that you the Jean is sensing the totality of somebody's existence kind of instantaneously yeah speed reader for Peter it's this one thing it's this one thing and that felt really keen too and it's May right after she finds out that he's Spider-Man you think you don't have to do this because I've got powers now delightful yeah and you know what is again scary and new about change I love that like it's already pretty scary moment reminding us I don't know Peter just felt like so young to me in that moment in a way that I appreciated like yeah MJ and Ed went off to college and everybody thinks they're an adult and they are they're in this next phase of their life but they're still so young you know and they really were very young very recently and have gone through so much allowing Jean to enter the memory that is like he's carrying like this little bead of light this thing that tells him who he is and who he was and who he can be allowing her to gain access to that so that she can benefit from the thing that he knows May gave him was like so lovely you've got me you're not alone you've got me you've got me you've got me and especially because Peter is in such a dark place in this movie because of loss and grief in the Yolanda Belova you're not the alone and then he could add I've seen your belly button even though you hadn't yet um maybe these are big potato problems and you should think about them all right uh Department of Damage Control I thought this was the weakest part of the film yeah I loved Jamal Tillman but I thought yeah same this character sucked and was not well used yeah I mean it's just sort of kind of cookie cutter like you know I I think it is worth especially with like Jean and the rest of the cast entering the story here reminding us not that we need to be reminded but reminding us that the people in position of power will tell you they're trying to help and really they just want to use you and wield you until they use you up completely we probably get that at this point in the MCU and in these superhero era movie making this might be someone's first yeah exactly and so that I'm not that would be boy what a way to begin your journey um this is what Marvel hopes that you can enter anywhere yeah yeah I do think particularly on the dawn of this new X-Men era that's purposeful you know it is a Spider-Man movie not an X-Men movie but that is going to be such a persistent thing for the X-Men I'm sure it's a thread going forward I just don't think it was well used in this movie or that tremendously interesting all right what's not here it doesn't matter but just sort of like love and respect the teachers are gone our classmates are gone you know, and Gori Rice is not getting paid for this movie. know happy hogan who was a huge part of of the trilogy i missed i missed happy but that would have felt like maybe i don't know it's interesting on the one hand i'm like maybe he's just trying to figure out some star wars stuff on the other hand a lot to work through there um i don't know we already had i wonder if that would have felt crowded because we got the great moment with happy and peter at the gravesite at the end of no way home and so we've sort of done that thing already with the character of like the impact that may had on both of them remains but he doesn't remember peter because the spell did work i wonder if it would have felt like one too many given the mj and ned centrality in this one too many like i have to figure out how to feel about this person being back in my life when they don't remember who i am do you want happy hogan in doomsday to see victor von doom or in in a future movie see victor von doom that looks like tony stark or you're like you know what i can be done with happy hogan good question i still am more interested in the peter or steve version of that i'm interested in morgan i mean that that's gonna make me fucking sob will a cheeseburger be involved i hope so um no daredevil yeah something we speculate about no daredevil and then like reportedly rosario dawson filmed a claire temple scene this is it's funny because one of the first things adam and i talked about when we left given the hospital setting of the closing was like where was claire yeah so that i would have liked i actually would have liked claire if he had if he had in his sort of like i don't see anyone but like we saw how bruised and battered he was if he like occasionally got some like night nurse help yeah or stuff like that you know so yeah claire would have fit i didn't mind matt not being here me neither um it's just something we heavily speculated yeah and it was absolutely delightful to have him in no way home obviously um he's just a very good lawyer just a very good lawyer uh all right we talked about the ned stuff already let's talk about the end credits the best not i'm sorry the net stuff was the best not the end credits spidey in space question mark so grumbling my theater spider-man will not appear in doomsday we're pretty sure probably in secret wars sadie sink is in secret wars how sure are we that spider-man is not going to be in doomsday how sure are we that tom holland is not going to be in doomsday but maybe a different spider-man could be in doomsday i feel like spider-man will be in doomsday right i think he's not but maybe they're lying they like to lie um they especially like to lie about what spider-man is in so on the tracker we see the dot in queens yeah and then we see another dot in space so is this um spider-man like has traveled from queens to space that's the animated you know is sony using this as a sort of like this is about our animated movie that's coming out uh next is that they're like it's our end credits we're going to use it to tease our stuff not your stuff maybe battle world or another peter and incursion there's a very strong theory that toby mcguire is going to be my read was incursion doomsday multiverse setup yeah and i think just the stingers in general recently have all have been doomsday set up like you know the end of doomsday set up and then the end of doomsday set up and then the end of doomsday set up and thunderbolts is fantastic for certainly the end of thunderbolts is yeah here's the fantastic for like it just feels like it's always like something in space is suddenly here now because incursions okay because doomsday but who knows if we marvel look at me i like toby mcguire if we get toby i know andrew i won't be happy okay that's all i like to be really great i think toby's really great in no way home yeah yeah i demand you pastor joke very i demand andrew garfield i need to know if peter three is okay did he go home and find some work-life balance i need to know i'm with you anything else you want to talk about before we go no i don't think so i'm glad that the movie uh seems to be you know bringing people to the theaters what a time to be a fan of movies what a july the odyssey and spider-man brand new day movies hell yeah it's great movies great i'm excited movies hell yeah put it on the quote card um see you at the movies thank you thank you to our pals thank you carlos cherboga scott lee jacob cornett i don't know if jamie's here i copied this over from the odyssey notes so it's possibly that was left over from that or maybe jamie's here somewhere and i didn't see him arjuna arjuna ringa powell joe me and dinner on squad thank you to you mallory rubin thank you for making it through this pod not our last one today and uh delight delighted to talk to you about this film i really wish i had sat next to you and watch this same same i had nerd clusters as you know we'll never we'll never sit apart again maybe uh perhaps possibly uh see you soon for house of the dragon stuff bye you from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus Thank you.