Blank Check with Griffin & David - Spider-Man 2 with Chris Gethard

Episode Date: May 29, 2022

For a while, “Spider-Man 2” was considered the high water mark for superhero movies - but does it hold up 14 years deep into the MCU? We’ve got two words for you - ALFRED MOLINA. Self-professed “Blank Check rabble rouser” Chris Gethard returns to the pod (and apologizes to the Blankie Community) as we trace the history and legacy of this iconic Spidey sequel. We love this movie so much, David doesn’t even care that the subway sequence isn’t accurate to New York! Other topics covered - why Aunt May should always be elderly and fragile, Tobey’s near-firing from the franchise, Mr Ditkovich Memes, our comic book villain rankings, and more! Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

He knows a podcast when he sees one. Too few characters out there flying around like that, saving old girls like me. Lord knows kids like Henry need a podcast. Courageous, self-sacrificing people setting examples for all of us. Everybody loves a podcast. People line up for them, cheer them, scream their names. Years later, they'll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them how to hold on a second longer. I believe there's a podcast in all of us.

Thought keeps us honest, gives us strength, makes us noble, finally allows us to die with pride. Even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most, even our dreams. I think that's great. That's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. A somber, dramatic, emotional. Exactly. Here's the tough. I was trying to figure out if it was like, oh, do I break off a piece of this? Do i do it even though i've committed to hero being the word i replace with podcast so then i can't end it with the word podcast or fucking whatever but here's the biggest struggle it's a very fine line i found between rosemary harris's aunt may and uh fred gwynn is the old man in pet cemetery i was working and when i was re-watching the movie,

I was trying to get it right, because she has this very specific inflection. Because it's like a British person doing an American accent. Yeah, so she sounds sort of like a rich lady from Connecticut or something. She's got that kind of like lilt. Right, she's got that lilt, and she's got the sort of like the melody of a classically trained british theater actor

and it does end up sound like sometimes dead is better the ground is sour peter uh you know i never thought about that because like you know when they do aunt may in the the later one sally field and marissa tomei are basically both playing her as like a white ethnic New Yorker like I think Sally Field's doing more of a Jewish thing Marissa Tomei's doing more of an Italian thing but they are both playing like Queens broads whereas like Rosemary Harris is not really playing a Queens lady like that is

I never thought about it like she's just playing a classy old lady which is also good right talked about right there was never anything that felt particularly Queens about Aunt May in the classic comics just the milieu no and even just the fact that she always looked like a grandmother but like i just looked her up she's born in brooklyn you know so like you know it canonically the comic book character is a an outer borough new yorker uh so but yeah no you're right that in

the dicko stuff she's really just an old lady and chris way in any time yeah i don't i wasn't i have so much to say but i wasn't sure if i should wait for just swing on in what do you think about the great aunt may dialect of the rainy trilogy well first thing i'm gonna say okay because where to be okay first thing i'm gonna say is, okay, where to be? Okay. First thing I'm going to say is we're discussing what is probably rightfully called the greatest superhero movie of all time. And in rewatching it, so many performances and moments where I was going, oh, right, this movie's awesome. This movie's next level. That being said, the Tom Holland Spider-Man series, when Tom Holland appeared in Civil War, I cried.

We've talked about this several times on the podcast. We can talk about it again. No, no, no. We can. No, no. It's true. We did our Patreon episode on Civil War. And Griff, you and I, I think, are just both raving about him, right?

Just how sensitive and emotional and sweet he is and how it really felt like, oh my God, this is like such a great Peter Parker, which is funny. Cause now I'm like, you know, so exhausted by that, that, uh, franchise, but it's funny. I'm like exhausted by those movies, like that sub franchise. But every time I am actually in the act of watching him play part Peter Parker, I'm like, he's so on the money. I love it. There's a lot to discuss here, obviously, about Tobey Maguire. They nail the emo side,

but the humor side of it is pretty lacking. And Tom Hound, they managed to adjust the dials, and I think they have both. They have the humor side and the big way. But as someone who's been really jazzed on the recent Spider-Man movies and who really has been enjoying watching them, who grew up obsessed with the Spider-Man comics, like I'm not coming in cold to this. I'm coming in invested. Love the new franchise.

Love Marisa Tomei in the new franchise. One of my main takeaways, I wrote down really just a handful of things that I wanted to make sure we discuss with you guys. So I had to jump in even before my intro because Spider-Man's better with an old, fragile Aunt May. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. It just doesn't make sense for Aunt May to feel like someone who's basically got all her shit together. Because then it's like, where's the sort of like the Spider-Man feeling of like, it could all fall apart tomorrow. Right. You know, that kind of Spider-Man thing of like,

Oh God, like, you know, one, one false move. And like, who knows what's going to happen to my family or my friends or whatever. It's not even like she has to have,

like, she shouldn't have all her shit together. Like I want my aunt may so old and fragile that if she finds out I'm Spider-Man, she's going to have a heart attack and drop dead. I'm going to kill my other parental figure. It's one of those things that you're right. Like it,

it kind of doesn't make sense for her to be that old and fragile, but yet it always works so much better in the same sense where I'm like, I give you points for trying to root Aunt May in the tri-state area, but it sounds more correct when Rosemary Harris talks like this. This is what I was sort of going to come around to, exactly. It's like, you know,

that is at the end of the day what she's like. Somehow this is what I always imagined her sounding like when I read the comics. I feel like in the Ditko comics, especially like there's so much like you're saying, Chris, where it's not just that

she's physically frail. Her constitution, he's just worried about her like getting overexerted or whatever like and i think sally field is a very fragile actor like i think that's a thing she traffics in but i think she she can play right mentally fragile very well she's very good at playing people who are stressed out or yeah i think she played more frazzled that's the thing i think she focused on the frazzled which look by the way when rosemary harris kills it this hard the next two people gotta do something different and they obviously cast very different because they couldn't just do diminishing returns but you do realize just having this aunt may who's like so sweet so kind so fragile is the. Who also has maybe figured it out.

Everything. In that speech. Has maybe figured out he's Spider-Man in the Henry speech, which is brilliant. I'm going to call out something else because you two are being polite. And everybody knows that I'm one of Blank Check's go-to rabble rousers, okay? You're going to rouse so much rabble. I'm worried about it. I'm worried about your safety.

In the first five minutes of this episode, you're both saying that you're known as one of Blank Check's go-to rabble rousers and also felt the need to say, to announce to our listeners, people should know I'm not coming in cold on Spider-Man. You think anyone knows that you're a rabble rouser and thinks that you're just some fucking off the street. Hey, Chris, do you happen to have any takes on Spider-Man? Listen, Marisa Tomei is amazing in those movies. Here's the thing. Marisa Tomei can do anything.

If you want a player more vulnerable, they could have played a more vulnerable. Where it gets weird in the modern Spider-Man movies, if we're being totally honest, is that she's dating Favreau. That feels very off. It feels very off. And it feels like it takes away...

Now, that being said, major spoiler for the most recent Spider-Man, which I love, which brought back Maguire, which we'll talk about. The moments when you... Everyone here has seen this, yes? You can talk about No Way Home, certainly. Do not worry about that. The moments when you realize

she's been hit by the glider, and you realize... we've all always thought they didn't tell the origin with uncle bed because why would they beat that horse right and then you start to realize oh no this is a multiverse where that hasn't happened yet and it's happening now in front of us without me it got me bad i started crying before how like knowing the backstory of spider as soon as she said great power great responsibility i started tearing up and I realized it hadn't hit Hallie yet,

what was happening. And I'm going, and Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield are watching it from my perspective of, oh, we know what he's about to go. And they got me. Smart writing. Yeah, and I think she kills that scene also.

She's Marissa Tomei. There's a reason my cousin Vinny is what it is and this is a podcast where i'm allowed to say that sentence and not feel like an asshole but no of course not you're just speaking truth yeah her being like young and hip and and dating favreau being together enough to be out on the dating scene and self-sufficient is like no no no her whole life is, it should be like, like aunt may Rosemary Harris crushes it in the sense of like,

it should be watching like a sick mouse, try to walk down a tightrope and a wind tunnel. Like that's how fragile she is. Here's the thing. You know what I think it is? Partly. It's like you're making for one, the Ramy series is there.

And that kind of attempted to, uh, which we'll talk about capture the classic Spider-Man feel let's update it. Let's not have this female mentor character be the most comically cosmically old fucking Mr. Burns ass lady ever. Let's have her be independent, you know,

and then this is true in the comic, the current Spider-Man comics, right. You know, aunt may runs, uh, you know and then this is true in the comic the current spider-man comics right you know aunt may runs uh you know a social uh outreach kind of thing right like she works helping the homeless like she's she's together she's cool she's like with it and i think there was also there was the behavioral thing of just like what aunt may in the original comics if you do the math is supposed to be like 50 but with fucking city miles on her in the 60s and whatever. And they're like, a woman in her 50s looks like Marisa Tomei now. Like, you have to update the cultural standard.

So I get that. You know, I get it. Trope-wise and archetype-wise, in a rewatch of Spider-Man 2, though, to me it's the thing that, and some of this is also rosemary harris right some of it is also just you can't fuck with great that that speech is a lot there's a lot of fat to chew on in that henry speech and she makes that look like she's just a queen's backyard tossing that away and i wrote it down she literally said that was no griffin newman delivery she fucking made it work she at one point says the words about spider-man that he gives us strength keeps us noble and allows us to die with pride and makes that feel like she's just in a backyard packing up her

garage look like she's rosemary like chris what you are talking about is why this movie is so good because yes you know it has that radical sincerity that like just super intense like you know uh purple dialogue that could be so bad or so glaring or just clang on your ears and sometimes is even in this movie let's i want i'm not sure how i feel about that but we can talk about that before we do can i just say something david i'm holding back and I think you can feel it. And I think any listeners who heard me on the show before felt it. I referred to myself as a blank check rabble rouser. And David, you immediately said, oh no.

Something like that. So you're nervous too. I did write a letter. I didn't want to get emotional when I read it. So I did send it to you, David. Is there any way you could just read the letter before we get in? Because I got to be able to get to the hot takes without walking on landmines here and eggshells.

So is there any way you could just read this letter? Oh, my God. All right. Here we go. All right. I've opened the letter. I'm going to read this. I'm not going to read in a Rosemary Harris voice, but I will read it aloud.

Now, every time a letter has been sent in pre-record, has been handed in or sent in, it's been a historic moment. Not to set the expectations too high, but the importance of giving a pre-record letter to a host or producer at the beginning of an episode, it carries a lot of weight in the blank check lore. Okay. Here we go.

All right. To whom it may concern, Colin. Before we begin today's episode, I'd like to formally apologize for my behavior the last time I appeared on Blank Check like to formally apologize for my behavior the last time i appeared on blank check and more pressingly for my online interactions with a number of fans of the show afterwards i never expected that my innocent opinion to reiterate my subjective opinion that i enjoyed rise of skywalker more than the last jedi would set off a firestorm

i realize i recognize i was a steamrollery jabber jaws on that episode. The episode, by the way, it's our Patreon Marvel performance review episode from 2019. The end of 2019. Just so everyone knows, my wife had recently birthed our first child and Rise was the first movie I saw in the theater after many months hiatus.

Even more importantly, that taping was one of the first times I broke out of Baby World and had a grown-up conversation post the birth of my son. I remember that, Chris. You were really, you not hung out with a lot of adults. We were raw. I mean, we're barely adults, but yes. This combined with my manic tendencies made me hit the gas hard in that moment.

And I do apologize. Even more importantly, it's been made clear my behavior in the blankies subreddit, a hive of scum and villainy, obviously. Yes. Was over the line. That was you. That was not me.

You edited it. That was, I said that was the hive of scum and villainy part. Sorry, I'm editorializing. I was very overwhelmed to see the level of anger

my Last Jedi opinions brought about and I had too much fun interacting with people in their mentions, in their responses, sorry, in my mind, I was playing a professional

wrestling heel, your Roddy Piper, Jake the Snake, million dollar man, who's quickly explained to me I was coming off more, much more simply, as a dick.

This incident was one of the few that has led me to delete my Reddit account. I've realized in my older and wiser years that Reddit might just be the worst site on the internet and that's saying a lot. Problem is, everyone who posts on it thinks they're funny and none of them are funny

or have a sense of humor. Seriously, I invite you to take a deep breath and imagine attending a real life party only attended by people who actively post on reddit can you imagine what a living nightmare seriously you throw your pen off the balcony and actively seek out foods you're allergic to in an effort to quine to fic death quick death you could just throw yourself off the balcony chris you throw the epi pen off the balcony i know that's what you're saying you're saying throw the epi pen off the balcony try need a pist, you throw the EpiPen off the balcony. I know, that's what you're saying. You're saying throw the EpiPen off the balcony and try and eat a pistachio or something. I get it.

David Sims has made it clear he does not want this episode to devolve into endless Star Wars talk. And I respect him enough to obey this wish. While all the boys have denied it, I think I did get put in the blank check penalty box after my behavior last time around and I don't want to stress anyone out.

So in case you're wondering, of course I have some strong opinions on The Mandalorian. Of course I'm penalty box after my behavior last time around and i don't want to stress anyone out uh so in case you're wondering of course i have some strong opinions on the mandalorian of course i'm baffled that book of boba fett turned him into someone seeking out what was a county level bureaucratic position yes he essentially tries to be a sheriff of a town very strange didn't hate it this is your editor that's me talking sorry're talking. Sorry. Back to go. And of course, once it dovetailed into being a simple Mandalorian

crossover, I found it strangely to be an extremely underrated Star Wars property. Of course, I've watched the Obi-Wan trailer. I will not be airing out my opinions on it this

time out of my respect David Sims. Do I also wish we had a breathing room to talk about how Grant Morrison's opinion on Superman being turned evil is an unnecessary and overdone

trope match up pretty seamlessly with my opinion that star Wars is our societal fairy tale. And it's okay to let it just be a fairy tale. And I feel very similarly to last Jedi about how it, how Grant Morrison feels about Superman. And all of you seem to really love Grant Morrison's take. And I find that, shall we say italics interesting?

Of course I do. But Sims says we don't. That being said, keep in mind my Manic Star was nonsense is what got us all the Babu Frick stuff, the rant about General Grievous and Gimme That Fisto, but apparently in David's mind it's worth throwing out all those babies with the bass water. David hates babies, I guess.

Sincerely, Chris Gethard. Okay. I'd like to respond personally. Okay. Because I do feel like I'm the target of this letter and i'm not i'm not offended no that was an apology that was an apology i'm not i'm not offended i'm not offended i'm just saying apology it was an apology with some fun i know i can be a little bit of the traffic cop what the blank check traffic cop i know that okay i just geff and griff and i have

you know we text and we were texting about Boba Fett, right? You know, we were texting about whatever the star Wars thing was. And geth was doing the whole, well, you know, we got to do like an hour of star Wars on the next episode.

And Griff was like, yeah, more, more. Yeah. Griff loves to, to loves to, to,

you know, eat that up. Right. You know, fan the flames. Yes. And I was just like, guys,

it's Spider-Man two. It's a, it's a very consequential film it is uh probably my favorite sam raimi film i don't know if you agree griffin i know we can get to the final rankings when we get to the final rankings but you know there's an argument you don't have to defend yourself i wrote a letter saying I get it and I agree with you. But I want to actually just talk about the Patreon episode a little bit. And just for a second, I just want to kind of reassure you a little bit. I think that episode is really funny. Yeah, I did too. I personally think there's sort of both. You're like you said, you're kind of just intense.

Like I'm with people you know thing which i having now had a kid i remember that feeling too where you're after the first few insane months kind of venturing back out of the world i remember i would i would like take walks with people because it was still like covid times not that it's not but you know what i mean and i would like you know i would chat with them and then after i saw them i would send a text being like i'm sorry if i was like too intense having a kid is weird and it makes you weird and imagine if your first like honestly your first real adult conversation about a movie after you had your kid david was recorded right exactly exactly like i would exactly i would feel embarrassed seeing people that i know very well who love me and would text being like if i just was kind of a

fire hose just then with the with the kind of like constant like this is what i think you know like i'm sorry and they would of course always be like you're fine what are you talking about you know don't worry about it but right we were recording it and i think you were maybe not totally aware the discussion of the last jedi had become the most charged topic on the internet. Had no idea. Had no idea. You didn't like that. It was a discourse nightmare. Like they had just been festering for two years.

Beyond that, I think to your credit and largely because you were such a new father, you had stayed pretty out of the Rise of Skywalker echo chamber. Like you were entering into it just being like, I think assuming we all agreed. Yeah, I was a little shocked that everybody wasn't like, this movie is visually stunning and that's carrying it to a really good crescendo. I didn't know about all this other stuff. But I do apologize that I came off as a dick

to your fans on Reddit. I was having a lot of fun with it. And then actually my friend Bryson, who Planet Scum, if there's any cross-reviews, he texted me. It was like, hey, friends of mine on Reddit are telling me you have to chill out. And I was like, oh, that's weird. But do I want to sit here and talk about how if you view The Mandalorian as the uncanny X-Men

and Boba Fett as something akin to X-Factor or Excalibur, that it actually works so well if you just have that perspective? Do I want? Yeah, I'd love to spend 20 minutes on that, but we don't have the time. We got to talk Spider-Man 2. I think that's a good take. I think that's a good take. I also just want to say at the same time that Bryson was texting you and saying you need

to chill out, you were texting us and going I'm fucking loving this. It was so fun. That's what got me in the doghouse. Right at the first couple days, you were like, I'm mixing it up in there. Yeah, we're having fun, right? That's why I got put in blank check jail. You did.

I didn't go back on the show this long. It's fine. I'm looking at Ben's face now and I'm watching the face of Mick who was on an email chain. Who was on an email chain. Here's the honest answer. The honest answer is,

I think there's a thing we are sometimes guilty of where if we're like, fuck, this is a great episode. This person on this is such a fucking great episode. And we pin that in our mind. We'll like, we'll wait too long to. And we pin that in our mind. We'll wait

too long to have someone back on because in our minds we're waiting for that. No, see, what happened is I was gleefully texting you that I was tormenting your fans on Reddit and I was coming off very poorly and it took me too long to realize and you said Gethard needs to go be on the Black Check

channel for a while and I should be. The reality is that Doctor Strange was pushed back a number of times because of the novel coronavirus. Yeah, and also possibly insane Marvel reshoots. Both. Both. How cool was it to

one of my main takeaways from Multiverse of Madness, right out of the gate, how cool was it to see Sam Raimi's Marvel york come back to life i mean it felt like it was on it felt like he was shooting it on the set of spider-man too and it felt so good nostalgically and and then and the two did go properties they let sam ramey put this visual i know it is funny but he's done both dick both major dicko characters it's it's true um no we pinned in our mind very early on.

I think we said, like, if we do Raimi, Geth, you got to do Spider-Man 2. And then Raimi kept on getting pushed further and further. And it was our failing to not think to throw any other possible episodes at you in the meantime. Everybody knows that I'm not a domesticated dog. I'm a feral animal out there in the woods. This is why the Chris Gethard show

is never destined to live forever on cable right so when you put a wolf on your fucking microphone the wolf's gonna howl and people don't want to hear that howl too often because it's loud and it scares them so if you need to go and say we need some domesticated dogs we can't have the wolves running through here so much so i get it okay i'm just a wolf howling at the moon and and sometimes reddit wants to get mad at that well i don't need to be on reddit reddit's a fucking nightmare full of what was the line i said people who think they're funny and none of them even have a sense of humor i think that that's fairly accurate you're and to be fair your fan base

is actually one of the better ones on reddit but i've been around reddit enough to know i mean my only problem and yeah reddit is one of those things where it's like there's you know obviously there's lots of pleasant people on reddit and then there's some unpleasant people and i do think sometimes reddit you know can encourage unpleasantness but i do think our reddit tends to be seen as a fairly chill one which is nice i appreciate that but you know and actually very smart people dealing with people who have opinions on comedy which is the larger sphere i i do comedy reddit is a fucking nightmare that was the big reason i had to get shocked to learn this people online talking about comedy in 2022 comedy is the most

annoying comedy is the most annoying thing in all of pop culture isn't it it is it's the most annoying thing and somehow getting more annoying by the day. And just the fucking bullies dominate one end and self-righteousness dominates another and all the discourse gets guided by fucking... Don't get me started. I could start naming names. We're not going to get used to that. Look, and we can...

I'm sad for you that you deleted Reddit just because that means you can't look at the guy who looks like Sebastian Stan, the dick guy. Just call me Bucky. Just call him Bucky. Who posts nude pictures with an erect penis, right, yeah, but

looks a lot like Bucky. Oh, beyond nude pictures. Oh, he posts active pictures of him having threesomes and real hardcore sex stuff. And he looks so much like Bucky that you will not be able to enjoy the Winter Soldier anymore. Look, this is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin.

I'm David. And I have COVID. This is another wrinkle we're going to weave into this episode. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers. They're given a series of blank checks checks make whatever crazy passion products they want sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce baby and this is a mini series on the films of sam raimi it's called podcast me to hell today we're talking about what yes i think david

it's fair to say is at least in the argument for his best film. But I think more importantly, all of us agree. And I think now it's become a slightly more contentious belief to hold. Is the Great American superhero movie. I feel like this was the default answer for a while and I think there's been a generational shift now. Yeah, this movie's kind of an

antique to a younger generation, I assume. I don't know. But I do think it is still kind of the high watermark for making a studio-friendly franchise comic book picture that feels like really artistic and, you know, genuine and wonderful. And it is my favorite.

I've seen it so many times. I do love Spider-Man 2. You know, I don't... What's its competition grip do you think like now like we're like what would logan raised the bar we both like logan less than you do i don't i don't dislike logan you know i've only seen it once uh i should watch it again um but logan's also not like um it's very uncomic bookie like you know yeah and it's also not like a canon movie like they actually said it in it.

So it's got that going, you know, whereas I'm, and I am a big fan of the Wolverine and I think Griffin agrees with me on that. It's not a perfect movie or by any means, but I like, of course,

yeah, I love, you know, Jackman as Wolverine. I, I, I think that if you're going to say Spider-Man two is high, you know,

I do think Jackman kind of holds the throne of like comic book performer right would that would would that make can we give him that thor ragnarok is pretty perfect if you ask me this is another thing you like ragnarok more wow david is good for anybody since this is an audio medium i have to say david sims just gave me what can only be described as the most dismissive hand motion i I gave you the buzz off. The most actively disrespectful. The buzz off. Look, I think people on this podcast know I am not like,

I don't mind that movie. I think it's fun. Yeah. But I do, look, it's coming out this year, Thor 4, right? Taika Thor 2 is coming out this year. Oh, with the fucking God Butcher? With Gore the God Butcher? Yeah, who looks fun. I like the look of him. Have you read Jason Aaron?? With Gore the God Butcher? Yeah, who looks fun?

I like the look of him. Have you read the Jason Aaron stuff? Have you read the Gore the God Butcher stuff? I have. I love Jason Aaron's Thor run. It's so good. I also think fucking Christian Bale's decision to play that totally fucking straight,

like to play that like Shakespeare against the tyke of it all, I think is a really fucking good choice. Well, look, Griffin, have you read these comic books? Yes. So we can all say, and for anybody who wants spoiler-free theory,

you're going to want to skip ahead 30 seconds. The fact that they made that trailer so fun, but we all know it's God Butcher and Christian Bale's playing it like that, and those comics are bleak. Like, they're setting up Marvel fans. They're making, they're trying to make kids, it's God Butcher and Christian Bale's playing it like that. And those comics are bleak. Like they're setting up Marvel fans. They're making,

they're trying to make kids. Kids are about to cry like fucking Bambi's mom getting shot. Like that trailer is making this movie look like a party with Thor. And these movies, that villain is bleak. And I love that they're about to pull the rug out from under everybody. Agreed. David,

what were you about to say? I'm just wondering if the worm is going to turn if there's going to be maybe some taika fatigue obviously uh jojo rabbit was a pretty divisive movie uh there's just a lot of taika out there taika's on the poster he's out he's billed on the poster of that movie did you know that i'm just wondering if there'll be some moment where people are like, you know what? This tone is starting to grate. Maybe not. Maybe I'm totally wrong. I have no idea. I would not be surprised if that moment comes at some point, but I don't expect it will be

this movie. I got a big question about if this is the best one ever. I got a big question. And it ties right into this generation gap. When Spider-Man 2 came out, a lot of people Yeah. When Spider-Man 2 came out, a lot of people were wondering if Spider-Man 1 was a fluke. Sure.

That was still a fair thing to say. Because we were not too far away from the collective memory of Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. Mm-hmm. Of Danny DeVito as the Penguin. We were not too far away from the collective memory of these things.

Are you anti-DeVito is the Penguin? I'm just saying it was what it was. Comic book movies didn't have a good reputation. The Schumacher Batman was fresh in our mind. Sure. X-Men, X2 had set the bar and then Spider-Man really raised it. The X2 is in between

Spider-Man 1 and 2. So it's first X-Men, Spider-Man, X2, Spider-Man 2. And I think X-Men 2 had shown, yeah, you can build on these and make a cool sequel. Like, that was a very successful sequel. Yeah.

But the idea of Marvel putting out good movies. Like, DC, it was known, okay, every few years, you're going to get a Christopher Reeves Batman every once in a while. You're going to, or Superman, you're going to get a Michael Keaton Batman every once in a while.

But Marvel, it was hilariously bad. A company that had been bankrupt within recent memory, bad. And we're all sitting here tenuous. Now it comes out and it's an incredible movie. And I wrote down some names right here

where you just, you look at it, you go, Molina? Of course. I'm on this rewatch. I'm going, Kirsten Dunst. Kind of blows me away more than i

remembered like it's a really good performance rosemary harris we've talked about jay jones and jameson they brought him back for a reason right yeah i'm even going on this i'm going elizabeth banks as betty brett has a lot of fun in this one the guy who played radio rahim is robbie robertson bill nunn bill nunn perhaps the greatest performance in this movie is phil lamar as a non-speaking person on the train the great phil lamar he is great he is great you know what probably the kid fisto of spider-man 2 is that if you watch when spider-man's about to fall off the front of that subway car one of the people who leans out and catches him is a silent Phil Lamar. Marvin.

Phil Lamar. I think Dan Hicks, Chloe Dykstra. There's a lot of folks in that train car and they do all nail it. Here's the big two. And I got to bring this up. One discussion that needs to be had based off of this movie is James Franco's performance needs to be discussed. Agreed.

And generationally, are fans who are used to where Marvel has set the bar now going to cut Tobey Maguire as much slack as we are considering that we first consumed Marvel movies when they were disappointing and terrible? Which is not to say that Tobey Maguire's performance is bad, but I think that the overall mandated take of the character puts a lot of emotion on him and it's always been kind of made fun of and it's cartoonish upon a modern rewatch. Is Franco good and is Maguire bad? I think Franco is good, but I think it's a very, very risky performance. He is walking an incredibly fine line. I think we can open up a whole Franco sidebar

because we at this point have recorded and released our Spider-Man 1 episode, but have also recorded our Spider-Man 3 episode. And David has said throughout this main series, because we've also recorded our Oz the Great and Powerful episode, that aside from his... Yes, he's a feast or famine actor. There's almost no in-between

space with Franco. With him, I'm either very dialed into what he's doing, or he seems completely bored and disconnected from the work, the material, his role, whatever. And with few examples, the Francos I defend are the big swings. There are a couple of times I think he's given honest, measured, realistic performances,

but I think he's usually better when he's taking a big swing. And this is a big swing performance. He's making big swings in every scene. Now, even within this movie, like there's some of the moments where he's calling Peter his brother and he's playing it drunk and causing a scene where I'm like, damn, this is good. And then there's things like Defoe

coming back at the end and going, avenge me and him going, no! And you're like, that's the best take. That's the take they used. There were other takes. I'll say this about that particular moment that you're referring to. Defoe is so phenomenal screaming avenge me that maybe it's just absolutely it's just a tough thing for him to be next to, you know, like, you know, because Defoe is just the master of unhinged, you know, four color comic book from the 1960s acting. Yeah. Right. Not just a reverse Kuleshev effect

going on in the construction of the film, but also if you're on set witnessing Defoe throwing fastballs at your head, you might fucking, like,

you might shrink a little bit. And again, I'm nitpicking. I started off by saying that I loved this movie when it came out and I rewatched it

and was, like, overwhelmed with how much I still love it. I'm nitpicking here. But again, I'll just reiterate, I'm nitpicking here, but the, again, I'll just reiterate. I don't want to have to keep up with the foe.

You put me on a set with someone of that caliber. I don't want to have to keep up with the foe, but James Franco was tasked with that. That's the best take is the one that they use. That's the best take. Require. Let's, let's just swivel to McGuire.

I, for a long time, kind of had the take you're talking about. Yeah. Where I was like, yeah, it's a very sensitive and interesting performance, but it didn't really have the jokiness I want from Spider-Man.

I think we talked about this a little on the first Spider-Man episode, right, Chris? Sure. We touched on this. And so as a comic book nerd, I was like, I missed that. Spider-Man's supposed to be motor mouth, and that's not really there.

And because McGuire had such a weird career after this where it's not like he never gave a good performance again he was such an interesting performer before spider-man right he was such an exciting young actor like ice storm pleasant phil uh even cider house rules ride with the devil wonder boys you were just like wow this guy is like so exciting and then after this it's he's done sea biscuit in between these two it's the good german which is a bizarre performance uh it's brothers it's the great gatsby it's pawn sacrifice that's like basically all of his major roles after this so like i think the bloom came off the the the mcguire row rose a little bit right and you were And you were kind of like, did he turn out to be a bit of a flop?

And then there's also all the tabloid stories where you're reading about how he's out there, like... Yeah, and he's supposed to be kind of an intense jerk, right? Trolling for strange, picking up DiCaprio's leftovers, and there's all that new Rat Pack bragginess that was very weird and dark. Let's not call it the new Rat Pack. Let's call it the Pussy Posse.

They have to wear that with shame. You said it. And then I saw him in No Way Home and his performance in No Way Home. You're like, right, this was the McGuire performance and he's doing it. That's interesting. You go back to these movies and you're like,

yeah, this is a very specifically calibrated performance. I really like it. Like, that's interesting. You go back to these movies and you're like, yeah, this is a very specifically calibrated performance. I really like it. I'm a big fan. I like it. Okay, can I make my Maguire defense? Of course. I guess I don't like

the Holland Spider-Man movies as much as you do. But I do agree with you that Tom Holland is like the perfect Spider-Man to a degree that it feels bizarre like it feels like he was constructed in a lab only to be able to fill every single tenant of that character simultaneously to a degree that i think we will see

may haunt his career like something like uncharted now has to be, what if Nathan Drake was Spider-Man? Because he just kind of is Spider-Man, right? That feels like it is his movie star persona. Whereas this is very much applying the sensitive indie drama leading man, smart young guy, Tobey Maguire persona that had been developed over the 90s to Spider-Man, right? He's loaning that to these movies. He's bringing Tobey to the movies, whereas, like, Holland has perhaps just merged with Peter Parker at this point and might never be able to age out of it. Who knows?

Yeah, the tough thing with Holland, right, is when you see him in something not Spider-Man, you're like, oh, he can't shake this performance. He's just like this all the time right right right yes um but but i think uh especially now that we're in this zone where like nothing is sacred anymore right if if an adaptation doesn't work it's going to be rebooted immediately if a casting doesn't work they'll reset it like none of these things have the preciousness of what you're talking about geth when like a spider-man one comes out and you're talking about, Geth, when, like, a Spider-Man 1 comes out, and you're just like, if they fuck this up, we're never gonna get any of these movies again.

Or if Spider-Man 2 fucks up, you're like, even still, the goodwill of Spider-Man 1 will be eradicated immediately. All this will go back on the shelf. And we've talked about, we've been doing like the Batman movies on Patreon, and even just how much less critical I am of the Zack Snyder DC movies now, because even at that time I was like, is Snyder going to get to be

the only guy who gets to tell characters stories with these characters for a decade, for an entire revolution, a cycle before anyone else gets their hands on it? It's like, no, none of this is precious anymore. There's seven Batmans at the same time. None of this fucking matters. Right. None of this is precious anymore. There's seven Batmans at the same time. None of this fucking matters, right? But I do think when you look at like arcs of comic book series, the runs, the eras, characters morph and they mutate over time and different artists and different writers,

they push and pull and they, certain creators intensify certain aspects of the personality and sidetrack other aspects of the personality and the character adapts to the times and whatever. So when you're reading a comic book of a character, very rarely does it have to fill every single thing that character has represented over 75 years. But when you're making a movie of that character, you're like, I want you to put everything this character has ever been to me into one characterization and one performance, you know? And I think there's that thing where it's like Keaton's Batman was very different from Adam West, was very different from Christian Bale's, from Pattinson's, from Affleck's.

All of them, I think, are good, but all of them were able to focus on different slivers and like adjust the knobs in such a way. And there's a thing I saw Laura Ziskin say in like a behind the scenes thing I watched for this movie, where she was like, the terror for us in making this movie was that everyone, perhaps she's generalizing, but so many people, millions and millions and millions of people had a Spider-Man movie in their head they had always wanted to see. And there's no way we can make everyone's dream Spider-Man movie. But we really trusted in the movie that Sam Raimi had in his head and hoped that that overlapped with enough other people's movies. And for Sam Raimi, clearly the moodiness of Spider-Man, the sort of Archie comics, earnest

vulnerability, the bleeding like sort of heart on its sleeve sort of thing was the important thing. And I think Tobey Maguire is playing that aspect of Spider-Man perfectly, which is exactly what he's asked to do. I think you can ding him for not fulfilling other aspects of the character in a broader sense. It's not about him. It's not about him. Yeah, but I think he's giving the perfect performance for this movie

and for this movie's interpretation of Spider-Man. And especially because other guys have now come along and been able to hit the other things. I take all of that pressure off of him where I'm like, I don't need to be quippy because I've seen other people do quippy well. See, here's where, because I agree with what you're saying. And I'll say this. Tobey Maguire, really? He nailed what he was asked to do i could not do what he did his reaction to rosemary harris's speech is incredible when i mean the underrated because it's right before the speech the importance of the hey you want some chocolate cake the healing right the healing it's maybe the single best scene in the entire film. In a quiet argument.

A very important scene. Yeah, and him realizing like, oh, other girls might be interested in me. If I'm not so, like, maybe I can let Mary Jane go for her safety and recognize that that's not going to end the world. Maybe I can find the balance in things in my life and realize, you know, he's nailing,

and his reactions to things nail it. But my problem is that you ask anybody who's read any issue of Spider-Man or watched any Spider-Man cartoons from the 60s through the 80s, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. If I'm being very, very nitpicky, which is part of what we do here on the show, right? Spider-Man tells jokes is top two or three things that any casual fan would know and list about what they like about the character. He's funny. He's a wise ass. He fights Electro and he makes

dumb puns about how electric things are. And then Sam Raimi is funny as fuck. Let's keep that in mind. In this movie, you have things like when Mary Jane jilts him at the altar, you give the fucking great line to J. Jonah Jameson

where Simmons gets to go call the caterer, tell him not to open that caviar. And his wife nails this. And he does the same thing even in Multiverse of Madness, right? Like Bruce Campbell's going to keep punching himself in the face. Sam Raimi knows how to deliver like a modern vaudeville, raise your eyebrow real high, something physical. So within this movie, Raimi is very funny. We all know that Spider-Man is a funnier character than this is, and that's a fundamental tenet of Spider-Man.

So it feels like such an intentional choice to leave it out. And therefore, a missed opportunity where, again, I do still believe this is the best superhero film of all time. And I care. But if we're going to nitpick about why a modern generation might not see it the way we do, I think we were all willing to take a deep breath and go, ah, weird that Spider-Man doesn't have any jokes. In a movie, that is pretty funny.

But I don't know if the younger generation is going to be willing to put up with it now that the bar has been raised. I think he's funny, but I think he's funny in his reactions to things. He's funny in an odd sort of a quiet way, yeah. He's funny in like a Buster Keaton way where it's this weird disconnect.

I mean, there's another thing Rami said in one of these behind-the-scenes things where he's like, the thing that's funny in like a Buster Keaton way where it's this weird disconnect. I mean, there's another thing Rami said in one of these behind the scenes things where he's like, the thing that's always funniest to me is no one else in the movie understanding that he's the star of the picture.

And that's a great take. Great take, right? And that's, when I actually was rewatching in person, I finished this morning, the subway scene. Yeah. Which, to me,

High watermark. That might be the most iconic, right? That and the Rosemary Harris. But that's like the iconic, when it shows up in film reels of, hey, the best of the decade. That scene. One of the most amazing things about that

is it's such a remarkable line in the sand in a movie this big where they're reminding you he ain't superman everybody this is hard for him yeah he can't just stop a speeding train one of those web snaps right at the tail end you're like oh he might not make it like they do such a good job of showing exactly what you're showing and ramey's so in touch with that of like nobody realizes he's the star he's not superman he gets shitted on by life and all that stuff's real but would it kill them to have him just have one line that's like doc you got eight arms and not one of them can give you a better

haircut like i can write that's that's a spider-man style joke that i can just spitball right now he can't have a handful of those i look i I agree with you and it's like the biggest failing of the first Spider-Man is the one time they give him a quip like that. It's homophobic. Like, it's annoying that the one time Spider-Man slings a joke. Did your wife make it for you thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He says husband. Don't rewrite

it to be kinder to the truth. No, I'm just I'm tired. I'm going to throw out another hot take then. I'm going to throw out another hot take. If you want to focus back up on Spider-Man 2, I'm just, I'm just, I'm tired. I'm going to throw out another hot take then. I'm going to throw out another hot take. If you want to focus back up on Spider-Man 2, I'm just going to buckle the fuck up because I don't know how you'll feel about this.

Can I finish my thought before this in response to your last hot take? Sure. There's the Raimi through line in all these movies where he loves testing his characters, right? And he loves torturing them. And then there's the additional- Putting them in the box, shaking it up. Right, right right and i think he likes to test characters moralities and very often

they they succumb right and and spider-man is his unwavering figure and in a lot of behind the scenes stuff he was talking about that he felt like a moral responsibility and understanding how many kids were gonna see this movie there's this thing he said that's really interesting where he's like, you put this costume up on screen and you like apply the world's most expensive special effects to having him swing through the city and you have Danny Elfman's horns blaring and immediately the character becomes iconic and we imprint upon it and we care about it and we defer to it and in a way that is unfair that we haven't even earned. So my challenge in making these movies

is to earn what we're being given for free. Because with most movies, you have to work to make an audience care about your character, be impressed by them or get excited by them. And with Spider-Man and these elements we have at play in the crafts people and the cast and whatever,

it's just like the iconography is there. You have it in the tank, right? And he talked a lot about like, I really feel like we have at play and the craftspeople and the cast and whatever. It's just like the iconography is there. You have it in the tank, right? And he talked a lot about like, I really feel like we have a responsibility to provide a strong moral center to these films because these movies are going to be seen by children, all this sort of stuff. And unlike someone like Ash from Army of Darkness,

like Spider-Man is the guy where like the bad shit happens to him and he remains resolute. And this whole movie is the testing, right? Of like his morals and his priorities and all that sort of shit. The additional layer to this is that Raimi loves fucking with his actors, right? And I think his relationship to Tobey Maguire was weirdly similar to his relationship with Bruce Campbell, where he just personally, in a somewhat sadistic way,

finds it so much funnier to fuck with Tobey Maguire than to let Tobey Maguire have the upper hand. I do agree with you that there's a universe in which he could have, like, threaded the ash needle, where you can have the guy throw out quippy one-liners and still somehow get embarrassed. But I do think his comedic priorities are, like, you know, the universe is gonna fuck with Spider Spider-Man and I'm going to fuck with

Toby. And I want to make him look as silly on screen as possible. Let me, let me say something. Cause I agree with you. I basically, I know what you mean, Jeff.

And I know that that's part of the Spider-Man thing. And that is, you're, you're, you're right. You could throw in a few lines and they, there's like one line at the bank. Like,

you know, he, they try it a little bit, but not really. But this movie has total control of tone and it's picked a tone and it goes with it and that is something that is so rare especially now in these marvel superhero movies that i largely enjoy watching but cannot help but undermine themselves with self-aware humor and dorky quips all the fucking time to the point that i'm like take yourself seriously and it's the taika waititi oscar winner guy i appreciate a lot who's made

a lot of good movies it's my whole problem with ragnarok where i'm like if we don't have any respect for this material i don't know how much fun i can have with this like because like that's the whole thing where's like thor so silly and i'm like okay why'd you make a thor movie like what the fuck and now he's like i'm gonna make another one fuck you thor you're dumb the guy with a hammer he thinks he's so smart i'm like you know at a certain point i want a little majesty from this it's about a goddamn lightning god you know like why do i need it to be him being like fart you know and i'm like come on this episode's somehow even hotter than I thought it was going to be. Geth, you're burning up. Well, I just want to say that I agree.

Yeah. I do think that the self-referential MCU jokes have become too much. I like Thor going there because I also know some of my favorite Thors. Like, I never liked Thor growing up, but when you read the frog Thor storyline, which treats him with,

where you start to go, oh, when creators treat, blah, blah, blah. When creators treat Thor, understanding this is a Norse guy.

This is insane that we're even making this. That's funny. I like now it's the same type of jokes spread throughout every single movie. And I agree. It's too much. Now I would like to agree Griff, and it sounds like there's been quotes and I agree it's too much. Now, I would like to agree, Griff, and it sounds like there's been quotes, and I'd like to give benefit of the doubt

that Sam Raimi had to make some choices and that there was a lot of thought put into the moral compass and the responsibility of making a Spider-Man movie, understanding what Spider-Man represents to me. I'd like to think that all of that is the end-all, be-all of it. It's hard for me to not be a little cynical

and think that there was some dickhead at sony who had control over money who read a script at one point and went why is spider-man making jokes he's the hero superman doesn't make jokes like it's hard for me we can talk about the cynic the cynic in me feels like there's so much humor in the rest why give so many great jokes to other characters it feels intentional that they were stripped from spider-man which feels to me like at some point sam raimi must have banged his head against a wall and just gone they really don't fucking get it okay everybody else look the jokes. Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man

makes a lot more jokes. They tried, they clearly took that note from the fans and tried it, right? I'm not wrong, right, Griff? Are we also feeling so good for Garfield right now? I mean...

We're all thrilled for him, I feel like, right? Yeah. You know, like, nice job getting a little dignity back from that franchise, like, or that performance, right?

But it is that weird thing where you watch those two Garfield movies, The Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man Tale of Two Kitties. Damn it, I was going to make that. The two Garfield movies, he's really fucking quippy. And I know that those two movies, like, Mark Webb bragged about, like, we brought in a bunch of standups and we had a fucking punch up room for every fight scene. And we were like, what are the funniest things Spider-Man can say? And like, none of it works for me. Like there are scenes where he

comes off weirdly mean. There are scenes where he comes off glib and condescending. And I don't put the blame on Garfield, but that like movie cannot find the tone in which he can fuck around with the heroes and have it work and i think it works better with holland perhaps because marvel is so committed to this jokey tone with everything and i think you're like look and mcu has a problem like the self-referential overly joking stuff that undercuts the states it would be akin to making a Star Wars movie that insists on calling out Star Wars as a fairy tale when it is

in fact a fairy tale. It would almost push the same buttons, right? Why is this light on? If these villains are really at a level where you threaten the world, you just wouldn't be making jokes. You're prioritizing jokes over the reality. It would almost be like saying, hey, if you have the modern knights and and princesses why shit on the very idea that knights can be knights and princesses can be princesses like it would almost be the same

group i'm imagining ed harris like admission control and his his like sweat starts pooling he's like i don't like i'm not dwelling on it i'm just saying theoretically and i didn't even name a specific movie that does or does not do that i'm saying there's no idea what movie you're talking about get literally rolled up his sleeves he did he didn't take his preparation for that last time you were taking your glasses off when you uh when you were about to get fired up i don't get what i'm not trying to start a fight here i'm just saying i agree that when you have an iconic franchise you want to treat it with some dignity that allows the source material to stand on a firm foundation. That's a take

I understand it and I know where you're coming from. I just don't think Rise of Skywalker has any majesty to it whatsoever. I didn't even say the name of that movie! Who knows what movies we're talking about? Who knows? This is all I want to say. Final thing about the jokiness thing, okay? And then I got another hot take that actually might be even more controversial.

Yeah, we'll get to the next hot take. I want to tie. Well, yeah, we'll get to the next hot take. I want to tie off this hot take so we could get to the next hot take. I do. I understand what you're saying, get that. Maybe the studio is like he can't tell jokes. He's the hero, right? Like I could see that being a dumb studio. No, all this to say, I also think there's a reality in which it just didn't work.

Right. Sure. Where it just doesn't match with McGuire's thing. And it just might be some real cutting room floor stuff out there of jokes. It's not his strength. Right. Because I do think in rewatching Spider-Man 3, they do make him jokier in that. And it doesn't work as well.

Like he's jokier in the bully Maguire mode where he's like fucking with people more. The tone is so much swinging so wildly in that movie. Whereas here in 2, it's so controlled. That's not his strong suit. And you cast this guy, and you got to get the best Spider-Man performance that he can give, rather than trying to get him to serve

every tendon of what Spider-Man could be. And look, at the end of the day, too, this, to me, still is the high-water mark of superhero movies. So, again, I'm nitpicking. We're having fun here. We're having a great time. And if he had more jokes and that removed the amount of times

that Tobey Maguire, like that for Kirsten Dunst to just unload on him of like, here's the list of everybody who showed up at my play. Your aunt, your sick aunt has shown up. This person showed up this many times. Harry's come twice and I dumped him.

Like who, I don't know an actor of that era more than toby mcguire who can just sit there and absorb that no and not need to respond in order to kind of affect the conversations always feel like they end on his reaction and he's not saying anything he does some top shelf listening in this movie. Incredible on screen. A lot of like, you know, monologues like Mary Jane's like that you're mentioning. Him letting them hit,

him letting them settle, him, you know, him taking time with them being quiet. Which is unusual. The scene where he confesses to Aunt May about the night of Ben's death. Oh my God. Hard to watch.

They cut away from him one time for like a fleeting second. It's pretty much an unbroken one-er. I remember the first time I saw this movie almost being mad about that scene because I was like, I was too in it where I was like, don't tell her, don't tell,

it's, you know, she doesn't need to hear it. You know, you know, like you start getting emotional in this way, like you're connected to these people. Yeah, anyway. You know what else jumps out too that's tied to this topic is one of the funniest moments of this movie from modern times is he saves the train

barely. His mask gets torn off because he ain't Superman. Like this is not pretty. This is not easy for him. His knee, he hurts his knee on the track like the fact that they should and then that line iconic an iconic line he's just a kid and you're kind of looking at him you're like but watching it today i'm kind of like that's kind of what tom

holland has like tom holland looks more like a kid yeah yeah it's true mcguire's a little less kiddish but i still think it's crucial that yeah he's still like you know his frame is not massive and toby mcguire does have a boyish face but i and i bring it up in saying that another scene where he's playing it unconscious and he's the center of gravity of the whole thing in a way that like i'm saying maybe he couldn't nail jokes maybe the network didn't want jokes maybe ramey overthought jokes to a degree that, like I'm saying, maybe he couldn't nail jokes, maybe the network didn't want jokes, maybe Raimi overthought jokes to a degree that I wish he hadn't. All possible. But I would not trade

if any of that was to undercut moments like that where Tobey Maguire's doing so much with so little, I wouldn't trade him. Right, that's the bigger point for me. What's your other hot take? Okay. You know what, I don't want to get everybody mad.

No, I think, come on. Do you want to save this one for later? Well, no, because the last thing I want to do is just, I don't want people thinking I'm coming in here. Sure, you don't want to be like, just known as like, bomb thrower or whatever. Right, you don't want to be known as like, blank checks, go-to rabble rouser.

I'm just not trying to be like Floyd Mayweather where you know like, oh, he's saying the most controversial shit to sell the most tickets possible. I'm not trying to do that. Okay. You have been talking about a big game that you want this to be the most listened to episode of Blank Check ever that you wanted to break the ratings. Listen, am I the only one who can't help?

How do you guys feel about Peter's apartment in this movie? Like with Mr. mr dickovich like his crappy little one studio or whatever it is and the bathrooms down the hall like it hit a point where i was like man you're hammering this one so hard like no one in no one in new york city has lived like this since like wpa photographers were said to document the lower east side is this your hot take is this your hot take is this your hot take this is the hot take they overdid it with the apartment okay okay all right all right i'm gonna

i think i can quickly and i knew it was gonna get you upset and i'm seeing that it got you upset i can quickly just send this one back over the net it's easy look this this movie geth is obviously it's sort of like quasi set in the present day but it's basically set in the golden age of comic i mean sorry the silver age of comic books right you know in the the sort of dick coat era and that is absolutely the kind of shitty you know converted tenement apartment that like too much no no i knew people who lived in those in the 90s no no no no no i like i had friends in the 90s my mom's friends and stuff who would live in those like Carol Gardens apartments where it's a it's a little old Italian lady downstairs. The bathroom's in the hall. Like, you know, it's just and like her son lives in the other apartment and she's always like, you know, like the very classic cartoony. That shit is very New York.

I dated someone last year who was like, yeah, my apartment's weird, but at least I have a bathroom. And I was like, what do you mean by at least I have a bathroom? And she was like, all the other units on my floor share a communal bathroom in the hallway. In the year 2021. So right back over the net gap, New York City.

I know someone who lives on the Upper West Side who lives basically in a dorm. It's basically a dorm. Your bathroom's in the hallway, and you live in a one-room apartment that has like a bed and a kitchenette in it yeah i lived in an apartment where the store a floor above me was that exact same like set up where it was three different apartments in a shared bathroom yeah fucking hey arnold house i'm saying that they tried to squeeze a little too much juice out of that orange in Spider-Man 2 and it

took me out of it. It hit a point where I'm going, I get it. He lives like dog shit. He does have a balcony, though. He does have a balcony. He has a nice balcony. Do I love the chocolate? Even as I'm saying it out loud, I go, do I love the chocolate cake scene as much if they don't?

You need the chocolate cake and you need Rent. I mean, Rent is one of the most down, funniest one-word performances in any movie, Rent. Touche. I withdraw it. I've been convinced. I've been convinced. I get that.

I know you said you. Because unlike some people well, just some people maybe seem to think I'm not the type of person who can have a discourse where my opinions might bend or change over time. Some people might think that I'm a little dogmatic about my opinions on certain franchises. And I just want to point out that that was a moment

where I was really willing to learn and clearly show that maybe some other people might be the ones hanging on to some dogmatic tendencies on Reddit. But that being said- I know you hate Reddit. I know you already said that everyone on Reddit thinks they're funny and that literally no one on Reddit is funny.

But I want to direct your attention to a subreddit that I think is the funniest. It is r slash Mr. Dietzschewitz memes. And it's an entire subreddit of just doing. Well, it's clearly Ditko. It's Ditko. She's named after Steve Ditko. Yeah. But it's just people creating. Wow. This is good. Mr. Ditkovich asking for rent. Some's Ditkovich. She's named after Steve Ditko. But it's just people creating

memes of Mr. Ditkovich asking for rent. Some of them are video, some of them are Photoshop. I'm going to go to top all time on this. Yeah, they're incredible. Because I follow r slash Raimi memes, which is really good and fertile. And then the Mr. Ditkovich memes were taking over Raimi memes.

And they were like, we got to spin this off to its own thing. I got to say number one on all time is pretty good. taking over Raimi memes and they were like we gotta spin this off to its own thing I gotta say number one at all times is pretty good it's Peter it's the exchange that's in the movie I'm sorry Mr. Dikovic all I have you know blah blah blah until the end of the week but he says all I have

is this board game until the end of the week and he's and what's photoshop in his hand he's holding a copy of the board game sorry and of course Mr. D And what's Photoshop in his hand? He's holding a copy of the board game. Sorry. And of course, Mr. Dinkovich says, sorry, it doesn't pay the rent. You know, I don't think I noticed. Is that, wait, who's behind him there? I don't know. Maybe that's not an actor.

Is it that guy? That is? Is that a Louis Lombardi? Louis Lombardi from like 24 and stuff. I got to look it up. It definitely looks like him. I think it is. Wait, isn't that the guy

who played the FBI agent on The Sopranos? The same actor, correct? That is the same actor. I'm not sure if it's him. It does look like him, though. Going to look it up. A lot of notable actors

making glorified extra roles. Spider-Man 2 poker player Louie Lombardi. Louie Lombardi. There he is. He was so good on 24 and on The Sopranos. But, and remember, it was one of those things,

one of those classic, not to spoil 24 for anyone, but when they killed him off, where it was a good moment, obviously, like it was dramatic. Edgar Styles, that was his character in 24. And then you were just immediately like, you fucked up. You can't kill off a character that good.

You know, you want him in your rotation like it sucks to not have him anyway um no one cares about my 24 take no i'm sorry i just saw another really you saw a good one which is peter peter wrapped up right after doc ock has delivered him to harry's penthouse and then like the close-up on his face and then the hand comes and pulls the mask off and it's peter maskless looking at him and then reverse shot mr dekovich is photoshopped over james franco's face holding the knife just saying give me rent you know it's it's really hard to describe memes i'm realizing this as we go on that's so good um anyway welcome to the podcast where we react to memes you can't see uh spider-man 2 geth do you remember the first time you saw this movie like

were you there opening night were you there at midnight like were you know how pumped were you for it 2004 is when it comes out i, I'm fairly certain that I saw it at the Willowbrook Mall in New Jersey. Sure. And I think it was opening weekend, if not opening night. But I remember being really psyched because I had

really enjoyed the first one and I remember walking out. I mean, I remember so I had lived in New Jersey, moved to LA for a little bit came back to jersey and i moved to new york in the fall of 2004 so this is right before then right before i went summer of 04 and i'll tell you i remember feeling like um the subway scene which we've talked so much about but the reaction of those new yorkers who all decide we're not going to take a picture of them we're not gonna we won't tell right and when it's become such a thing of who is it who is it

between harry and jay jonah jameson and everybody wants to know who is spider-man who's spider-man all the new yorkers doing it and then that moment of if you want to get to them you got to go through me and me and me and these new yorkers stepping in with fear on their faces knowing that they they might get fucking killed for doing this, but they're going to do it. I don't want to be too schmaltzy, but as somebody who had been in the New York area on 9-11, somebody who was doing, I was in town doing shows on 9-13,

like grew up with a view of the New York City skyline, that scene may be more than any other, I would say, in the history of so many legendary New York movies. That subway scene made me cry my eyes out, and I remember feeling like, man, that's what I love about New York and New Yorkers.

It is the best kind of... Obviously, the New Yorker moment in the first movie is so on the nose and sort of sweet now. Felt silly then to me, at least. And then this one, you're like, that's, sort of sweet now felt silly then to me at least. And then this one, you're like, that's it.

That's, that's what he was trying to do. But that moment was shot pre nine 11. It's, it's perfectly measured in this way. I mean, there's another thing. I remember seeing this. I think I saw it at,

uh, AMC Lincoln square midnight. And I remember just having that feeling of like, holy shit, I can't fucking believe how good this is. Scene to scene to scene of just like, are they going to fuck this up? Are they going to fuck this up? That entire train sequence feeling like orgasmic, right?

And then the fact that when the action sequence ends, it ends with such a resonant, like, sort of emotional payoff. But I also think rewatching it and trying to, like, place myself in the headspace of it now, because I still do think this is thought of as, like, a high watermark of, like, set piece construction. But at the time, the subway sequence was fucking mind-blowing. And now when you have, like, the last hour of an Avengers movie be 800 characters all fighting with their power sets at the same time, it's like anything feels possible, right?

Like, you know, you have to be clever in story construction. There's nothing visually you can show us that feels like, I can't believe they're putting this on screen. I think at that time, the fact that that sequence goes on for like eight consecutive minutes felt impossible. Like you watch the action sequences in the first Spider-Man and they're pretty fucking

quick. Yeah. There's just a thing where there was like a limit to how long you could sustain superhero action in a movie, especially people are like defying physics. If there's that level of CGI involved, it's like you could have something really cool happen for like a minute and then someone has to fly away. You cannot have this be sustained. If it goes on longer for this, it's two people with their feet planted punching each other. And this sequence, you're just like,

it keeps on heightening and heightening and heightening. It goes on for so long, so long, so long, so long. And then to have this weird, sad sort of like resolution of it. And then, and then the ending just blew my fucking mind. And it just felt like such a complete statement, such an insane, like, this is a sequel that truly found a way to iterate everything in the first movie successfully. Took everything that worked and made it even better and gave us more of it and took everything that didn't work and perfected it and just felt like perfect on all its own terms and i walked out i was like i just cannot fucking believe this movie exists i and and saw it so many goddamn times

i think for me i saw it at the odian lester square opening weekend in london because that's where i lived at the time in 2004 put that out there i to put that out there. I'm just going to put that out there. Weird. I saw my friend Howard. Shout out Howard Amos. Big shout out to Howie. We saw it together. And I remember for me, obviously the subway sequence,

and we can talk about it more even later, but for me, it was also the surgery sequence, where it kind of goes full Raimi Monster movie. I remember at the time being like, kind of being like, is this allowed? Like, you know, just being so impressed with how happily bananas that sequence was. And nothing in the first movie, you know,

quite is that unrestrained Raimi, right? Like, you know, that feels like him really cutting loose, being like, okay, you know, these are my movies, right? I get to do this. You've made a better Spider-Man movie and you've also snuck in a full uncut Raimi sequence in the middle of it. It was like you're solving concerns I didn't even have.

Yes, exactly. Like you, Griff, I saw it a bunch. And I think I just, over the next couple of years, I went from like, that's an amazing movie to like, oh yeah, that's like a sort of best picture snub. Like, you know, like that's like a sort of best picture snub. Like, you know, like, that's actually a movie worth taking really seriously. Which Roger Ebert was one of the

few people at the time who was like, no, this like deserves to be like viewed very seriously. So I love Spider-Man 2, much like Spider-Man 1, it's just anytime I throw it on, you know, I throw on to rewatch for this podcast, obviously. I'm just like, oh right, I know every beat of this. Right. I know all the lines. Like, you know, I threw on to rewatch for this podcast, obviously. I'm just like, oh, right.

I know. I know every beat of this. Right. I know all the lines. Like, you know, it's just kind of written into my brain. This one, like even without trying, I just I'm just completely familiar with everything about it. And yet it still always delights me, which is great.

It was I'm just looking at it was Roger Ebert's number four movie of the year. I think he argued several times it should have gotten the Best Picture nomination. It was Million Dollar Baby, Kill Bill Volume 2 was his number two, Vera Drake,

Spider-Man 2, Mulad. That's quite a five. Wait, what's the fifth one? Mulad, Usman Samban's female circumcision drama. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a great movie, actually. Yeah. There's something else I want to say, which is that there's almost something, there's something we haven't brought up and dwelled on i just looked at how long we've been talking and it's it's kind of shot we got a lot more well look it's almost shocking that we haven't gotten here yet but then you think of it and you go

because it is so obvious to anyone i mean half an hour into this movie, it was obvious. At the end of the movie, it's obvious. And it's obvious today, 20 years later, the sky is blue and water's wet. And Alfred Molina puts on one of the best performances of a villain that has ever been committed to cinema. Yeah, okay, let's dig in. If we want to talk about why Spider-Man 2 is better than Spider-Man 1,

why Spider-Man 2 still might be the best superhero film of all time, we're nitpicking Jamesames franco and toby mcguire toby mcguire's performances to me i feel like apartments if and apartments but if you to me it kind of feels like if you played a super villain after this and you didn't sit down and watch molina's performance as research you fucked up and didn't do your full job gether do you know that the entire No Way Home concept was reverse engineered from that conversation?

Of just, you can't beat Molina? Yeah, that it was Pascal and Feige trying to blue sky what the third Spider-Man could be, which at that point I think was still supposed to be a craven, Spider-Man's identity is out, everyone's trying to hunt him movie. It was the original idea. And they were like, is that enough? Is there a second villain? What do original idea. And they were like, is that enough? Is there a second villain?

What do you do? And Pascal was like, I mean, it feels like we should bring Doc Ock back. Right. Let's do Doc Ock. Who plays Doc Ock? Right.

Right. And Feige just said, how do you possibly touch that performance? It's like the thing we backed ourselves into with J.K. Simmons. You're not going to get anyone else to play this better. Like, how do you even touch that? It's a shame we can't just

have Alfred Molina play Dr. Octopus again. Right, right. And then the entire thing came out of like, what if we could? What are the implications of that? And then what if from there

you bring the other guys back? And you know what's crazy about that movie? Because I loved it. I loved that movie to death and i rarely get to go see movies in the theater anymore and we prioritize that one got the babysitter in the time of covid when so but what i love about that movie is like all the people from the sony like tom holland kills it tomei kills it um i have some problems with some of the

I have some problems with some of the ancillary characters. I had a friend who saw Ned's performance in the first one and just called out, like, this guy Ned, that was cringey. And I've never been able to fully commit to Ned because my friend decimated it so hard. But by and large. And then you're bringing him back, right? And Garfield gets his moments. And Jamie Foxx gets to call out the ludicrousness of the past one

and say like, now I'm going to be cool in this one. And Tobey Maguire, certainly I think they honor him and give him some moments in a way that also maybe retroactive, you know, now not every,

between this and Spider-Verse, not every Spider-Man needs to be funny. Some of them can be alcoholic. Some of them can be emo. Some of them can be Gwen Stacy. Like, so it starts to make a little more sense right and stand out um all of these people crushing their moments defoe comes back and you're like holy fucking shit defoe is good and even still 20 years later none of them can quite reach the height of Molina in this character.

Today, round two, he does it again. In a movie that's a nostalgia fest about people, everyone getting to come out and take a big nostalgia swing, he still is the backbone of the whole thing in a way that's fucking mind-blowing. And I would argue they give him the least to do. Like, everyone else is given a meteor assignment he's just fucking gravitas and presence

you know and right his big moment in No Way Home is when he gets to be good again which is this sort of like incredible relief where you're like right that he was so sweet and genuine and tender in this like you know the couple scenes he has before he goes crazy yeah and you're kind of thrilled to see it again when he was announced griffin i love dr octopus right i'm i'm a big spider-man i'm like who are they gonna have and i just remember being like

alfred molina the stuffy villain from chocola like diego from Frida, like, you know, I mean, obviously you think Snidely Whiplash from the Dudley Do-Right movie. Like that's his most prominent villain role in a mainstream movie. Boogie Nights. The one thing is there's Boogie Nights where you're like, he's so insane in that one scene. I guess I was like, okay, I remember that. But I definitely was like a little baffled that he was the pick it was very surprising casting and when you look at like the other people that were sort

of vaguely concerned with such insane rumor mongering and even like fan arting at that time I remember people being like fucking Robin Williams like anyone who was just like a big name because the movie was so big. I can tell you who the four were. Well, it's what I find interesting is that the four names were essentially four guys who were getting all the precursor nominations for Best Supporting Actor that year.

Correct. In 2002. Yeah, right. And then Alfred Molina gets snubbed, but gets Spider-Man as the ultimate reward. So it was Ed Harris for The Hours, Chris Cooper for Adaptation, who wins, Christopher Walken for Catch Me If You Can, and Alfred Molina for Frida,

who was getting the precursors and doesn't get in at the last minute. And he's probably the least well-known of those four actors at the time. Not that he's a nobody, but he's not a huge name, maybe. But they start filming this movie early in 2003 they're casting it late 2002 it makes sense that they're like let's go big let's

get someone who's about to fucking get an oscar nomination or win this year and he's still far and away the most surprising pick from that group um yeah and and he is just so real and like, just so it's, it's funny because like in the comics, Dr. Octopus is supposed to basically be a megalomaniac, right? He's like, Sue,

he's like, I'm the smartest. I'm the best. That's like a goblin too. He's like, yeah, he's pretty, he's kind of a creep.

He, you know, there's a lot of storylines like where he, even in the dick, like where he like dates Mary Jane. I mean, sorry, Mary Jane, Aunt May. Well, yes well yes but but also there were so this movie very nearly was

uh dr octopus as same age rival to peter parker gets trapped in love triangle with mary jane that's in the michael chabon script we can talk about it but like to have him be more of like a tragic monster universal horror villain you know like that's that's kind of a swerve from the comic book character it doesn't bother me at all obviously no they nail it so hard like it's it's it's so beautiful and donna murphy you know is so incredible in that like one, you know, so you totally feel it. You need basically nothing. The fucking Donna Murphy performance. I was watching this with commentary, and, like, everyone was just like,

Jesus Christ, did she do us a solid on this movie. Right, because she's there for five minutes, right? It's very little, and yet you'd need it so bad. But it's like, the one scene where he goes over to her, it's like, there's an entire performance here, there's an entire relationship here. There's an entire relationship here. You fully believe she so quickly sets up in this dynamic with her husband that like this is Peter for the first time seeing a possibility of what his life could be. And also understanding how much Octavius loves her so that when she dies, you believe it's fully going to fucking break him.

And you kind of believe that he's a little slightly high on his own supply. Not in a bad way, exactly, but someone who maybe will take it a little too far because he really believes in it. That scene is incredible for how much it accomplishes and sets up dramatically. Not plot-wise, but dramatically in the emotional dynamics of

its characters in like three minutes that reverberates across the entire rest of the film i have to ask two questions to molina question i have to if it's okay if i can plug a thing yeah ask you and then plug another thing that's your first of all uh my friend john ross bowie who i've known many many years who people might know from from from big bang theory and speechless and a bunch of stuff he has a great podcast called householdaces where he interviews other character actors who take a lot of pride in being character actors.

And he interviews Molina, who really considers himself a character actor. And if you want to do a deep dive, it will make you love him even more because he just speaks to being a stage actor and a scrapping it out film actor and speaks to Spider-man and blah blah blah the other question i have since we're on the topic of dr octopus have you read superior spider-man

yes yes brilliant which is wonderful everyone if you are a fan of the dynamic between this was written clearly i think f i think you know in a-Molina as Doc Ock world, came out in 2013, but the relationship between Doc Ock being good and bad and balancing that with his feelings about Spider-Man, if anybody out there is not a comic book fan but wants to go read more that push these exact same buttons that Molina nails, that series really does it. Really does it.

Yeah. Molina is fucking unbelievable i was watching so many uh the interviews and stuff from the time and he like really talks about life i was astonished they hired me i was astonished i got called in for the meeting that's not the kind of actor i was i was never up for these types of parts i knew i had a little oscar heat from frida but even still and he was like i didn't feel like the meeting went that well. I didn't. There wasn't any follow up when they told me I had the job.

I was astounded. Do we know who was was Rami his champion? Who championed him that hard? I don't know. Probably Rami, right? I mean, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sounded like it was a combination of him somehow being the consensus choice between Ziskin, Raimi, and Arad, who were the three main decision makers at this point in the franchise.

But also, not just like a consensus, like, settling choice, that all three of them were like, I think that's, it seems crazy, but he seems like the guy. crazy, but he seems like the guy. And they also talk about that, like, one of the guys who was one of the concept artists for the movie. This movie, like, they were filming this less than a year

after the first one came out, right? Like, he was, Raimi was starting development meetings on this film the week after the film was released and they already were working on scripts at that point. It was like such a fast moving train that they were just throwing so much shit at the wall

to sort of figure it out later. And this one concept artist said that they kept on just being like, we have no idea what the fuck Doc Ock looks like. We don't know who we're going to cast. We don't know if he's 25 or if he's 60. Like, we don't know what this is. Just keep on throwing stuff at the wall. And that he had a drawing and Molina had not entered the conversation yet for casting. That kind of looked like Molina.

That was like what this character ended up looking like in the movie. The final tentacle design, the trench coat, the stockiness of the body, just the whole energy of the thing. And it just felt like when he drew that, everyone went like, huh, that kind of makes sense for this version of the character. And I wonder to a degree if then when they take the meeting with him, they're like, he fits this version that we're already maybe leaning towards. Let's also note too, in that interview he did on on the podcast i mentioned this was a world where cgi hadn't totally taken over yet and there was a lot of a lot of those tentacles were puppeteered

yeah they're like 75 there's a lot of scenes where he's acting his ass off and surrounded by people pushing and prodding sticks and strings and shit like that like that's yeah amazing the behind the scenes footage is insane it is truly yeah because the vast majority of the time like subway sequence excluded a vast majority of the time it is is puppeteered live okay spider-man one is a huge hit ramey is not signed for spider-man 2 like a rarity these days obviously but back But back then, you know. So, he's really into it. He signs on. He wants to make another one. But, as

will happen with Spider-Man 3, Sony basically, like, it's like, 4th of July, weekend 2004, it's on the calendar. We are hitting this date. They, in fact, even originally said first weekend of May. It was, like, a big fight to push it back two months. They wanted the exact same weekend.

Yeah. Right. Exactly. So, you know, that's hard. And they basically need to start working right away on all this, you know, visual effects stuff, the action sequences, like all the stuff you're going to need to create

from the ground up before you even, you know, start ground up before you even you know start filming proper and they've hired guff and millar to write the first draft of the script before even ramey has signed up for the sequel so they're sort of stewing on that but i think they already know we don't have time to lose so they're like four different scripts are being written simultaneously right but the biggest thing that Raimi is interested in is the very famous Amazing Spider-Man number 50, Spider-Man No More, right?

Which is one of the most famous Spider-Man comics. The image of him walking away from the suit in the trash can, right? You know, that's Laura Ziskin, who's one of the producers, is like basically like that's sort of such a famous arc for him. It feels like such a classic movie too thing, right? The sort of like, can we bring him low, have him renounce it, and then swing him back up again, right?

Very Empire Strikes Back. Right? Like, very obvious place to a light on for a second film. You know, we've done the origin, now this is the sort of coming of age, like learning responsibility, all that stuff. Go and Millar, like you say, Griff, they're on Smallville.

So they're brought in first. David Koepp does a draft. Then Michael Chabon, who had just won the Pulitzer for The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, which is a book that has that Silver Age comics, you know, energy, comes in and writes a script that is sort of notorious. And you were referencing it there, Griff. I'm sure you've heard about it, basically.

But that's the script where the Dr. Octopus is almost in a love triangle with Peter and MJ. There's this scene where they go to an Ethiopian restaurant and eat dinner. And he's like, I like to eat with my hands. I'm a little freaky and stuff like, you know, he's a lot more of like a dirty dog in that script i don't really know how else to put it um but also that script makes it clear that peter is draining his powers using occ technology he gives him a special chip like they

make the uh loss of peter's powers scientific in that script versus in the movie where it's really just kind of a vibes thing yeah and i think, I think they ended up in the right place. Like, I don't think you need all that. I think it's fine in the movie that it's just kind of like, he doesn't want to do it anymore. And like the moral mission just kind of leaves him like, yes, it's a little, you know, it's not very comic booky in a way, but I mean, I don't know what you guys think. No, I think, I think it's the entire success of this movie is what we keep on going back to, which is just like there's such a clearly identified

spine to this thing, which everything ends up being in communication with directly, which is just this battle of like, is it worth being Spider-Man or not? Right. And there's a simplicity to how it all comes together that it's why I think this may be movie

was able to survive and come out so coherent despite being like this rush production multiple drafts being written at the same time by different writers all these things because reami knew like what the core tenants were and i think it's so much smarter to not make that some complicated plot thing to make it just it's the inner battle within this guy. Right, exactly. But look, all these scripts kind of have the same beats of, you know, the train fight is there. You know, the Dr. Octopus lab showdown at the end is there.

You know, they have the action beats, I think, are basically clear across all these scripts. It's about everything else in the middle. They're shooting the train sequence in like fall of 2002. They had to get so ahead of it because the special effects were going to be so revolutionary that they like don't have a script and they're like, send a crew out, go film on the L in Chicago. Right.

Just get a bunch of fucking footage and we'll figure this out later. I think, um, I think everything that's being said makes so much sense. And I think what these are all stabs at, what I really appreciate as a comic book fan, because I was saying before, it feels really weird to not have quips. And we've discussed there's a million reasons why maybe that could have happened, right?

Sure. Whether it was artistic choice, whether it was mandate, whether it was McGuire wasn't nailing it, so cutting room floor, whatever happened there. But one thing that this movie you can tell Sam Raimi really understood is when you look at superheroes Superman is

a god in the sky and a boy scout with morals Batman is driven by this darkness and is a really great detective the X-Men are a family and they have to overcome cosmic threats and robots by coming together as a family. They are at their best when the heroic traits rise to the surface in the face of adversity. But Spider-Man, if you really read the comics, spider-man is at his best when he loses yeah the best spider-man no more he fucking lost like the master planner do you ever read the

original ditko arc it you know it builds up to this idea of the master planner where doc buries him under a bunch of equipment and he he's drowning, and he realizes, holy shit, I'm going to die. Aunt May's going to have no one. And that's when he comes out, and that's when he becomes at his best in the iconic scene that's been aped in a million comics and movies ever since, and he lifts all this stuff off him.

It's only after he loses Craven's Last Hunt by J.M.D. Mateus. If you haven't read that. Absolutely insane story. One of the coolest comic book stories I've ever read. One of the coolest comics. Blew my mind so hard. But David, you can

again, if anybody doesn't want to know the spoilers, skip ahead right now. Go check it out. Go check it out or skip right now. You can catch me. That story is basically Kraven the Hunter shows back up because he's like, I've never met a successful Spider-Man and he spends

three issues, I believe, beating the shit out of Spider-Man and Spider-Man just loses yeah and then he then he buries Spider-Man and puts on a Spider-Man costume and rampages around being like I'm Spider-Man it's fucking insane it's insane I mean and like it's funny because that's what superior Spider-Man is as well right it's like you know villains coming into contact with sort of the goodness of Spider-Man through trying to be him is a very interesting arc that is repeated in Spider-Man. There's a running theme with Spider-Man of the world beats the shit out of him. And only when he's just on the brink of being eliminated forever do they realize how much they need him.

It's a really, really weird archetype for a hero when you think about it. Like every other hero gets put under adversity and that's when the powers come out he is at his best when it crosses past a threshold where he actively loses and this movie does that in a way that when you think about how much money was on the line and how much superhero movies were not a locked in thing that had been historically made fun of up until the best few years Like pretty bold that they were allowed to have him strike out and lose as much as they did in this movie. But it squeezes all of what is so identifiable and great about Spider-Man. It's why Marvel is better than DC because they were the ones that figured out, oh, you want to see yourself in a hero, but you are never going to be handed Superman's power.

You're never going to find a green ring that can make you the Green Lantern. But you can be a high school kid who gets his fucking ass handed to him by life and have to step up. That's why Marvel is better than DC because of Spider-Man. And it's not because of Fantastic Four, which came first. It's because of Spider-Man. And this movie, they went there in a way that was a pretty bold choice for a studio to bank on and for Sam Raimi to stake his reputation with the character on as well. But I think part of that is they made this very bold choice at the end of the first movie, which is they're not going to end up together, right? And we talked about this in the previous episode, or maybe we talked about in Spider-Man 3, but David Koepp said that was part of his original pitch even before Sam Raimi came on. He said, the two things I think you need to do to make this movie work are, you gotta

take a lot of time before you put him in the suit. We have to really build it up. And two, he can't end up with her at the end of the movie. He has to walk away, right? And the fact that that movie was such a resounding success, and I do think the reason it was such a sort of transcendent success is that movie succeeds in making people care about that relationship and that romance. I do think that's the thing that pushed it to a different tier of blockbuster was people were invested in Peter and Mary Jane, and part of it's the chemistry and part of it's the writing. Part of it's the earnest belief

in these two characters and whether or not they deserve this love and all that sort of shit. That sets the table very well to make a movie where they can go into this film with confidence that

we can have this guy lose a fucking bunch. This guy can be Charlie Brown. We can keep on pulling the football. Especially for the first half of this movie. Maybe even two-thirds. This movie actually has this insane structure

where there is not a lot of action in the middle at all. Like, everything you think about with Spider-Man 2, you're like, oh, God, that thing is so packed with action. It's mostly at the back of the movie. It's mostly the final act, which is just unrelenting. Like, you're bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. But there's so much sadness and weirdness in the middle,

which I love. The first third is him as spider-man failing comically the middle section is him fully i don't even want to do this right right right and then the final third is like i'm spider-man with a fucking which we'll get we'll get to but okay alvin sergeant comes aboard the script writer of ordinary people julia, Oscar winner, old vet, right? The fucking goat. He's the one who basically comes in and with Sam and Ivan Ramey, pulls everything together from all the screenplays.

He gets the sole screenplay credit. Story credits go to everybody else. And I think he's just the guy who understands the emotional core of things. Right, Griff? Like, they give him all the credit for stuff like that Aunt May monologue. You know... Yes. That's the thing for me. It's always been my

belief that he's really the magic transcendent sauce in this movie. Although credit belongs to many, many people. It's that he was able to both in his sort of brilliance as a story man, isolate the things that worked in all the different separate drafts that had

been done in their siloed developments, uh, and, and weave them all together cleanly, but also then put in these fucking dialogue scenes that, that really sing and that have this kind of like, uh, working class poetry to them,

you know? Um, of course the biggest issue and the thing that's most discussed about the pre-production of this movie is whether Topi McGuire will come back at all. Do you remember this, Chris? How big a fucking deal this was? No. He's contracted.

He'd signed a deal. But apparently he was so incommunicado with Pascal and Raimi in between the first and second movies. Just went off and did Seabiscuit. He's doing Seabiscuit, which is this kind of crazy demanding role he's playing a jockey it's all this stuff you know uh and uh he's also produced 25th hour the spike lee movie right kind of crazy um the most important thing is he refuses to do a full body computer scan so because they need to scan his body to uh like start work on the visual effects and toby mcguire did admit later in a profile he was basically like look i was working really hard on sea biscuit they wanted me to clean

have be cleanly shaven and i had a beard for that movie i was exhausted i didn't get this is what important and if i had known it mattered to sam i would have done it i not like he feels bad about this but basically he kind of almost fucks the movie so hard by like dragging his feet on stuff like that that they announce in the news that they're pushing the movie from May 2004 to July 2004 like you said Griff and that they're going

to cast someone else and they throw it on his quote unquote back issues they're worried that because he does have apparently you know some sort of back problem. Sam Raimi publicly says at the time, like, I was worried maybe he would get paralyzed, that there would

be some problem with his back. Right. Raimi always framed it as we weren't being vindictive. Because I think the other aspect is that his agents want to get more money out of this film. There's all that is going on. There's that thread.

I think he had back problems from Seabiscuit. I think his agents perhaps intensified the severity of the back problems to try to juice more money out. And then Raimi's response, which then I think extended to Sony is, well, if he has back problems, we're not going to have him do this movie

because I can't live with there being an accident during production. And so Raimi reaches out to Jake Gyllenhaal, who is a very young, exciting actor at the time. He's pretty brand new. And is at this moment dating Kirsten Dunst. That's the weirdest element of this whole thing is that Dunst and Maguire date during the first movie.

They break up. Maguire is now engaged to Jennifer Meyer. And Dunst is with Jake Gyllenhaal. date during the first movie. They break up. Maguire is now engaged to Jennifer Meyer. And... Dunst is with Jake Gyllenhaal. She says it was not an easy time when all this was going down. But yes, as you say, Tobey Maguire is dating

the president of Universal Studios' daughter, Jennifer Meyer. Ron Meyer, who is famous as being, up until recent history, this great mediator, who even for movies that didn't concern him, he would like get in between big egos and parties and work things out.

So Ron Meyer calls McGuire and he says, you don't want to be Michael Keaton. You don't want to fuck this up. You don't want to lose this role. He calls Amy Pascal. He says, don't drop Toby. This is a mistake. He calls in Joel Silver.

Joel Silver like brings in the neck doctor who worked with Keanu Reeves on The Matrix because Keanu Reeves had this crazy neck, you know, injury on The Matrix and says, like, tell him that he can do this movie.

And the doctor, like, looks through all the storyboards and is like, yes, you can do this. And like... That's the funniest thing to consider for me in this whole kerfuffle

is a doctor, I imagine, in a lab coat with a stethoscope walking through the production offices of spider-man 2 looking at storyboards like getting up really close will this break your back looking at cartoon drawings of spider-man fighting dr octopus and being like i i think this won't paralyze him um and uh and then he was rehired and oh i'm seeing here also his salary was increased to 17 million dollars 17 a clean that's nice um and of course there is the oh my back joke in the movie which they wrote in and they were like oh should we do this is this too much and no everyone was like we got to do it um yeah anyway and then as you say then a lot of the rest of the dossier is about melina

and how they raymie is just like he needs to be grounded in real understandable motivations he needs to have depth and reality he needs to be someone with passions and weaknesses and all that you know like he he doesn't want to just do the Schumacher Batman thing of the 90s where it's like, what's his deal? Deal is, he's a villain. That's what the Batman villains are mostly like. It's like, well, A, number one, they're

a villain. They are bad guys and they don't like good guys. And that's just not what the Spider-Man movies are like. As we think about malina you know before we were saying like this one is the dialogue is this is the best superhero movie of all time and then we were naming other movies that might be in consideration david did some very dismissive hand signaling at my thor ragnarok are there any other are there superhero are there

super villain performances that hold a candle to Melina? Or is this one still setting the bar for you guys? The top tier for me, I would say, is, I mean, I think a lot of these are the cliched answers. Go ahead. Jared Leto, the Joker.

Right. Jared Leto, the Joker in the Snyder Cut. Jared Leto, Michael Morbius. I think the cliched answers, but they are the ones that come to mind, are like Ledger, Dark Knight, Pfeiffer, Catwoman. Absolutely.

Michael B. Jordan, Black Panther, I still think is the best of the Marvel villains. Good answer. The MCU villains. I agree with that. Although I would speak up for Hiddleston in the first Avengers movie. I think Hiddleston's up there. I think Hiddleston's way up there.

But then you, I mean, I'm trying to think of like who else even then Ian McKellen you could argue for. Obviously that's sort of, yeah, as Magneto, obviously that's sort of like half villain half anti-hero in a way i guess but you know that's pretty big i mean some people would say nicholson and you know other you know

burton guys right um i'm just trying to think like elite unimpeachable tier yeah i think i think that's the elite we also i gotta say i don't know if he's up at that tier but the michael keaton scene where he has the vulture when they're in the car is i mean i love that i think that's a great that is a chilling scene that i don't know if it quite reaches these names but it's perfect it doesn't what's so good about that scene also is just that you're like oh keaton keaton opened the cork up on this one you know what i mean it's just nice to see him do that. I think it's a phenomenal performance. I think maybe the character doesn't work as well as the other ones we're talking about,

which like that tier is the elite is the character is perfectly conceptualized and the person's fucking knocking out of the park and the movie knows exactly how to use that. You know, but Melina is just so special and it remains one of the most, you know, kind of like Ledger was, you know, as we've mentioned,

you know, Ledger was also daring casting in its way. It doesn't feel that way now, but it was. And where it's like, yeah, this is daring. This is not what I would have imagined. And it's way beyond what I would have imagined. So good job, guys. And I buy the Feige thing where he's like, I don't want to recast that role.

Too tough. Like Feige thing where he's like, I don't want to recast that role. Too tough. Like, Feige does understand that stuff. Not even that, where he was just like, we all, obviously, that's untouchable. You know? Not even like, I refuse.

But like, it's obviously just not even, how do you do that? Watching so many of the Molina interviews, it was so funny because, like, he talks around it and they all talk around it,

but they were like, he hates stunts. He hates stunts. And he has this quote that's really nice where he's like, look, I would never assume that a stuntman would come up to me and give me a line reading or tell me how to deliver a joke or how to play a close-up or whatever.

So I figured they're here, they're professionals, they're here for a job. I'm not one of these actors who needs to do my own stunts for ego. They're better at it than I will ever be. If there's something where they need me because of the framing and my face has to be visible there, I will do it. But I always would rather let the professional do it. And then they cut to the special effects guys and they're like, yeah, Alfred hates stunts.

He just doesn't want to fucking do that. And they're like, he's very noble in the way he talks about it. He's like, look, this isn't what I'm trained at i'm like right but he just actor this is bizarre i don't do like blockbusters it's been an interesting process like he's very honest about it and he's like it's a very technical form of acting i have weeks where i don't talk to anyone else where either i don't have dialogue or my dialogue is with puppeteer puppet arms that, that are weighing like 50 pounds and are strapped to me. Like meticulous,

meticulous work. And there's this funny thing where he and Rainey are shooting like a, hi, I'm Alfred Molina and I'm Sam Raimi and welcome to the DVD of Spider-Man two. And it's the outtakes of him doing that. And Molina keeps on fucking it up. And at one point he like snipes to Rami.

He's like, I'm sorry. It's just, this is the most dialogue I've had to say in three months. I mean, that's really funny. And he says it in like a very Rami and Bruce Campbell fucking back and forth way. And Rami keeps on making jokes at Molina and everything. It doesn't feel like actually bitter,

but you do get the sense of him talking about, like, this is a weird way to act, and it's not what I'm used to, and I don't totally understand why they hired me. But my job is to make this work. I have to know exactly what kind of movie I'm in. And it's a couple of those scenes, obviously him turning good at the end,

the Donna Murphy dinner scene, but also that first fucking big abandoned pier warehouse monologue pier warehouse talking to the arms yeah that fucking thing where you're just like the classic village our villain argent thing where it's like we got to do this quick we got to make the motivation clear and it can't be like ludicrous and but that's the performance scene where i go how the fuck does he pull this off because it is just him speaking to arms and he has to go through like 18 revolutions of like, no, no, listen, I'm good. I'm a good scientist. My wife is dead. I'm good.

I don't want to do it. I have to do the experiment though. Experiment can be done. The real crime would be not finishing what we started. To have it end on him standing on all legs, like reaching at the skies, at the heavens, going like, the power of the sun. Like there's a believable build to that.

That's the thing for me where I'm like, I don't know if any other villain performance has had that kind of control of the dial, you know, where it's like someone like a ledger. What's impressive is that it's, it's scary. There's menace,

there's chaos there, you know? And their villain performance is like Pfeiffer where she's going is that it's scary. There's menace. There's chaos there, you know? And their villain performance is like Pfeiffer where she's going big and it's cartoonish and all that sort of stuff that work. And there's like a specificity and a smallness to Molina that can go all the way to like grand operatic.

I'm doing the soliloquy from a fucking splash page that is just kind of astounding. I'm going to say something. Yes. I'm not trying to cause a fight. And I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to bring up anything we're not supposed to bring up, but it very much applies here.

It does make me realize perhaps the only other villain that attained such heights while maybe being under such weird circumstances is one actor doing the body and a different actor doing the voice of a masked character whose face you never see named Darth Vader. I mean, it's, it's an interesting argument. It's,

it's, it reminds me of that where you go, how did they make, cause that right. Darth Vader at the end of the day is the iconic, like, I mean so much iconic stuff about Star Wars. But as far as a villain where you immediately feel scared and menaced because they nail it so hard, it's hard to top Darth Vader.

And that was one person's body, another person's voice. You never see their face. It's impossible to replicate what they did with Vader because it's why would you ever do it that way? It shouldn't work. It's stupid. It's stupid. It's stupid. And by the way, when they do it today, you go, well, that's clearly the problem. Like, there are disastrous performances

where you're like, well, the problem is they fucking dubbed them over. But you know what one thing that they nailed so hard with that was, was between his look, his height, his movement, there was no ambiguity about the fact that he was evil. And they didn't feel like they needed to paint

that Star Wars world with shades of gray. They really allowed him to be... Okay, so here's the thing I like about Doctor Octopus in this movie. Just balancing things they do really well, right? They get a lot of guff from the first movie on the goblin costume. I'll come back. I guess I'll just come back.

I'll come back to it. They get a lot of guff from the first movie on the Goblin costume. I guess I'll just come back. I'll come back to it. Meh. They get a lot of guff for the Goblin costume, him looking like a Power Ranger, him having a mask, hiding Willem Dafoe for so much of the performance. So that's a big thing. They know they have an increased budget. They have sort of like... Raimi is given more trust because the movie

is so well received on top of being such a big hit. The big thing they fight for is like, can we do the villain whose face is going to be exposed the entire time because that immediately makes this film so much more complicated from a special effects perspective right you're gonna have a guy with an exposed chest with like loose flowing clothes you know with a visible face the entire time and then the special effects are these crazy tentacles and whatever and then the other part of this is he doesn't have a fucking crazy costume. He's wearing like

a coat. Which Doc Ock doesn't really have one. In the comics he always wears this green jumpsuit. He's got this weird green jumpsuit but even here to just be like these are the clothes he like stole when he was escaping from a hospital to like rob a bank. He's always got little glasses though right?

Yeah he's always got glasses. He right yeah he's got to have glasses yes melina looks good in those little glasses they're usually like little triangles they're little sideways triangles facing in and each other um but but the fact that this movie yes which they give him a better haircut right he is supposed to be dorky he's supposed to be a little pudgy with a bowl cut he's not supposed to be this like physical specimen. He is a mad scientist first and foremost. And he's always drawn that way. He's not drawn as someone who can like go punch for punch with Spider-Man. It's that he's smart and he's got the arms. No, I think that the ultimate Doc Ock was a little more hot and live. Yeah. And that was why they considered for a second the, the Chabon take of like,

is he a contemporary, but it really smart. What were you going to say? Yeah. Well, I was going to say in general, as a big fan of the comics, one thing that I kind of,

and I think superior Spider-Man really underlined this for me, but that you kind of always felt as a comic fan was like the green goblin is pointed to as Spider-Man's Joker, right? Uh, as his Lexx luthor but in reality reading the comics um i've got a lot of love for those green goblin stories but the two things you have are that he's peter's best friend's dad and in the comics spoiler he kills gwen stacy kills spider-man's girlfriend like um yeah right and and those are like huge iconic things

but i think for most people who read the comics long term doc ock is quietly spider-man's joker way more than green goblin because of what you're saying he's number one yeah i would agree with that just because green gob is insane. That's like all he is. Whereas, as you guys are just pointing out and what brings it into mind is like he, Otto Octavius at the end of the day is a scientist and that's really all Peter wants to be, right? Like he is.

They're a little more intellectually equal in that way. And that's the thing that I think makes this movie sing is the villain plot and the hero plot feel so completely intertwined and not in some bullshit way where it's like, well, Otto is draining his power. But it is the fact that like when he goes to his fucking place for dinner, he sees the exact person he wants to grow up to be. to grow up to be. Peter's dream is that he's a respected scientist on the level of Otto Octavius and that he is happily married to Mary Jane Parker and that is what their home life is like. And then Otto becomes the nightmare of everything he doesn't want to become. He only exists as either the specter of what he wants to be in his middle age or the thing

he has to prevent himself from falling into. He instantly he gets power and instantly goes insane in a way that Peter thus far hasn't. And it scares the shit out of this kid. Yeah. That's a pretty good motivation for an entire movie. Yeah, it fucking rules. Here's another thing that rules about this movie and this character and this performance. And re-watching this, I was just like,

that's what's fucking missing. There is a scene in which he puts on a little hat and he goes into a bank and he breaks open a vault and he takes out big sacks with dollar signs on them and he goes,

money. Well, he needs the money to buy his science stuff. I know, but this is what all these fucking movies... No, you don't know. What the fuck? What, does he go to a store next and says, like, here's money bags.

Give me a bunch of metal. Like, no, it doesn't make sense. It's great. It shouldn't make sense. It's exactly. That's what I'm saying. I know. I'm agreeing with you.

I am so fucking over these things having the stakes of it is the end of the world or even worse for me the stakes are so weird and nebulous and unclear I don't really understand what they're fighting for but it's treated with the chaos of it's the end of the world whereas this movie it's like here's a guy he's got an evil plan how's he gonna fund it

gotta rob some banks Spider-Man's gotta stop him from robbing those banks coins and bills. You guys know when you go, when I was a kid, you go to Disney World, right? Yeah. And you go to what is now

Hollywood Studios, right? Correct. Formerly MGM. Formerly MGM Studios. And this whole idea originally was like, this is like the movie world. And...

Right. One of the things that was so fun for me as a kid when we'd go to disney world is like you walk around their fake sets and you take that thing with the studio tour where you're on the little tram and they show you what it's like to have like a fire ball explode and then the water rushed down in the can and then you get older and you know i become an actor and you realize oh none of that that was a theme park replicating movie sets those weren't real movie sets and like the indiana jones stunt spectacular if you watch it presupposes like hey guys this is what it's

like to be on the stunt crew and you're like no these are people in orlando florida this is not you're making me is it weird to say that in a highly complimentary way sam raimi's new york between the spider-man movies and Doctor Strange. Feels like a theme park. Feels like watching a movie shot at a theme park. In a great way. A couple weeks ago I was in LA and as I do almost every single time I go to Los

Angeles for any reason I go to Universal Studios and I do the fucking Backlot Tour. It's my fucking favorite thing in the world. And part of it is I like to see how everyone does it differently. But they also modify the tour based on like routes and what's filming that day and what's unavailable and all that sort of shit. But I feel like at this point, I've seen most of the variables of like what they will or won't show you. Right. And there's like a New York backlot set that they drive through. You always see like the same couple of angles of,

and it's like, look out your window. No, you didn't accidentally board a plane. This isn't real New York. It's what we call little New York here, whatever the fuck they say, right? Right, right. And then this woman clearly goes off the script a little, and she's like, can I, can I,

Jerry, can we do this turn here? I want to show them this. And she pulls into like a side street of the New York backlot lot and she's like look we don't usually show this because some other stuff is shut down today and this is available i can show you this this is the theater from spider-man 2 it's the broadway theater where she does importance of being earnest and i got chills it was it weirdly hit me but it also was this insane thing where I went.

I have lived in New York City my entire fucking life. I know what New York City looks like. And this is the first time I ever processed that that is not a real theater. And I know that. I think I know that intellectually. I watch the movie. I'm like, there's no theater that looks like this. There's no block that looks like this. There's no block surrounding a Broadway theater that looks like this.

I understand this. No, yeah. It almost looks like it's in the village or something. There was a block that looks like this. There's no block surrounding a Broadway theater that looks like this. I understand this. No. Yeah. It almost looks like it's in the village or something that would block around it. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's meant to be like a little like West village. Like you think it's supposed to be like the Cherry Lane theater or whatever, like a little. No, no, no. I think this is the point. I think looking at it on the back lot, it's meant to be like the Cherry Lane. And then this movie repurposes and goes like, no, this is on 40. She's on Broadway. She's on a broadway show yeah but i just accept it and and seeing it undressed like that it's kind of incredible the magic of like and brayme talked about this a lot in all the sort of things i've read and watched him whatever that he's like we

had to have a really clean balance of when we're shooting real new York, you want to use the real, a lot, you want to use the real locations that kind of feel magical, that can harmonize with the soundstage parts of New York, that can harmonize with when we have to shoot a piece in LA or Chicago that doubles for it, and somehow it all just fucking works.

I'm really interested in your opinion, Griffin, as a native New Yorker, because you go, there are scenes that feel like very campy sound stages, right? Where you're looking at it and you're going, that's not a block in New York. Like, this looks like a, this. Doesn't bother me. Not only does it not bother me, I walk away as someone who lived in New York for close to two decades of my life going, this feels like one of the most fucking legit representations of New York I've seen on screen. And yet there are times where it almost looks like Johnny Dangerously level cartoonish, you know?

But what's more impressive to me is that he's able to use actual New York footage and have it fit in with the cartoon footage. I mean, I am the biggest subway nerd in the world. I always get kind of huffy about weird subway representation in Hollywood movies. This movie, you know, has this whole, like, New York subway sequence on what is clearly the Chicago L train, like anyone who's ever been to Chicago knows. And right, it's like

an elevated line that's running through Manhattan, which like hasn't happened in many, many decades and all that. And I'm still just like, that's great. What an iconic subway scene. Like, I don't care at all. Like, scene. Like, I don't care at all. Like, it's great. I don't care at all. It feels to me like Ratatouille,

where I'm like, well, that's maybe the best that France has ever, that Paris has ever been captured on film. And I said that to my mom once, who's French. Your mom probably wanted to hit you with a frying pan. Yeah, she was like, that's a fucking cartoon. None of that's laid out the way it is in the movie. And I'm like like but it feels

correct here's a question you know i have i have a question that i am not smart enough to answer but that you two nerds i think will rack your brains and is the type of reason i like coming on this podcast oh boy are there movies that shot in new york more practically that are regarded as New York movies that you think nail New York hard nail New York less than Spider-Man 2 did even though Spider-Man 2 so visibly uses sound

stages in other cities as often that's a weird one because I only remember the good ones right I'm trying to go because obviously I immediately I thought you were setting me up for like yeah shot in New York that like actually really feel like French connection taking a Pelham 123 right like those those 70s classics

things like that. I'm saying movies that shot here where you think Spider-Man 2 out New York's them even though they were more more faithfully shot. And to me for this movie had a lot of New York photography. I do want to I do want to, I do want to shout that out.

Like, and this was this moment where New York was like, made in NY was the stamp on the poster and they were giving the tax credits

and all that, you know, like, but yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I have the answer and maybe it's unfair

and I'm beating a dead horse, but I, it's the thing that immediately comes to mind. Both of the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movies were shot more in New York than any of the Raimi. Percentage-wise, I think those movies are like 80%, if not more, shot in New York and in real streets and shit. And it just doesn't ever feel as tangible to me both in the way they photograph the city

and the way they dramatize the spirit of the city. I think I think it misses in both. Yeah, I prefer, you know, honestly the first Holland movie is more New Yorky than the Garfield's. Yeah, even though probably half shot in Atlanta

or whatever, but at least has those cute moments like the bodega and stuff. There's a few things in there where you're like, okay, that's nice. Don't see that in a movie a lot. You know what else? As we talk about it that I've never thought about that I wonder if you guys would agree.

And again, another franchise that I don't have total authority to speak out to from a point of expertise, but just casually, the sound stagey parts of Sam Raimi's New York, if they resemble anything anything it's almost a sesame street feel which is great which is really fucking crafty on his part story things like that it's really crafty on his side because it's like it looks like a fake new york that looks like other fake new yorks that we really love as new York. But that's the thing I love about him is like when he's shooting real New York,

he's shooting the parts of real New York that feel like fake New York. Like I'm like the way he uses Columbia University in this. Right. He's shooting on like Moneta Lane. Like he goes and shoots on these weird blocks that block down by where all the NYU professors live behind the gate off of Washington Square. It doesn't look like any other part. Yeah, that doesn't look like any other part

of New York, but holy shit, is it New York-y. And he's talked about this for all three of these movies and I think one and two more successfully, like, talking with his locations team and stuff about, like, we gotta find the places that feel magical. Either the landmarks that are like hyper real

or just these odd blocks that have this energy whatever the fuck it is it's yeah I don't know there's stuff in this movie I mean it's like look I could do 10 episodes on this film right it's one of these things we're watching these three movies I'm already like I don't feel like we have enough time to

talk about them I mean we've broken two hours you guys know that right oh yes I'm fully aware. Oh, yeah. Yes. Sure. How long was the movie itself? The movie is two hours and ten minutes. Maybe. Is it his longest film? We're going to beat it very soon. Is Raimi's longest? No, not even close.

What's what's Raimi's longest? Well, it's probably Spider-Man three, right? That's that's that's. Oh, yes, of course. We talked about this. It's either three or great and powerful. That's pretty bloated. Oh, yes, of course. We talked about this. It's either 3 or Oz the Great and Powerful. They're both bloated. Yeah. A thing I was going to say.

Oh, there's, like, I just, the way these first two movies are, like, imprinted on my brain, right, and I'm sort of obsessed with so many little details of them. There are things, talking about the hyper-reality of this film, right,

and the sort of, like, movie logic that he operates on. You now have like, they perfected the art of, we know exactly how to build a superhero suit to make it look good on camera, to let the actor move, and then how to augment it with CGI so you never see the, you know, the unappealing aspects of the thing, right?

There's something to the amount of times in these movies that there has to be the cheats. And even when I was watching these films as like a 14-year-old whatever, I would fixate on them, and not in a bad way. But whenever he needs to take his mask off

or put his mask on, you're like, this costume is absolutely designed where there is no separation. There is no way that the top part removes from this bodysuit. It is impossible. The tension of it, there's no zipper, there's no seam, there's no nothing. And anytime he has to pull it off, it's clearly hidden in a cut where now they've switched to the suit where they have to cut to it when the fingers are already underneath

it. Or when he's putting it on, the second it gets down over his jaw, they cut away, you know? And then the whole shape of his head is changed. Right. Because it's not just putting a mask on. They have this weird plastic vacuum form thing

so that he has the perfect Ditko Spider-Man skull so it's not just Tobey Maguire's feature smushed underneath. And every time, I, like, accept it.

And similarly, when he's delivering pieces at the fucking opening of this movie, I think we need to talk about a lot more now. Yes, we he's delivering pizzas, the fucking opening of this movie, I think we need to talk about a lot more now. Yes, we do. We need to go through some of this movie. Yes, go ahead.

This was me smoothly swinging into a transition of the pizza thing. The pizza boxes are so beautifully art directed where one in the middle stack is just so smushed. I love it. And every time he puts it down on Bones's desk, right? I look at it and I'm like, this one box in the middle is so smushed. I love it. And every time he puts it down on Bones' desk, right? I look at it and I'm like, this one box in the middle

is so smushed that you just can't even imagine how bad that pizza looks inside. It's so fucked up. But the other ones, the ones above and below it still have a reasonable integrity. But he knows that's the funniest one

to just have this totally warped corner. I have, I just have to say on my end, and I think I speak for a lot of listeners here, maybe not. Yeah. The fact that we've been talking this long and you both just said, now we have to actually start going through the movie. That's astounding. That's astounding. People love when we do that.

People love that. They're always tweeting like, ah, they start talking about the movie two hours in. We've been talking about the movie the whole time. We've talked about lots of scenes in this movie, you know, that pop. But the pizza scene, just the absolutely outrageous audacity

of him doing all of that, and it's so much fun, and it's against the clock. It's this classic Spider-Man thing. And then he puts the pizzas down and he says pizza time like like she's supposed to be like, oh, yeah, great. This looks good. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. It makes me laugh

every single time. An incredible performance from Emily Deschanel. Emily Deschanel chewing the gum. So funny. What's the guy's name from Chappelle's show? Donnell Rawlings. Hey, he stole that guy's pizza. And isn't the guy who name from Chappelle's show? Darnell Rawlings. Hey, he stole that guy's pizza. And isn't the guy who gets the slice webbed out of his hand? It's Scott

Spiegel, who co-wrote Evil Dead. He's one of Sam's guys. Yes. There's so many guys like that in one scene. You got Brent Briscoe coming back as the garbage man who finds the costume. Yes. You got, obviously, Joel McHale as the bank teller.

So good. Hal Sparks. You've got the only film to have two different talk soup hosts. Right. Hal Sparks is the guy who asked about the costume, right? In the elevator. In the elevator. Let's not.

We need to put some research in that. Can we just say, presumably, the only film to have two talk soup hosts? Presumably. I don't want to create any controversy by claiming it has two talk soup posts. And then we find out. Phil Lamar. Phil Lamar, Gethard. You shouted him out.

Phil Lamar just leans into frame, puts his hand on Tobey Maguire's chest, and that seems to be the extent of Phil Lamar's participation. Obviously, the great Dylan Baker. Oh, Dylan Baker. Well, yeah. Great.

I once acted in Anchorman 2. I met Dylan Baker. Oh, God. What a great guy. What a great guy. I forgot he's in that. Yeah, of course. A great dude. And then years later,

was that something? And he was there and came up to me. He's like, how you been, man? I was like, oh, you're one of those guys. You remember people like me. That'll get you acting work for decades. Joy Bryant, who went on to have a pretty big career. She's the one who says, go Spider-Man, go.

I love that. Daniel Dae Kim is one of the assistants. Just a lot of guys. Yeah, Peter McRobbie. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where almost everyone with a line pops. I worked on it. One of the first movies I ever worked on,

one of the other dudes in it I realized had a really large child acting career. And I knew I recognized him for something. I was going through all of his credits and I couldn't figure out what it was. And then I realized Mark John Jeffries, he's the kid who witnesses Peter Parker do the

flip. Yes. Sure. Right. And because that's what my mom always told me, but I never believed flip. Yes, sure. Right. And goes, that's what my mom always told me, but I never believed her. Eat your vegetables. Feels weird that we haven't shouted out Asif Manvi yet. Yay, Mr. Aziz. You know, that's Joe's Pizza in the Village, right?

Which is... It moved three doors down. It moved slightly, but it's... It's around the corner in the same block with the Spider-Man 2 sign. Can I just say, I think it's another thing this movie does so well that most sequels fuck up.

Is Asif Manvi? Not putting Asif Manvi in at the beginning. No, I think a lot of sequels fuck up this sort of presumed, we made the first movie, you liked it, you liked all their characters, off to the races, let's go. And I do think even if

you're amped for a fucking sequel movies still have to like win you back over they have they have to sort of re-acclimate you to the characters and their struggles and whatever here's the thing i don't like about what the sort of mcu format is usually the first action sequence that leads off the movie will be them fighting a sort of b-tier villain from their rogues gallery uh that we know will be easily defeated right kind of a you know it fucking dr strange fights shuma gorath and you're sort of like okay yeah this is just him kind of warming up on the speed bag getting everyone back on board but it's kind of nothing because you're sort of like okay okay get to whatever the real plot is right like this is our little our little

aperitif and this instead it's like spider-man's big challenge after by the way the most incredible opening credits of all time with these beautiful painted flashback visuals by alex ross and all that you know like but but speaks to this fucking like 2.0 approach to this film where it's like opening credits first movie good how do we make them better alex ross alex ross like spicing everything up but then it's like yeah what's spider-man's big challenge as this movie begins he's got to move this this pizza 50 blocks in 10 minutes like you know fucking peter parker challenge and also just the simplicity of like you start once again with the mirroring of the fucking uh opening narration right yeah

this close-up of kirsten dunst that turns into the billboard that immediately establishes some years have passed. Her career has changed. Everything's refocused on the girl of his dreams, but he can't fucking be with her. And then we're immediately snapped back into reality. He almost gets hit by a fucking car. He's a goddamn pizza delivery boy

and he's late. He stole that guy's pizza. I really love what you guys... It's really smart to point out, they found a way to skip the hero of the weak moment, or the villain of the weak moment. And they replaced it with pizza, which is so New York-y and so fun and so charming. And you let him be Spider-Man at

minute two, like he puts on the suit immediately. And I would say some franchises fall into a trap where they try to play against type to reestablish that and I don't love that. Three does that and I think it fucks the movie over well you know like grant morrison pointed out like it's too easy to do dark superman everybody's doing it now i might argue you know the star wars franchises maybe had some missteps where they started you off cutting you off no but spider-man 3 we've talked about opens with him being like things are going pretty great everyone

loves spider-man and you immediately are like i don't feel comfortable in this movie i know they're trying to subvert it but like this is just immediate re-establish reinvestment and this is peter parker's whole fucking deal it's a classic peter parker thing he's got four quarters you know he's got a hundred chips and he has three plates that he needs to have them on he's constantly moving them around like you know romantic p, job and science Peter, superhero Peter. He can never

be 100% devoted to one thing. I'll actually say, too, connected directly back to Sam Raimi, more tangential to Spider-Man, it's one of the things, multiverse of madness, one of the things that's very interesting. Because MCU, I think you guys are correctly pointing out, there are tropes, there are cliches. It's kind of its own genre of movie now and some of it's

getting eye-rolly but to subvert wanda into being the villain and to say we're going to do a whole disney plus series that shows her mental fracturing and then she's going to be brought back and i was really impressed of like they don't fuck around. Like they don't spend the whole first act and then show you her turn. Like she messes up one thing and he's like, what Wanda? She's like, you never said that name.

Oh, I'm the most bad-ass fucking person you deal with. I'm like, I love that. I love that they can dedicate a whole Disney plus series to basically go, we're going to justifiably turn this hero into a villain. Now in a world that doesn't have as many strong female heroes

as you'd like, it's kind of a shame. But Elizabeth Olsen kind of crushes it. And I go, what a cool layered way to do something that's the opposite

of what we're saying. Yeah, dedicate a whole TV series to it. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. It's the benefit of telling a 45-part story like crazy. You can go do something off to the side, but of course then you have the irritation of like, by the way, you better watch this thing on Disney Plus before

you see the movie. Right. You know, it's understandable. Some people are like chafing at that idea. But if you do, it was pretty fucking cool to go, oh, they don't need to burn a minute of exposition on this because they did it elsewhere. And now we can just have Scarlet Witch and Doctor Strange fucking fight and she's badass. Pretty cool. The opposite of the small pizza moment in spider-man well and and

this movie at large where it's like this film actually does work as a complete self-contained statement yeah like even just how economically it sets up everything at the beginning even it down to its reintroduction of Harry and everything. Like, you can watch this without having seen the first one. And this movie, as much as it sets things up for another movie,

actually feels resolved in terms of its own thematic and emotional concerns by the end of this film. And I think the more these stories become interdependent on other stories, even if it is impressive that you're able to do

certain things like that, like that's the silver lining. The more I go back to this is like, remember when this was just like a two-hour fucking movie that felt complete? It is. David, I wonder if you have the same feeling. We are living in a world where we grew up on comic books

and now they're being sold back to us for hundreds of billions of dollars, right? But you and I are also the parents of young kids and we're pop culture obsessives in our own way and i sit here and i go man what a cool thing that i get to watch all these movies with cal again someday and i get to watch him watch them for the first time absolutely it is already so exciting this the idea of doing that david's daughter's watching toy story it's the proudest i've ever been of david's daughter now spider-man 2 is one of theest I've ever been of David's daughter. Now, Spider-Man 2 is one of the few films

that I can go, oh, he can see, he doesn't even necessarily need to see Spider-Man 1 and he'll still get most of this and why it's cool and fun. Yeah.

It's pretty much all there. The Norman Osborn callback at the end will be horrifically confusing to him. Sure. But maybe the only thing? Like, true? Pretty much the only thing.

Everything else is there the mcu i tell you i do watch like watching watching the newest spider-man i'm going holy shit am i i don't even i feel like i watched some of those andrew garfield movies on a plane and got through them am i gonna have to watch the andrew garfield movies with cal for him to spirit jesus fucking christ that's the thing you can't even skip over the failures now because they're reclaiming the failures or whatever yeah the only stuff they let you skip over is like the edward norton hulk and the inhumans tv show and now even that's kind of been brought back with black bolt even that's like actually maybe you should watch inhumans

maybe you should throw that i'm not watching i'm joking i'm joking i can't do the thing this movie gets at which i don't know if it's even really possible for any of these modern movies to get at anymore, and I'm not even saying just MCU, is that feeling of being a kid and picking up a comic book and reading it and going like, God, what a great issue. That was such a fun read.

And then you know it's going to be a month until a new issue comes out, but it's a very different sense of satisfaction than when an issue ends with a cliffhanger and you're like holy shit what happens next that feeling of like finishing an issue and going that was great i just had a great time reading that and i i'm looking forward to whatever happens next but i feel resolved. I do think it's good when our properties that are aimed at kids slash youthful excitement allow us to feel

that youthful excitement. I agree. I agree. I do think that should generally be... Oh, no, actually, I'm seeing here that superhero movies should actually be incredibly adult

and rated R and involve bones being broken and, you know, moral sins being committed. I'm not going to name property. Some of the Star Wars movies to me have made me think a little. I'm so glad to hear you guys agree because

I feel like Star Wars has struck the ball a couple times. So hearing that David agree with me, that's cool. We don't even really need to talk about it. After the pizza sequence we have Aunt May's apartment. We don't even really need to talk about it. After the pizza sequence, we have Aunt May's apartment. Aunt May is losing her home. She's being evicted,

so she's having kind of a yard sale and all that stuff. You reestablish the three most important characters in his life. It's the birthday party he's late to. He's late to this birthday party. Mary Jane and Harry are there. He's kind of estranged from both of them in different ways.

Gethard is stroking his beard like a fucking cartoon villain. He's like giggling and sitting back in his chair. He's just so proud that he fucking filibustered Star Wars in again. I just love Spider-Man. I just like Spider-Man and I like talking about Spider-Man.

That's all that's going on. I'm not going to be somebody who's going to sit here and gloat about anything I may or may not have done. I like Spider-Man. I just like Spider-Man, and I like talking about Spider-Man. That's all that's going on. I'm not going to be somebody who's going to sit here and gloat about anything I may or may not have done. I like Spider-Man a lot. The chocolate cake scene into the yard sale scene, to me, is something... Those are two sequences

that a lot of the MCU movies try to consistently have and almost never hit as... No. It always feels a little more perfunctory when they're doing stuff like that in the mcu and the chocolate cake stuff is so subtle which then allows rosemary harris's speech to be fucking shakespearean level words mush yeah to have right to have the one scene that's no dialogue and one that's like all this florid dialogue and both work ursula Dickovich, obviously an absolute legend.

Shout her out. Yeah. The best. Maybe you should just stick with Ursula, Peter, who knows, you know, she's,

she's total, total babe. That scene too, though. It's just, Hey, you want some chocolate cake? And for him to go,

yeah. And then her response is just maybe a glass of milk too. Yeah. And it's that simple. She's not wrong. They go well together. It's that thing of like the absurd, like,

the absurd comic nature of how much the universe constantly keeps on fucking with Peter. Right? Like, kind of exemplified for me in when he drops his books at Columbia and the backpacks won't stop hitting him in the head. Yeah. And on the commentary, they talked about that the extras, because it's Spider

Man 2 and now he's a big fucking star, were like too tentative. They like didn't want to hit him that hard. And Raimi was like, it's not funny unless you hit him really hard with the backpack. And they like didn't want to do it. They were worried about getting yelled at. So they had to do so many goddamn takes. And Maguire was like, it was pissing me off that they weren't being more aggressive because it was taking longer and I ended up getting hit more. And the solution to it was that Raimi just walked into frame and did it himself.

And that one like knock to the head that's really brutal in the middle of it is Raimi. And he's like there i got my fucking take but that sense of the universe of like he cannot bend down without someone smacking him in the noggin right like everyone just fucking shits on this guy everything just like funnels down to him constantly and then he gets a piece of chocolate cake just this moment of just genuine kindness for no reason um well she likes him but you know what i'm saying it's a selfless thing she thinks he's a cutie but like she's not trying to manipulate him no she's not she's giving him a moment a little respite there because obviously yes what's going on in this movie is throughout everything peter is having this kind of internal

moral or you know whatever like his subconscious failing that his powers just leave him it's not like one of those classic things of like oh he encountered a power draining machine or you know there's someone who can suck his powers away it's just that if he's not bought in to his mission as spider-man he simply cannot be spider-man right that's the best way to put it but also like spider-man 1 the origin story is so tied in puberty in so many ways and ramey like consciously sort of like underlines those things for comedic effect in the first movie uh and this one is sort of like him getting to like even though he's a guy in his 20s it's like middle-aged sexual dysfunction that whole scene with the doctor is is you know they're like

they're they're drawn out the comparison absolutely the doctor played by by that guy ah fuck i can't remember anyway i like that he has like the tie-dye shirt right uh anyway uh we've got dr octavius we mentioned that sort of opening scene where peter meets him and he's like you know uh kurt uh kurt connor says you're brilliant but you're lazy right you know the sort of which you sort of feel for peter where you're like you know what he's fucking spider-man which is again the classic thing you can never say it he can never be like well the reason i seem a little scatterbrained is because i'm a famous superhero but i can never say it. You can never

enjoy his heroism. There's a thing they said in the commentary that the original plan for this movie, or one of the 15 drafts or whatever, was that Harry was going to hire Dr. Octopus to find Spider-Man from the beginning of the movie, almost.

That was sort of his main drive. It was a sort of Craven-esque hunt. Obviously, Harry is tied up in him in that he's funding his experiments and all that. Right. You know, but what is it? Nobel Prize, Otto! Nobel Prize!

That's his thing. Avi Arad gives himself the credit for this and who knows where it belongs, but that he was like, ultimately just felt a lot more interesting to have Peter and Harry be able to talk about things face to face. Yeah, sure, not to have a go between. And the weird tension of those scenes,

the thing I think Franco does well is that energy of the guy who's trying to be chill has constantly had one too many drinks. Right. And just shifts the energy of the conversation to uncomfortable territory way too fast, way too frequently. Harry knows that everyone is kind of talking about him

in worried voices behind his back. He's got that energy, right? You know. Now he's gotten pushed into running a company that he never really wanted to run

and he's playing the role of like tech fucking asshole. Yeah, exactly. But he's... Top of the world. What does he say, Otto? Like top of the world, Otto? Yeah, and Nobel Prize.

Nobel Prize. Nobel Prize. Nobel Prize! Nobel Prize! He keeps on, like... Yeah. Experiment goes wrong. Obviously, the most incredible thing about the experiment going wrong scene is her screaming face reflected in the glass shot that is just so good.

And so, so maximalist. And so, I just feel, like, dorky. You know, like, people would be afraid to try something like that. Now, this is the exact amount of explanation I want. He's created a new form of energy that is so volatile. He had to make robot arms to handle it. He put AI in the robot arms,

so he didn't have to control them entirely. And then the chip breaks and it makes them crazy. That's all I want. Why, why is this happening? That's exactly as much time as I need spent on this. Our conversation is reminding, underlining something before I was saying,

you know, thinking so much about how I really love Tom Holland and I think Tom Holland has nailed Peter Parker. But this movie, as we discussed it, it's becoming clear to me. Tom Holland has nailed Peter Parker harder than anybody else did.

This movie nailed Spider-Man harder than any it has done before or since. The characterization of Spider-Man. We were talking before about one thing that jumps out is I love a fragile Aunt May. I love an old Aunt May. I love a she could, her heart could stop beating with one shock Aunt May. Another failing of the MCU, but what were they going to do with all those movies? Established it. Going back and re-watching a movie where Spider-Man has no mentors. He tries to call Happy Hogan all the time in the MCU and they do a lot of bits about how

Happy doesn't even pick up the phone. But he has Tony Stark. He has Iron Man. He has that tech. Yeah. It's the worst thing about that. It's very limiting. It's very limiting to who spider-man it's spider-man living in a shitty apartment where it's like he goes outside and it starts raining and he can no longer crawl up the walls and who is he ever going to talk to about this because who would ever treat there's also just this fucking thing with those movies where it's like spider-man is like a stem icon now right where he's like i'm just like a dorky computer programmer who 3d prints weapons or you know i don't know there's just something about it he's a little too happy go lucky like i think things go a little too well

for him he's got a little too much going for himself he's got spider-man as a character has a little too much swag yeah they try to do the oh you know just when he thinks he's got his good he's brought low but like you know anyway um what are some other things in spider-man wait wait wait shout out to the tentacles okay come on the tentacles in this are so good the design is good they look good as hell they can light a cigar for him they can light a cigar for him i'm like i watch this and take off his sunglasses i like when they do delicate catch a glass that's falling oh yeah yeah i don't want like i don't want to have a computer control my mind but i could be into rocking tentacles like on and off if i have you when you say that you don't want a computer to control your mind i don't believe you which

hacking david i know you're like fucking Fast and Furious car trying to get through the movie as quickly as possible, but I want to go back to a thing because it's an echo of one of my favorite scenes. The second backyard

throwing out the trash, Peter and Mary Jane conversation at the beginning of this movie. I think because you started with the specter of like, here she is now. She's on billboards all around the city. She's on Broadway. And I've made this decision to be a sad, mopey bastard.

I won't allow myself to be with her. Right. But I think part of that is this belief Peter has sort of selfishly that like, well, and she's going to continue to hold this flame for me as well. We will be sad lovers who are destined to be alone. Right. And then he walks into this party. Harry's there. Harry's got his weird energy and May's putting on a brave face on the fact that she can't afford

the house. This is one of the scenes where I really like Franco's choices by the way. Great great performance from Franco that entire scene. And then MJ is just being super normal and friendly. And then they go out and it's this weird like echoing of oh look at us we're no longer in high school we moved out but like here we are back in this backyard again remember the first time we talked where they actually start to like speak to each

other for the first time and she drops the fucking hammer on like I'm dating somebody she's dating J Jonah Jameson's son he's just got to deal with that she's got a line reading he's a famous astronaut and then his asshole boss is there yelling at him to take pictures in the

moment he finds out it's pretty great but there's the thing where where she says I'm seeing someone by the way like she throws it off as just I've been trying to avoid dropping this on you the whole time right end of the conversation I've been seeing someone by the way on you the whole time, right? End of the conversation. I've been seeing someone, by the way, and he goes, like, like a boyfriend?

And she goes, like, like I like him. And she's got, like, this, like, old fucking movie star lilt on it. Like, she sounds like fucking, like, do you know what I'm saying? She's so good in this movie. She's like a Judy Holiday delivery or something. I really love Dunstan. All three Spider- movie. I really love Dunstan, all three Spider-Mans. And I love Dunstan general,

but I do think this is the movie that gives her just more meat on the bone. And like, she just, she's just phenomenal. I mean, this is the same year as eternal sunshine. Like it's when it was really like,

wow, like this is such an important actor. It's another thing they said in the commentary is they, cause they were like all these drafts kept on going back to this love triangle idea. And they went to her at some point and they went like, we can't figure this out. Give us the answer. Would you rather

if there's another guy in the picture that it's a bad relationship or a good relationship? And she was like, good relationship. It's so much more interesting dramatically if the guy is good if he's a nice guy the guy is nice and there's absolutely nothing wrong with him and he's there for her and there's an absolute pathway for her to live a happier life an easier life at the very least the great cinematic shorthand is just her kissing him on the couch upside down and you know him being like wow

and her being like yeah yeah uh-huh and you can just tell that she's just like right this is never going to be quite especially being jjj's son which is just an incredible incredibly smart decision to be able to bake jjj into more scenes which is what everyone everyone in America wants. It is true. It is true. Just give us double JJJ. Like, everyone in the commentary talks about the most exciting thing in this movie was just coming back and knowing, well, unequivocally, this guy fucking hits.

Everyone knew that worked. In the office works. Just give him as much of that as we can. Like, you look at his performance at JJJ, and it's like the equivalent of watching an MMA fight where the bell rings and one guy just walks up and smashes the shit out of the person across from him and the match is over

10 seconds later. It's a Ronda Rousey. It is so good. It is just a fucking blitzkrieg of hilarious choices and great acting. It's just every fucking gesture. This is him laughing at the advance right uh where he laughs laughs laughs and then goes right back to serious he's like a serious

no what do i pay you for you know like you know all that love anytime he nails that but i think making this guy the son of that dude right who is such a fucking nuisance to spider-man and to peter parker and then casting this, like, unbelievably handsome dude, making him a fucking astronaut, American hero. Daniel Gillies. But also, right, having him not be someone

that you're rooting for to go away. Like, you know, like, ah, fuck this guy. He's rude. Right. It's such a wise choice to just be like, he's a nice guy.

It'd be so easy to make him a fucking arrogant asshole or sort of glib or unattentive, you know? He's fine. He's just boring. He's boring. And the same thing with Peter deciding to quit as being Spider-Man. It's like you have the very hokey, very sweet,

very lovable raindrops keep falling on my head sequence, right? Where it's like, he doesn't dislike being just Peter Parker, right? Like, there's a lot he actually enjoys about it, but he has the thing in the back of his mind always of like, people are getting beat up in alleyways without

me, you know what I mean? Where it's like the great responsibility. He's not able to finish the hot dog, you know? There's something coming to mind right now because we're talking about how great dunst is in this movie and she really it really you watch it back you're like i i hate to say it because it's probably some sexist instinct related to like nerd culture but i feel like i remembered dialogue of her being hammy in this and i watched it back today i'm like she, she's fucking awesome. She makes it all the time. She is so good.

And I think she's very keyed into the old-timey, sort of romantic nature of her scenes. The sphere, the sort of temperature they exist. Now, I hate to keep comparing it to the modern stuff, but there's something that really stood out to me in one scene. A scene that I'd forgotten,

and then when it came up, I was like, holy shit, it got me again and made me remember how good this scene is. You look at MCU now, right? And they play with the idea of if anybody figures out who Peter is, it's a disaster, right? And they do it. Mysterio reveals it and it leads to, he goes to Dr. Strange. It sucks McGuire and Garfield through and all these villains. And it's super fun, right? And then leads to the scene at the end where Zendaya is working and she no longer remembers him and he remembers he realized that he has made this choice that if he really loves her she can never know but you think about how much work they put in for that right whereas in spider-man 2 they do the same thing by going in the total opposite direction

where she she decides she doesn't want this marriage. She runs, she tracks down Peter and they, without her even needing to say it, she has come to have the sneaking suspicion. Oh, I think I know who you are and I know how much you really do care about me. Give me one kiss. There's something I need to find out. There's something I need to see. However she phrases it. And as he's sitting there freezing up, considering whether he should go for this kiss, his spider sense comes back, car through the window, slight slow motion, like not even full slow motion, like a very cool affectation. He fucking jumps, dives over her and then leans back.

And that sound effect as the tire just barely misses his face. And you go, man, those are two different choices about Spider-Man, right? And both that I loved, but in a way that, again, is showing me this movie hasn't been beaten yet. Like one movie where the idea of him finding out leads to all these people coming through portals and multiverses and this, and we got to erase it, and Doctor Strange, and you need more heroes, villains all this whereas this one just goes i can't she wants to kiss me but i

can't kiss her because if i if i let somebody in guys like doc ock are always trying to fucking kill me and and she's gonna get fucking killed and that's more pure spider-man a hundred times out of a hundred to me to this point spider-man was the last character in the MCU who had a secret identity. And now they've blown that up and then they did a whole movie to unblow it up and what have you. Right. And this just shows you why you need that in a simple. Absolutely. This is, it's like, it's another chocolate cake moment.

Sometimes it can just be that simple. But also in the doctor scene, he gives it up pretty quickly, right? He's trying to do this thing of, I had a dream, actually. It was my friend who had a dream. And then the doctor just sort of goes like, okay, we don't have to talk about it. If you feel like you can't be Spider-Man anymore,

like there's this quiet admission of like, you're safe with me, right? Yeah, Dr. Pippa. There's Pippa laws. Right, the citizens on the fucking subway see him, give him his mask back, and go, we won't tell anybody. You know, that there's this sort of like understanding with people. And I think Rami even admits as much.

But in any of the scenes with Harry, MJ or Aunt May, which are obviously the three big emotional relationships for Peter, I feel like in any given moment, you question whether they know. The actors are always towing this line. When Aunt May is giving that speech, Harris is especially great at that. But also as a viewer, it's really fun to realize if any of the three of those figures it out at any given point, it's a big fucking deal that's going to change everything. point, it's a big fucking deal that's going to change everything. Well, and not to go out of

order here as David tries to barrel us to the end of this episode, but you want to talk about Dunn's performance here. The thing she fucking nails that puts her in the Hall of Fame for me, her long unbroken camera track in reaction

shot to Peter turning around as he's holding the collapsing warehouse on his back and she sees his face for the first time is incredible. She does like fucking seven emotions. You see her go through 20 different thoughts. It's

all worthless and it's incredible and what's amazing about it is it's at first the shock right the sort of stunned i mean not only is she in this insane intense environment with life and death stakes and whatever but just like this astonishing thing to see but gradually she gets to the like of course you know you watch it all play out on her face where it's the of course who else could it have been it had to be him the entire time and then the sort of as it lands on her the understanding of why he has acted the way he always has the full sort of retroactive understanding of their

entire dynamic for the last couple of years it's like heartbreaking yeah it's incredible she's really good she's really fucking good and you know what one thing that's very fun for me about this conversation is and one thing that is really brilliant about them bringing all the Spider-Mans back in the new movie is one thing that they do have

in common all of them that they never betrayed whereas they've turned the dials on some other things where you go, as a Spider-Man fan my whole life, I go, what is that? They always let Peter be an idealist who's naive and wants the right things. Even when he's giving up, it's because he's sitting here going, it's impossible to do this. He never turns outright cynical, right? He's defeated, but he's always naive. He's always wide-eyed. He is always at the end of the day, like a kid from an outer borough going into the big city because he thinks he has the ability to make things better,

and therefore he should try to go make it better. And it's another thing that, you know, I just look at some franchises who let their farm boys turn into cynics. And I just go, it's just a shame, isn't it? It's just a shame to have your farm boy archetype. All right. All right.

I'm cutting you off. I don't care. I don't care about Star Wars. We're not talking about Star Wars. Did I say Star Wars? I don't think I ever said Star Wars. Yeah. I said farm boy archetype who turned cynical and I don't always love that.

I'll finish the thought later. It's okay. A thing I really like about the construction of this movie is in the middle, Peter Parker stops being Spider-Man by choice, essentially. He's sick of it. He wants to rebalance his life. I'm Spider-Man.

No more. And yes, crime does rise. But Dr. Octopus is not really on the loose because he is busy building his secret lab. Now, is that silly comic book logic? Yes. Does it make sense to me? Yes.

Yes. I love it. It's fine. And he doesn't reemerge really until he's like, okay, now I need the titrium, the tritrium, whatever it's called. Right. And that's when, you know,

that's when Harry's like, well, you got to get fucking Spider-Man. You got to get Peter Parker. You know, that's when we're into act three. But like, I think this movie does a good job having downtime, like having, you know, having this like, yeah, you know, it's another really important scene too. In that, in that sort of level, the burning building scene, which is such a clear echo of you have that in the first movie has a wonderful.

Yeah, absolutely. That burn, the burning you have that in the first movie. The first movie has a wonderful, yeah, absolutely. The burning building scene is great in this one. Right. So you have this scene that's a real test of his heroism in the first movie. The cops hate him. When you come back out here, we're arresting you. I'm not coming back. He goes and Greek gobs there and gasses him. Right? But he wins. He saves

everyone. He gets the baby out of the building. He reunites with the mother. Everything's fine. This movie, he's been trying not to be fucking Spider-Man. He walks past the people getting mugged in the alleyway, the cop cars, the sirens blaring over things. He finally sees the burning building. Enough's enough. He tries to do it as Peter. And he goes in and he saves the girl from the building. And it's tough, but he fucking does it. And he comes out and there's a sense of victory. Maybe he can do this. Maybe he can use his powers to help people without having to build an entire fucking identity around it.

And just when it's there in front of him, he doesn't resist it. And then they're just in the background, the firemen going like, yeah, unfortunately, we lost you. Someone up on the fourth floor. Yes. He's realized Peter's not enough,

and Spider-Man is, and it sucks. There are certain things he cannot do as Peter. That is fundamentally why Spider-Man will always rule. The X-Men will always rule because their origin story is we were born that way.

We're born different and people fucking hate us for it. And there's no way around that. We'll never be part of society. We will try as hard as we can to fight for and defend society you're gonna always find a reason to say that I'm a fucking hateable piece of shit and everybody

you know a lot of people can identify with and Spider-Man so much of what the core of it is like hey like it sucks it sucks that you're Spider-Man but you are so you gotta go be Spider-Man now. And we know that that fucking sucks for you. It sucks.

It sucks to be Spider-Man. Go do it. It's going to suck. You'll have some highs, but it's mostly going to be you taking tomatoes to the face. Look, obviously there's the whole thing where he puts his suit in the garbage. You know,

the Spider-Man no more. There's the whole thing where the puts his suit in the garbage, you know, the Spider-Man no more. There's the whole thing where the J Jonah Jameson gets the suit. My favorite sequence in the movie. It's my favorite comic book sequence of all time is when Jonah is smoking the cigar. He's finally turned ruminative, right? He's finally willing to admit,

you know what? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was a good guy. Maybe I shouldn't have been so hard on him, right? He's looking at the suit and all that. He's giving the sad monologue. And then he turns around, the suit gets stolen, right? Replaced by the note, okay?

The perfect web, you know, that just appears on the wall, you know, within one second. The note saying, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood, Spider-Man. Yes. Jonah flips, right, back to old Jonah. He's a thief. He's a menace. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? We love this. Cut to he looks out the window.

He sees the open window. He raises his arm. He says, I hate you, Spider-Man. A newspaper spins into frame, saying he's back. Spider-man swings through the newspaper and breaks it then he swings through the air through the skyscrapers of new york being joyful spider-man again at least for a minute it's wonderful to behold it's all great this is all a reflection in dr octopus's sunglasses which we now zoom out of as dr octopus

climbs a clock tower ready for his third act villainy and then they begin the most spectacular action sequence in comic book history it's never been beaten because it's this straight to the train it's them tossing building shit at each other. With all this insanity. I have to tell your listeners right now that we're all on Zoom because Griffin is suffering. Griffin has COVID. Just you explaining all of that. Griffin, Ben, and I sat there with shit-eating grins on our faces just hearing you explain that.

That's how fun that is. I've seen it a million times rapturous shit i i've i've you know seen this movie a million times and you could just watch that sequence on youtube anytime you want obviously in this modern day and age anytime you see it you can't believe you forget that it's all just like bang bang bang bang and it's so much better because you had that that 45 minutes of downtime. Yeah. Because, you know, you were missing him for so long. And can I give some credit quickly to Alvin Sargent again? Sure.

In our mind's eye, that Jameson moment you talk about is obviously a big purple monologue, right? Yeah. Here is the entirety of it okay sure i drove spider-man away my god he was a hero spider-man truly was an asset to this city he was a criminal that's who he is a burglar he stole my suit i want spider-man i want spider-man he really draws the entirety of it right right right you have at one moment ted ramey saying something and he sort of makes a face right like yes yeah yeah i want to circle back to something david said before of doc ock goes off and builds a lab is that comic booky logic that we're willing to put up with a little bit i would actually argue that i would actually argue that when we first meet him

right when harry first brings peter over to doc ock he's like hey kid i don't really have time for this i need i have too much science shit to be doing right now like right out of the gate he was like my whole thing is i want to do science shit and i gotta get it done fast and i know how to do it better than anybody so i'm gonna go do it so i actually think it makes perfect sense that he's like i have these enhanced abilities let me oh sure let me go off and build this crazy lab because that's always who i am and i'm saying it makes sense though i love it i'm saying i love it but i actually put it up there with you know michael b jordan in black panther one of the great things about it is you sit there and you go oh this guy's logic is his actions are fucked up but his logic is sound you know you understand his perspective but like one of seven things that donna murphy dinner scene is

accomplishing which just their fucking conversation about them meeting on the quad in college is so cute and him just saying he'll never understand poetry it's more complicated than fucking him reading the what is what's how does the poem begin day after day uh he longed for what how does it go day by day he gazed on her. It's long-fellas. Peter trying to use that at Mary Jane. She's like, what the fuck are you talking about? I mean, just the classic Peter thing where he's like,

I tried to cram a lot of emotional introspection into a couple weeks. Is this what you were looking for? And she's like, what? I'm engaged. What are you talking about? I'm not just going to drop everything. Yeah. Also, you're coming off as a

dumb child right now coming off as a stunted child but that thing where peter's like asking him like have you thought about this have you thought about this and he's like yeah kid i've thought about everything i'm dr otto octavius this is the most important fucking day of but he respects him he respects that he's he's respects him. He respects that he's thinking ahead. He respects that he thinks through it. Right, right. But he's like, kid, I'm not going to be bettered by this, right?

And then she says you need to sleep soundly tonight. And he says, did Edison sleep before he turned on the light bulb? Did Marconi sleep before he turned on the radio? Did Beethoven sleep before he wrote the fifth? And Peter says, did Bernoulli sleep before he found the curves of the quickest descent?

And it's an all rosy, I love this boy kind of thing. But Peter's the one guy who is so burdened with doubt in all aspects of his life that he can't help but think about the way in which things could go wrong. It is that little bit of hubris

that Otto has that does him in. And that moment when he's fucking soliloquying where he's like, the kid was right. I got it wrong. I didn't think through it. That's immediately overcome by, it's impossible. This was my life's work.

I have to be right. I have to prove to everyone I was right. Him as an arrogant scientist tracks for me in a way that, right? The Green Goblin, it's an Achilles heel of the character. I'm never gonna totally buy that someone can go from point a of their starting point and then be driven so nuts that point b is now i wear this fucking outfit now i wear a halloween it's just the thing about green it's just that simple like there's just no point b

that ends with the logic dictates that i need to dress up in this fucking gear i need to go buy this get it fitted. I got a little purse. I slung it over my shoulder. This motherfucker at some point designed this and went to whatever the fucking Marvel Universe's version of a seamstress is, which I think actually is a major thing in Daredevil.

Actually, there's a few points where they have this guy, the Tinkerer. But there's so many points where this smart human being, Norman Osborn, could have gone like, is it this? Is it this color scheme? Is it pumpkin? It's really going to be pumpkin bombs? I'll never totally buy that he

is anything except nuts. And nuts is not that interesting. You learn this very early in your days in improv. It's like, yeah, if you're going to play somebody who's crazy, that's an unmoored reality that's sad more than anything else. Otto Octavius, I buy it.

Tracks the whole way. I'm never going to buy that Norman Osborn didn't have 10 stopping points where he could have said at the very least, it doesn't need to be purple and green. You know, it's that simple. Agreed. And the fact that I think this movie actually gets to have its cake and eat it to have the moment where the chip is broken, where he wakes up, where he sees Peter, puts it together.

Molina's just like immaculate delivery of Peter Parker, brilliant but lazy, putting it all together in his head. And then that final moment of like,

I'm going to die a hero. You know, I think this was a big complaint at the time that like these movies always had to kill the villains off, that you couldn't let people continue to exist in the universe. But there's something noble about the fact that like these movies always had to kill the villains off that you couldn't let people continue to

exist in the universe but there's something noble about the fact that it's like what life does Otto have to go back to now Rosie's dead he's made himself look like a lunatic the last thing he wants to do is die on his terms saving it has to be this it's the reiteration of the experiment

that he failed it the first time and the second time he finally once he's you know snapped out of it has the emotionalation of the experiment that he failed it the first time. And the second time he finally, once he's, you know, snapped out of it, has the emotional realization of I've gone too far. And there's only one thing for me to do, which is go down with the ship. And there's that weird haunting shot of the fully CGI Alfred Molina drifting down into the water. That's like one of the earliest examples of like photorealistic full human being for an extended shot like that that starts in a close up. There's something so painterly and like haunting about it. And then Peter crawls on a giant web that he has spun in five seconds. He's good at it.

He's great at it. But I love that like much like the perfectly placed your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man note. at it but I love that like much like the perfectly placed your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man note they're just like every time he makes a web it is so beautifully art directed and it is accomplished in as little time as it needs to be done and I don't give a

shit because it's comic book logic and all of Spider-Man's web should look like that and him just having to like sad sack be like well now you understand I'm fucking Spider-Man I can't do this. Go marry him. Go off.

Have your nice life. She goes down. You just go, okay, here's a fucking another superhero movie. They're going to kick the can on this Peter MJ thing again. I don't know what they do, but he's clearly made his choice.

It felt like this was like the sausage they were going to slice so thin for so many movies. And I remember being astounded that she leaves the wedding, that she shows up and that she has a long scene. They have a long dialogue scene. A long scene. The complete presence of like, I understand exactly what this is and I want to go through this with you because I'd be happier struggling to be in a relationship with Spider-Man than in a life without you at all. And the thing that fucking makes this movie

like five-star perfect masterpiece to me is you have this scene that's so exciting. What do you say? And he says, like, what's his line? He says, like, oh, God, yes. She says, go get him, Tiger. He says, oh, boy, yes, I think is what he's saying. He repeats the thing.

Very, very, very Silver Age Peter Parker, sure. They kiss. You talk about, like, why this movie transcended. I remember seeing this with my sister, who's six years old at the time. When they lean in to kiss, she's, like, leaning forward into the screen, kissing the air.

Like, for a six-year-old girl, it's like, this is fulfilling the notions of, like, fairy tale romance at this point, right? Sirens go off, head turns away. He looks back to her shamefully. This is the deal. I'm a package. You're getting me and Spider-Man.

How do you respond in this moment? Here's the first real test. Go get him, tiger. You fucking work back in her most famous line in a different context. You know, it's still a little melancholy. She's watching him leave. This is the thing, David. So he fucking swings out the window.

She's happy, triumphant. We repeat the end fucking swinging sequence from the first movie. Fucking elfman horns blaring, helicopters. Looks fucking incredible. You're like, eh, fucking triumphant ending. Cut back to Mary Jane just standing in the window, looking off, actually now having to stand in this, recognizing this is what my life is.

He swings off and I hope he comes back home. It's not an enviable life. The fact that this movie gets away with a fucking graduate ending is astounding to me. And it's like every time I see it, it's like lump in throat. Like it is. It's a really messy, complicated ending. And it doesn't feel like it's a messy, complicated ending because of what's teeing up for a future movie.

It's like the same thing I love about fucking Toy Story 2, where it's like the ending here is the acceptance of how difficult this is going to be um you and you could not make another movie and i'd be happy i mean i don't mind that they tried another movie i don't think three really works but like you know but like there are things about it that work but the fact that this ends on a close-up of her face is the thing for me that like differentiates Raimi from almost everyone else who makes superhero movies yeah I mean obviously the first movie ends on a down note this ends on an up note it's an up note you know he he's doing well but still mixing that spider-man thing it's kind of a down note and the third one also ends on a down he ends all three well the third film ends on an incredibly strange bittersweet note, which I love. It's one of the best things about it.

You know, there's so much with Spider-Man in general, and especially in this one, so much of it is him going, I'm ruining my life and I don't want to take down everybody else with me. Yeah. And the happy ending is she effectively says, I'm into it. Take my life down with you. Take me down. It's not the happiest ending in the world, but it is kind... He has someone who's in it with him willingly. That's the victory.

There's acceptance. And that's good. But he just... Raimi has to remind you at the very end that there is a cost to that. He's not going to let you walk out focusing on the uplift of she's in. And of course, twinned with this is like we have harry talking to norman in the mirror so we know harry is finally being put on the path to villainy over there like there's there's there's things hanging over the movie it is obviously aware that there'll

be another one but there doesn't have to be uh you know and it would totally work and this movie weirdly does basically stand alone even though it's the middle part of a trilogy which everyone always says oh well that's the one where yeah of course it can't really have a beginning and ending but you know you got to forgive that and like well this movie pulls that off this movie absolutely has a beginning and ending yeah ending of the episode we love an ending we do love an ending of the episode but we gotta play the box office game we will play the box office game. We will play the box office game. Did we say enough about the subway sequence

just because it's so good? I guess we did. Yeah. I guess we kind of got that all. I think we did. We did. No, we did great. I mean, I love it.

Listen, this episode has to come out in a few days. Like four hours. This episode's being released in four hours. So let's not relitigate. That's a good point. We can move on. And we're about to hit three hours, and that's fine.

Yeah. Agent McKeon is going to have to use the fucking Dr. Octopus arms to edit this episode at rapid speed. I'll just say that subway scene, I don't think a movie has ever nailed a moment that makes you go, that's what it really would be like if a

regular person turned into a superhero like what movie scene has ever nailed it harder than that subway scene of just this would not be easy it would not be fun it would fuck your whole life up and you'd be barely surviving the whole time but you would and people would appreciate you for it what has ever nailed that harder no nothing the other thing i think that sequence nails so hard and the first movie does a really good job with it and it was sort of the special sauce of what raimi was able to execute but that whole sequence heightens it to a different level is just the fucking poses he gets out of it yeah like there's that moment where where spider-man jumps onto the pole and he's sort of like side swinging from the pole Do you know what I'm

talking about? It's just always these perfect sort of acrobatic classic Spider-Man body contortions. That moment when he spins at just the right angle to be able to slide through the slats of the bridge, the walkway from the subway station. Like, all that shit's just so

fucking good. I mean, all this stuff in the action sequence where, yeah, exactly what you're talking about sliding on the street holding on to the train with the fucking trash can lids it's all rules it fucking rules this movie rules it's for cool kids Spider-Man's my best friend it's also the reaction

of those New Yorkers on that train is so New York so meaningful in the years after 9-11 but also just in the maybe more than any other scene I can think of in a superhero movie where they allow the perspective of real people to just go like, oh,

there's a superhero among us. And that's a pure thing. And that's a beautiful thing. And it's also maybe the last point I want to make before we play the box office. But is this thing, I think, a benefit to making Spider-Man movies that take place siloed off from the rest of the Marvel Universe, is you are able to have Spider-Man sort of truly represent the moral balance of a universe. There's something when he's the one guy, you know?

And when the citizens of the cities sort of reflect themselves in him, and he's just this one sort of bizarre idea of why would anyone do this? Who is this person? Do we demand too much of them, you know? I would actually argue that, you know, if you're thinking about characters where they represent a heroic ideal,

it's probably Spider-Man in this and Luke Skywalker before they fucking made them all complicated and fucked up. Okay, so the box office game. This movie comes out 4th of July weekend, 2004. Thank you. It opened to $152 million.

It was very successful. That's over the four day or five day or whatever. I mean, everyone assumes this will be the highest grossing film of the year. And the surprise is that Passion of the Christ is this bizarre out of nowhere phenomenon. And then Shrek 2 wildly overperforms. This is still a huge, huge hit.

But those two movies, yeah, weirdly. Worldwide, actually, Azkaban beats Spider-Man and not Passion of the Christ. That's wild. But Spider-Man does a lot more domestically. I know Azkaban underperforms domestically. Okay, anyway. So it's number one in the box office. Number two, Griffin, is the most successful documentary ever made.

What did it open to? Give me the three-day. I told you, 152. Thank you. Is that three or five? No, it's the five-day or whatever it is. Okay, so the three-day was 88. Okay.

Yeah. Number two, the most successful documentary of all time. Let me guess. It is Fahrenheit 9-11. I was going to make a joke answer. I have COVID. I don't have the energy

to make joke answers. Yeah, we've also been podcasting for three hours. It's Fahrenheit 9-11. Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11, which made $221 million worldwide. It's barely a film. It's absolutely terrible,

in my opinion. And yet, you kind of have to admire it as like weird, right, 2004 propaganda. Number three at the box office is a comedy

sort of notoriously so good it's bad. So bad it's good. It's a so bad... Very high concept. It's... Oh, oh, oh. It's White Chicks.

It's White Chicks. Sean and Marlon Wayans are White Chicks. I remember because I went to see White Chicks when Fahrenheit 9-11 was sold out. I knew they came out the same weekend. Yes. White Chicks. I saw it in 2004. I was stoned.

Which is a crazier movie? White Chicks or Little Man? Which one's more nuts? I think Little Man's more nuts i think little man's more little man is more nuts white chicks has some sort of a point to make i don't know that little man i saw a little i was on a hawaiian vacation and my parents were dismayed that i went and saw little man on opening day in hawaii they were like we're in hawaii it's like a once in a lifetime trip i'm sort of disappointed they didn't like complete that trilogy of

bizarre, like you'll never believe the Wayans look like this, right? Yes, right. Yeah. Well, they never did. I guess because they ran out of swings. They're not dead. I don't think... They're not dead. Number five at the box... Oh, sorry. Number four at the box office is another comedy,

a big hit comedy of the year that's kind of in the anchorman zone but is maybe not quite as funny but was similarly you know random and uh influential 2004 random comedy influential anchorman comes out after this i think anchorman comes out the following weekend it comes out this summer yeah may I hazard a guess, even though I know this is not my place? We're not talking wedding crashes, are we? No, that's following summer. That's the next year, yeah.

But you've got the star. I'm going to say, oh, it's Dodgeball? Yeah. Yeah, big hit. David and I were talking the other day about how, like, Spider-Man is arguably the cultural movie of 2002, like the defining movie. And even though Spider-Man is arguably the cultural movie of 2002, like the defining movie. And even though Spider-Man 2 is better,

we were like, what is the culturally defining movie of 2004? And we landed on Anchorman Feels Like the Answer. Like, Anchorman Feels Like the most impactful cultural object released to theaters. That's the longest tale. Longest tale. Right?

And, like, legendary comedy. Yes. Yeah. Like legendary film, but like in terms of every, the ripple effects. Oh, yeah. Between what it does as a film,

between the way it launches Steve Carell more than he'd been launched at that point in particular. Launches everybody. Yeah. Yes. I agree with that. Number five of the box office

is a film we've covered on this podcast from a great auteur. It's a comedy. It's not entirely successful've covered on this podcast from a great auteur. It's a comedy. It's not entirely successful. It's a comedy from a great auteur that is not entirely successful. Did they mostly make comedies? Is the film The Terminal? It's The Terminal. Jesus, you're

good at this. Thank you. Some others in the top ten. I forgot The Terminal was summer. Did a perfect game, a box office game yesterday despite having COVID. The Notebook is chugging along. It's going to have its big sort of, you know, word of mouth run.

You got Azkaban in there. You got Shrek 2 in there. You have Garfield the movie. Uh-huh. You have Two Brothers. Wait, what is that? Two Brothers is fucking Guy Pearce and Freddie Highmore and a lion or a leopard or some shit.

Tigers. Tigers. Tigers. Yeah, there you go. And you got The Stepford Wives, the remake by Frank Oz. Yeah, let's do Oz. Yeah, let's do it. Oz the Great and Powerful.

Frank Oz the Great and Powerful. Exactly. That's the box office game. Spider-Man 2 is a big hit and thus guarantees a third film. Yes. Which, once again, has to be made as quickly as possible, which leads to lots of problems,

even more than this one. Yeah, he somehow is given, I mean, we'll talk about it in the next episode, but he somehow is given more time but less freedom and is under greater stress. More villains, too. And more villains, more excess in that regard. Everything's kind of a big old mess,

but it is a fascinating bounce. And also it's very successful. This is a weird example of a movie where there was all this pressure on it, and yet still somehow, I think, because everyone was so astonished by how well Spider-Man had worked, they kind of went, it's up to you, Sam.

Like, as much as you hear about all these plates spinning at the same time and all these contrasting sort of development and developmental ideas and everything, it does feel like they kept on just deferring to the guy and going, what is this movie about? And he had such a clear vision of what

Peter's internal struggle was, and he made a fucking masterpiece. And I don't know if anyone's ever going to be given this kind of trust and freedom to be fucking masterpiece and I don't know if anyone's ever going to be given this kind of trust and freedom to be able to I don't know probably not it's crazy remember when we used to do part one and part two episodes or I guess we only did

it once on Titanic we did it once I feel like maybe this is making me sort of think that we could potentially try and break it down might be helpful or we could do shorter episodes just in general that we could potentially try and break it down might be helpful. Or we could do shorter episodes. That also could be a thing. Let's maybe make this a four-part episode

and take the next four weeks off. I have COVID. That's it. Griffin, take us out. Now I'm going to go check on my baby. I just want to thank you for having me before you go and I'll see you again in 2026. I love you, Geth. What year did you just say? Look. I love you, Gath. I love you so much. What year did you just say?

Look, we love you, Gath. You were not banned from the show. You were not shadow banned from the show. And you calling out that you are the man who gifted the show with Kit Fisto and the Grievous rant and all that shit. I do think you are an essential part of the building blocks of the show.

I think that episode sort of established the tone that would change as we would transition out of the star wars apps into more general things and i think i when people ask me for like recommendations of how to get hey we don't need to do this i do always say i don't need to do this i think that is the funniest episode we've ever played we don't need to do this i think that's true i've said my piece i've apologized to the people who are fed up. We all have moved on and I haven't tried to shoehorn Star Wars into any of this.

You never brought it up again and I appreciate that. You're a good friend. You've been a good friend to me and a good friend to the show. I've done my best and so I always feel

lucky to be here and I thank you for having me. I'm surprised David was really strict about steering it back away from Star Wars. You know,

being a parent has really changed him. I think the difference is that you view this as a way to step away from parental obligations and for him, he's like, this is another fucking kid I gotta take care of. Listen, Griffin, though, Book of Boba Fett, way better than the initial backlash against it, right? Agreed. I think

it's pretty good. I think it's... Our friend Nick Weiger put it really well. He was like, it's boring, but it's the good kind ofed. I think it's pretty good. Our friend Nick Weiger put it really well. He was like, it's boring, but it's the good kind of boring. Well, it's also like if Mandalorian was Boba Fett and Boba Fett was the Mandalorian, characters-wise, we'd all have no problem. It's just that they've consistently backed themselves into a corner

where Boba Fett's the biggest badass anyone's ever heard of, and we've yet to see it. Well, I just think it's impossible. I think trying to open that box to open the book, if you will, was a fool's errand. I think there is no way you could ever actually fulfill what Boba Fett is in everyone's mind. You could try to do the show that is let's fulfill the promise of him being the biggest badass and it would never live up to it. So they swerved in the opposite direction and had this. They decided to make the show that is what if Boba Fett tries to go in the straight and narrow and getting in

that pits really changed him. And he wants to be a decent guy. And I think that disappointed a lot of people, but I just think like, I kind of think that makes sense. I don't think they ever should have done it. I think they just should have done a third season of Mandalorian. I think the show gets immediately better when Mando reenters the show. I feel like if they had said, if they had announced this is going to be a spinoff of the Mandalorian, everyone would have been mad and not watched it. But you can't

just say that's going to be a spinoff of the Mandalorian. Jesus Christ almighty. We got caught. Is this part of the episode? Never should have gone and checked on your kid, David. You never should have done it. Hell yeah, how. You never should have done it. Oh, yeah. How could I?

I just think, yes. I think they should have just done a proper third season of Mandalorian where Boba Fett was like a co-star rather than David, why are you putting your head in your hands? Hold on, David.

Are you okay? Put your head in your hands. Are you okay? David's got his daughter crying in one room. I'm in the other room. I got COVID. I'm crying.

He's running back and forth with different bottles. I'm staying with David, by the way. I showed up on his doorstep and said, I got COVID. I'm crying. He's running back and forth with different bottles. I'm staying with David, by the way. I showed up on his doorstep and said, I got COVID. Are you really staying with David? No, I'm not. I'm not.

Go to your friend's... Go to get COVID. Go to hang out with your friend who has a child. Are you insane? I think at the cartoon show in Blank Check, the animated series, we would heighten our dynamic to that.

I think I would be that much of a demon, a pox on David's life. Look, I'm happy we did this episode. Ben's got a sandwich. Oh, you got Anthony and Sons? Hell yeah. I'm excited to go back to sleep, eat soup. I've been chugging just from a straight, like, fucking plastic jug

of Tropicana this entire episode. I wish I ate lunch before this episode. Geth, you got to start. I'm going to make some soup. Geth, do you have anything you want to plug? What would I like to plug? I'm out on the road. I've got a new hour that I'm really psyched about.

I'm going all over the US. And then in August, I'm going to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with it for the whole month. Cool. Beautiful. Anonymous going strong. New Jersey is the world going strong.

Cool. And yeah yeah just think you'll love it bro i went in 2016 it's a great great place great festival great town and uh yeah super psyched super psyched to be here and be a part of this and uh thank you all so much back soon chris you'll be back so soon maybe i'll just need you know maybe between now and when you see me again i'll just inexplicably go live maybe between now and when you see me again, I'll just inexplicably go live on a weird island and turn bitter and burn all the books that are...

Okay, thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping to produce the show. AJ McKee and Alex Barron for our editing. Pat Reynolds and Joe Bowen for our artwork. Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song.

You can go to patreon.com slash blank check for blank check special features. I actually visited the island in Ireland or like saw the cliffs and stuff. It's gorgeous.

Don't encourage me. All right, you're right. Franchise commentaries, hashtag not all Batman, the bonus episode on some shit I'm forgetting. A live show. We're fucking putting out

the live show episode, the old dogs episode. Go to Blank Check Pod for links to all sorts of other nerdy shit. Tune in next week for Spider-Man 3 with Jamel Bowie, one of the smartest people on the planet, delivering his long promised defense of Spider-Man 3 is good, actually.

And as always, I have COVID. I want to go back to sleep and I feel so bad. Smell you later. There's a terrible trend, too, also, of me getting sick just in time for some of the episodes I'm most eager to do in the history of this show. Which else do you think of? I puked during Starship Troopers.

You did. Classic. Classic moment from you. Right. I was incredibly sick during Mad Max Fury Road, which ended up being our last in-person. It was my... Oh, if you wanted your fan base to hate me, you should have brought me on for Fury Road. Well, fuck. We're not even dipping our toes in that. We're not even talking about that.

No, thank you. Wow, really? It's not quite the same... You don't want to talk about how we might need to pay some attention to substance over style at some point if we're all going to fucking collectively get on our knees and worship this movie like fucking early Christians willing to be beheaded? Not a conversation. Ben just silently nodding his head. Okay.

I guess I'll write another letter then and apologize for that. Yeah, you will. When you guys have me back on in seven years.