‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ and the Spider-Man Movie Rankings

With great power comes great responsibility. That’s why we brought in Van Lathan to discuss the fourth installment in the Tom Holland–era Spidey series: ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day.’ They break down what worked for them and what didn’t work and sort through what it could all mean for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Later, they debate how it stacks up against the rest of the franchise and rank all 11 Spider-Man movies. (0:00) Intro (1:08) We are returning to American Cinematheque's Friend of the Fest! (2:16) ‘The Thomas Crown Affair’ trailer reaction (8:14) ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ (SPOILER WARNING) (1:03:56) The future of the MCU and box office predictions (1:30:07) How our taste informs our relationship to different genres (1:41:28) The Spider-Man Movie Rankings Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Van Lathan Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh It’s on Prime. A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.®️ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carry sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit mddallies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 1:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:47Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about Spider-Man. Spider-Man does whatever a spider can. On today's episode, we will be joined by Van Lathan to talk about Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the fourth installment in the Tom Holland-era Spider series. We'll break down what worked in this movie, what didn't work, if anything, didn't work, and what it means for the future of the MCU. We will also rank all 11 Spider-Man movies. But first, let's get into some movie news right after this.

• 2:18Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is presented by Amazon Prime. One of the best things about streaming is that you never just pick a title, you pick a feeling. And Prime makes that easy with great entertainment and fast shipping that brings the moment to life. Prime helps you experience the feeling you're craving, shows you can't wait for, and deliveries you don't wait for, one click away. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

• 2:38Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Amanda, to start, we have a programming announcement.

• 2:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:40Sean Fennessey?

  So, we are returning to American Cinematheque's Friend of the Fest this year.

• 2:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Together.

• 2:45Sean Fennessey?

  Together, you and I will both be there. August 25th, 7:30 PM. What film are we screening?

• 2:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Out of Sight, directed by my beloved Steven Soderbergh, starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Really can't wait.

• 2:58Sean Fennessey?

  Have any two actors had more heat between them in a film? Arguably, arguably not. You're also returning to Friend of the Fest, are you not?

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Yes, we are doing The Matrix Reloaded. The entire Midnight Boys pew pew squad is gonna be there.

• 3:09Sean Fennessey?

  And what day and time is that?

• 3:11Speaker 00

  Do not remember. This information is available online.

• 3:15Sean Fennessey?

  Buy tickets, come see us, come say hi. We are very excited. We've been, this is our fourth time, I think, doing the festival. We talented Mr. Ripley, I missed, Gone Girl.

• 3:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I was reading Gone Girl, which I missed. Michael Clayton reunited.

• 3:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 3:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you to the Venice Festival for shifting back a week. Thank you to Labor Day for being as late as it is this year.

• 3:34Sean Fennessey?

  It is very late this year. Let's start with some movie news. I'm glad you're here for this movie news. So there was a trailer for a new film called The Thomas Crown Affair.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:44Sean Fennessey?

  This has been a film twice before. This is a reimagining 30 years later and 60 years later of The Thomas Crown Affair, the second film.

• 3:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, The Thomas Crown Affair, parentheses, 1999.

• 3:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that is a foundational text for Amanda Dobbins.

• 3:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Directed by John McTiernan, maybe you've heard of him. Starring Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, in her early 40s, just absolutely throwing 100 miles an hour in every sense of the word, including topless.

• 4:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 4:12Amanda Dobbins?

  This movie.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  I'm sure she was in her late 40s at that point, maybe almost 50, right? Am I tripping?

• 4:18Sean Fennessey?

  I thought maybe 43.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 4:20Amanda Dobbins?

  But she is on record saying that she, if she didn't propose the topless scenes, then she was like very game because it was a really use it while you got it philosophy.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Preserve the beauty on screen.

• 4:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I really absolutely endorse and respect.

• 4:35Sean Fennessey?

  Relatable.

• 4:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I wish it were relatable in my case, but.

• 4:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think we're all hoping that the stars.

• 4:40Amanda Dobbins?

  That clip, I'm over it.

• 4:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think we're all hopeful that the stars of this new film will have the same feelings about putting themselves on screen. Michael B. Jordan is starring in and directing this new version of The Thomas Crown Affair. Adri Arhona plays the female lead of the film. You and I did get a chance to see some footage, not exactly what has been released when we were at CinemaCon in April. This is the official trailer release. I need to go to you first because of how much the second film means to you. What do you think?

• 5:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I welcome it. Please make as many heist movies about billionaires set in internationally renowned cities as you would like to make. I just thank you, and I'll see you in March. Not, this is not complicated to me. It's not like The Thomas Crown Affair 1999, you know, is There Will Be Blood. It is a remake. It is a little bit cheesy in just the right way. You know, they have sex on the marble stairs, and they like dance at Chipperianis, and then he folds the painting into a briefcase, but it doesn't totally make sense because they cut the shot where you take the frame out. Anyway, we're not defending the highest art of cinema. What we're doing is having fun at the movies. And I can still do it.

• 5:52Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, can you do it?

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Sneaky, ambitious swing from Mike to me. He's been in a lot of movies that have been very successful. But a lot of those movies that are very successful that he's been in are like Sinners is a genre film, right? Has all kinds of things to buy. Creed is in the Rocky verse, Black Panther, whatever have you. This is a movie where you have to go see this movie for Michael B. Jordan, and he has to charisma his way through the entire thing.

• 6:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, he just won an Oscar, so.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  So like what I'm saying is, in this case, this is where, really, this is the movie where you drop your nuts and you go, I am in this gigantic, huge film when she was dripping with charisma in Sinners, right? Both characters had a different type of charisma. But now you solidify your claim as the number one guy if this movie works and is successful.

• 6:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's a really, really bold and exciting movie star move. Because this is as close as he's likely to get to James Bond. It's interesting, it's from the same studio that also has James Bond now. I guess this is, you know what it reminded me of the trailer a lot is Tenet. It looks a lot like Tenet in terms of the way the action is scaled and styled. Hopefully, it has a little bit more narrative coherence for the general audiences at home, but.

• 7:12Amanda Dobbins?

  This is a pro Tenet podcast.

• 7:14Sean Fennessey?

  No question, no question.

• 7:15Amanda Dobbins?

  This is a pro MBJ podcast. I don't know. I got a lot of feedback from people who know how much the 1999 version means to me, and they were excited for me. And then I saw some other people saying, are we sure? You know, this is a risk, blah, blah, blah. I don't really understand that mentality, just except the big budget heist movie from a major movie star, who's also a director.

• 7:36Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. I'm looking forward to it. Any Adri Arhona thoughts?

• 7:39Speaker 00

  All of them.

• 7:40Amanda Dobbins?

  She's so beautiful.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  She gets it done.

• 7:43Amanda Dobbins?

  That's the respectful way of saying what you're thinking. But I, like, honestly, that woman even in, so she was in The Father of the Bride remake? Isn't that right? On like HBO Max or whatever? And even in that not very good movie, I was like, who is this woman? And what's going on here?

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Every time you see her, like, begging to be made a star. One of those interesting people that if we look back at her career five to 10 years from now, like, we're gonna say it was right there for her to become a major star. She just needs the right role to pop, to like get to that next level.

• 8:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't know if she's been better than she was in Hitman. She's amazing in Hitman. She was very funny in Splitsville, which came out last year. I don't know if you saw that movie.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Did not.

• 8:26Sean Fennessey?

  You know, she.

• 8:27Amanda Dobbins?

  It's funny, you might like it.

• 8:28Sean Fennessey?

  You might, you might like it. She's about to be an onslaught, this new Adam Wingard movie that looks very kind of Terminator-inspired. And it sounds like she's Wonder Woman.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:38Sean Fennessey?

  Because that hasn't been confirmed. It sounds like she is.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, she's playing a role in Man of Tomorrow. I think they won't really say what the role is, but it seems pretty likely that she's.

• 8:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Is her name Diana?

• 8:52Speaker 00

  Well, there's talk that that might be a different character that like exists.

• 8:57Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a different Diana?

• 8:59Speaker 00

  Not a different Diana, but it's like a different character entirely. But I think that it's a red herring, because I think she's probably.

• 9:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, isn't Nicholas Holt Buzz Lightyear? Did you ever see that photo? Did you see the photo?

• 9:11Sean Fennessey?

  His suit is similar to Buzz Lightyear's suit.

• 9:13Speaker 00

  Oh, you're talking about the war armor that Lex Luthor wears.

• 9:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it did look like there were some copyright infringements there.

• 9:21Sean Fennessey?

  We're gonna, we're gonna talk about Man of Tomorrow a little bit near the end of this conversation about Spider-Man because I've been thinking a little bit about the long road that we are on and will continue to be on and what will work and what won't work. But let's, let's transition away from the news and directly into Spider-Man: Brand New Day. This is, as I said, the fourth film in the Holland Spider series. It's the first one directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. This is not his first Marvel project, of course. He directed Shang-Chi. He also had a huge hand in the Wonder Man series that came out earlier this year. This new movie brings back Hollins and Daya, Jacob Badelon. We have some new faces who've not appeared in Spider-Man movies before. Jon Bernthal, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando, who has been in them and is back.

• 10:05Sean Fennessey?

  Mark Ruffalo's in this film. And I think we're probably just gonna put the spoiler warning right now.

• 10:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Spoiler, spoiler, spoiler.

• 10:14Sean Fennessey?

  Because if you haven't seen this film, we're gonna talk about not just what happens in it, but who is in it. And one thing that they've been circumspect about, that everybody knows, but they're not supposed to know, but they are supposed to know, is that Sadie Sink is in this movie.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:26Sean Fennessey?

  From Stranger Things, and she is playing a significant character that we will talk about momentarily in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to come.

• 10:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I really, if you don't want to know who's in this movie or what's happening, turn it off. We're not going to abide any of your complaints.

• 10:41Sean Fennessey?

  I think it will be difficult to talk about it without just being direct about all the.

• 10:44Speaker 00

  I don't even understand this criticism. It's starting to get on my nerves. You have to talk about the movie, you have to tell you what happened. If you don't want to, just go see the film and then come back and listen to the podcast after.

• 10:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the good news is, everyone's gonna go see this movie. This is gonna be one of the biggest movies probably of all time.

• 10:55Amanda Dobbins?

  If they didn't already see it at our incredibly oversubscribed and unprofessional screening.

• 11:00Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so the story of the movie. Following Doctor Stephen Strange's spell, at the end of the film Spider-Man: No Way Home, the world has forgotten that Peter Parker exists. Four years later, Parker anonymously protects New York City as the hero Spider-Man and investigates a powerful new threat while his superpowers undergo a surprising and potentially dangerous evolution.

• 11:20Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda, I'll start with you.

• 11:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Why not? Guests first.

• 11:22Sean Fennessey?

  Well, because he's sharing thoughts on the Midnight Boys, you know, it's, you know, it's your show.

• 11:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you. Thanks. Yeah. Remind everyone listening at home. Well, I think this is the least successful of the Tom Holland movies, in my opinion.

• 11:35Sean Fennessey?

  Fascinating take. Okay, great.

• 11:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And I say that because I have just rewatched all of them. I prepared for these rankings that we're about to do. I have rewatched every single of these movies except for Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse in the last week. So, and all of the Tom Holland ones pretty recently. And I think some of it is just the Saved by the Bell, the college years aspect of it all, which is he is no longer a teenager. And he has moved on in his life. And so the essential Spider-Man magic, which is, he's just a kid. Trying to figure life out and trying to figure out what to do with his great power and great responsibility. And just, you know, can a, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man have it all?

• 12:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is, it's, it's perfect, the character. And the further you get from that situation. And the more you have to bring everybody like back into place in sort of Baroque ways. The less room you have for what makes this Spider-Man, and Tom Holland specifically, who I think is probably my favorite Spider-Man and is wonderful. But you just have less room for him because he's got to be alone and sad. And you have to set up whatever the hell new franchise that you guys are going to talk to me about at great lengths. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not there to be like, oh, what are they going to do with the X-Men? I'm there to be like, oh, is Tom Holland going to get to talk to Zendaya and his bud?

• 12:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and like, oh, Marisa Tomei still looks really, really hot in flashback. And maybe I should style my hair like that. It's on the real.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  It's nuts. Since a different world in 1989, 90 and 91, just like has a hold over it.

• 13:16Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, it's so, it's inspiring and I'm proud of it. Should I get those glasses? But the glasses are too big for my prescription, you know, that's kind of, so that's where I am.

• 13:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 13:25Amanda Dobbins?

  When I'm watching a Spider-Man. So I, and also, and crucially, most crucially. You and I did not see this sitting next to each other. And so.

• 13:34Sean Fennessey?

  So you were confused.

• 13:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Well.

• 13:37Sean Fennessey?

  Cause I'm usually the explainer.

• 13:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And there were a few moments where you were not there to lean over and put some context in. And I think in some of the X-Men stuff, that would have been useful.

• 13:48Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we'll talk about that.

• 13:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, we'll see.

• 13:49Sean Fennessey?

  Cause there's some interesting choices that are made in this movie.

• 13:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Does that mean that it's bad? I don't, I don't think I think that it's bad. I think it's just my least favorite of the four because of every, all of the terrain that it has to cover. And also what I'm most interested in, in Superman. I mean Spider-Man. Sorry. I do know the difference.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Peter Parker.

• 14:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Sean Fennessey?

  Ben, what'd you think?

• 14:10Speaker 00

  Obviously, I thought it was phenomenal. Okay. But it's interesting. I think.

• 14:15Sean Fennessey?

  How, how, how deep into your cheek is your tongue though, when you say that?

• 14:19Speaker 00

  Like, no, so when I say phenomenal, I mean, I thought the movie was really, really good. Like, really good. Like, um. And it's interesting hearing, uh, like Amanda's take because like the Spider-Man, the criticism of the Spider-Man that we've gotten. The Tom Holland Spider-Man is that it's actually not actually Spider-Man. Is that the Spider-Man that most people fall in love with or have fallen in love with is a Spider-Man that is working for the Daily Bugle. Is constantly broke, is alone. And one of the main things that he is grappling with is how to be Spider-Man. And also how to be a normal guy, right? How to work and make money.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  He doesn't have in a lot of the comics lore, this great benefactor of Tony Stark and someone that can shepherd him and answer questions for him. What has happened to Spider-Man is the guy who did that died, which is Uncle Ben, which catapulted him to being Spider-Man. But also put him in a situation where he has to figure out a lot of these aspects of his life. And he's just a young adult, just a young guy. That version of Spider-Man hasn't existed in the MCU. Not yet. There's always been for him, somebody who kind of was a little bro in him. Be it Tony Stark, they let Mysterio do it. Then he gets three other, he gets two other mentors.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  That, you know, where other Spider-Man. But this one.

• 15:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's so wonderful when that happens. I watched it again this morning. I loved it.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  So, but at this.

• 15:54Sean Fennessey?

  And Doctor Strange too.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  And Doctor Strange as well.

• 15:56Amanda Dobbins?

  He's, he's.

• 15:57Sean Fennessey?

  This is a big criticism of the previous three movies is, is they won't just let Spider-Man have his own movie.

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:01Sean Fennessey?

  I would argue that this movie doesn't do that either.

• 16:03Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Well, I think, I think that it does. I think that like, there's a certain MCU aspect of it that kind of gets put in. But this is the first movie to me that is directly through his purview as a solo character, having to use all of his resources on his own. To figure things out. And so at the end of the last film, that was the exciting thing about this film. Was that we were finally going to get, it seemed like those first movies were an actual three film arc. To get us to the actual Spider-Man that we know. And I thought that this movie kind of landed that plane.

• 16:38Sean Fennessey?

  I, I think I'm right in between both of you. I think, um, and if I had to guess, this will be the rare case where. My opinion is what the opinion that most people have, which is that like.

• 16:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Congratulations.

• 16:50Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, that's not, that's not common these days, but.

• 16:52Amanda Dobbins?

  The everyman, Sean fantasy.

• 16:54Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I liked this movie. I didn't love it. And it does a lot of things that I really admired.

• 16:59Amanda Dobbins?

  That I disliked it.

• 17:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. But I, I would imagine I liked it more than you. I don't, I do, I do think it is, there are some things about it that are clearly. Much more sophisticated in terms of filmmaking than in the three previous John Watts movies. I think the John Watts movies, and also because of some of the Tony Stark stuff that you talked about with, you know, the nanotech Spidey suit. It's just like, they kind of just seem like a CGI explosion a lot of the time. This movie is much more grounded. Um, it feel, it looks not just because of the story arc, but the suit. And the way that the action is shot, it feels much more like the Spider-Man I imagined when I was reading comic books. And so I really liked that about it. I agree with you about Holland. I think he is the best Spider-Man.

• 17:39Sean Fennessey?

  I think him making this evolution over time. And with that, that series that you talked about, the first three films, what that, those films do is they essentially like elongate the first Sam Raimi movie. The first Sam Raimi movie is the same thing. It's a high school movie, right? About a kid who gets these spider powers. We basically get the high school kid for three movies in this set. And now Tom Holland is 30 years old. And I'm really torn about whether or not this movie being a dour existential examination of. A spider boy becoming a Spider-Man is like, actually works all the way through. I like that they pursued it and I do think it's very true to the character. It's just that the movie is a little sullen for a Spider-Man movie, for my taste.

• 18:22Sean Fennessey?

  The other thing that simultaneously works great and works terribly is there's just way too much going on in this movie. It is way overloaded. It has a lot of responsibilities. Part of that is the responsibilities of amending what happened at the end of Far From Home, which is like, okay. So we know that Peter and Zendaya and Ned, they have to get back together somehow. We have to remind Zendaya and Ned that Peter is Spider-Man and that if we don't do this, then this movie hasn't achieved. An essential part of the Spider-Man lore. But then also, there's a lot of new characters. There's a lot of old characters who are reintroduced. There's an entire organization that is like a rival risk organization that has to be introduced to this.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  Which organization is that?

• 19:01Sean Fennessey?

  Damage Control, which is like appeared, but maybe not with so, so much necessity. Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Been around MCU for a long time.

• 19:07Sean Fennessey?

  But.

• 19:07Amanda Dobbins?

  But I didn't remember that until I went back and rewatched.

• 19:10Sean Fennessey?

  Has never had the centrality that it has in this story.

• 19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I did have a moment watching this and being like, really? You've named this federal bureau Damage Control?

• 19:19Speaker 00

  Well, it's comics.

• 19:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I know that now, Van, but I didn't, you know, I've seen every damn movie. But, but I don't have your, I'm not, I'm not sitting there with your knowledge. I'm sitting there as a dumb dumb, watching these movies as a movie. And I was like, huh.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  I understand it, but like, the name of the organization is S.H.I.E.L.D. because it's S.H.I.E.L.D. in the comic books. And so Damage Control is in the very first Spider-Man movie. Vulture gets his stuff, he's getting it from Damage Control. Damage Control been around for a long time.

• 19:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's been around for a long time, but it's never been put in the center of a movie. And it really does occupy.

• 19:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I remembered that Michael Keaton was the bird guy and also the dad, like great moment in movies.

• 19:58Sean Fennessey?

  Is the Vulture.

• 19:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I know that. But in my head, what I remembered was Michael Keaton, evil bird, dad of the prom date.

• 20:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 20:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And I did not remember the Damage Control.

• 20:09Sean Fennessey?

  And Damage Control obviously appears in Wonder Man, which just came out. So then there's like some connective tissue between the movies and the TV shows. But that's also something that we've criticized these movies for.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  Control has been in other Spider-Man movies. It was in, it was in like No Way Home.

• 20:21Sean Fennessey?

  The second one. Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 00

  The third one. Like, remember Damage Control is like, Damage Control has been in other Spider-Man. So it was waiting to have a larger role in the Spider-Man. Do I think that Damage Control in this situation is the perfect? Like sort of antagonists for Spider-Man in this way? There've probably been things that would have been more thrilling to me, but it was just been them introducing something else that was brand new.

• 20:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, for sure. Um, and you know, the movie wrong foots you because it makes you think that Damage Control, very transparently doesn't. It's clear it's an insidious organization from the very beginning.

• 20:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Once again, spoiler alert, I'm, I don't remember or know anything going into this, except that I want Tom Holland and his buds to get to be together. And Jermell Tillman walks on screen and I was like, oh, so he's, yeah, he's the evil guy. It is instant and obvious, even to people who are not paying, paying attention like me.

• 21:15Sean Fennessey?

  I think even to the extent that the movie knows that it's doing that, like, and maybe that's a little bit of a, a struggle for me with the movie is that. The only real genuine crisis and conflict in the movie to me is Peter's personal crisis. The actual battles, the, the fight sequences, whoever the enemy is going to be, doesn't occupy the same space that like. Maybe a Dr. Octopus does, where it's sort of like, well, this is one of the critical foes in this person's, uh, struggle as a, as a superhero. And he represents something as kind of a counterpoint, you know, that like, he was a mentor and he's been driven mad and he's also a man of science. Like, there's a lot of deep ideas in the villains in the Spider-Man universe.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:55Sean Fennessey?

  This one, I felt, kind of has a big gaping hole where that feeling usually goes. So I struggled with that a little bit. And then there's the whole Jean Grey component.

• 22:09Sean Fennessey?

  Which.

• 22:11Sean Fennessey?

  I could not be more mixed on. On the, here's, here's, here's my positives on the introduction of Jean Grey into this movie. One, Sadie Sink, I think is excellent casting. Um, I was not a big Stranger Things person. I think I quit after the third season. I don't have a ton of exposure to her. Right. I thought she was terrific in this movie. I think the X-Men are very well set up with her in this part. To go back to some of the canonical stuff that Ben is talking about. As far as I know, Spider-Man and Jean Grey have no relationship. It's just kind of weird to go into a movie like this and see them interacting in the way that they necessarily do. That doesn't mean that it's bad.

• 22:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's because they have trauma, you know? So they understand each other and they're lonely.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  They meet.

• 22:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And they've lost someone that they love, which, you know, is also how the other Spideys bond in No Way Home.

• 22:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I rewatched this morning.

• 22:56Sean Fennessey?

  That stuff is getting a little padded at this point, obviously.

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Hallmark.

• 22:58Sean Fennessey?

  But I, but I, I did feel at a certain point that the movie, and I'm curious if you guys feel this way, sort of becomes Jean Grey's movie for about 40 minutes.

• 23:07Amanda Dobbins?

  It does.

• 23:08Sean Fennessey?

  And this is something that many MCU movies are criticized for, but it does overwhelm the Spider-Man quality of the movie. And it's a two hour and 25 minute movie. And I'm not necessarily advocating for excising Jean Grey entirely, but there's not a ton of reason for her to be in this movie other than just to set up what is to come, narratively speaking.

• 23:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, though, again, I rewatched the other, the Holland trilogy before this in rapid succession, preparing for this podcast. And I had forgotten how much Tony Stark there is in it and how much of it is just interstitial between, you know, The Snap and whatever is going on in the Marvel. And those three movies are used in this, in the same way to continue stories that are going on outside as much as they are Spidey stories.

• 23:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 23:51Amanda Dobbins?

  So I don't think it's different. It's just the tenor of Tony Stark being like, I got you, bud. Here's your suit. You know, Gwyneth Paltrow, you marry me versus Sadie Sink being like, I can control everyone's mind, but not my sister. You know, it's, it's a different vibe.

• 24:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  I think even in the, like, and this was a, Jomie had this criticism. A lot of Midnight Boys had this criticism that the movie has a villain problem. And I think my thing was this villain, Jean Grey being the villain in this movie, is kind of even, you know, to my, against my, uh, better, my preferences, is continuing in the tradition of Spider-Man movies in live action.

• 24:31Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Which, if you look at Green Goblin, if you look at, uh, Dr. Octopus, which I rewatched that movie. And Raimi's skill as a horror director is underrated, not in the grand scheme of things. Obviously, he's one of the masters of that craft, but in how he crafts that movie, there are a lot of just straight up horror sequences.

• 24:52Sean Fennessey?

  He's perfect for Spider-Man because Spider-Man is afraid of the villains in his world. It's different than Captain America.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  And you have to be afraid of them. So like, he makes them scary, right? But Octopus, Octavius in that movie is a tortured genius that is a good guy.

• 25:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  That is doing a bad thing.

• 25:12Sean Fennessey?

  In all of these movies, Electro and Amazing Spider-Man 2, you know?

• 25:16Speaker 00

  The only one that's kind of not that.

• 25:17Sean Fennessey?

  Flint Marco, Sandman is like a tragic figure.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Right. The only one that's kind of not that is Mysterio to a degree, right? They even bring all of these characters back in No Way Home and still play to those same hits.

• 25:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  So to that end, Jean Grey being someone that starts off as villainous and is doing a villainous thing because of this profound trauma that she has, is in line with other things that we've seen in Spider-Man movies. And Spider-Man has been the superhero rehabilitator as much as he's been the person that needs to defeat the villain.

• 25:50Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  I thought it was a really interesting move to have her occupy that space in this movie. I thought it was really interesting. To your point, though, there gets to be a point in the movie where we're in Jean's story now. And it was always gonna be interesting how people related to that after three movies and come in to see Spider-Man. I, I thought it was in the same tradition as Civil War being a Black Panther origin story.

• 26:21Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Like, uh, to a lesser degree, Iron Man 2 being a Black Widow origin story. She occupies a much larger part of this movie than those characters do. Black Panther is in a lot of Civil War and has an entire arc in Civil War. But yeah, so like, I didn't have as much of a problem with it.

• 26:38Sean Fennessey?

  I never felt watching Civil War, though, like, uh, well, now we're in a Black Panther movie.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  Right, but.

• 26:45Sean Fennessey?

  I felt like this is like a tributary in the story and we're gonna go back to Tony and Cap momentarily.

• 26:50Speaker 00

  But I, but I'll say, I'll say that like, there's a reason why, uh, Jean Grey is just a much, much, much, much more fundamental, not to me, eh, everybody, but a much more fundamental, no, to me too.

• 27:04Sean Fennessey?

  She's a linchpin in Marvel storytelling. She's one of the most important Marvel characters ever.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know why I'm pandering. No, like, Jean Grey in this regard is a much, much larger character.

• 27:12Sean Fennessey?

  Hang in there. This is, you're gonna need to know this.

• 27:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I do know this.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  Then, then to Charles.

• 27:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought you were about to say that she's like the most powerful superhero of all the superheroes, which you guys always say about every time we, you know, every superhero that gets introduced is undefeatable.

• 27:28Sean Fennessey?

  The, the other challenge with this, of course, is that like, we've already seen the Dark Phoenix story told twice before.

• 27:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so Jean Grey is Dark Phoenix?

• 27:35Sean Fennessey?

  She is, yeah.

• 27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 27:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  The Phoenix, the Phoenix Force is an entity that is bonded to Jean Grey.

• 27:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, and then Jennifer Lawrence played a, a blue person who was an X-Man, but not Dark Phoenix.

• 27:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, that's what I always get confused on.

• 27:50Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think you're making a very good point. And I think, I haven't even mentioned a bunch of other characters who are in this movie and play somewhat critical roles in this movie. Uh, Bernthal's Punisher plays a very big part in the film.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  It's a team up.

• 28:05Sean Fennessey?

  Um, The Incredible Hulk, uh, is in the film, Ruffalo's Hulk.

• 28:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:09Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, we see Scorpion in full for the first time. We see Tombstone in this movie. We see a bunch of comic book characters, right? And the comic book-ish-ness of the movie, I loved.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  There's an incredible sequence with the Punisher and the Hulk and Spider-Man in the middle of the movie where I was like, this is what I have wanted my whole life.

• 28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:33Sean Fennessey?

  Like, when we joke around about like being dorks and 12 years old, like, that sequence in the movie, which I don't think really is a very effective movie storytelling, but the sequence itself, I was like, this just rocks. Like, I could watch this for an hour and enjoy myself, but why The Incredible Hulk is in this movie in the first place? Is a, is a little debatable?

• 28:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Because he's teaching Spider-Man about Jeanette, like biohacking.

• 28:56Sean Fennessey?

  Inhibitors.

• 28:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, in order to not be consumed by his spider hormones.

• 29:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, um, and I have a strong reading of that entire sequence and, and like what all that means to this movie.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:06Sean Fennessey?

  So like, there's a part of my brain that loved seeing that big splash page sequence where those three guys are fighting.

• 29:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:13Sean Fennessey?

  There's a part of me that loved seeing Jean Grey freeze all of New York City with the, her power and, and, and start thinking about the future of a cool X-Men movie. And then there's another part of me that was like, felt like I was looking at my watch every 30 minutes and being like, how much is left in this?

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 29:28Sean Fennessey?

  Because it feels glacially paced at times. And then the movie goes really fast and then it slows down. And MJ and Peter are talking.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:35Sean Fennessey?

  And they're trying to figure out their relationship. And then it speeds up again.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  So invested, then it jumps out of that.

• 29:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and, and so I just felt like it was uneven, you know, it's just, and, and not bad and pretty enjoyable.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:46Sean Fennessey?

  And I think is mostly gonna give people what they're looking for here, but there was also just something a little bit off.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  Well, so this is what I, okay, so the movie is not the perfect version of itself. My rule for comic book movies, really for any movie, my role, my rule for any movie is as long as it works. I wouldn't have cared if Angel would have flown into the movie. Wouldn't have cared if the one of all would have been in the movie.

• 30:11Sean Fennessey?

  Warren Worthington?

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Warren Worthington III. I wouldn't have cared as, as long as it works, as long as you deploy the characters. As, as long as you deploy the characters in a way that serves the story and makes for something cool, as long as it works. If it didn't work for people, then it didn't work. And so it was, it was fat. But, you know, I think the movie is a little bit, I think the parts of the movie that don't work are the parts that are a little reactionary, because this movie comes out and is being made, the like, Marvel has a, a big, big sort of, uh, blunder. Maybe it was the Marvels, I can't remember which one it was. And then like, right after that happens, they said, hey, first day of shooting, brand new day. So a part of this movie, the, the ethos was to restore the feeling.

• 30:57Sean Fennessey?

  Right, we have a problem to solve.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Like, we have a problem to solve. So this is what we're gonna do. We have this gigantic character. We have other characters that you like. You're gonna come to see this and we're gonna give you both the heart and the superhero bonanza that you want, that's gonna remind you of some of the times that you had fun at the theater before.

• 31:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and they have released the movie exactly one week after Comic-Con when they took over Saturday night. And you were there in person to be like, no, look over here, look at all of the cool new things that we're doing in Marvel. And here's our new Black Panther and here's Ryan Gosling, et cetera. So it is of a piece of, just trying to restart.

• 31:32Speaker 00

  So like, I think that it, see, the box office plus the fact that this movie is good enough for a lot of people, fun enough, really good for some people, then some people are gonna be, uh, like, less thrilled about it. But that it is good and makes a lot of money is gonna be enough for people to be like, okay, they can still do this. But they were definitely at some points, just trying to give you this one frame where the Punisher is shooting the Hulk, Spider-Man is on top, and that frame was for you to be like, wow. I, like you said in Hall H, I never saw, thought I'd see those three characters on screen together.

• 32:09Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  And that, that frame is meant to like elicit that response from you.

• 32:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a much bigger thing going on here, which in theory will transpire over the next two Avengers movies where it's like, all right, all of us dorks have been waiting a really long time for everybody to be in the same movie. And we couldn't, couldn't get the X-Men in the movie. We didn't, hadn't introduced all the other characters. Like, they've introduced probably 80% of the, maybe 90% of the major Marvel characters now in movies. Like, we've gotten pretty far, something like Ghost Rider or Blade, like, we haven't quite gotten everybody, but most of them are gonna come around. So they're gonna fulfill all those, those dreams, desires and wishes. Um, but that doesn't change like what's in the actual movies, you know?

• 32:49Speaker 00

  Certainly.

• 32:49Sean Fennessey?

  And to me, I've been at war with this for years where I'm like, I'm getting these endorphin hits watching the films.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:56Sean Fennessey?

  And then I'm thinking about what happened in the film like an hour later and I'm like, so what happened again? Which I find to be a little bit of a sign of the struggles that they have with the general storytelling as they try to manage delivering some of those moments to the audience. The, one of the things that the movie does that I'm curious to hear what you guys think about it is, you know, they introduced this idea of the arachnid DNA essentially taking on a greater.

• 33:21Speaker 00

  Second mutation, yeah.

• 33:22Sean Fennessey?

  A stronger presence in his body than what has come before. And so this becomes kind of like a. Post puberty, pubescent story. And we see that the webs start forming naturally inside of his body, which is always the most wonderful sperm laden metaphor.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  I remember it.

• 33:41Sean Fennessey?

  Can't control himself, just spurting everywhere.

• 33:45Amanda Dobbins?

  They do, they make a point of calling them spider hormones. The spider hormones are surging, not like the spider DNA or the spider whatever is taking over. So yeah, it's not a complicated metaphor.

• 33:57Sean Fennessey?

  What did, what did you think of how it was portrayed in the, in the movie?

• 34:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Made a lot of sense, you know? In general, I feel like there's a lot of attention paid to puberty and then no attention to paid to what happens after. And our bodies are always changing, as you know, because you just fell off the cliff. Are you off the cliff yet?

• 34:14Speaker 00

  I'm in the motherfucking canyon.

• 34:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, yeah, yeah. Do you have any corrective lenses?

• 34:19Speaker 00

  No, but like my, I got the reading glasses situation.

• 34:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm rapidly headed there. So I, I, I thought it made a lot of sense and is, you know, like a, a pretty neat literalization, not just of like, it's hard to grow up, but also the battle between being Peter and being Spider-Man and who are you going to be? And can, can all of these weird, crazy scientists help you? So it, it, it worked. I like your interpretation. You want to trot it out for the people?

• 34:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it feels like the whole movie is about Peter Parker trying to find the right SSRIs. You know, like the whole, the inhibitor that we talked about that he, you know, he observes that Bruce Banner is using and that the idea of manipulating science and technology to get your hormones in the right perfect balance. Like, I'm not sure how literally the screenwriters were thinking of this idea, but it reminded me a lot of talking to people who have had these experiences where they're just like, I, I was off and now I'm fine. And because I found what the right mix is for me. And it's a very common experience for a lot of people. And I, I thought it was pretty clever and like deftly communicated that as Peter was getting older and getting frankly, more depressed, dealing more with loss.

• 35:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And the true villain in this movie is loneliness. So, you know?

• 35:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, shout out Prozac, which I am, you know?

• 35:35Sean Fennessey?

  I lost my girl, I lost my best friend, I lost my aunt, like I lost all these things. How do I, how do I deal with it?

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Can I make a crude, give like the audience a crude understanding of like just my general feeling and my connection to these movies? Do you guys ever have a friend that you have a lot of history with? So the friend makes inside jokes. You find the jokes funny, like legitimately hysterical because of your history with that person. And then sometimes there's a third person in the room and they go, that's not that funny. Or they go, it's kind of funny. They go, yeah, it's humorous, but then why do you find that person so funny?

• 36:11Sean Fennessey?

  Is this you on this every episode of this show? Is that what you're saying?

• 36:14Speaker 00

  No, but, but what I'm saying is that like for me.

• 36:16Amanda Dobbins?

  It's humorous, it's just you might as well just walk into the ocean, you know? That's just like, yeah, that is.

• 36:22Speaker 00

  So for me, when I look at some of the stuff that's happening on the screen, like for Spider-Man, even in Spider-Man 2, they do this exact same thing in the reverse, which is Spider-Man is going through something emotional, so he actually loses his powers. If you remember, he, he can't see anymore. The webs aren't coming out because so much of who Peter Parker is, is connected to his emotional, emotional state. Remember, he's trying to be a human being that has all of these relationships and has all of these people that he cares about and also trying to save New York City and be something more than what he is. And then also another thing about Spider-Man that is fundamental, that this movie hasn't really struggled with as much, is he's also always coming to terms with his power.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  Spider-Man is a much more powerful character than sometimes he is able to be. He pulls his punches when he is fighting people. He like doesn't use or can't control some of the aspects of his arachnid DNA that really make him almost a god tier character. He's super strong and super capable. And this is the film, it's been done in other movies, that kind of wrestles with that. Like Spider-Man in his, in his final mutation, how does he just not control what's going on emotionally in his life? But the damage he can do if he's unchecked.

• 37:43Sean Fennessey?

  I thought some of this stuff was really well done in the movie, actually. And they, they contrasted, and I think it really explains neatly why the Punisher is there. I mean, the Punisher, the Frank Castle character in Spider-Man do have a long tradition together in the comic books. They're often pitted against each other. They have this uneasy alliance. Jon Bernthal has been playing the Punisher for a very long time. Never like this, his version of the Punisher is very R rated and very violent. This one is PG 13 and pulling his punches on F bombs and not quite going as far as he usually does.

• 38:12Amanda Dobbins?

  And making chili.

• 38:12Sean Fennessey?

  And making chili, yes, having a lot of comic relief. But this movie gets Spider-Man right all the way up against the wall of how violent can Spider-Man be? How, like, will he kill?

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Like without the black suit, without something like taking him, well, it is, I guess.

• 38:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of the version of the mutation, yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:31Sean Fennessey?

  Where he's like becoming a, a man spider instead of a Spider-Man.

• 38:37Sean Fennessey?

  And I, I mostly like this, however, I feel that this movie is really indebted to two movies. And I, I was thinking of this immediately. I don't know if this occurred to you guys. I saw the movie sitting next to Joanna and we talked about it after I saw it. The first one is The Dark Knight, which is the movie is immediately communicating like this is a darker Spider-Man movie, all the way to the point where in that opening tank chase sequence, like the tank literally flips upside down into a building, a brick wall. And it is kind of almost feels like it's recreating the truck flip from The Dark Knight. But just the sense of like, there's a little bit more gravity and seriousness in this Spider-Man movie. The second one that I feel is unmistakable is The Matrix, that there is something about being the chosen one,

• 39:17Sean Fennessey?

  harnessing your power, finding balance, particularly in that final conclusive battle sequence when he's like, I'm both. When he communicates that he's both Spider-Man and Peter Parker.

• 39:28Sean Fennessey?

  The fight sequences with the hand, I haven't even mentioned the hand, another canonical spider, spider figures. And even small stuff like the Jean Grey body jumping telepathic trick that she does, which resembles the agents moving into people's bodies.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  Or fallen.

• 39:47Sean Fennessey?

  Or fallen, good, good, good shout, Denzel Washington film, yeah, good movie. But like, there's even a moment literally in the movie where Jean body jumps into helicopter pilot and like takes off, it's like the same scene from The Matrix. And I don't know if Dustin Daniel Cretton was watching The Matrix or something, but there are a lot of sequences where I was thinking of these movies. Honestly, not a bad thing. The Matrix is 27 years old. If you're going to borrow from something, it's kind of a cool idea. But it is interesting that in order to kind of like evolve the character, it needs to lift some of the sentiments from other movies because I think we as viewers are kind of trapped between the two things that you're describing. One, the Holland films that we know.

• 40:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 40:27Sean Fennessey?

  This is the fourth time we've seen him. They're a little bit brighter, a little bit chirpier, a little bit more like Mr. Stark, Mr. Stark. And then the Spider-Man that we know, which is like this 20 something guy, who's trying to figure out his love life, who's trying to balance his career and also has this huge burden of being Spider-Man. I, I feel like it was mostly pretty successful.

• 40:47Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, I'm kind of torn. It's weird to be like, I'm the old guy now who sees The Matrix instantaneously when I'm watching a movie because when you're a kid, you don't know the movie references and you have to kind of catch up to them. And now I'm like, do the 25 year olds know that he's Neo? That that's what they want you to be?

• 41:02Speaker 00

  Do you think they'll enjoy it more or less if they know?

• 41:05Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think it really matters. I mean, I, I, I, it's just interesting for me as a movie watcher to get to that phase of my life.

• 41:10Amanda Dobbins?

  You and I were talking about before we started recording how, and it's a little bit because after we saw this new movie, then we went back and did research, but I had a hard time remembering this movie before we recorded. And in fact, we, we rewatched the trailer just to refresh our, of, okay, oh, so there's this happened and there's that truck sequence and there's the hand and there's like the, the Punisher splash thing. So I will say just in terms of the set pieces and bringing all of those and the movie action that you're seeing on screen, if you're not there for the comic book nerdery of it all, and if you're not there being like, oh my God, it's the Dark Light or The Matrix, I don't know that they're the most memorable.

• 41:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, I do feel like some of the action stuff just blurred until you get to the hand blurred together a bit.

• 42:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Amanda Dobbins?

  In, in my head. So to answer your question of will they enjoy it if they don't see those things? I mean, maybe they'll enjoy it more because they're not looking for references or maybe it won't feel reheated. Or maybe the action stuff falls a little flat until you get in person.

• 42:18Sean Fennessey?

  How did you feel then, both of you guys, about how Zendaya and Ned are used in the movie? And how that story is communicated of them eventually reuniting?

• 42:27Speaker 00

  I thought that it was like really well done. I thought that there are times in the movie, those are the characters in this film that challenged Spider-Man the most. Everything else is just an obstacle.

• 42:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  Like everything else is just an obstacle. Spider-Man is going to win. He's going to get over this. They, they are going to get through the Punisher, he's going to get through the Hulk, he's going to get through the hand, he's going to figure it out. This is the one part of the movie to where you actually don't know if he's going to be okay. And that's another central thing about the character, which is not really being sure if Peter Parker is going to figure this out. He kind of does, but the movie doesn't give it to you. The movie, they are reunited, but not in the same way that they were. The end of the movie gives you hope that it could happen. So all the personal investment that you've made into the character of Peter Parker and really the kind of Scooby Doo, like Dr. Strange says, element of his friend group helping him.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  Not everybody was a gigantic fan of that because once again, it's kind of like Spider-Man by committee. But that was the thing that worked the most because.

• 43:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll be the guy in the chair.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, that, that was the thing that worked the most because that was the thing that undergirded the first three movies more than anything else. Like him and his friends.

• 43:45Amanda Dobbins?

  At the very end, when he does the handshake with Ned, I, I did tear up. So, you know, clearly that worked for me, even though getting them back together.

• 43:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Is getting Ned back into the mix is a little labored. I thought the way that they used the MJ character and they used the Jean Grey of it all and her specific powers to bring MJ back into his life was quite effective and upsetting.

• 44:10Sean Fennessey?

  The false start setup is an excellent scene. Yeah, that's like one of the best scenes in the movie.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  I mean, I think a lot of the scenes, like even when Spider-Man comes back from this triumph and she's sitting there reading the letter, you're like, oh shit. Like, I think most, you know, they're married. So I think, I think.

• 44:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, they have, they have great chemistry.

• 44:28Speaker 00

  They have great, hopefully, you know, for them. But like, I think.

• 44:32Sean Fennessey?

  Did you watch the GQ Spider-Man trivia video that the cast did?

• 44:36Speaker 00

  No, I didn't see it.

• 44:37Sean Fennessey?

  It was really, really, it was very entertaining, but where they were asked questions about Spider-Man lore and it was the whole cast. And, you know, unsurprisingly, Tom Holland got most of the questions right. Zendaya got a couple right. Jon Bernthal and Sadie Sink barely spoke during the entire quiz.

• 44:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I relate.

• 44:51Sean Fennessey?

  They seemed to not know and they were, they were in the Dobbins chair. But watching Zendaya, how much she loves her husband was really interesting because she was just like leaning into him constantly, laughing, like turning, making side jokes to him. Like, and you, I agree, you can kind of feel it in the movie. Like, they just, they vibe, they, they, they have a thing. And when they're together in the movie, the movie is really working and you really want them, you really want her to wake up and remember, which is a credit to the storytelling.

• 45:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But also a credit to the storytelling that she, there's not a, I mean, it gives you the faint and so it kind of gives you that moment and takes it away from you.

• 45:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  But then MJ herself is just like, I don't, I don't know that person. Yeah, like it's really, it's like very smart and grown up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she's like, I'm, I'm sorry, but, but that's not gonna happen. Good luck.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  And he's, he's gonna have to do it like he does everything else Spider-Man does the hard way. I think, you know, me connecting to the movie is obviously, like I said, part of my experience with the characters and part of that. I also, when I re-watch Spider-Man 2 and re-watch the original Spider-Man, I think these, think the movies are close. I think this is by far the best one of the Marvel MCU Spider-Mans that they've made because it's really, to me, the only faithful adaptation of the character itself. Everything else was, to me, to give.

• 46:13Amanda Dobbins?

  All right, Emily Wilson over here.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  I don't, I, I honestly don't, like, we, we've had this conversation on The Midnight Boys. We had a very ill-fated midnight court against.

• 46:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Doesn't like drug make either.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  So like, I, I honestly have enjoyed the Tom Holland Spider-Man, but have never really completely bought in because of how much they leaned him on other characters. This, whereas there were some team-ups, Spider-Man was on point, running point at every time.

• 46:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's, it's interesting to think about that. And I guess when we talk about ranking the movies, we can discuss that some. But I feel like part of the reason why they did it this way is very logical because there were two other very recent versions of Spider-Man that were more interested in the adult Peter that was dealing with some of these issues. So they had to differentiate somehow, right?

• 47:01Speaker 00

  Well, I don't even think it was that. I think that those other Spider-Mans don't have to worry about being woven into a larger universal narrative.

• 47:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  So what makes more sense to do right here is because you already have Tony Stark, who is the big swinging of the MCU.

• 47:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Look at that self-edit.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  That's why I'm following, there's a lady in the room. The big swinging of, of the MCU to bring Spider-Man in, a character who is infinitely, infinitely more culturally relevant than Iron Man was at that point in every way. It makes sense to have Iron Man shepherd him and like steward him so that Spider-Man doesn't get in the way of the perfect art that you've created for Iron Man. He comes in under Tony Stark so that when you kill Tony Stark in Endgame, everybody is not thinking, oh, we still have Spider-Man. It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? And so it's the same problem that kind of Batman and Superman ran into because it was

• 48:06Speaker 00

  like you bring Batman into the Superman movies, is this a Batman movie? Is this a Superman movie? How do you split it? You think you want both people in that movie, but you really gotta do it right. So this Spider-Man had to fit in to something that other Spider-Man haven't. It was their universe. This universe, up to this point, hasn't been his.

• 48:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I, it struck me also how much the Marvel tone has changed from the quippiness of Avengers 1 and 2 and even Spider-Man Homecoming. And, and Holland is kind of like the apotheosis of that and he was such a fit and cast into a universe that had already been established by Iron Man and RDJ and all of these people and the jokes or whatever. But that's what he's doing. He, in the first three, he's doing very quippy stuff and he's really good at it.

• 48:55Sean Fennessey?

  And that's very, to me, that's very true to Spider-Man, the wise, cracking web slinger. That's a part, that's a key component in the comics as well.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  They've never really got it right in the movies, though. Only, you know who really got that right? Garfield. Garfield was the Spider-Man that was like, you pull out the knife and he goes, oh my God, oh my God, my weakness, small knife, small knife. And then, and then he turns around, but like, he was the guy that got that right more than anyone. Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man is so emotional and so it works.

• 49:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  But as far as that version of the character.

• 49:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Pearson's just dragging him across three movies, but that's fine.

• 49:32Speaker 00

  They've never really nailed it.

• 49:34Amanda Dobbins?

  She always does it, Kiki forever.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:36Sean Fennessey?

  Not sure I agree with that take, but we can litigate that momentarily. Um, I, let's talk a little bit more about Jean Grey.

• 49:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so she can control minds? That's what it is? That's what she's doing?

• 49:49Speaker 00

  Telepath, telekinetic.

• 49:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so let's put that in.

• 49:53Sean Fennessey?

  She can move objects with her mind, she can control people's minds, she can influence behaviors, she can, if powerful enough, stop time, freeze time. She, she has.

• 50:02Amanda Dobbins?

  How is she, because time is a construct and it's just what's going on in our minds?

• 50:06Speaker 00

  She can make you, like, you've seen, have you ever seen the original X-Men?

• 50:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Which one? The ones with Patrick Stewart? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  You ever see when like, like at the beginning of the second one, where everybody stops and you know that Xavier is about to come into the room because Xavier is the world's.

• 50:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I, I don't know until he comes into the room, but yes.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  Xavier, well, as soon as that happened in theory, we started clapping because we knew Xavier was about to roll in. But like Xavier is the world's most powerful telepath, so he could literally could be in, like, Wrigley Field watching MVP candidate Pete Crow Armstrong.

• 50:39Sean Fennessey?

  Please do not, do not, do not talk about that in front of me. Please, for the love of fucking God. It's the five-year anniversary of that trade, literally today.

• 50:50Amanda Dobbins?

  That's the cup that when we were at Wrigley last summer, you were just like sulking, being like, he used to be a.

• 50:55Sean Fennessey?

  He's the best player in baseball.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  So he literally could be there as PCA steals three bases, hits two homers.

• 51:02Sean Fennessey?

  I will, I will fucking kill myself.

• 51:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I just thought we were gonna say, who in the booth? Which, right on, Lucas.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  And so he could, he could, he could stay, it's tough. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. I mean, look, it's like, look, the Mets are, that's a tough, that's a tough one.

• 51:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Where, what is your baseball team?

• 51:19Speaker 00

  Uh, the Dodgers.

• 51:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, that's not really real.

• 51:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, listen, I, you still haven't taken me to Dodger Stadium.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  We have to go.

• 51:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, well, I'm leaving town, so why don't you work on a September ticket?

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Well, they'll be here all the way through.

• 51:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  So, um, but, but yeah, so like, he could be in Wrigley Field and just stop everybody at the same time in their tracks because that's how strong of a telepath that he is.

• 51:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so she, she is also a telepath.

• 51:46Sean Fennessey?

  She's, she's, obviously in the movie, she doesn't realize how powerful she is. The movie is about her learning the extent of her powers.

• 51:54Sean Fennessey?

  The, the movie does something kind of interesting to me, which is that it aligns Spider-Man and Jean, obviously, as outsiders. The movie is very much about outsiders. The X-Men story is about outsider people coming together to form a team and to better understand themselves in the world, yada, yada, yada.

• 52:08Sean Fennessey?

  But Jean is a mutant and Spider-Man is a guy who got bit by a spider. Like, they are different and.

• 52:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Go on.

• 52:14Sean Fennessey?

  Well, part of what's interesting about Spider-Man is.

• 52:16Amanda Dobbins?

  What is, what is a mutant?

• 52:18Sean Fennessey?

  Immune is you're born that way.

• 52:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 52:20Sean Fennessey?

  She's, she was born with telepathic powers and they make, they may reveal themselves as you get older, but, but they're special earlier on historically. Spider-Man is raised with like a human morality.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  Ask it.

• 52:31Sean Fennessey?

  A human experience.

• 52:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, so are you, are you born that way? Is it, is it a genetic trait?

• 52:36Speaker 00

  So earlier on in the history of Marvel, this group of beings called the Celestials.

• 52:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Oh, so this is just straight Greek mythology.

• 52:45Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, literally, yeah, all the characters.

• 52:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I mean, I, like, you know, I do know that.

• 52:49Sean Fennessey?

  Or Norse mythology.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Norse mythology, so they.

• 52:53Amanda Dobbins?

  But this is genetic.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  Played with human DNA. And like, even the characters that have powers, this is really way to, this is like ridic, we don't even talk about this on Midnight Boys, even the characters who have powers, they have a gene that lets them unlock those powers. So Spider-Man was born different because for, there are people in Marvel that the radioactive spider biting them would have killed them. There are people in Marvel that being exposed to the gamma, it would have killed them. But they have a different set of genes that's designed by the Celestials. The mutants have, are differently designed by the Celestials, meaning that their powers will manifest during puberty.

• 53:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  Particularly when they get like super stressed out and stuff.

• 53:32Amanda Dobbins?

  During puberty?

• 53:33Speaker 00

  It comes out during puberty.

• 53:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Are the Celestials diff, yeah, no, I.

• 53:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's all metaphor.

• 53:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I got it.

• 53:40Sean Fennessey?

  Our changing bodies.

• 53:41Amanda Dobbins?

  So are this.

• 53:43Sean Fennessey?

  What was it like, what was puberty like for you?

• 53:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I was about to ask.

• 53:46Sean Fennessey?

  Did you have a good time?

• 53:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I was about to ask, has, have comic books gotten to perimenopause yet? Like, what's up with Diana? Like, at, you know, 42?

• 53:54Speaker 00

  She's a god.

• 53:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's right. I know, because she is literally, she's already. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but okay, who's a, who's a demigod?

• 54:02Speaker 00

  You know what?

• 54:02Sean Fennessey?

  That's a one in gene is.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  They kind of deal with this. Jean will definitely go through it.

• 54:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 54:08Speaker 00

  Those hot flashes will be insane.

• 54:09Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, before, before the hot flashes.

• 54:12Speaker 00

  Cause you know, you know, you know, who kind of went through this? They explored it a little bit in Watchmen a little bit. As you watch, uh, like her, like her.

• 54:21Sean Fennessey?

  Carly Googino and Malin Ackerman's characters.

• 54:23Speaker 00

  She talks about it a little bit, aging superhero, heroine. And you, she talks about a little bit, some of the stuff they do, they go into it that much.

• 54:31Sean Fennessey?

  They do.

• 54:31Speaker 00

  Overall, aging.

• 54:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh huh.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  Because these characters are supposed to be perpetually young.

• 54:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 54:36Speaker 00

  It's something that comics don't do very well. Unless they want to kill a character.

• 54:39Sean Fennessey?

  This is something that distinguishes this movie is like.

• 54:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say like this is.

• 54:43Sean Fennessey?

  Actually older.

• 54:43Speaker 00

  He's older, yeah.

• 54:44Amanda Dobbins?

  This is closer to perimenopause than, you know, puberty in terms of.

• 54:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I was.

• 54:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It was just like a different change.

• 54:50Sean Fennessey?

  It was a little bit sadder return for me for, for Spider-Man. That was sort of what I was thinking for him.

• 54:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Emerald year, yeah.

• 54:55Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I'm like Emerald year. Uh, I was like, oh.

• 54:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Hey, Chris Nolan's Emerald year.

• 55:00Sean Fennessey?

  Is that true?

• 55:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, he's also a Leo. It's his birthday this week.

• 55:03Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, damn.

• 55:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you know it's our Emerald year?

• 55:05Sean Fennessey?

  Lot of Leos.

• 55:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Jupiter is in our house or something.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  I don't know what the hell is going on.

• 55:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, it's like, it's just, it's our time. So just get, get ready, get on board.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and the other question I wanted to ask is, are the Celestials different than the people that they made that movie about with Jim? With that Chloe Zhao directed?

• 55:22Speaker 00

  This is a.

• 55:22Sean Fennessey?

  No, they're in the movie. Yeah, that's the, that's the part. That's the.

• 55:25Speaker 00

  You're fucking with me.

• 55:26Sean Fennessey?

  The thing that's emerging from the earth was a Celestial.

• 55:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I remember because I remember going like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:31Sean Fennessey?

  She knows.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  Fake nerd, you're nerd.

• 55:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I know Greek mythology. And so every time I go and I'm like, oh, you're doing this one, you know, once every three years, they try, decide to like actually acknowledge the text.

• 55:42Sean Fennessey?

  MCU movie of the last eight years in theaters.

• 55:44Amanda Dobbins?

  That movie was not called the Celestials. What was that called?

• 55:47Speaker 00

  The Eternals are creations of the Celestials.

• 55:49Amanda Dobbins?

  So the Eternals are just like the literal Greek gods. They're like Zeus, Hera, like all of those people.

• 55:54Sean Fennessey?

  Sort of.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Eternals are, the Eternals would be closer to the Greek gods and the Celestials would be the Titans.

• 56:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. Right, right, right, right. Okay. That, I mean, as soon as you said Celestials, I thought Titans. Great. Okay.

• 56:05Sean Fennessey?

  Spider-Man is different though, because he's grounded in a changing experience. He's not like Superman where you're like born to do it. You know, you, if he doesn't get bitten.

• 56:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he's the demigod.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Spider-Man is one of the characters, and it's interesting when you listen to, to Stanley and Jack Kirby talk about this, is that part of the reason why we have mutants is because they got sick of inventing ways for characters to get their power.

• 56:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  It was, you went on a space mission and you were exposed to something and now you can stretch. Was you were bit by a radioactive spire. It was, you got gamma rays or whatever. You're a Norse god. They just went, you know what? You're 13, you get the powers.

• 56:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  And then they can just talk about like whatever the powers are. And that's what the, the mutants became. But also, it also became really interesting social commentary, which the X-Men has always been, which is this tension between mutant kind and humankind. Humans' ability to kind of like discriminate against mutants and try to control mutants. And then mutants wrestling with their genetic superiority. And whether or not, obviously the central tension between Magneto and Professor X, whether or not they want to live alongside mutant kind or rule it and run it. And even in this movie.

• 57:17Sean Fennessey?

  Martin and Malcolm.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  Martin and Malcolm.

• 57:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course, yeah.

• 57:20Speaker 00

  And even in, and even in this, in this right here, that is something that the character of Jean Grey is actually kind of dealing with. Because she has trauma and that trauma is enough for her to really do in this movie, some ghastly things. A person gets hit by a car, a taxi. That was when in the movie I started to think, maybe it's not Jean Grey. Because like Jean Grey is a character that I can't see even through all of her trauma. A lot of times if the dark Venus is not controlling her or influencing her, just like killing people for her own.

• 57:54Sean Fennessey?

  I would welcome an X-Men story that features a little bit more hard edge storytelling.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  I think that's what they're going for.

• 58:00Sean Fennessey?

  I think that would be to see the real Berserker rage of Wolverine, to see the real like Cyclops accidentally killing something. They did in Logan, but you know what I mean? Like in the wider MCU. One of the things with the MCU, I mean, Amanda was gesturing towards this. These have been very quippy, sort of candy colored movies. And invariably, when you do this for long enough, you have to evolve the kind of story that you tell. Endgame had a great stakes and people died, but even then there was a lot of jokes. And this is a much more dour and sullen movie, as I said, and I don't want it to be totally joke machine, James Gunn style movie. But I don't want it to be depressing either. And so I think finding, striking the balance is really challenging.

• 58:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's the, it's the primary challenge of this movie is what tone are we meant to hit between zippy montages of Spider-Man fighting canonical bad guys? And, you know, this guy who lost his best friend and his girl and, and, you know, figuring out how to deal with his, his hormones.

• 58:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Basically an incel, but for good.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  Aw, damn.

• 59:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, he is.

• 59:01Sean Fennessey?

  You know what movie this is also reminds me of? Taxi driver.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. Tough.

• 59:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's.

• 59:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, he's, he's just like alone in the weird attic.

• 59:09Speaker 00

  But he's not.

• 59:10Amanda Dobbins?

  With like a lot of.

• 59:11Speaker 00

  But he's not, an incel is an involuntary celibate. He actually gets hit on by the girl in his apartment and goes, no, I don't want that. Cause I'm stressed out about MJ.

• 59:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:21Speaker 00

  That's tough for you to call Peter Parker an incel.

• 59:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I said incel, but for good.

• 59:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's withholding his. No, yeah.

• 59:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's like, he's like Sterling Hayden in Doctor Strangelove. Yeah, he's withholding his essence.

• 59:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  Very, um, uh, you know, I, I think that there's one thing that tonally these movies, superhero movies in general are dealing with right now. Is that the MCU and other films, remember this was a criticism of Zack's universe. A criticism of Zack's universe was that it was too dour.

• 1:00:00Sean Fennessey?

  Zack Snyder.

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  Zack Snyder.

• 1:00:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

  Zack Snyder.

• 1:00:04Sean Fennessey?

  You're on a first name basis.

• 1:00:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Leave my husband's name out of your mouth.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  I think he could write a bad, he's a hell of a writer. I would love to see his take on Ant-Man. Um, so.

• 1:00:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Love to see that paycheck, so.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  I would love to see his take on it. Um, but, um, that these, that these movies were easier to make.

• 1:00:23Sean Fennessey?

  So glad you're here.

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  When they were, these movies were easier to make when they were actually taken a little bit less seriously. What happened.

• 1:00:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  What happened towards the end of the MCU's classic period is that people started to ask a lot of serious questions about superhero. They, superheroes, they started to say, okay, where are the women? Where are the black women? Where are the Asian Americans? Where are the things? And we were at peak woke era. What's, I hate saying that. I'm woke as shit. And people were saying, yo, there needs to be a reflection of some of the real world stuff that we're dealing with in these movies. And Marvel tried and god damn it, they fucking failed.

• 1:01:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  Just, I'll just be, they, they, they failed. They couldn't do it.

• 1:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  And so, and so I, I'll say this to say that like, it, it, I don't think that it was a bad swing. But now when we talk about the films, people seemingly have soured on the quippiness and all of that stuff that they loved about the MCU.

• 1:01:22Sean Fennessey?

  No doubt.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  They hated the Zack Snyder, I wish I knew his middle name now, the Zack, the Zack Snyder universe because it was too dour. So now I think.

• 1:01:31Sean Fennessey?

  Zack Baron Snyder.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Zack Baron Snyder. Okay. Now I think.

• 1:01:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Just send those checks right over.

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  The films have to kind of find themselves and kind of figure out how they're gonna do what they do. I think even, to be real with you, the Fantastic Four actually kind of struggled with this same type of push, pull thing. Was the Fantastic Four bright enough? Was the Fantastic Four fun enough?

• 1:01:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 00

  It seemed like they were fighting against themselves.

• 1:01:58Sean Fennessey?

  Sequences in, in their apartment, you know, that stuff is a little, little dull, little, little sullen, a little like fate of the universe is really the crisis at home stuff. That is really hard to balance. I, I think it's part of the reason.

• 1:02:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Brain that's too big.

• 1:02:12Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's, it's a great responsibility, like being a, like being a Spider-Man.

• 1:02:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Why hasn't Christopher Nolan made one of those movies?

• 1:02:17Sean Fennessey?

  He did, he made The Dark Knight.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  I'll tell you.

• 1:02:19Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I meant, you know, Fantastic Four. I know, but that's still the best superhero movie, so it's fine.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  Would be phenomenal. The thing that I.

• 1:02:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's called Oppenheimer. It's literally called Oppenheimer.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  Like, that's actually, look at that, genius. But like, the, the, the thing about that character is in a lot of ways, and I don't want to come in here and shit on the Fantastic Four, but in a lot of ways, the failure of that movie to me is in the character of Reed Richards. Just a relentlessly fascinating character.

• 1:02:49Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. Miscast though, that's really the biggest problem. Wrong actor.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  The smartest man in the universe who consistently believes, and they almost always, they almost kind of did it with Tony Stark. Who, who, what? What?

• 1:03:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I just didn't know. I was just remembering last summer and I, just this shot from Materialist where Pedro Pascal, spoiler alert, where Pedro Pascal just like sinks down.

• 1:03:12Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:13Amanda Dobbins?

  That's the best thing that's happened in movies in, in 30 years. It has nothing to do with this conversation.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  I wanted to love that movie much more than I did. I thought it was okay. But anyway, but anyway, to, to, to you, these sort of, uh, tonal middle grounds, it's a problem.

• 1:03:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's, it's just hard. It's, they're comic books. It's really, really hard to balance this stuff. And you're, you're right, they were taking these movies more seriously because they've been so dominant for 15 years and we expect a lot out of them. I certainly have. And I, part of the reason I've been so critical last five years is I'm like, I think you guys can do better at this point, not worse. And some of these movies are getting worse and that isn't great. This isn't worse. This is not a step back to me.

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:48Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it's maybe not, it's definitely not my favorite, but I, I, it would have been very easy for me to come in and be mad and I, I wasn't mad at the movie at all.

• 1:03:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's also hard to be, it's not hard to be that successful, but there is a real, where do you go? Because people want the exact same, but also something new.

• 1:04:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and so at, at some point, it's just, they've been doing this for almost 20 years and it's hard to please people the way that you did 10 years ago.

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  And you can't take breaks, right?

• 1:04:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  With James Bond, you could be, we'd be making those movies since the 60s, but what we do is we take a couple of breaks, a couple of years breaks, sometimes five, 10 year breaks.

• 1:04:22Sean Fennessey?

  About to be a six year break, yeah.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  Six year breaks, and then you pull back and you go, okay, new director, new James Bond, everything a new, everything's new. Right? With, with, with these movies, because they're essentially one gigantic comic book.

• 1:04:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  And now they're rolling and the economy of it, the economics of it are so crazy. It's difficult to actually do the type of reset that they would need to do.

• 1:04:44Sean Fennessey?

  I know you're, so you're getting into where I think we need to go. So before we go there, uh, we'll get into what's next for the MCU, box office predictions and our Spider-Man movie rankings right after this.

• 1:04:55Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Every episode, we break down what's worth your time, what to watch, what to skip, what to put on the list. But some things on the list aren't exactly fun to get to, like sorting out your coverage. It's not a blockbuster. It's just one of those things that matters. That's where State Farm comes in. One of their 19,000 local agents can walk you through your options in person, over the phone, or through their easily accessible app, and help you get the coverage that's right for you. So you can get back to the fun stuff, like arguing about movie rankings. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:05:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, so you've set up a really interesting series of discussions, because there's a bunch of things that now are going to happen, that have to happen. What you're hinting at is how, in fact, essentially, Tom Holland can't get off the Spider-Man train. And it seemed like in some reporting recently, including that your husband did, like, he's been weighing in his mind whether to continue to be Spider-Man and

• 1:05:46Speaker 00

  Batman 4.

• 1:05:47Sean Fennessey?

  What, how much longer can a man be a Spider-Man like this? No one's ever made four movies as Spider-Man, until now. And so I think that there's a question of, I'll phrase it this way. Coming out of the movie, I turned to Joanna and I said, over/under two and a half more Tom Holland Spider-Man movies? So what do you say to that?

• 1:06:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Does this include?

• 1:06:12Sean Fennessey?

  Not Doomsday, just Spider-Man, colon?

• 1:06:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, two and a half, under.

• 1:06:19Sean Fennessey?

  Under. What do you say?

• 1:06:21Speaker 00

  Two and a half, under. I think he'll do two more.

• 1:06:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 1:06:23Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:06:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Sean Fennessey?

  Joe said over, which I thought was interesting.

• 1:06:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:06:26Sean Fennessey?

  And

• 1:06:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I just need him to make the Fred Astaire movie.

• 1:06:29Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's gonna do that.

• 1:06:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but like, you know, go.

• 1:06:33Sean Fennessey?

  He seems to have the prestige bug now that he's done The Odyssey.

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. You guys, that, that, that, that movie had better work. Like, if, he's a phenomenal dancer, very likable, that is a beloved American cultural icon that hasn't really been dipped. That movie better work, because if you really want to know the reason why he's playing Spider-Man, again, it has nothing to do, has more to do with Cherry, and the other movie where you couldn't, where you could hear people's emotions, and all of those films, than it does with this.

• 1:07:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  Like, it, like

• 1:07:08Sean Fennessey?

  His other stuff hasn't worked.

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  It hasn't worked. And so, and so, he, this happens. People catch cold ones, they pick the wrong scripts, he's talked about it. But one of the reasons why he will play Spider-Man, he loves the character, I think he has different expectations of the characters in the movies after having worked with Christopher Nolan.

• 1:07:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Speaker 00

  I really do believe that that's real. But the Fred Astaire thing will be a referendum on whether or not Tom Holland is capable

• 1:07:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Can exist outside of Spider-Man, yeah.

• 1:07:36Sean Fennessey?

  I don't really know. He was my least favorite part of The Odyssey, you know? And I know some of it is the character, the way that it's written, and what, you know, what purpose it serves in the story, but I also just thought his performance was not very strong. The exact opposite in this movie. In this movie, I thought he was great.

• 1:07:50Amanda Dobbins?

  He's wonderful.

• 1:07:50Sean Fennessey?

  I think this is his actually best performance as Spider-Man, whether you even like the story or not, because he's given more to do. I, I'll say, just cynically, I'll go over and just say, I think he'll make three more of these, because he's really good at it. And what we have seen is that other Spider stories can probably live alongside these movies. The Spider-verse movies are happening and are working.

• 1:08:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:08:14Sean Fennessey?

  Let's all get prepared to see a, a real Miles Morales in Doomsday, you know? Like, I think that there's a chance that something like that happens, and then all of a sudden, we're getting the No Way Home version, where Holland is the old guard, you know, 10 years from now, where he's

• 1:08:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Training's a new one, that's nice.

• 1:08:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You know, like, all of that is in play, too.

• 1:08:30Amanda Dobbins?

  So, was your question to Joanna, if, in the main Spider-Man movie, is he the main Spider-Man?

• 1:08:39Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't, I didn't specify that.

• 1:08:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Because that, you know, I could see, he'll, he'll show up. He's definitely Chris Evans vibes, where it's like, and even if he tries to quit, in 15 years, we're pulling him right back in!

• 1:08:52Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:08:53Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 1:08:53Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:08:54Speaker 00

  Well, it also, it, it also depends on what works, right? Like, because I can make the same argument for Chris Evans. I think Cap had a pretty final arc in Endgame. And maybe if Chris Evans has found tremendous success outside of this, maybe he's not picking up the shield again.

• 1:09:09Sean Fennessey?

  Did you see Ghosted?

• 1:09:10Speaker 00

  I did see Ghosted.

• 1:09:10Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think?

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  Terrible. I saw, so, so, not only that one, but you know what one that Kalika liked? The one where he had to, like, rescue Santa Claus? What was that called?

• 1:09:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Red Notice?

• 1:09:22Speaker 00

  Red, no, no, that was

• 1:09:23Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no.

• 1:09:24Sean Fennessey?

  Red One.

• 1:09:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Red One, Red One, it's close.

• 1:09:27Speaker 00

  Completely absurd, Sunday, 1 o'clock, watching. Like, you know

• 1:09:33Sean Fennessey?

  A horrible movie.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  Look, the, completely absurd, the afternoon on Sunday, when you're just relaxing, man

• 1:09:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't know what that's like.

• 1:09:43Speaker 00

  The critical meter goes way down. Like, you see Jumpin' Jack Flash on TV, and you go, Jesus Christ, I feel so amazing to have caught Jumpin' Jack Flash. But I say, like, but I'll say about him, though, like, like, same thing. I think you have one more furthering Spider-Man's adventures, and then I think you make a last one, where potentially Peter Parker could be killed, and mirroring the story that happens.

• 1:10:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I will lose my shit. I'll be so upset.

• 1:10:12Speaker 00

  And Spider-Man, depending on how Miles Morales is received.

• 1:10:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't kill my sweet little boy, you know?

• 1:10:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:19Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I want to talk about X-Men and Doomsday, but since we're leading into this, I'm a little dubious of what you just suggested, happening that quickly, because this movie could make $2 billion. The tracking, I think the domestic tracking is around like 300-plus million, which is fucking insane. Now, some of it is like premium large formats, and tickets cost more, but the last Spider-Man movie made 1.922 billion. It was, you know, coming out of COVID, but before Top Gun Maverick.

• 1:10:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:10:53Sean Fennessey?

  And this was really the movie that was the first mega-success.

• 1:10:58Amanda Dobbins?

  December 2021, yeah.

• 1:11:00Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think this movie makes more than that movie?

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:11:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. We're back plus inflation.

• 1:11:07Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're right. This would be fascinating to me, because I don't think that this movie is going to be, is not going to have the same highs in the theaters that, that No Way Home represented.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  For any Spider-Man movie to have that type of highs, no Spider-Man movie could ever have it.

• 1:11:22Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think people will go see this movie three and four times?

• 1:11:24Speaker 00

  I think so. I think this, I, I think there's just no way to, if you take, the multiverse is, the highs of No Way Home are as much about real-world business as they are about the story. You just, there were things that you couldn't have done before, you weren't going to be able to do, and put three people in a movie together, now you have all your Spider-Man. Just think about right now, if Christopher Reeve were still with us, and like, at some point, Koran Swett is like, in the Fortress of Sol 2, and he walks in, like, in his 70s even, in the suit, it's just like, you're gonna go nuts.

• 1:12:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:00Speaker 00

  Like, you're gonna

• 1:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  What about Brandon Roth?

• 1:12:02Speaker 00

  Brandon Roth, all of them, even if you saw all, I mean, literally, like, that, that

• 1:12:05Sean Fennessey?

  Henry Cavill.

• 1:12:06Speaker 00

  Henry Cavill, that would really go crazy, if they did something multiversal, and they brought Henry Cavill in, and people would go crazy.

• 1:12:12Sean Fennessey?

  George Reeves.

• 1:12:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Isn't Henry Cavill on some sort of Netflix IP show now? And now he's like, he's not the Punisher, but he's like The Witcher.

• 1:12:20Speaker 00

  He's not on that anymore. What's his name, is The Witcher now?

• 1:12:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, Henry Cavill keeps getting written off?

• 1:12:25Speaker 00

  What's it, the, Hemsworth's brother is The Witcher.

• 1:12:28Sean Fennessey?

  Liam Hemsworth.

• 1:12:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Liam Hemsworth is The Witcher?

• 1:12:30Speaker 00

  I think that he's

• 1:12:31Amanda Dobbins?

  What does The Witcher do?

• 1:12:32Speaker 00

  I don't really know much about The Witcher.

• 1:12:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, I've reached the end of your knowledge of this stuff?

• 1:12:39Speaker 00

  I think that's a video game. I don't really watch, I don't fuck with Harry Potter. So like, so, what I would say is, the highs of that, I think, are probably, it's just stuff that we didn't think could happen. But I will say, maybe Miles can maybe get there, for some people, perhaps? But to me, at some point, this version of Peter Parker will end his watch, because this version of Tom Holland, I think, has caught the serious, I'm being taken serious actor bug. And if that Fred Astaire movie does go crazy, and he does get a nomination, and the dancing is all it is, and he's not gonna want to put the suit back on. And I think that that's more prevalent with these characters.

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  The only guy who I know that loves doing this, that would pay 50 times, is Hemsworth. Loves Thor, would be in Thor, play Thor till he died. Everyone else kinda tries to get out, until he gets pulled, until they get pulled back in.

• 1:13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Kind of respects, like, the, there's something beautiful, just about finding your purpose, you know? And just being like, I am content, very Australian, I guess.

• 1:13:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Just, I'm Thor, and here I come as Thor.

• 1:13:48Sean Fennessey?

  There's, that's a lot of caveats, I think, to what you're describing, you know, like, well, like Connery went back to Bond in the seventies, you know, with the hairpiece going big time. So it's a real never say never, because he is really good and people have a big relationship to him. I'm really, really interested in, in the box office of this movie, not just because I'm interested in the box office of every movie, but

• 1:14:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you have it in your little, in your league?

• 1:14:09Sean Fennessey?

  I believe so.

• 1:14:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm sorry, that was dismissive.

• 1:14:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's not a little league, it's a large league. There are a great many.

• 1:14:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you do this? You do like movie fantasy drafts and all that sort of stuff?

• 1:14:16Speaker 00

  I think it's awesome, though.

• 1:14:18Amanda Dobbins?

  That's great.

• 1:14:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's really fun.

• 1:14:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Glad to have you on record.

• 1:14:20Speaker 00

  Remember the hat back in the day in like the 2000s, they had like, you could buy like fake stock in movie stars and movies and stuff like that?

• 1:14:27Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, Hollywood Stock Exchange.

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, we should do that at TMZ.

• 1:14:29Sean Fennessey?

  I did that, of course. Yeah, it is fun. Um, I am interested in this one particularly because I do think that there will be a contingent of people who go to see this movie who are a little disappointed by it. Um, I don't think it has that, quite that same emotional like wow factor that, um, No Way Home does. And I think this is a better made movie. Like No Way Home has a really kind of like ugly CGI finale to it, you know, it's like, it's not, it's not a great movie, but it has like a lot of, it delivers a lot of feelings.

• 1:14:57Speaker 00

  No Way, No Way Home is, to me, infinitely more flawed than this movie is. And like,

• 1:15:04Sean Fennessey?

  I just don't think its highs are as high.

• 1:15:05Speaker 00

  I agree. Like, I agree. I think the last.

• 1:15:08Amanda Dobbins?

  When Andrew Garfield saves MJ?

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 1:15:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Come on, what's wrong with you?

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  That's phenomenal. But like,

• 1:15:16Sean Fennessey?

  There's not a moment in this movie that hits that moment to me.

• 1:15:19Speaker 00

  Nah, of course. But once again, like, it's like,

• 1:15:21Amanda Dobbins?

  When they hug at the end before they have to go? Come on!

• 1:15:25Speaker 00

  All of that's awesome. But like, there are large portions of No Way Home to me that just, like, when you go back, especially on the rewatch, they just aren't that good. You're literally just getting to those.

• 1:15:35Amanda Dobbins?

  They bring all the villains back? They're so funny?

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  That doesn't work at all.

• 1:15:38Amanda Dobbins?

  What happened to Happy?

• 1:15:39Sean Fennessey?

  Happy Hogan. Well, what, what did I write on the document here? I mean, what did, what this movie does, I think is somewhat less successful, is it introduces, uh, Liza Colonzeas as Sergeant DeWolf, and she kind of occupies the Happy Hogan role in this movie. Sort of like adult, Commissioner Gordon, I wrote Commissioner Gordon here, actually. Yeah, same thing. Like, this sort of law enforcement figure, grown up, who's kind of keeping Peter in line. And it was a little bit like, who's this lady? I was like, they're throwing a lot of new characters at you. They're throwing a lot of, um, new setup at you.

• 1:16:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, but so, let's trace it out here, because Florence Pugh is in this as the Black Widow.

• 1:16:19Sean Fennessey?

  We didn't even mention her. I actually really enjoyed her. But again, it was like one more character.

• 1:16:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, she's very funny. She's filming in one location and her office is a Russian bathhouse and.

• 1:16:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's, she literally is on a Zoom call in the movie.

• 1:16:30Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really funny. She's great. Um, and so she, does she remember that Peter, that Spider-Man was an Avenger?

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  Yes, everybody remembers.

• 1:16:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, Happy doesn't, because where's Happy?

• 1:16:43Speaker 00

  Happy does remember that Spider-Man was an Avenger.

• 1:16:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, then why isn't he in touch with?

• 1:16:47Sean Fennessey?

  Because he doesn't know that Peter is Spider-Man.

• 1:16:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:50Amanda Dobbins?

  But, but we don't see Spider-Man in touch with Happy at any point, do we?

• 1:16:54Speaker 00

  I know, Happy's just not in it.

• 1:16:56Sean Fennessey?

  He's just not in the movie.

• 1:16:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, why not? He just completely abandoned Spider. What's that about?

• 1:17:00Sean Fennessey?

  Well, because he only knows Spider-Man as Peter, right?

• 1:17:03Speaker 00

  Well, no, he knows Spider-Man, like, remember at the end of No Way Home, it's like, how do you, how did you know? I know, knew it through Spider-Man. Like, they're talking about that.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:17:13Speaker 00

  But there's no Peter Parker. So Happy might be into some Spider-Man, but who knows, like, what, what, like, where Happy is, is right now. Stark is dead.

• 1:17:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  Is like, who's taking care of all of that stuff?

• 1:17:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Also, Peter just learned how to bioengineer everything all by himself.

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  He's a genius.

• 1:17:29Sean Fennessey?

  He's a brilliant kid. That's the whole, that's why he got bit by the spider in the first place. He's like a, a rising science student. His classmates went to MIT and graduated.

• 1:17:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Tony, I know, because he, you know, lobbied on the bridge for, to that nice MIT admissions officer to reconsider them. But Tony still made the suits for him.

• 1:17:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so.

• 1:17:49Sean Fennessey?

  But then, not in this film.

• 1:17:50Amanda Dobbins?

  When was that transfer of knowledge? I just, you know.

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  He made, he made a suit in Spider-Man Far From Home. Remember, he uses, at the end of the movie, he's coming back, he makes, he uses the engineering stuff to like, make changes to all kinds of stuff. Like, I'll say this.

• 1:18:05Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that was always one of the reasons why I thought pairing him and Tony was cool. Because they did have that, they were both kind of like mini, like inventors, you know, they had that kind of spirit of science in their characters.

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  This is a reason why people were against, uh, in the comic books, Peter having organic web shooters. Because organic web shooters, like, the web shooters are the demonstration of the genius of Peter Parker.

• 1:18:26Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  And so like, a lot of times when Peter Parker is fighting, he, he thinks his way through the fight. Not unlike Batman and stuff. Yeah.

• 1:18:35Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't love that Peter wouldn't realize that there would be a static electricity from his eyes in the movie, you know, or MJ has to point that out to him.

• 1:18:42Amanda Dobbins?

  MJ got to be a woman in STEM, which is really important. So.

• 1:18:44Sean Fennessey?

  It is important.

• 1:18:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Like me, every day.

• 1:18:47Speaker 00

  Which, to be honest with you, is, which, to be honest with you, is something that happens in this movie, right? Because you have those types of characters surrounding him, a lot of times, you have to sacrifice his genius and his character to like, spread the ball around a little bit.

• 1:19:03Amanda Dobbins?

  The self-evident and also lightly offended way that you both said, well, he's a genius, to me, was very special.

• 1:19:09Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, I will say this, though. Like, you know, Batman.

• 1:19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Show me the test, you know?

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  Like, like Batman. Either Batman can do it or he can't. Like, like, you know, after, so, he's a genius, he's a genius. You know, like, Captain America, not a genius.

• 1:19:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  If he, if he built it, you'd be like, you can't do that. You're good at leading and telling people what to do and fighting. But him.

• 1:19:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I know that, I know that he goes to the special science school, you know, but there are many geniuses at the special science school. Manhattan Science School?

• 1:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  No, isn't it like Midtown Science and Tech?

• 1:19:44Speaker 00

  Something like that.

• 1:19:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, sure, yeah.

• 1:19:46Speaker 00

  He's a genius!

• 1:19:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:48Sean Fennessey?

  Um, this movie doesn't have a stinger. And.

• 1:19:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Doesn't it have the, the location tracking thing? That doesn't count?

• 1:19:57Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's barely a stinger, right? It's a stinger that's showing, showing that there's some, something happening in space. Um, what, what do you think that meant? You think that means there's another Spider-Man that has been being picked up by the spider tracker in space? In another reality, in another universe?

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  I think I read a lot of theories and watched a lot of theory videos on it. Obviously, it leads into Secret Wars, uh, and Doomsday in some kind of way. Maybe there's another Spider-Man, another reality. Uh, maybe it's picking up Venom. Like, who knows? That would make a whole ton of sense, but it's obviously.

• 1:20:30Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't the symbiote like a huge part of Secret Wars?

• 1:20:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Sean Fennessey?

  Like Black Spider-Man? Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:34Speaker 00

  Certainly, yeah.

• 1:20:35Sean Fennessey?

  I'm wondering if they're gonna try to bring Tom Hardy in and fuse all that stuff back together.

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  They could. We went back and looked.

• 1:20:42Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda's shopping right now.

• 1:20:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Googling Tom Hardy, Secret Wars.

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  We went back and looked.

• 1:20:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I previously Googled The Punisher. And I really, I was happy to see Jon Bernthal.

• 1:20:52Sean Fennessey?

  Can we talk about Frank Castle real quick?

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:20:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I have no idea who that was. And that's one where I just kind of nodded. And, you know, the movie communicates that Jon Bernthal is a rough around the edges mentor-like figure to Tom Holland, Spider-Man. And that's enough. That's all I needed. But I had absolutely no idea what, like.

• 1:21:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's not really what he is in the comics. They're usually at odds, um, even though they're both.

• 1:21:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I've learned that from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page.

• 1:21:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, obviously, they have very different approaches to fighting crime. One guy wants to blow shit up and shoot rockets at them, and the other wants to save lives. Um.

• 1:21:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:21:30Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I don't think Bernthal's a great Punisher. I, I know that that is really going against the grain.

• 1:21:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Now he's never coming on this podcast.

• 1:21:39Sean Fennessey?

  And I've never asked him to, so I'm not really worried about that. Uh, I.

• 1:21:43Amanda Dobbins?

  What if I?

• 1:21:44Sean Fennessey?

  I know that everyone thinks he's like, great and perfect. Um, and maybe it's just because I haven't really loved his appearances throughout these Marvel movies, but, um.

• 1:21:52Speaker 00

  Did you watch the show?

• 1:21:53Sean Fennessey?

  Parts of it, yeah. And I'm like, to me, that was a little too hot, and this one's a little too cold, and we haven't gotten to just right. And to me, he's not like a super quippy character, but also I don't think he's like, um, like the, like nu metal, like, super, like, I, I can't describe how, what doesn't work to me about the more serious, hard-edged version of him, but it never really clicked for me. Not that like Dolph Lundgren did or whatever, or who was, was it Thomas Jane was the other one? Like, I don't know that they've quite nailed it yet, but, um.

• 1:22:22Speaker 00

  I literally think that he was born to play the role.

• 1:22:25Sean Fennessey?

  And a lot of people say that, and I understand it. I just, I've never felt that way.

• 1:22:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I think it's interesting in this one is, because I look at this, this is not the traditional portrayal of The Punisher, right? Uh, The Punisher is an ex-marine, um, who had a psychotic break after his family was killed by the mafia, and decides he will kill every bad guy that he sees. He is an expert hand-to-hand fighter. He is a sensational marksman. He is just a born killer. And he is killing to feel, fill the, the hole in his soul from the death of his parents from the mafia. So Punisher don't play around. There's a part in Captain America: Civil War, this is a part in the Civil War comic,

• 1:23:12Speaker 00

  where Civil War is where all of these, uh, characters fought each other. And so Captain America's side has to go out and recruit villains to help them, because they're down some people. But Punisher walks into the movie, sees, walks into the meeting, sees all the villains, and just kills all of them.

• 1:23:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay. Setback, yeah.

• 1:23:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And then Captain America tries to beat the shit out of him, or does beat the shit out of him, and Punisher won't fight back. So like, he's just like, bad guy, see the bad guy, kill the bad guy. I thought, I thought this portrayal of him was interesting, because it seemed as if, no one can get through Frank Castle in this universe. Daredevil wasn't able to. Uh, like, no one could stop.

• 1:23:50Sean Fennessey?

  To emotionally connect with him.

• 1:23:51Speaker 00

  To emotionally connect to it. And I thought it was interesting in this one to have this be a, a display of what Peter's superpower really is. Which is that Peter, through his intention and his goodness and, uh, his method, can make, he can soften people. He can make people kind of like, see themselves as human beings. So even Punisher, who is a killer, like, is a criminal and a killer, when he's around Peter, he can't help but be a little bit better. Which is like what you've seen throughout these movies from the character. Now, I will say to a lot of people that just watched Punisher One Last Kill, in which

• 1:24:31Speaker 00

  he kills probably, probably, uh, around 70 or 80 people, maybe more, in some of the most brutal ways. And then to see him come back in this one, where he won't even say the fuck word, it's probably a pretty knee-jerking situation, even though at, at the end of Last Kill, he supposedly learned some lessons.

• 1:24:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's an, it's an odd choice, I think, to, for that to have just come out, and then for us to be whiplashed into, like I said, PG 13. Um, no shots at Bernthal. I'm a, I'm a big fan of his, but he, not, hashtag not my Punisher.

• 1:25:09Speaker 05

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• 1:25:55Sean Fennessey?

  You more or less were the same excited for Doomsday at this point.

• 1:26:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, the stuff that we saw at Comic Con, I think changed everybody's mind. Like they, the first trailer from Doomsday came out and people were lukewarm on it.

• 1:26:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, let me, before you go any further and talk about that. Cause obviously we saw that Doomsday trailer in April. Why did they put that trailer out?

• 1:26:19Speaker 00

  Which one?

• 1:26:20Sean Fennessey?

  The, the one that was publicly released. Like, why did they actually, why was that?

• 1:26:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Two weeks ago.

• 1:26:24Sean Fennessey?

  Two weeks ago. Why was that the, why was that the trailer they chose to put out?

• 1:26:28Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:26:29Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I really don't understand it.

• 1:26:31Speaker 00

  It, it, it seems, I literally don't know.

• 1:26:34Sean Fennessey?

  Clearly bad, a bad trailer.

• 1:26:35Speaker 00

  Like, I wasn't as offended by it as other people were. But every single criticism that people have of it, I completely understood. Whereas the one that they put out in Hall H. You would have to not have a pulse, like to not be interested in the movie after this. It's more grounded in the, the character of Doom himself, which the first one is not at all. Meaning even though Doom is a central character. And he does something at the end of the trailer that is so fucking cool. And so badass that you wanna go watch him for two and a half hours on screen. So I have no clue why they did it.

• 1:27:15Sean Fennessey?

  You wanna go watch him for two and a half hours on screen.

• 1:27:18Amanda Dobbins?

  That like, you know, you, two and a half hours is not like the standard runtime that we reach for when talking about one of these films.

• 1:27:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't, I can't share this information, so I won't say what I'm gonna say. But I, I know something interesting about runtimes relative to the rest of this year.

• 1:27:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:27:33Sean Fennessey?

  That I'm wondering if it will change the game. I'll leave it at that. Uh, I'm gonna see Doomsday, I hope it's good. I've been, I've been on that.

• 1:27:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I am also gonna see it and I also hope it's good.

• 1:27:43Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 1:27:44Amanda Dobbins?

  What will my definition of good be? We'll find out.

• 1:27:47Speaker 00

  Well, you know what you said earlier about Thomas Crown Affair?

• 1:27:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:27:52Speaker 00

  Like, there are some of these movies that are, that are nearing masterpiece status, right? There are some of these movies that are perfect emotional rides and perfect storytelling. And we've had a couple of those highs in the comic book era. Dark Knight obviously is a very self-serious kind of examination of the morality of people. What you're willing to do, how far you're willing to go. So Nolan obviously is on a different level with being able to craft narrative in, in the human condition. But then you also have perfect comic book movies like Guardians of the Galaxy. Or, which I think is a phenomenal film, Captain America, Winter Soldier. And then even to a point, the combination of Infinity War and Endgame,

• 1:28:33Speaker 00

  which offer a perfect arc for two or three different characters. For Thanos, for Captain America, for Iron Man, right? But the main thing is having fun at the movies. And you can't have fun at the movies when you're insulted by how bad and cynical something is. I get it, I understand. And there have been some of these movies that are bad and cynical. And it breaks the deal that the audience makes with the film. But if you go and you have fun at the movies with people flying around, you probably won. Like.

• 1:29:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally agree.

• 1:29:07Speaker 00

  You, like, you probably came out ahead. Like, I recently.

• 1:29:11Sean Fennessey?

  I wish, I wish my mind could work that way. Unfortunately, I'm trapped in my own, within my own superpower of overthinking about every single movie that's ever released. But that's, that's my burden, you know? That's my, that's my great responsibility.

• 1:29:22Speaker 00

  I overthink these movies too, but like, I think that like.

• 1:29:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think what you just explained is representative of 97% of people who go to movies.

• 1:29:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:29:32Sean Fennessey?

  Which is like, I would like to have a good time.

• 1:29:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Sean Fennessey?

  And I think this Spider-Man movie is, is, is an interesting test of that. Because it is trying to be a good time, but also trying to be a serious examination of a lone man. And also trying to further the story in some ways that are cynical and some that feel natural towards a progression. And that's why it's a mixed bag to me.

• 1:29:52Speaker 00

  You know what's interesting about this is I also think that this has a lot to do with kind of what, what, obviously your level of fun that you have for a movie has to do with what wheelhouse movies are in, right? Like, my father loved westerns. So there are some westerns that like are, to me, slow, whatever. But my dad loves being in the world. Like, the whole.

• 1:30:16Amanda Dobbins?

  A thousand percent.

• 1:30:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, the whole Disclosure Day thing is like, a lot of people went to the movie and thought that the movie was bad. But then a lot of people just went, like, my mom went to it, she was like, I had fun.

• 1:30:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:26Speaker 00

  Like, like, like, I had fun inside of the movie. And she came away having, like, half the shit in that movie is completely unexplained. And like, to me, for a movie that's trying to be cerebral, didn't make a lot of sense. But there was also just some cool shit in that motherfucker. That made it like fun for my mother and my sister to go see, and they really enjoyed it. So part of this is like what you bring into the movie with you, if it's just about fun.

• 1:30:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, it's funny that you bring that up. So I, we can use this as segue into our Spider-Man rankings. I just re-watched Spider-Man 3, the third Raimi movie, which is, has one of the toughest reputations of, of the Spider-Man movies and obviously signaled the end of the Tobey Maguire, Raimi era. And I thought a lot of Disclosure Day when I was re-watching it. Because I was like, this movie has some script problems. It's a little baggy at times. It's a little bit like, it seems like it's going down a road and then it doesn't follow through on some of the storytelling instincts.

• 1:31:21Speaker 00

  He's right, yeah.

• 1:31:23Sean Fennessey?

  And then on the other side of it, there's some stuff that Raimi is doing with the action and the set pieces, where I'm like, well, there's like, one person on earth who can do this. And I felt the same way watching Disclosure Day. I'm like, there's one guy in the world who can make a movie that looks and feels like this. And it's, it's a similar kind of balance that you're describing about whether or not you can have fun at the movies and what you're going to the movies for. And whether a movie can sweep you away or not, despite having a problem with the plot or feeling like a character's been jammed in there to serve MCU long-term purposes or whatever. And.

• 1:31:55Speaker 00

  But isn't that, but isn't that just the fact that like, and.

• 1:31:59Sean Fennessey?

  I'll just say that seeing Spider-Man 3 again, I was like, this is better than I remember.

• 1:32:02Speaker 00

  And it, and the same thing happened to me. But isn't that, in part of that, just the fact that because of your understanding and craft and your relationship with the filmmaker, that there's only so bad that the movie can be?

• 1:32:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly what I wrote on Left Box. I was like, there's, I can only ever feel so low on a movie because I see what this person does in a way that really moves me.

• 1:32:22Speaker 00

  Now, let me say something about that. Is that is respected to me? That feeling is respected to me everywhere else except for this genre. Because like, I'll tell you what I mean. So I am.

• 1:32:35Sean Fennessey?

  Not to me.

• 1:32:35Speaker 00

  Like, I am, like, I am called a fanboy because I simply admit to the audience. I go, look, if people, man, when I was a kid, if there was a part of a sitcom where somebody acted like a superhero, like, I would go like this, right? Like, it didn't matter who it was, it was fucking Mighty Mouse. It was whatever it is, if you had a cape and you were flying around, like, I was enamored with it. And I completely admit that for me, my bar of enjoyment, not quality. This is not, this is a taste thing, right? It's not a, it's not a critical thing. My bar gets lowered when people start flying around and using their powers. Of course, there are tremendous disappointments. I think though, everybody has a different version of that.

• 1:33:20Speaker 00

  I think, I think everybody has a different version of that. People who love the horror genre, they love horror movies to where I go, yo, not only was that grotesque, it was offensively bad. You know what I mean? So I just, I think that, I think across the board, that is a thing, like, for you, with, like, some of this.

• 1:33:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, no, I was gonna say that I think, because you posed it in the terms of, you know, is, is there no prestige attached to, to your genre where, you know?

• 1:33:50Speaker 00

  I don't think my genre is, lends itself to prestige.

• 1:33:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah, and I think that, I think the kind of, the YA and romance fans, which I think are actually distinct from romantic comedies at this point, but are very passionate fanbase and with like very fine rules about what happens in those, in those movies, books, shows, whatever they are. And if it checks those boxes or does something well enough that speaks to something that they care about in a very specific way, I think they accept it. And they are like, you know, they're fangirls essentially. And I think it's understood kind of similarly. The horror people have done a very smart trick where they've elevated, you know, their passion into cinephilia.

• 1:34:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And so as soon as something hits like a certain trope of, look, this amazing killer, this amazing, you know, technical shot. And there, you know, is a lot of technical expertise that goes into all of this. But once, once a horror movie hits certain checklist.

• 1:34:50Sean Fennessey?

  This can change though, I mean, you're making a very smart point. Horror though, is grounded in a historical cinematic achievement, you know? Like Frankenstein being a film in the 30s that changes film forever, or the, or Dracula.

• 1:35:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:35:03Sean Fennessey?

  And then you move on through time and The Exorcist becomes one of the greatest and most successful films of all time. Silence of the Lambs winning best picture, like, there is this, now, this might happen for superhero movies, probably less likely for, for YA.

• 1:35:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:17Sean Fennessey?

  Or, um, but you never know. It's just that there's not as much history to move against here too.

• 1:35:21Speaker 00

  Right, but think about the movies that you named, right? So The Exorcist is like a morality tale that has to do with the existence of God, the nature of evil, those are weighty things. Frankenstein, once again, another movie based on this like seminal text that has to do with man's relation to creation. Those movies are horror movies, but they're also elevated tales of the human condition. Terrifier is not, okay? And Terrifier is a perfectly absurd and fun ride. I'm fucking. Hypnotized by it. But that is also a movie that over the last 10 or 15 years

• 1:36:04Speaker 00

  has become a bellwether in new horror. And it's a, it's an insane clown running around and killing people. And the horror fans, the true horror fans.

• 1:36:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's, that movie, that franchise speaks to what Amanda is describing, which is like the cinephilia of the gnarliest kill and the sort of like, the extravagance of the gore effects that are being done. I'm really interested in this.

• 1:36:28Sean Fennessey?

  You're talking about this idea of subjectivity and it's not taste, it's personal preference, right? It's like, what's a specific kind of story that you like? What's a specific kind of story that you like? And what's one that I like? And mine is often like, well, I have a big relationship to the person who made it. And so I'm interested in the choices that they're making. So that's my subjectivity. So I'm going to be more forgiving of Disclosure Day. The same way you, what's an example of a movie that you were like, I'm willing to be more forgiving of a movie like this? Cause it's in a, a lane that I really like.

• 1:36:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 1:36:56Speaker 00

  Don't do it.

• 1:36:57Amanda Dobbins?

  What was I about to say?

• 1:36:58Speaker 00

  I have no clue. I thought you were about to.

• 1:37:01Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I don't know. I think, I, it's honestly more just.

• 1:37:05Speaker 00

  Magic?

• 1:37:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, because I don't really, I don't really care about that. Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:37:09Sean Fennessey?

  Challengers. Like that's a movie that like, if you listen to Bill Simmons and Wesley Morris talk about it, they were like, this is one of the worst movies of the year.

• 1:37:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:37:15Sean Fennessey?

  And you were like, this is right in my sweet spot. It's a much more acclaimed movie, but you know what I'm talking about where it's like that hits so many things you like.

• 1:37:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And like what you're asking me, it's like, yeah, for the, the things you like in a movie, if they show up in a movie, then you respond to them, you know? And what I like in a movie is, you know, a lot of style and good music and handsome people, like maybe or maybe not fucking, you know? All set to Luca Guadagnino. And so.

• 1:37:41Speaker 00

  I think I like that too.

• 1:37:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. And so you also liked challengers. And so sometimes a romantic comedy, you know, fills that void for me, though sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes like a, a drama with people talking fills that void for me and sometimes doesn't like, you know? My problem is, not my problem, but the reason that I don't have any sort of, reason I'm not just like losing my mind all the time on this podcast as much is because I don't have anyone like genre. I just have like a bunch of hallmarks and different things and movies where I'm like, oh yay, they did this. And now I'm really excited. But it really is just, what do you like and what do you not like?

• 1:38:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I try as best as I can. I sometimes fail, but I try to use the word favorite instead of best. I've used the word best many times, you know, in an effort to draw attention to something, but it's really more about like, what are you responding to? And I always find it interesting to talk about comic book movies with you because I know there's a part of you that is like defending your younger self for having all your dreams realized. And then there's another part of you that is like, this actually makes me happy in a profound way. And looking for the middle is like where the truth lies. And I have my versions of that as well. I'm not, that's not a judgment against you.

• 1:38:47Speaker 00

  No, no, no, I completely understand. I think that's very true. I also think this though, there's one thing that, and you guys know me by now, we're friends and colleagues for a while. One thing that, and this is probably a, a passion of like a, a result of my ADHD, right? One thing that bothers me more than anything is when I feel like something is unfair, right? Like take comic book movies out of it, a mob movie. There's only so bad, if somebody walks into a room and goes, hey, you're gonna be made today. I'm like, oh shit. He's gonna be made. He grew up in fucking, uh, Canarsie. And the big boss told him to come down and get his pen.

• 1:39:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:28Speaker 00

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:39:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, sure, mine is a makeover, right? It's like, oh, like, oh, like, oh, we're going shopping. And I'm just like, okay, well, a montage. Let it roll.

• 1:39:38Speaker 00

  And like you are a mob movie fanboy. You, you've seen all of the movies, you love them. And sometimes I think that.

• 1:39:47Sean Fennessey?

  Mine is an Paul Schrader movie when a guy's writing in his journal. Whenever that happens, I'm like, it's fucking odd. This guy's writing in his journal late at night.

• 1:39:54Speaker 00

  Right. And so whereas some of this stuff is slop and it's so commodified, these are corporate, I'm copying to it. These are corporately owned characters that, we're gonna tell these stories every five years because we have to. Because the like, there's a, a, a specific value that's attached to it. We talked about this in He-Man. We had a mo, like we're in He-Man, He-Man, not a perfect movie, but when he pulled the sword out and when I have the power, that was just like it wasn't a cartoon. And, and, and like, I'm sitting there and I'm, I'm sitting there in front of my girl. I'm like, I'm about to cry.

• 1:40:31Sean Fennessey?

  I was moved.

• 1:40:32Speaker 00

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:40:33Sean Fennessey?

  I was absolutely moved. Movie is not very good, but in that moment I was absolutely moved.

• 1:40:37Speaker 00

  I think I'll just, I'll cop to it right now. Almost every single criticism of comic book movies has been fair. Except for one thing, which is the criticisms of the fans of them. And so every single thing that has been said has been fair. It is like fair and maybe more than fair. Maybe the comic book movie industry needed to have its ass kicked and needed to fail and scale back so that there was room for obsession and room for backrooms and room for the drama and room for people to go and, and expand their cinematic palette outside of whatever these studios were gonna throw at people with a cape.

• 1:41:19Speaker 00

  I get that. I just think in the last, and it hasn't happened here. I just think in the last four or five years, some of the criticisms of the fans and the people who are really dedicated to this has been a little bit unfair. Man, I went to Comic Con and there's a company, this company right here, and they make wheelchairs that is based off the comic book characters. So that kids can go around the floor on Battle Cat and stuff like that. And I don't mean to be.

• 1:41:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's the best thing in the world. That's amazing. That's great.

• 1:41:47Speaker 00

  Be overly earnest, but we were talking about it before. I don't know how I feel about Comic Con. I might be above my pay grade, but it was a lot of people there that this is their whole fucking life.

• 1:41:57Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:41:58Speaker 00

  And I think that I'm a little bit probably overprotective of them.

• 1:42:00Sean Fennessey?

  I think when you see criticism of the fans, I try to not criticize fans of things.

• 1:42:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's, I think it's because when things are down, fans get defensive and we live in a time of social media. So you have a lot of interaction between people where they're like, you don't like what I like, fuck you. And that breeds some, some division.

• 1:42:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But there's always a small but vocal group of bad fans of any genre. Of any, like of any organized group of people, right? And so when you start hearing.

• 1:42:28Sean Fennessey?

  Fans, you know?

• 1:42:28Amanda Dobbins?

  From those.

• 1:42:29Sean Fennessey?

  Really toxic.

• 1:42:30Amanda Dobbins?

  But that's.

• 1:42:30Sean Fennessey?

  Super toxic.

• 1:42:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Your point is, your point is well taken. I was thinking about it.

• 1:42:34Speaker 00

  It really bothers you.

• 1:42:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:36Speaker 00

  Funny.

• 1:42:36Sean Fennessey?

  It was for six months of Javi Baez, three months of Javi Baez. It's a tough trade.

• 1:42:41Speaker 00

  Might be the best player in sport.

• 1:42:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm sorry. I was just thinking about how, I guess my version of, um, of I'll watch any is really, you know, in Anyone But You, when they have the, it was just not a good movie.

• 1:42:56Sean Fennessey?

  The shower scenes, that what you're gonna say?

• 1:42:57Amanda Dobbins?

  No, that's, that's okay. No, the, the climactic.

• 1:43:01Sean Fennessey?

  Any movie with a shower scene, I'll watch.

• 1:43:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, you know what? Me too.

• 1:43:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Remember Ben Affleck in Gone Girl? Never forget.

• 1:43:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:43:09Amanda Dobbins?

  But, um, when they're like in the Sydney harbor, and I don't remember if they're doing Titanic or they're doing something similar, but I. Yeah, on a boat. And I was like, okay, so like the big romantic set piece of a romantic comedy, no matter how bad it is. I'm like, if you went all the way to the Sydney harbor and you tried to film something like, okay, I'm in, I'll enjoy it.

• 1:43:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:43:30Sean Fennessey?

  This is a good reminder that taste is subjective. It's very bad. Okay.

• 1:43:35Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, it's, it's not good, but, but that scene, they tried, you know? And they went to Australia. You can't take that away from them.

• 1:43:43Sean Fennessey?

  11 Spider-Man movies.

• 1:43:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:43:45Speaker 00

  Oh shit.

• 1:43:45Sean Fennessey?

  You said you rewatched a lot of them or parts of a lot of them?

• 1:43:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I watched parts of or all of every single one of them, except for Across the Spider-Verse. And we did show Into the Spider-Verse to my four-year-old last week.

• 1:43:55Sean Fennessey?

  You did you?

• 1:43:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:56Sean Fennessey?

  Did that play?

• 1:43:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Sort of. He was like a little scared a couple of times.

• 1:44:00Speaker 00

  Which one?

• 1:44:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Into the Spider-Verse.

• 1:44:02Speaker 00

  Oh, I can see that.

• 1:44:03Sean Fennessey?

  The second one, I've done both with Alice. The second one is, there's a lot of story and it's very confusing.

• 1:44:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I was confused by it when I saw it. Yeah.

• 1:44:12Sean Fennessey?

  Spider-Women is a lot to take in for a little kid. That being said, that movie is fucking amazing to me. And I, this is a hard list to do because I love the Spider-Verse movies so much. They, to me, they are actually the thing that gave me the feeling of reading the Todd McFarlane Spider-Man comic books when I was 12. Where I was like, good God, this is scratching something so specific about, um,

• 1:44:40Sean Fennessey?

  inexplicable, ineffable feelings that certain media can give you.

• 1:44:45Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't know that I have that relationship with any other Spider-Man movie except for Spider-Man 2, the Raimi Spider-Man movie. That, that is the one that I feel like is the very best of the live action movies. I do, I do understand that that's a very common take, that that's, but you know, you thought that this most recent Tom Holland film was the least of the four. You thought it was the best of the four.

• 1:45:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:45:07Sean Fennessey?

  I'm probably somewhere in the middle.

• 1:45:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 1:45:09Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like Homecoming was really cool and it was like a great reinvention of Spider-Man.

• 1:45:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it's great. And the Michael, the Michael Keaton, when he opens the door, it's, it's perfect.

• 1:45:17Speaker 00

  Great movie moment.

• 1:45:18Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, we are, we are coming to it, much like Emily Wilson and Christopher Nolan from, from different walks of experience.

• 1:45:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:45:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Where you.

• 1:45:27Sean Fennessey?

  How much of the text have we spent time with?

• 1:45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And how much of the text do you need to see very specifically in, in the movies? I have never read a Spider-Man comic, but I do have two little boys at home. So when I watch Tom Holland as a teenager, just being like happy-go-lucky and I would love to look like Aunt May trying to protect him, you know? And so I just like, I mean, help me, Marisa Tomei. So I just, I don't have any preconceived interpretation of him, the Spider-Man.

• 1:45:56Speaker 00

  That's interesting.

• 1:45:56Amanda Dobbins?

  As a teenager makes the most sense to me, just like it's the easiest on-ramp to a superhero because I'm not a man of a.

• 1:46:03Speaker 00

  Most accessible Spider-Man.

• 1:46:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And the most accessible superhero because like, again, I don't wander, I don't walk around like feeling the burden of, you know, my greatness and my responsibility and my genius to people all the time. That's a man thing. So.

• 1:46:17Sean Fennessey?

  I'll quibble with that a little bit. But it's like. We can explore that in a future episode.

• 1:46:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Like I, Batman, like I, you know, I'm sorry that happened, but like, you know.

• 1:46:27Sean Fennessey?

  His parents were murdered.

• 1:46:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, I've seen it 45,000 times.

• 1:46:31Sean Fennessey?

  Crime Alley.

• 1:46:32Speaker 00

  See, this is, this is a legitimate criticism. We don't have to see them die again.

• 1:46:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:36Speaker 00

  And Spider-Man.

• 1:46:37Sean Fennessey?

  That's an OG Jason Concepcion take.

• 1:46:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:46:40Sean Fennessey?

  That you, we never have to see that happen again in a movie.

• 1:46:43Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's, and that's really sad, but I, you know, and now he's interpret, you know, he's made all the, he's inherited all the money in the world and has some gadgets. Cool. But I, like Superman is just, he feels like an outsider, but also an inside. I don't know. I don't relate to any of them. I don't get it. Like, I don't like, must be hard to have all that power. Spider-Man, he's just a kid trying to figure it out. It's cool. I understand. So.

• 1:47:09Speaker 00

  Likes girls.

• 1:47:09Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, yeah. He likes girls, but also, you know, he has some higher calling, but like, how much of the time is he going to spend on girls? How much of the time is he going to spend on his higher calling? You know, relatable. So.

• 1:47:20Sean Fennessey?

  He's got homework.

• 1:47:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. So.

• 1:47:22Speaker 00

  I couldn't play football then, so I shouldn't do it now.

• 1:47:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. He's got prom, right?

• 1:47:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 1:47:27Speaker 00

  And his girl's dad.

• 1:47:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 1:47:29Speaker 00

  Is the, is the prom guy.

• 1:47:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Bad break.

• 1:47:32Speaker 00

  Keaton leans over the car with the gun and you're like, yo, that's a hell of a scene. That like, anyway.

• 1:47:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's just to say that that interpretation of Spider-Man speaks to me the most.

• 1:47:46Sean Fennessey?

  What happened to Laura Harrier?

• 1:47:48Speaker 00

  Good question.

• 1:47:49Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen her much lately.

• 1:47:51Speaker 00

  Oh, you know what? She was in Michael.

• 1:47:54Sean Fennessey?

  Who was she in Michael?

• 1:47:54Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 1:47:55Sean Fennessey?

  Suzanne DePas.

• 1:47:55Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:47:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:47:58Sean Fennessey?

  Very important person in music history.

• 1:48:00Speaker 00

  An extremely important person in music history, television, film history, Suzanne DePas.

• 1:48:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And all she gets to do in Michael is hand someone a card and then just like stand there.

• 1:48:11Speaker 00

  She was played by Vanessa Williams in the, uh, uh, Jackson's and American Dream.

• 1:48:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that's right.

• 1:48:17Speaker 00

  Which is vastly superior.

• 1:48:18Sean Fennessey?

  I've seen that to Michael. Yes, I agree.

• 1:48:20Speaker 00

  So like, you know, she got more, more to do then. I think she made it maybe directly produced that one too.

• 1:48:25Sean Fennessey?

  There could be a whole movie about her.

• 1:48:26Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:48:27Sean Fennessey?

  Her life is so interesting.

• 1:48:28Speaker 00

  She's like a seminal figure. Yeah.

• 1:48:30Sean Fennessey?

  Anyway, uh, to me, the worst Spider-Man movie is The Amazing Spider-Man 2. I feel like it's not, not really arguable, right?

• 1:48:37Speaker 00

  Domination.

• 1:48:38Sean Fennessey?

  It, it is very, very unsuccessful. I love Andrew Garfield as an actor. I liked him in the first Amazing Spider-Man, didn't love, but I, I, I mostly agree with what you're saying in terms of like, they hit a different tone.

• 1:48:50Speaker 00

  That one thing, right?

• 1:48:51Sean Fennessey?

  That component.

• 1:48:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:48:52Sean Fennessey?

  The second movie is a fiasco and.

• 1:48:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Completely agree.

• 1:48:56Sean Fennessey?

  Totally torpedoed his run as Spider-Man and frankly, Mark Webb's career. He has not been the same ever since.

• 1:49:02Speaker 00

  And, and, and was the catalyst for Sony getting into the deal with Disney and the MCU.

• 1:49:10Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly right.

• 1:49:11Speaker 00

  Because they had to produce another one. They didn't want to make a sequel. And the best way to do it was either to make a Sinister Six movie, which no one was going to go see.

• 1:49:21Sean Fennessey?

  I really wanted it though. It was supposed to be Drew Goddard, who was supposed to make it. And I really fucking wanted that movie.

• 1:49:26Speaker 00

  Like the Sinister, Sinister Six movie, which they, they didn't really want to do that and they, they got into the deal with, with the MCU.

• 1:49:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's so annoying though, that we didn't get that movie, but we did get three Venom movies. Craven, The Hunter.

• 1:49:36Speaker 00

  And Madame Web.

• 1:49:37Sean Fennessey?

  And Morbius and Madame Web.

• 1:49:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:39Sean Fennessey?

  You know the Sinister Six? It's like the six main bad guys.

• 1:49:43Amanda Dobbins?

  You've told me about them before.

• 1:49:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:44Amanda Dobbins?

  But I didn't commit it to memory. I did commit Madame Web and the Pepsi can to memory though. So at least we got that.

• 1:49:51Sean Fennessey?

  What's the second worst Spider-Man movie?

• 1:49:54Speaker 00

  This one was hard for me because it's either, and the animated movies are in this, right?

• 1:50:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:50:01Speaker 00

  They're way at the top.

• 1:50:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:50:03Speaker 00

  It's either Spider-Man 3.

• 1:50:06Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:07Speaker 00

  Or.

• 1:50:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:08Speaker 00

  The Amazing Spider-Man 1.

• 1:50:10Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. I think it's between those two. I think they're a nine and 10 position, which, which goes first.

• 1:50:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So Spider-Man 3 is Thomas Hayden Church as the Sandman.

• 1:50:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's correct.

• 1:50:21Amanda Dobbins?

  And Amazing, oh my gosh, I forgot about that.

• 1:50:27Speaker 00

  One of the greatest, greatest scenes ever.

• 1:50:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:30Speaker 00

  Praying in church, caught.

• 1:50:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And then.

• 1:50:33Speaker 00

  Who kills Peter Parker.

• 1:50:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's, and it's when, and Kirsten Dunst as MJ is like on Broadway.

• 1:50:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:50:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Very, very clearly not singing.

• 1:50:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:50:42Amanda Dobbins?

  At all.

• 1:50:43Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:50:43Amanda Dobbins?

  That's okay. She is, she has many other talents.

• 1:50:46Sean Fennessey?

  I would say Mary Jane is mis-served by Spider-Man 3.

• 1:50:49Amanda Dobbins?

  When I was re-watching Spider-Man 3, I was thinking about how at this point in Kirsten Dunst's life, she had already made Marie Antoinette. And was then like back on stage pretending to sing in, in Broadway. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I didn't make it. 20th anniversary this year.

• 1:51:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And then.

• 1:51:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think.

• 1:51:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Amazing Spider-Man has the Branzino.

• 1:51:13Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 1:51:15Sean Fennessey?

  Does it?

• 1:51:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:16Speaker 00

  The Branzino scene.

• 1:51:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. When he goes to, yeah, when they, they're going to dinner. Yeah. And he's poking at it.

• 1:51:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:51:21Speaker 00

  It's a good scene.

• 1:51:22Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a good scene.

• 1:51:23Sean Fennessey?

  I do like that scene as well.

• 1:51:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Lot of questions about Gwen Stacy's wardrobe choices at her very grown up internship. I don't, did they not have like the fingertips on the skirts rule?

• 1:51:35Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, you're saying it was too revealing what Gwen was wearing?

• 1:51:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Not only is she wearing a short skirt, which is.

• 1:51:40Sean Fennessey?

  Speaking of reactionary.

• 1:51:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Is fine, but then she's wearing, she's wearing knee-high boots, then.

• 1:51:45Sean Fennessey?

  You're slut-shaming Gwen Stacy?

• 1:51:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Not slut-shaming. I'm saying that she is giving the tour for all the new interns. And she's wearing like, um, sock boots, no, like, like thigh-high socks on knee-high boots and a short skirt.

• 1:52:03Speaker 00

  Young woman can dress however she wants to dress.

• 1:52:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:52:04Sean Fennessey?

  I'm waiting to hear something bad.

• 1:52:06Amanda Dobbins?

  And I would just like to say that I think that there are many settings in which we're that. And your job where you're the lead tour guide is probably not one of them. That's my tip.

• 1:52:16Sean Fennessey?

  Noted. I'll let Emma Stone know what you said about her. Um, I think it's probably Spider-Man 3 and then The Amazing Spider-Man, but it's a coin flip having just revisited Spider-Man 3.

• 1:52:26Speaker 00

  I, I'd probably go opposite, but I couldn't hate it. I couldn't hate it. I don't know why. You know what?

• 1:52:32Sean Fennessey?

  Come on, Tobey Maguire turns into Venom. That's fucking sick, man. Kind of, sorta does, but not really.

• 1:52:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Tofer Grace turns into Tobey Maguire.

• 1:52:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Tobey Maguire wears the black suit.

• 1:52:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:44Sean Fennessey?

  Of course.

• 1:52:45Speaker 00

  I think it's probably, I think it's probably reverse.

• 1:52:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:52:48Speaker 00

  But I also think.

• 1:52:49Amanda Dobbins?

  So you think that it's Spider-Man at 10?

• 1:52:52Sean Fennessey?

  Spider-Man 3.

• 1:52:52Speaker 00

  Then Spider-Man 3.

• 1:52:54Sean Fennessey?

  I'm fine with that.

• 1:52:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's tough for Andrew Garfield. Another Leo.

• 1:53:00Sean Fennessey?

  Do you remember his press conference when he was cast as Spider-Man and he talked about how important Spider-Man was to him? It's the most eloquent an actor has ever been about being cast as a superhero.

• 1:53:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Wonderful.

• 1:53:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:10Speaker 00

  And he's great in the role. I just think that just, it, it's actually almost not a fair comparison because there's so many climatic things that happen in Spider-Man 3 and the movie is wonky and silly, but it's just, it's, it's kind of riding the, the fumes of the first two.

• 1:53:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So that's, that's fine. I don't really care.

• 1:53:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay.

• 1:53:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Eight movies. I feel like Far From Home is probably next.

• 1:53:36Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 1:53:37Sean Fennessey?

  Mysterio. I love Gyllenhaal. It's, it feels like just a little bit of a side quest movie.

• 1:53:42Speaker 00

  Now you're picking from only good movies now.

• 1:53:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm a little lower on Far From Home.

• 1:53:48Speaker 00

  Okay, cool. You're picking from movies that-

• 1:53:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I think I-

• 1:53:51Sean Fennessey?

  I'll say, once we get to six is when I'm like, I pretty much like all these movies a lot.

• 1:53:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I was a little more charmed by Far From Home when I watched it this week than I was previously. And obviously, I like Tom Holland, but more than I-

• 1:54:09Sean Fennessey?

  You love Europe. This is why you like this movie?

• 1:54:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, they do, you know, they do Rialto Bridge. I'm more of an academia, but that's, um... And I also thought the opener with, you know, they have like the high school TV network do like a farewell to farewell video for all of the Snap individuals that opens it.

• 1:54:33Sean Fennessey?

  Angkor Arai, yeah.

• 1:54:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was really, really funny.

• 1:54:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:35Amanda Dobbins?

  But that's, yeah, so I was a little charmed, but I, that's fine.

• 1:54:39Speaker 00

  So, the thing is, it's clearly a Holland movie that has to go right here. And I think the other ones, you just can't possibly make a, you can't possibly put them right there to me.

• 1:54:51Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's the least of the Holland movies, but I like it. I like it.

• 1:54:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It's also, the one tricky thing is that this is where he and Zendaya really figure out Spider-Man and MJ, because MJ is in Homecoming, but she's not Laura Harrier, and she's kind of, and so she's just being very weird and funny in Far From Home and spouting off all her conspiracy theories and then figures out that he's Spider-Man.

• 1:55:16Sean Fennessey?

  Is there another movie you would put here instead of this movie?

• 1:55:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Well-

• 1:55:18Sean Fennessey?

  Your interest in Far From Home fascinates me.

• 1:55:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I just, listen, I did my homework. I refreshed everything. I don't know if it's my favorite, and I think of the Holland ones, you know, I put it there, but like, I just prefer the Holland's to the Tobey Maguires, you know, and I know you can't-

• 1:55:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's so hard with Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, because they-

• 1:55:38Amanda Dobbins?

  They started-

• 1:55:39Sean Fennessey?

  Spider-Man changed movies.

• 1:55:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I, listen, and it's Kiki, and it's the upside down kiss, so you can't, you can't put that lower.

• 1:55:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:55:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And then-

• 1:55:48Sean Fennessey?

  The vibe of that movie at the time of having so much fun and just totally locked in, perfect casting for Osborn Green Goblin.

• 1:55:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I think Spider-Man 2 is just a real like comics person versus non-comics person.

• 1:56:01Speaker 00

  What you mean?

• 1:56:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I just like, I, I trust you guys, but I don't, I don't get that at all. I don't care about Dr. Octopus. Like, you know, in the same way that you said when the big, like, the splash page in Brand New Day makes you come alive.

• 1:56:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I was kind of like, I spent the time being like, who's, who is Jon Bernthal supposed to be right now? I just don't respond to it in the same way, but that's-

• 1:56:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's also to Dan's point earlier, like, you're not a big horror movie person, and it's a great horror movie. It's a great Frankenstein werewolf movie, where a guy just kind of is like transformed by his own creation into this demonic figure, and it becomes a very tragic story about Octavius in a way that is just like very, very good genre movie making.

• 1:56:46Speaker 00

  Did you guys-

• 1:56:46Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's like, it's as much creature movie as it is superhero.

• 1:56:50Speaker 00

  You guys, we watched the movie, right?

• 1:56:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:52Speaker 00

  The scene where he is being operated on and his tentacles come alive?

• 1:56:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And is like slaughtering the doctors.

• 1:57:01Speaker 00

  It's scary.

• 1:57:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:03Speaker 00

  Like, that, that deepens the seriousness and the stakes every time Peter is on screen with him. It's good. But, um-

• 1:57:12Sean Fennessey?

  There's, there's good Peter and Mary Jane stuff in it, too.

• 1:57:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:57:14Sean Fennessey?

  You know, where like they split up and she's gonna get married to somebody else and I, Spider-Man 2 is very high up there. We'll bargain. We're gonna have to bargain.

• 1:57:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:57:23Sean Fennessey?

  Um, is there another Holland going here?

• 1:57:26Amanda Dobbins?

  At eight?

• 1:57:28Sean Fennessey?

  No, at seven.

• 1:57:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, Brand New Day? But it's his favorite, so I don't, I don't really know what to do.

• 1:57:34Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting. Where do you think Brand New Day is going?

• 1:57:35Speaker 00

  I think Brand New Day is third. Well, hold on. If you're not, if you're counting the animated movies, then no.

• 1:57:40Sean Fennessey?

  We are counting the animated movies.

• 1:57:42Speaker 00

  When we did the animated movies, we didn't count, we didn't count the, uh, we didn't, when we did ours, we didn't count the animated.

• 1:57:48Sean Fennessey?

  I think we should. It's obviously not just Peter Parker, though Peter Parker is in these movies, too.

• 1:57:52Speaker 00

  Brand New Day is not as good as either one of the animated movies. I was actually less into Across the Spider-Verse than other people were, but Brand New Day is-

• 1:58:01Sean Fennessey?

  Because it was trying to do too much?

• 1:58:03Speaker 00

  A little bit.

• 1:58:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:04Speaker 00

  But-

• 1:58:04Sean Fennessey?

  It's very busy. Revisiting it, I was like, oh, this is really busy.

• 1:58:06Speaker 00

  But Brand New Day is not as good as either one of those movies.

• 1:58:08Sean Fennessey?

  The animation style and the music and the scope of that movie, though, is so crazy.

• 1:58:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I just remember when all the Spider-Mans start like glitching or whatever. I had no idea what was happening, which, yeah, respectfully.

• 1:58:20Speaker 00

  So then seven is going to be-

• 1:58:22Amanda Dobbins?

  It looked cool.

• 1:58:23Speaker 00

  Oh, no, it's tough.

• 1:58:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's probably, probably between Homecoming and Brand New Day.

• 1:58:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Then I-

• 1:58:29Speaker 00

  I want a caveat.

• 1:58:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Homecoming is so wonderful.

• 1:58:31Speaker 00

  I want a caveat.

• 1:58:32Sean Fennessey?

  I like Homecoming a lot. We're in pretty much really good movie zone here, for my taste at least.

• 1:58:38Speaker 00

  I would, I think Homecoming is, I think Brand New Day is better than, better than the rest of these. I would go Homecoming. Uh, it's getting tough. I would go Homecoming, but I mean, I'm a guest.

• 1:58:49Sean Fennessey?

  You would go Brand New Day?

• 1:58:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:52Sean Fennessey?

  I think I would go Brand New Day, too.

• 1:58:53Speaker 00

  I'm outvoted. Just put a thing in there. A, parentheses, Van disagrees.

• 1:58:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:00Sean Fennessey?

  All right. Should we put that on the card, actually? Um, okay. Top six.

• 1:59:07Speaker 00

  Now you're, now, now you're in the end game.

• 1:59:11Sean Fennessey?

  Is it Spider-Man?

• 1:59:13Speaker 00

  Fuck.

• 1:59:16Speaker 00

  The original?

• 1:59:16Sean Fennessey?

  Or Homecoming?

• 1:59:17Speaker 00

  Oh, it's, uh, it's-

• 1:59:19Sean Fennessey?

  Homecoming?

• 1:59:20Speaker 00

  It's Homecoming.

• 1:59:20Sean Fennessey?

  Then Spider-Man?

• 1:59:21Speaker 00

  It's-

• 1:59:21Sean Fennessey?

  And then, and then Thunderdome. And then we have to figure out what we're doing.

• 1:59:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:26Speaker 00

  So, okay, I'll put-

• 1:59:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Can you just put a manager's sat here next to the title?

• 1:59:30Sean Fennessey?

  No, then five is No Way Home and then Thunderdome.

• 1:59:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I will put Home, yeah, I'll put Homecoming there. Five, I'll put No Way Home. And then we're in-

• 1:59:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And then what's left?

• 1:59:41Speaker 00

  Two, the, the two original live actions and the two animated ones.

• 1:59:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, just-

• 1:59:45Speaker 00

  And now you're fucking-

• 1:59:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Much like the rest of this podcast, I'm just sitting here while y'all are talking.

• 1:59:49Sean Fennessey?

  I gave you a lot of leeway on Nolan, so you're gonna have to roll with me on Spider-Man.

• 1:59:52Speaker 00

  It's like, you're right.

• 1:59:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I truly don't care, so go ahead.

• 1:59:54Speaker 00

  It's like, this is the Kumite.

• 1:59:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:59:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's Across Spider-Man into Spider-Man 2.

• 2:00:02Speaker 00

  Ooh, Across Spider-Man into Spider-Man 2. So this is something that people don't agree with me. I have Spider-Man 1 and 2 is almost identical quality.

• 2:00:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:00:13Speaker 00

  So, I actually, from a watching perspective, slightly prefer Spider-Man 1.

• 2:00:19Sean Fennessey?

  You do?

• 2:00:19Speaker 00

  Because of the Green Goblin stuff, which I think is perfectly done. However, that's a personal preference, and the reality is Spider-Man 2 is a, a higher filmmaking achievement. It is. It's like a, it's a, it's a, it's a slightly better movie. I prefer Spider-Man 2 a little bit. The question would be, really, of that top two lists, if we're being for real, is Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse actually better than Spider-Man 2? Like, that's a pretty perfect movie.

• 2:00:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 2:00:50Speaker 00

  I think that's-

• 2:00:51Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you. I agree. To me, it's a five-star movie. Like, I have said this, I said it when we were doing the show. This, that movie blew my mind.

• 2:00:58Speaker 00

  Y'all going viral if y'all put, if y'all put it number one, but I think, I think, I think there's a, if we're just being for real, if we're taking our personal preference out of it like I already have, you could make an argument that Into the Spider-Verse is slightly better than Spider-Man 2.

• 2:01:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I've already said that this, this Spider-Man 2 is a thing that just doesn't speak to me in the same way that it speaks to you guys, and Spider-Verse does more so. But I also opted out of this conversation a long time ago.

• 2:01:28Speaker 00

  What does the Letterboxd have? What do the people say?

• 2:01:30Sean Fennessey?

  Actually, I'd be curious to know what the average rating is for those movies. It's 4.4. Into is a 4.4, which is pretty much as high as you see a movie go. And then beyond-

• 2:01:42Speaker 00

  I'll look at Peter and-

• 2:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  Beyond, beyond, beyond. The live-action Spider-Man 1 and 2 are both a 3.9. Beyond and Across are both 4.4.

• 2:01:51Speaker 00

  It's nuts. If you just help, I mean, you know.

• 2:01:55Sean Fennessey?

  The Spider-Verse movies are-

• 2:01:58Amanda Dobbins?

  We know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:00Sean Fennessey?

  Move me.

• 2:02:00Speaker 00

  Let me ask you this.

• 2:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  They move me.

• 2:02:02Amanda Dobbins?

  It wasn't unmoved.

• 2:02:03Speaker 00

  How much does culture fit into this? Because from that perspective, Spider-Man 1 and 2 are some of the most consequential, you said this.

• 2:02:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 2:02:12Speaker 00

  They're some of the most consequential movies in modern film history.

• 2:02:14Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote in my newsletter today that Spider-Man, the first Spider-Man film, it arrives in 02, in the year when everything dramatically changes, when you get Harry Potter 2, Lord of the Rings 2, Men in Black 2, and then you get a ton of, like, Big Fat Greek Wedding and Signs and Eight Mile, and you go down the list of like all the huge movies that came out in 2002, but Spider-Man specifically, which was the highest grossing movie of that year, a movie set in New York City after 9/11, that movie, and the flag is billowing behind Peter in the movie when he's racing to save Mary Jane.

• 2:02:51Sean Fennessey?

  That movie shifted, honestly, for the worse, in my opinion. What Hollywood thought its mission was. That doesn't change how much I liked that movie. I loved that movie when it came out, and I still do. And I was a kid who loved Sam Raimi movies when I was a teenager.

• 2:03:05Speaker 00

  The arms race.

• 2:03:06Sean Fennessey?

  It really did. And the globalized box office really kind of kicks off at this time, where we see there's more money to be made in Europe and Asia from our films, maybe even than in America. But that's not, I can't hold that against it either when we're having a conversation like this.

• 2:03:20Speaker 00

  Hold what against it?

• 2:03:21Sean Fennessey?

  The fact that I think it kind of tipped things in a negative direction for Hollywood for 20 years.

• 2:03:25Speaker 00

  Like, see, you know.

• 2:03:26Sean Fennessey?

  It just became franchise city.

• 2:03:27Speaker 00

  The Marvel guys go, okay, well, we gotta go get a $500 million loan from Merrill Lynch and do our thing.

• 2:03:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 2:03:33Speaker 00

  The characters, we have less.

• 2:03:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Me too.

• 2:03:35Speaker 00

  They, they.

• 2:03:38Speaker 00

  They look at that and they go, that's money that we, that we are not making. All right, I mean, I'm good with that. There's gonna be, there's gonna be controversy, but I'm good with that. So Spider-Man 2, number one, you really could swap those, but.

• 2:03:54Sean Fennessey?

  You want the internet going crazy because we put Into the Spider-verse at one?

• 2:03:57Speaker 00

  I just think that y'all, y'all probably gonna get love.

• 2:04:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not gonna see any of it because I'm gonna be on vacation.

• 2:04:03Sean Fennessey?

  Me too.

• 2:04:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And I don't, I don't, I don't accept any of the collabs when there are superheroes involved.

• 2:04:09Speaker 00

  Bro, like.

• 2:04:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't come into the meme posts with your ideas. The meme posts are our space, okay? Keep your bot army stuff on topic, okay? I am the moderator and I say that's our space. I just, you know, like, someone stumbles across some random algorithm and suddenly I gotta hear their feelings about like who Ghost Rider is? I don't care, you know? This is my space.

• 2:04:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I get it. Uh, I heard, I say something about Ghost Rider. I heard that, uh, this idea is like, a lot of it, I mean, they talked about this. A lot of it's coming from Ryan.

• 2:04:45Sean Fennessey?

  From Gosling, yeah.

• 2:04:46Speaker 00

  And I heard that the idea is phenomenal. And people are being tight lipped about it, not really talking about it. But I heard that the idea itself is pretty amazing.

• 2:04:55Sean Fennessey?

  Why don't you just share what it is?

• 2:04:56Speaker 00

  They didn't tell me.

• 2:04:57Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, that's a great way to get people talking about it. Hey, I heard this idea is phenomenal. What's the idea? No one's talking, no one's allowed to say.

• 2:05:04Speaker 00

  You know that's how they talk.

• 2:05:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 2:05:06Amanda Dobbins?

  That is how they talk.

• 2:05:07Speaker 00

  You know that's how they talk, like, this, this is getting made because this is like the greatest thing we've ever heard. Okay, tell me a little bit about it. Can't do that. I'm like, but, but.

• 2:05:16Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm, I'm as susceptible to that as anybody, but like, it is still Ghost Rider.

• 2:05:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:05:21Sean Fennessey?

  He's a guy who dies and turns into a skeleton who bursts into flames. Like, how cool could it be? We know what Ghost Rider is.

• 2:05:27Speaker 00

  I repeat the shit, but I've been burned like five times. So, so like, they, they told me the same thing about.

• 2:05:33Sean Fennessey?

  Is Sean Levy still directing it?

• 2:05:35Speaker 00

  I suppose, yes, well.

• 2:05:36Sean Fennessey?

  Say no more.

• 2:05:36Speaker 00

  Okay, whoa, okay, free guy. Um, that's good. I mean, we, I'll say this, just for.

• 2:05:45Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just, I just strong-armed at the end here. This is, I was like, this is what I want to happen.

• 2:05:48Speaker 00

  For consistency's sake, you probably gotta put Spider-Man 2, number one. But I'm being for real, just on quality of movie. I remember I left Into the Spider-verse blown away, almost a tie, almost a one.

• 2:06:01Sean Fennessey?

  You know what else I like about Into the Spider-verse?

• 2:06:03Speaker 00

  What?

• 2:06:03Sean Fennessey?

  Is it made me think about, well, of course I love the representation, I love Miles. But I actually was like, Chris Pine could have been an interesting Spider-Man. Casting him as the Peter Parker who is kind of vanquished at the beginning of it. Like, there's a lot of little choices in the movie that kind of gratify your old school Spider-Man fans and also make it a very modern telling, which is really hard for comic book movies to do, as we talked about with this brand new day conversation. Epic episode of this show. Incredibly deep, lots of personal lore shared.

• 2:06:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:06:33Sean Fennessey?

  Lots of deep discussion of subjectivity as a driving point for taste amongst podcasters.

• 2:06:39Speaker 00

  Guys.

• 2:06:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Not just podcasters, pretty much.

• 2:06:41Sean Fennessey?

  All humans.

• 2:06:42Speaker 00

  Guys, I'll be, I'll be honest. I'm gonna go over well when I say this. If I wanted to, just based on the numbers that I've put up in terms of what we talk about when I'm on here.

• 2:06:54Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, wow, third chair.

• 2:06:54Speaker 00

  If I wanted to.

• 2:06:55Amanda Dobbins?

  You think you want a third chair in?

• 2:06:57Speaker 00

  If I wanted to, I'm not gonna, if I wanted to, obviously, I don't have the stature of a CR. I don't have the bona fides of a Tracy, okay? But if I wanted to, just based off what happens when I'm here, I could make the argument that I'm third chair.

• 2:07:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:07:21Speaker 00

  Okay, it's like, CR is, has his own lore here at The Ringer. Nobody fucking with that. It's really, you know, he's starting to come like, come for the fucking, he like Lancelot almost. It's like a Lancelot, King Arthur thing starting to happen at this motherfucker.

• 2:07:36Sean Fennessey?

  You think that Bill hears the footsteps?

• 2:07:38Speaker 00

  I think he definitely hears them, you know what I mean? That's why he tried to throw a little assist just to see what he was capable of, you know what I mean? But so.

• 2:07:48Sean Fennessey?

  You think he checked the numbers? How well that CR.

• 2:07:50Speaker 00

  I, I, I think, I think that's one of those ones where you bring somebody in and just go, okay, let's see if you can sit in the big seat, just to test, to check, to check your temperature a little bit. So I'm not, I'm not about to act like I'm on a, and then Tracy brings, you know, play right guy, you know, got a, comes from a royal family of, of the Hollywood and his wife is beautiful and talented and he's great and all of that stuff. But we just talking about quality of what happens on the show and where we go? I don't know, man.

• 2:08:19Sean Fennessey?

  I respect you. I respect you staking that claim.

• 2:08:21Speaker 00

  I could, I could see a world where I'm in there. I'm kind of like the Miles Morales of the third chair argument. I got my own universe.

• 2:08:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 2:08:32Speaker 00

  Just saying, we got busy today.

• 2:08:35Sean Fennessey?

  We did. The rankings I'm gonna do very quickly as a recap.

• 2:08:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I closed my tab and have no idea what they are.

• 2:08:41Sean Fennessey?

  Number 11 is The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Number 10 is The Amazing Spider-Man, R.I.P. Garfield. Number nine is Spider-Man 3. Number eight is Spider-Man Far From Home. Number seven is Spider-Man Brand New Day, Van disagrees. Number six is Spider-Man Homecoming. Number five is Spider-Man No Way Home. Number four is Spider-Man Across the Spider-verse. Number three is Spider-Man. Number two is Spider-Man Into the Spider-verse. And number one is Spider-Man 2.

• 2:09:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, you didn't switch it at the end?

• 2:09:04Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't, no.

• 2:09:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:09:05Sean Fennessey?

  I have to stand on business when it comes to Spider-Man.

• 2:09:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:09:08Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, thank you. Third, third chair in waiting.

• 2:09:12Speaker 00

  Third chair in waiting.

• 2:09:13Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Higher Learning, The Ringer-verse, Tailgate.

• 2:09:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:09:17Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Rewatchables, what else is in the mix?

• 2:09:20Speaker 00

  This, that, just stuff, lots of great stuff coming out. Lots of great stuff.

• 2:09:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Thank you to Lucas Cavanagh. Thank you to Amanda Dobbins. I'm going on vacation imminently.

• 2:09:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so.

• 2:09:36Speaker 00

  Are you serious?

• 2:09:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:37Speaker 00

  All the content pushes over, so you got a little lull.

• 2:09:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so actually, I was more than happy to go two and a half with you guys because I won't be doing this for a while.

• 2:09:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 2:09:44Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, we do, we do have an episode coming early next week, which is our Canadian movie draft, which we taped live in Toronto a couple of weeks ago.

• 2:09:53Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 2:09:53Sean Fennessey?

  You'll be able to hear that and then, and then.

• 2:09:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And then.

• 2:09:55Sean Fennessey?

  And then, and Amanda's in the big seat.

• 2:09:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I am. Uh, can I tell everyone?

• 2:09:59Sean Fennessey?

  If you'd like to.

• 2:09:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, um, we're gonna have a special guest, Juliette Littman on the show.

• 2:10:04Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:10:05Amanda Dobbins?

  We're doing one night only.

• 2:10:06Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 2:10:07Amanda Dobbins?

  While you guys were doing that, honestly, Juliette Littman was texting me about a specific location used in the film One Night Only, which we will discuss, along with the 21st century romantic comedy canon. Get ready.

• 2:10:22Sean Fennessey?

  I'm excited. I'm excited for you, I'm excited for Juliette.

• 2:10:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:25Sean Fennessey?

  Excited for the listeners at home. I'll see you guys on the other side of my vacation.

• 2:10:47Speaker 00

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