Blank Check with Griffin & David - Spider-Man with Matt Singer

Episode Date: May 22, 2022

Upside down kissing, Bonesaw McGraw, and a soundtrack featuring not just one, but TWO of Avril Lavigne’s ex-husbands…it’s SPIDER-MAN! Screen Crush’s Matt Singer (who literally wrote a book about Spider-Man) joins us as we take a look back to a much different Hollywood landscape; a time when Marvel was a struggling comics company, when both Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire were considered odd choices for a superhero adaptation, and when no film had yet to open to $100M at the US Box Office. Is the hyphen in “Spider-Man” crucial to the film’s themes? Was it a mistake to cover Willem Dafoe’s already goblinesque visage with a mask? Does Joe Manganiello look too old to be a high school student? Join us as we discuss those questions 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

🎵 Who am I? You sure you wanna know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. Somebody told you I was just your average, ordinary podcast, not a care in the world, and somebody lied. It is incredible watching this, how gentle he is.

David, you texted me maybe re-watching this a year ago, and you were like, it is stunning to watch it again and realize, oh, he's just like, he's doing the Ice Storm thing. He's not like, I need to be a movie star in a conventional way. I need to be an action star. You're right. I need to amp up the sort of megawatt wise guy charisma or whatever.

It's true. You're right. He does not pull out any of those cheesy bag of tricks kind of things. Oh, I'm Spider-Man. Yeah, that opening. I'm Tobey Mag of things i'm spider-man yeah that opening acquire i'm spider look i really like this movie and i was so charmed re-watching it but it is crazy that it does that opening where it's like my story it's not for the faint of heart i'm like what the fuck are you talking about you know why i like it david do you know why i like it please

tell me because i like it too it does feel like something Stan Lee would pull off. A hundred percent. Especially in an amazing fantasy style omnibus where it's like, we got to hit the ground running, explain very quick. We don't have a lot of time for this origin. It also sounds like a Sam Raimi movie. It sounds like Army of Darkness. This is true.

It does. It's a good example of why the fit is right. But that's why I like that Bruce Campbell's like, who am I? How did I end up here? Yeah. And Tom McGuire's like, who am I? The vibe is different. It's not for the faint of heart. The story might shock and amaze you. The McGuire performance,

it's funny how, oh man, there's so much to talk about with this movie. With this movie? Yeah, like, it's funny how hyped I was as a 15, 16 year old when this movie's coming out. Just about as hyped as I've ever been for anything. An actor I love

from Pleasantville and the Ice Storm and Cider House Rules, I guess. What were the other Toby Wonderboys? Where I was like, yes yeah great casting yeah and i love this performance yeah and i think he is sort of much like keaton he does kind of remain like hey he did it first and he did it special and we love that but then it became kind of like

but why isn't peter parker like a wisecracker like he's in the club you know there was eventually that backlash of like, he needs, and that's of course the Tom Holland performance is so manic and up. Right. And Garfield's was too, right? And Tobi's not that acrobatic

and he didn't do that much of the stuff in his suit. Come on. And now you watch and you're like, God, this is such a special thing. Yes. Yes. And even when he freaking showed up in the new one and I haven't seen him in a movie in like eight years,

and I'm like, how's this going to work? And I'm like, oh, he's doing the same before, but he's still doing the gentle thing. He's still the same guy. Yeah. He still had it. The continuity of it's pretty incredible. It is.

I don't remember if I've told this story before or not, but I took my little cousin who's five to see No Way Home, and he's like a Spider-Man obsessive. Uh-huh. And it's very fascinating that he's like- What is that right what a weirdo wait he's only five he's five how how much spider-man can he fit in at the age of five i mean i was i was all in way before that i mean i i've always but anyway okay he's a spider-man i think he's five he's either five or six well i'm not challenging you on his age i'm just wondering how much spider-, he's a Spider-Man. I think he's five. He's either five or six. Well, I'm not challenging you on his age. I'm just wondering how much Spider-Man he's been able to see.

Maybe he's six now. But he, like, understands, like, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, Tom Holland. Like, he understands that they were three separate franchises. Sure, sure. The Holy Trinity. He knows each guy by their name. The Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost.

The first two or the second two, you know? Like, which Spider-man 2 are you talking about like all that shit and he i took him to see no way home because his mom did not want to and fair he was like jealous he was like i heard you've seen spider-man i was like yeah bro it came out like three months ago sure and then i realized like oh your mom just doesn't want to take you i'll take you right and i took him to see it and he's like asking me my opinions on Spider-Man and the different movies and whatever and I realized at some point he genuinely

doesn't know that the other two guys are in it oh right like he of course he's five years old he's not on Twitter but he knows who they are by name he understands like those ones came first and then these ones came later and then I was born and then Tom Holland got cast right

like he does understand that He doesn't know that this is going to happen. And then Tom Holland got cast. Right. Right. Like he does understand that. And like two hours in, when you get to like, Aunt May saying great power, great responsibility, he kind of turned to me and he was like, is it almost over?

And I was like, right. Honestly, what I did in that movie, I was kind of like, Jesus Christ. Yeah. So I had to be like,

George, I think you're really going to like what happens next. And then she died. And he was like, that, that's the thing you thought I was going to, George, I think you're really going to like what happens next. And then she died and he was like, that? That's the thing you thought I was going to? I was like, no. You're going to love this, buddy.

Right. And then you see like J. John Jameson being like, man, and he's like, that's the thing. And I was like, no, just I'll tell you when the thing's going to happen.

And portal opens up. Andrew Garfield walks out and he goes, what? Like there was no part of him that he considered that was a possibility. Why would you? That's awesome. Absolutely nonsense. Incredible. Incredible, what? There was no part of him that he considered that was a possibility. Why would you? It's absolutely nonsense.

Incredible. Incredible, right? Yeah. And then the second portal opens up. Yeah. And you see a silhouette and he goes, oh my God, it's Tobey Maguire. It's Tobey Maguire.

It's Tobey Maguire. It's Tobey Maguire, right? A five-year-old knows the name Tobey Maguire. He was like, it's Tobey Maguire, right? A guy who has not been in movies. He's in Higher Life. Right, right, right. Yeah, 100%.

He was like, it's Tobey Maguire, right? And I was like, I don't know, George. And he was like, it's Tobey Maguire. And I was like, I don't know, George. And he was like, it's Tobey Maguire. And then Tobey Maguire walks into the light and he goes, it's Tobey Maguire,

but he's old. Well, wow. Leave the man alone. So like brutal. Take that, Toby. He's 46.

You know, he's doing his best. But it was funny that he didn't understand the passage of time. Like, he was like, what's the character choice here? Like, why are they making him old? Why is he not walking out of 2002 passage of time. He was like, what's the character choice here? Why are they making him an old man? Why is he not walking out of 2002? Right, and it was like

for how much I think one of the things that people like to rag on with a little bit of distance of light, it's a thing that happens. Every time a superhero gets recast, people are like, oh, ready? Again? Do we need another one? And then they immediately turn to, well, what are the things that the last guy didn't pick up?

If you have a character that's been around for 75 years, no one's going to capture every element. So you're like, what do we want to correct in the next one? And it was always, Toby was too old. Didn't read as a high schooler, and I guess... And he wasn't funny. That was the other thing that he didn't...

He's not. He's just not. No, he was playing the soap opera romanticism of Peter Parker. But it was funny that to George, it was like, I don't know if I should say it. Whatever. Well, you've said it like eight times. I know. No one knows what his last name is. Sure.

Clinton of Parliament Funkadelic. It's funny that to him, it was just like, oh, Toby's like a kid. And now he's old. Sure. That I do think there's something in this him it was just like, oh, Toby's like a kid, and now he's old. Sure. That I do think there's something in this performance where you're like, he is playing a boy, and even though he's not realistically looking like a teenager, you accept it.

He looks okay in this one. The later ones, he definitely starts to look too old. But in this one, he's fine. I have no problem with it because it is of a piece of this movie that feels like throwbacky and it's not you know hollywood would cast 20 year old but it is funny when it's it's him dunst and manginello and like you know especially joe manginello where you're like this guy's supposed to be what 17 years old this guy like owns a home at this point he has a mortgage he's got a mortgage

uh but uh i don't care dunce is like 20 when they film this she no she was younger she like turned 18 while they were shooting it let's see yes that's right she was yeah she was like maybe 90 she was born in 82 okay uh until they mentioned that in the commentary i don't want to make it seem like i just know no kirsten dunce's birthday actually kind of crazy toby are seven years older than her yeah yeah he right but he really he was so boyish yes that's the thing totally the voice helps him a lot as much as my parody it's like that helps him a lot that he did have such a his voice never dropped no never really has right he's got such a boyish face and that's sort of like puppy dog energy well yeah i just wanted to sort of just wanted to say it seems like based on the conversation

thus far, the three of you big Spider-Man fans, really cool guys growing up. Super cool. Super cool guys. Nailed it. I just wanted to sort of early on just be a voice on mic representing the people that you know, Spider-Man's cool.

I'm not a fan. You're not a fan of Spider-Man? I mean I like them I like the movies I haven't seen though Any of the other franchises I've only seen this franchise Well that's not true We've watched you watch

Oh my god those are so forgettable They're a little forgettable I've seen the Garfield movies You don't need to. No. No, that's fine. The only reason you might enjoy them is that the tech is so uniquely bad in them.

It's like really bad. A lot of good LCD screens with nonsense CGI. A lot of bio computers. Yeah, a lot of that. But apart from that. He bings instead of, he doesn't use Google, he uses Bing, I think.

Yeah, he bings the fuck out of everything yeah he bings who are my parents he's like binging like what is this where is the subway like he has to bing he's looking for his

yeah it's a long story we don't need to talk about it but his dad has a secret subway station underground there's a secret abandoned subway station

where when he figures out what the code is no he has to he has to put a subway token into a subway token thing and a car a subway car rises out of the ground subway car i'm glad i know no memory of that and it feels like some ninja turtles like this is like right blank man remember he hangs out in an abandoned subway station yeah but it's it's like bad. It's funny. I like it. It's a good bit. And he had a boo on an amazing

Spider-Man. Not a bit. That was always cool. That was one of my favorite ones. Ben's glowing. So Spider-Man, Ben goes, yeah, it's fine. Blank Man, Ben Ludo. Blank Man is a movie. Now we're talking. That's a superhero. You know, this movie's coming out. It's like superhero

movies. Okay, well, there's been Superman. There's been Batman. They just had an X-Men movie. And then you're kind of mean, when, you know, this movie's coming out, it's like superhero movies. Okay, well, there's been Superman. There's been Batman. They just had an X-Men movie. And then you're kind of like, I don't know, Meteor Man? Blank Man? Like, how many others have there been? Right.

Blade, I guess. Steel. Steel. Watch out for Spawn. A lot of the ones that were done, like, Spawn was an A-list character relative to most of the characters that were getting solo movies

because a lot of them were like, we're not going to burn the big ones. We're going to do Supergirl. Yeah, sure. We're going to do Steel. We're going to do, you know, it was like. Well, because that was the thing. It's like, now if Warner Brothers is like, we're doing a Steel movie, it'd be like every A-list African-American actor is vying for this role. Back then it was like, I don't know.

Anyone want to be Steel? Everyone was like, no. And Shaq was like, I mean, okay, I'll be in a movie. What's the movie? I believe it's even weirder than that. I believe it's that Shaq had the Superman tattoo. Yes, he loved Superman. And someone algorithmically

was like, we should just do that, right? Like, the whole movie was built around him. I don't think the film would have gotten made if not for him. I think you're right although I think partly Quincy Jones produced it and he was also a huge Steel fan again the 90s look things were happening but this is my point it was just sort of like

I don't know if Shaq wants to play Steel I guess we let that happen as a vanity project Quincy's behind it you know right very very strange look we're talking about a guy named spiderman today uh we are talking about spider hyphen man i remember the timeout new york review of this movie i was so excited for all the time out new york review who's it by i couldn't tell you i don't know if

you want to look it up i'll try i don't think it even has a great yeah archive yeah that might be tough to find also there's been a lot of spider i i so badly was looking for i think like many uh young comic book fans are now the validation of like i want critics to take this movie seriously oh my god as a 13 year old i needed that so badly you were 13 that's so much older it's true well you weren't that much older. You're like a year older than me. I was 65. No. I was 21. Okay. You're four or five years old. I was 16. Yeah. Anyway. It's 2002 summer so I was 21. Right.

I just remember the time in New York making a big point of the hyphen. It was almost like the master builder what a difference an A makes where they go Rami is focused on the hyphen in his take on the material. Oh, like the idea being like the space between man and spider oh my gosh wow

I just remember that that was like and it was you know it was a time out in New York the review was like a paragraph but they were like the hyphen is really that feels kind of like the critic who I now really want to look up who it was being like what the fuck is my lead for this I was going to say he probably wrote it before he even saw them.

Yeah. Like what's an angle I can have that no one else can have. Right. And then whoever wrote the New York times review, I think, yeah, I remember that being like this fucking Defoe thing. Uh,

Tom charity wrote the timeout. Can you find the hyphen line? No, but so I don't, but like this may not be from time out in New York. It doesn't matter. Keep going. Whatever. I just always remember the hyphen and the name because of that.

Oh, I see. So I got you on that tangent just with my little joke. I'm sorry. Yeah. No, it's fine. Because, of course, I tell you that when I worked at the Disney store and you were supposed to put your favorite Disney character on your name tag, I asked for it to be Spider-Man. And I said, don't forget the hyphen. And they said, they're sending it to Disney legal.

They're not going to forget the hyphen. And then I got a name tag with no hyphen that made it look like my name was Griffin Spiderman. Like it was just my last name. So this is Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. Spiderman.

And this is a podcast about filmography's directors who have massive success early on in their careers they're given a series of blank checks make whatever crazy passion projects they want sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they swing across the new york city skyline baby rex reed not a fan i'm just looking at the right come on i don't believe that this year movies are like botany summer blooms are opening a month early he's complaining that it's coming out in may people are very trite another month of this shit first week of may tip of may wow then rex reed swerves into when i was a kid i liked captain marvel and superman and considered spider-man a bus and truck version of Batman. What? What does that mean? Bus and truck?

I don't get it. Does he call Kirsten Dunst tired? I feel like a Rex Reed. 18-year-old Dunst is over the hill. Yes, he says. Created to enthrall readers under the age of 10. By 10, I had graduated from Nancy and Sluggo

to Archie, Benny, and Veronica. Rex Reed really getting into his comic reading habits as a child. Rex Reed sounding like multiple episodes of all the podcasts where we do 20-minute tangents on comic strips recently. Calls Tobey Maguire goony. Remarks that their row house in Queens

is ugly. I mean, leave him alone. That's his house in Queens. Wow. Let's see. This is a pretty good review by Rex Reed. I got to say it's pretty, you know, just laying on all the mustard. Does like James Franco's

recent performances. James Dean shouts that out. Says the Green Goblin looks like a laminated praying mantis wearing an Islanders mask. All right. Wildly inaccurate. That's not a bad dunk. goblin looks like a laminated praying mantis wearing an Islanders mask. Eight out of ten. That's not wildly inaccurate. That's not a bad dunk. It's not a bad dunk.

And says the funniest actor is not Mr. Defoe who hisses like a leaky radiator. Rex Reed. Yeah. Working the body right now, but J.K. Simmons. Who has sprouted a full head of hair and a versatile turnaround from his bald sexual predator he plays on Oz.

Mostly impressed by the haircut, I guess? He's like, I never would have imagined this guy's not bald. He seems to imply he actually grew hair somehow. This man and a feat I've never seen an actor achieve before. Willed himself. Some people gain weight for roles. He figured out how to regrow

his hair. I'm sorry. Kirsten Dunst, he finally weighs in. I liked her better as a blonde. Oh boy. Sure. Rex. Cliff Robertson is a warm, nicest uncle

a spider ever had, but what can you do with lines like with great power comes great responsibility? Was he not supposed to say it? It is funny that now that is like a line. It's the idea that Rex was like,

why would anyone say this in a Spider-Man movie? With great power, get this out of here. Nonsense. It's just funny that there were like five, six movies with Tom Holland in them where people were like, I can't believe they're not saying it.

I guess they're never going to say it. They're just not going to ever say it. Someone clearly read Rex Reed's review and was like, listen guys, we were way off on this. Rex is right. We're not saying it this time. Ever. I just feel like that was a thing that was known.

But post this movie, that is like everyone knows that line. You quote that. You understand that is the Spider-Man line. Sure. Of course. It's the motto. It's all good. Look, we're talking about a very big movie today.

I just want to say he then swerves to his Hollywood ending review where he is like lavishing on praise. Best thing Woody Allen's done in years. Treat William's sporting actor slam dunk. He calls it a 40-carat cinematic jewel. It's not a, what did he call it? A bus and truck Woody Allen movie? It's not a bus and truck Woody Allen movie.

That is for sure. This is a miniseries on the films of Sam Raimi. Oh, we haven't even introduced that. Okay, sorry. I was trying, David. Sorry. You keep on going on these tangents. And I want to do a really focused episode with no sidebars.

Ben, pin both soundtrack, action figures, and miscellaneous merchandise. I know I said both, but I added a thing. All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. Sam Raimi. That's the guy. And Ben, also put a pin in singular cross-promotion. Singular wireless cross promotion So my series on the films of Sam Raimi Is called Podcast Me Today

It's called Podcast Me to Hell Yeah Today We are talking about Spieder hyphen man We're talking about Spider-Man His return to Big budget filmmaking

I guess After Well I guess he never really made it to big budget. Return to genre filmmaking. His return to genre filmmaking. Right. After... Well, the gift is kind of genre, but you know what I mean.

Yes. Pop cinema. Less classy movies. Thank God. Get back into the popcorn machine, Sam. A film that changed Hollywood forever. Indeed. And has shaped the

landscape we currently have in cinema. Changed Hollywood. So many ways. This is the beginning of everything. Okay, I mean my interest is piqued. Please go on. No, because I think the big thing is

You know this movie is quite successful then. Yes. I knew that. I mean I know it's a huge. It's no blank man, but right. It's no is... You know this movie's quite successful, Ben. Yes. I knew that. I mean, I know it's a huge... It's no blank man, but... It's no blank man. It's a huge pop culture thing that reached at least the millennials, right? It's like our Spider-Man, and I guess, obviously, there's fans that continue to revisit like you're saying, your cousin. Yeah, no, I think it's also getting reclaimed by a lot of the Zoomers.

I mean, if r slash Ramey memes is to be believed, I think a younger generation has come around to these movies as well. There was a period where I think people were like

these fucking corny words. Oh, they were. Right. They were really looked down on for a long time. Especially, I would say, obviously the third movie

was poorly received at the time. But like, I do feel like this movie's reputation had really gone down. Yeah, very far down. Including with me. Like, me, in hindsight, I was like, well, that movie is kind of prototypical. And the second one is the one that's really good. Yeah.

But all of them, the reputation was, they're hokey. Yeah, right. They're cheesy. They're too sincere. They're too sincere. They're too thick. They're so fun. No comedy.

No comedy, right. Yes. Which is funny because these movies are so much more comedies in genre than any of the later Spider-Man films, but they were like, but Spider-Man isn't funny. It's true. These movies are like old Hollywood comedy.

You and I were texting about it. They're like Vincent Minelli movies. They're like Stanley Donen films. They're old MGM musical comedies they feel like and and now of course right now most superhero movies are quite serious and grounded not all there's so many fucking superhero movies that you can but like the way that in which they're funny is very different this yeah and even the new the new holland one you talked about it how like he holland for the first chunk of that press tour was like this is like the saddest most serious spider-man ever yeah i cried making it in a certain point apparently sony was like can you chill out

you say it's fun yeah you're bumming everyone out like and yeah you know it does have that tone of like this important and serious and this has the right tone i think that yeah is not goofy or uh flippant about the source material but is watching it through night we were texting about it and we were just like this fucking tone you cannot believe that this was his tape that they approved it and that he executed it from beginning to end and i think i always liked this movie with some reservations i think even when i went to see it like amped up to the fucking nines i was like it's not a masterpiece it it like has magic in it it's got some stuff really right totally it's like you know i i re-watching the trailers you forget how much more they tried to sell it as being like cool and bad.

The ultimate spin. Right. Right. And like the trailers use the fucking matrix score just at the right at the start. I know. I know. But then what do they use?

Then what do they use? I just rewatched them. Not that though. I want to take you for a ride. Well that they do use Leave you far behind by Fucking What do they call it Which was also on the Matrix soundtrack

Yes But they also use Danny Elfman's Planet of the Apes score Oh right Which is funny Weird I probably just

Lunatic Calm Sorry is the name of the band Wow I needed to get that right That was the last time I was on Blank Check This is a weird Planet of the Apes

That's right This is a weird coincidence You love Elfman scores. That's my thing. That's what my tattoo says. Our guest today is Matt Singer, by the way. Wrote the book on Spider-Man. A book on Spider-Man.

What is the full proper title? The only one! It's Marvel's Spider-Man, colon. From amazing to spectacular. Spectacular, colon. The definitive comic art collection. I'm glad I clarified you're a fan of Spider-Man. Yes.

I mean, I am. Ben, red with embarrassment. Producer Ben, actually embarrassed, not playing it up. I have to ask, in titling that book, did you ever regret the fact that Marvel never came up with a Spider-Man comic that had a Z in the title? So you could call it like from amazing to zany. That would have been better. I didn't, it doesn't quite take you to the end of the alphabet. I didn't, I did not title the book. The book had a million titles that were the publisher, uh, ended up picking, picking that title. Okay. But you're right. It would work a lot better. I have thought about the zany

adventures from amazing to yeah. Spectacular. Yeah, exactly. It would work a lot better. I have thought about this. The zany adventures of Spiderman. From amazing to zany. Spectacular. Yeah, exactly. It would make more sense. Yes. So, Matt, you like Spiderman. Yes. Spider.

I also like Spiderman. Sounds like Griffin likes Spiderman. I love him. He's one of my best friends, I would say. And we were all Spiderman fans when this movie came out. I don't think I'd ever seen a... I had seen The Gift because I actually saw The Gift in theaters.

Yeah. I don't know that I'd seen another Sam Raimi movie in 2002. Oh, we had a very different different experience. I must have seen at least a couple of the Evil Dead. Yeah, I guess I had just seen those.

That's my thing. I'm trying to remember... I don't think I'd seen like A Simple Plan or Quick and the Dead or those little ones. I'm trying to remember if I rented them right before'd seen like a Simple Plan or Quick and the Dead. I'm trying to remember if I rented them right before or right after this. You were a little older. And you're a freaking Kim's video

guy. Well, I wasn't there yet. I know you weren't. But I mean, I had the experience where I saw, when I saw Spider-Man, it was like basically my favorite director making my favorite character. So it was a mind-blowing event. I guess the internet. How did we hear that Sam Raimi was making Spider-Man? This is what I'm tryingblowing event hearing i guess the internet how did we hear that sam

ramey was making space this is what i'm trying to remember yeah it was yeah the internet i think because the internet was yeah so for me like a couple of i guess two years before this i was in college i i had never seen a sam ramey movie and then i was the biggest nerd at school like i had no friends i had no nothing. You had nothing? Nothing. Nothing sent to your name? I made Peter Parker look really cool from the beginning of this movie.

Wait, if somebody told me that you were just an average, ordinary guy, not a care in the world? That person lied. So, but I went to school at Syracuse, and they had on-campus movies, and they would do a new movie and a midnight movie that was somehow vaguely related.

Okay. Sure. And I would just go every week because I had no friends and nothing else to do. Cool. This week that I went, this particular week, they showed The Mummy, or The Mummy Returns. I actually... One of the Brendan Fraser... Yes.

Yes. It was not The Dark Universe yet, sadly. Well, I mean, it wasn't a Karloff mummy. No, no, no. It was the Brendan Fraser mummy, one of those. And the Midnight movie was Army of Darkness, which I hadn't seen. A classic Midnight movie.

And it was sold out. And I had like, they only vaguely knew that movie from like comics, from like reading Spider-Man comics. And there was a period when that movie came out, it was the inside cover ad of of every marvel comic for like they knew their audience yeah exactly yeah but i'd never seen it i grew up in new jersey no like i didn't have any cool movie friends like it was just no one was passing and vhs a david to your griffin basically no i didn't have one david. So the movie starts and the audience is potentially drunk stoned.

They're losing their minds. They know every line. It was like you could not ask for a better movie experience ever. And it was like a bomb went off in my brain. And I immediately was like, whoever made this, because I didn't know who Sam Raimi was. I was like, this is my new God. Right. And I immediately just like know who Sam Raimi was. It's like, this is my new God. Right. And I immediately just like fell into Sam Raimi obsession. So when then when they say Sam Raimi is making Spider-Man, it's like, right.

Yeah. That's too good. That can't be. It can't be. That can't be right. And so, yeah. So when this movie comes out, I mean, I've never been. I think you said you were like one of the most excited times

you've ever been for a movie way up there's no question this is the most excited i have ever been and probably will ever be were you well not to go full circle but it's like the only thing that not the only one but like planet of the apes is in that tier it's like the bright i remember how much you love planet of the Apes and Burton was your guy Toy Story 2 I feel like those are the ones where I was just like my sense of self

is riding on this movie yeah cause you're young enough also that you're just like this has to be good it has to be good I don't know what I do with myself if this isn't good

right I was a huge X-Men nerd so the X-Men movie was probably more exciting for me in that although not that I was like a big usual suspects fan.

So I didn't have that, but I was truly like, they better nail this. This movie, I was a huge Spider-Man fan. I think I was calmer about it. I think I was like, this looks good.

See, if that makes sense. I was going in fairly. I was going to say, I got super amped for X-Men, but I think the fact that I then enjoyed X-Men amped me up more for this. That's part of it. X-Men was about as amped can be done at that right they right that was like the proof of concept right because before that there's base other than blade there's like no marvel movies right at all

those are the only like comic book movies anyone had ever seen and they didn't feel like comic book movies they felt like something else right this is this other thing. You have like Spider-Man, you have Superman and Batman, right? Who, especially at that point in time, are just the two most iconic American superheroes. Yeah, they're famous. And they have been successfully adapted to TV several times.

And then they make them work as, you know, modern movies. Yeah. So there's a 70s Superman run and nothing else that tries to imitate that works. And those movies diminish. Right. And then you have your 80s into 90s Batman run and none of the movies that try to imitate it work. And then those movies diminish. And it really is like the only two that they will put the muscle behind adapting are the two big guys. Right. You know,

that's like that's all that's going to work. And then X-Men, I think, was such a turnkey in terms of like, this isn't blade. This isn't steel. This is like one of the things that we all know. But X-Men has to couch everything they're doing. And like, we're going to make this look like a adult movie. I felt, I was okay with it because I was like, yeah, whatever you can do to sneak this. Exactly.

So like Spider-Man here shooting it out of his wrists. Yeah. The webs. Yeah. I was just like, that's fine yeah whatever whatever whatever i was not complaining no i was just like it's okay i get that you have to get everyone on board the context that people like younger people today do not understand is that like comic book movies were and comic books in general were looked at as like garbage garbage like i so this is 2002 bus and truck right truck material we talked about years ago before this i'm in high school and i did everything in my power to make sure no one ever found out i liked comics and read comics i would i wouldn't bring them to school i would hide them this is like it was like absolutely you know and this is a time when like

pro wrestling is cool so it's not like you know what i mean like a lot of goofy shit is yes but comics are like you don't get caught dead right someone's gonna kick a sandcastle into your face people are gonna knock my books out of my hand in the hallway no one can know right and even after batman which is huge yeah like by the batman doesn't change that because batman and robin is a goof right i mean i kind of enjoy batman and robin for what it is but it doesn't change the perception that comics are for dorks they're weird they're stupid they're goofy right right yeah right right there was nothing badass about it and then i think x-men and even x-men which is a good good movie for what it is but they were like we're gonna dress them like they're in the matrix yes right there's only gonna be a few of them right we're going to dress them like they're in the Matrix. They'll wear leather. Right. There's only going to be a few of them. Right.

And they really tried to hit the Holocaust thing. Right. The civil rights thing and all that. That's such a statement of that movie of being like, we're going to lead with the subtext. The stars are British actors in their late 50s. Those are the names in this movie. Wait, Ben, what did you want to say?

Well, I was just just gonna interject and say that i did have a relationship to um these characters um but through video games and through the animated show that's true there was a lot of the cartoons obviously and then right a lot of super nintendo games where you're spider-man or batman or wolverine or whatever i do think that i felt that same like we we're both from Jersey. I definitely saw the kids getting their books knocked out of their hands because they had comic books. You saw me. Did we go to the same high school?

I don't know. Was yours underground and just like filled with like shrapnel and just like rusty objects? Ben creating an ironclad alibi that he only saw the books getting knocked out of your hands. I wasn't doing it.

I witnessed this type of thing happening, of course. So I was just going to say, though, yeah, the animated show, I think, was like for a lot of kids an access point for Marvel. That Saturday morning show, I think, was really like the way for regular, non, maybe nerdy kids to access those we will dig into the weird development history of this movie across decades but there's the circular thing that i talked about before which is uh marvel is like near bankruptcy uh but they do the x-men cartoon

and the x-men cartoon explodes and it that's why i got into conflict exposes all these characters on a wider scale right people know deep x-men characters now this sort of like third tier toy company toy biz gets the rights for the action figures and they sell so many toys that when marvel is on the brink of true filing for bankruptcy toy biz buys marvel and then the machinery becomes we have to do a saturday morning cartoon or syndicated cartoon of every one of these fucking things and pump out as many figures as we can as many video games as you can so the 90s do work as this perfect launching pad to be able to run with these movies when you get to the 2000s because like these characters are all now back in rotation right

you're retelling many of the most iconic stories but yes I think that was a thing where i was i was so fucking amped for x-men and then the fact that x-men like that check cleared in my mind and then you start seeing the materials for spider-man and you're like shit they're just doing the costume right i remember i mean i vividly remember the first time i saw like the you know the the the official press photo of the costume you couldn couldn't believe it. And it really was shocking, especially even after X-Men, where X-Men's good, but they're all dressed like Matrix characters.

The whole story with X-Men was they were like, we tested the yellow costume on Wolverine. It looked bad. We couldn't do it. It won't read on camera at all. Do either of you guys remember when Alex Ross did his, he published,

I remember reading it in Wizard or Toy Fair magazine or something but I I don't know where it originally came from but he was like his concept art for this movie yeah he was like I have not been hired to do it but I thought I'm so in the camp of wanting to support this movie that here just pro bono are my ideas for how you could update Spider-Man to make these costumes look cool in a modern context. And you were like, what a cool design. But it was still couched in the idea that he was like, they can't just fucking put the suit on screen.

I have to make this look hipper. And then they were just like, I watched all the fucking special features of everything last night, but they talked so much about like a year of just, we know we want to do the suit. The question is just the way to execute it. And it was just the back and forth of just, we know we want to do the suit. The question is just the way to execute it. And it was just the back and forth of like,

how raised are the webs? What shade of red and blue? What shape are the eyes? But they were like, there was no question that the big move here was, it's going to be Spider-Man in red and blue with the webbing and the big white eye. And I feel like that was the thing that,

when we talk about, actually this was a really important movie. Yes. And like influential. like that was the thing that when we talk about actually this was a really important movie yes and like influential like that was that was it it was like we're not going to pretend that this isn't a comic book they're like this is a comic book because this is spider-man and then the movie is right sure but batman didn't batman didn't and then everything that followed that absolutely was kind of like superman just has has this kind of literary history in a weird way. It's seen as like, well, that's sort of an important American invention. Right.

And he is Superman, right? And you can sort of start catching. And Spider-Man is like, I don't know. That was the thing. The important thing is that nerds have always been treated poorly, and that's why we deserve everything coming to us and all control over pop culture. Right?

Right. Right. Okay, good. We all agree. Yeah, and power is not corrupting us, absolutely. No, of course not. Well, that's because we've learned that with great power comes great responsibility. Right.

So we would never do anything. This is a thing that every nerd on the internet has really taken part. Yes. Oh, boy. But I'm just, you know, that's what I was just trying. We can talk about the development of the movie now But like I'm just trying to remember that mindset of like This being exciting and new

And different It's like another universe It's kind of crazy that it's like Like how vivid this time is in my mind But like I feel like You know your nephew or whatever Is just going to have no concept of that sort of. There was nothing like these in theaters.

I mean, ain't it cool loading it up and being like, it's going to take five minutes for the photo to load. And seeing it go an inch by inch. Oh, yeah. When it was like the X-Men costumes being revealed. Right? Right. And there was that feeling of you were like, huh. And you have to like sit there and really think about it.

I guess that makes sense. That's okay. I guess that makes sense. Yeah. And it truly was that thing where when the spider-man photo loaded the promo one i remember was him sort of crouched on a corner of a building it's like blue and like the lighting is very like blue and red on right yep and i think that was almost it was maybe a leak i remember seeing an ankle i don't remember if it was official or not but very soon after that was the teaser posters because they had those a while in advance. And when you were just like,

holy shit, the poster is him crawling on a building and it has colors and the suit looks like that and you're telling me that's a real guy in it? But I wasn't interested in it, but then it told me

I would be taken for the ultimate spin. And then I decided I was interested. This is what's funny to me is they still had to be like, this is cool. This is extreme,

like skateboarding. What are you kids like? Right. Like it created the PlayStation 3 font. It did. You know, really ghastly font. Like I get again at the time, I guess it was cool. Yeah, but like nothing about the font in the trailers and stuff.

I like the the title, you know, like the actual title card of this like the opening credits are nice. But when you watch the trailers, Matt and I were talking about this, you know, like the actual title card of this. The opening credits are nice. But when you watch the trailers, Matt and I were talking about this before you showed up. It's amazing how much this movie does not really feel tied to the early 21st century at all when you watch the movie. Right. There's little things like... Macy Gray?

Macy Gray, the DNA. By and large, it feels... But then you watch all the marketing and you're like, oh my God, this is humiliating. It's sort of amazing and miraculous that while the marketing and the trailers and the soundtrack is like so dated, the movie itself feels so timeless. It feels very timeless. Which is literally apart from like Macy Gray, who I guess now has passed into memory.

And so it's sort of like, who's that? I know, but it is just funny where you're like, this was synergistic. Like, this wasn't just... Well, Unity Day is a big deal. World Unity Day is a big deal. Do you guys have Unity Day plans? I'm going to wear a kimono in honor of Unity Day, of course.

And I'm going to go hang out at the municipal building or go look at the balloons in Times Square where there's always big, oversized balloons. My favorite balloons. Lumberjack, Russian Dancer. Right. Weird Dog.

Weird Dog. Weird Dog. We all know the classic character Weird Dog. One of Stan Lee's other favorite creations, Weird Dog. So,

true believers, wait until you meet Weird Dog. I'm Celsius. This dog ain't normal. Enough said. He's a weird dog. How do you get into spider-man great question what's your you're a little older than me oh for me it was the electric company he was

a character on the electric company with was that when he was with fire star and uh no that's the cartoon that's the cartoon amazing yeah that's spider-man and his amazing friend right right wait fire star and who is the ice man of course fireman right, Firestar and who was the other? Iceman. Iceman, of course. Fireman. Right. Fireman and Iceman. And Miss Lion, the dog. Of course. Yes. Which I also definitely watched,

but that was a little later. Before that, so the Electric Company was like this PBS, you know, show. Kids show. Yeah. William Freeman was in it? Yes.

Yeah, it was like a easy reader. Sister show to Sesame Street, basically. And Spider-Man had these segments where he was, he had- It was the slightly older

Sesame Street, right? It was like like I feel like Electric Company was sort of 70s it started in the 70s no no I mean for slightly older audience oh yeah yeah it's like you're seven

or eight now you get to watch Electric Company so and and and the whole show was about like teaching kids to read and so Spider-Man had these he never spoke but he would

have word bubbles so it was sort of teaching you to read the thought balloons and word bubbles right exactly and i was just totally smitten with this thing the look the right it had nothing to do with being a dork or no you know relating to the character it was just the look of him and everything and then yeah the cartoons and but like i'm trying to remember when when you talk about, you know, being six and loving Spider-Man, like, supposedly my, I don't remember this, but one of my very first words as a child was Spider-Man. Wow. I mean, that's a good claim.

According to my parents. But it was not Spider-Man. It was Meme. Right. That was. That was how you were referring. But that shows you how, like, young I was that Meme was Spider-Man. It is funny. I mean, I feel like we'll talk about this

sometimes, David, where we need to like zoom out from a movie that we just all take for like given, as a given. Right. And go like,

how insane is it that that worked and that worked, right? And there's that primal element to Spider-Man where you're like, how insane is it that like Stanley

cracked this thing of like, here's how to put a relatable human being at the center of a story like this and at the same time they nailed the costume that hard that he is just so graphically compelling you know

yes and that you're almost like there's a version of which you're like he did this book though didn't sell but it was the one where he cracked you can put in every man in this situation and then later they came up with this character that looked good but it is now it is weird that Stanley was like Spider-Man. And like that was the thing that unlocked everything for Marvel.

But everything that's compelling about his costume doesn't really have to do with spiders. I mean, there's obviously the webbing. Not really. But he's red and blue. Yeah. I mean, and his powers are spidery, but then also not, you know, not specifically the spider sense or whatever. Right. And, you know, I was, you know, ranting at my wife yesterday where I'm like, you know, not specifically the spider sense or whatever, like, you know, like, and you know,

you, I was, you know, ranting at my wife yesterday where I'm like, you don't understand. There hadn't been a teenage hero. It's just like Robin. If you were a kid,

you know, like I'm trying to like, like that was revolutionary. This has all been excavated, obviously countless times. The legacy was sort of combining like Archie comics with superhero. Yeah. That's the huge which when you reread them and i the dick co run is extraordinary and it still reads so well and it's

so fucking good but yeah so much of it is like hey you going to the dance peter you know like all that shit you know what liz allen that's the first girlfriend right yeah yep yeah all that all that stuff yeah no it's, uh, it's wild. And that's the stuff that Raimi, I think, really has tapped into better than anyone else is that feeling of that early run. And like the teenager, you know, full of emotions and all that sort of stuff. Like even in two and three, when he becomes an adult, it still has that sort of Archie feel to it. But yes, you look at the marketing and they were trying so hard to sell it as like the movie of 2002.

And I do remember sitting there in the theater being so excited and 20 minutes in being like, this is the tone, like not being upset, being sort of like amazed that they had been able to hoodwink. Yeah. How did they pull this off? I mean,

that's the thing when you watch it today and it feels so timeless. Right. And then you go look at the trailers and all this ancillary stuff and they're trying so hard to be cool right and the movie is not cool and i mean that as a compliment but it is not there is nothing cool about it one of the reasons why maybe it became less popular over time of course it doesn't have that like it's not right it's not cool but then again spider-man isn't cool no obviously peter parker is right and he's supposed to be unlucky and always that is another thing about this movie that's that's really great is that it doesn't try to make him cool and it doesn't try to make the concept of spider-man cool it believes in the concept yeah sam raimi desperately believes

in the mythology of Spider-Man. When you talk about the early Stan Lee, Steve Ditko comics, that's one of the things that the movie captures is that belief in with great power

comes great responsibility. I'm very sorry, Rex Reed, but that is so important to the character. Apologies to Rex Reed. I mean, that's the magic of Ditko where he's so crazy. He's such a crazy person that he really believes that he's writing it.

Yes. And then there's, you know, when you, I mean, Steve Dicko is someone I'm obsessed with. And like, you learn about all this stuff where he was like,

the green Goblin should just be an ordinary man and there should be no, and the lesson should be, it could be anybody. And Stanley's like, what are you talking about? It should be Norman Osborn. That'd be a great plot twist. Like,

so that kind of like fire and ice of those guys is crucial. Despite working, right? Like if it was just Dicko, it'd probably be like all his other shit. That's like bizarre and inscrutable. So it's so good that they were combined, but the Dicko part is what's so amazing.

All these, I'm like that. All these elements lined up these different sensibilities, personalities, the graphic elements. they were combined but the dicko part is what's so amazing all these i'm like that all these elements lined up these different sensibilities personalities the graphic elements i love steve dicko have you ever have i brought it up on the show before jonathan ross did this documentary called in search of steve dicko no seen this it was on the i know what it is i haven't seen it he goes literally goes tried to because his whole thing is like, the guy's still alive. I'm obsessed with him.

I've always loved him. In search of Steve Ditko. In search of Steve Ditko. He's got a lisp, you know, Jonathan Roth. And he like, tries to meet him. Because like,

the whole thing with Steve Ditko is still in his fucking office, right? Like, drawing like, you know, trade illustrations or whatever.

No one wanted. And, one of the best parts of it is he interviews John Romita, who took over Spider-Man after Steve Ditko. And apparently Ditko is like, just don't make Peter Parker handsome. Because the way Ditko draws him,

he looks like an alien. He's like so skinny. Very, yeah, skinny. And Romita is like, is saying to Jonathan Ross, and I promised him, I won't, I won't. And then I started drawing him

and Jonathan Ross is like, you drew him super handsome. He's like, I know him I won't I won't and then I started drawing him and Jonathan Ross is like you drew him super handsome he's like I know I can't help myself and Peter Parker actually got hot and kind of handsome but like those early dickos he's so weird and that's why McGuire is such a good fit for like that energy not that he's not a

good looking guy he's very good looking but he does have a very odd face yeah and he's small he's very good looking but he does he's odd face yeah he's yes and he's small doesn't he's not traditionally handsome he's not a leading man he has that voice he he really has the ditko spider-man peter i mean it's all these things that are so fascinating about this like so uh i credit where credit is due a recent trend that i'm very much in favor of, I think in terms of iTunes extras, when they have like... I'm listening. Yes, keep going.

I feel like all the studios behind these, especially for the bigger movies, but I feel like they're working their way down, are now starting to add on every feature that was ever included on any version of any release of a movie. So I was going through the iTunes extras. I think I might know where you're going with this, but go ahead. Okay. The first Spider-Man, and they have like everything from every version, more than I even feel like is on the 4K disc now

or everything like preserved. Yeah. And it's very interesting to watch, not just all the marketing materials and whatever, but there's like 90 plus minutes split into different featurettes on that DVD. You know, the two disc Spider-Man one set. That is like, we need to give people context for this comic.

Where it's like, they still need to like pump up the idea of like, can you believe this character has existed for all this time? All this sort of shit. All these interviews with like Romita and Stan Lee. Right, all the old guys. Right. And Stan Lee's always like giving his lessons on like, what I learned

made Spider-Man interesting is you always have to tell a good story. And you're like, that's the formula, Stan? And he's like, the way we came up with the name Doc Ock

was interesting. He's my favorite. I liked him because I like nicknames. And I said, what if I had a character named dr otto octavius and that's what he was named at first and then i started calling him dr octopus and then i called him daca and that's why he's my favorite that was not what i thought

you were going to say what's the one you well because we were talking about how kind of interesting and quirky toby mcguire the screen test the screen this is what i was building up okay because this is a whole thing like he resisted this he didn't want to do a screen test he's an established actor the arc of this is right like and i've gotten this a little wrong i've talked about on other episodes but uh ramey really wanted the meeting his agent was like there's 16 guys on the list ahead of me oh i i can i can give you the exact quote but yes ramey was like i want the you know to to be the 17th guy and he's like fine make me the 17th we'll double back around yeah but i just want to set the specific toby thing right but he gets in there with the meeting with ramey uh ramey gets in the meeting with columbia and just has that

level of enthusiasm where like they're just like, Jesus Christ, this guy cares about this shit. Kirsten Dunst says in an interview that they reuse across like 18 different featurettes I watched last night, like, truly when you talk to Sam about Spider-Man, his eyes start glowing. Sure. I mean, that's, it makes sense. Like you could just, it's infectious how much he actually cares about it. Like, you could just, it's infectious how much he actually cares about it. And he always tells the story that when he was a little boy, his parents hired a local artist and they paid him $30 to do a painting of Spider-Man. He hung it above his bed.

And he slept in bed every night as a child underneath, like, a gift painting of Spider-Man. And Avi Arad is like, that is the exact man you need making a movie. But what I've gotten wrong in previous episodes when I'm talking about this is that Raimi didn't, I said that Raimi didn't know that he had been hired until he saw it in Variety.

What was the case was he went in for the meeting, thought nothing will come of it. Sure. And then there was a Variety story that said in an unlikely turn of events, Sam Raimi appears to be the top choice. Right.

Which was the thing he was flabbergasted by. Because he just thought, I'll get to tell people I pitched for Spider-Man. And the person who was most widely assumed to do it at that point was Fincher. Yeah. Everyone was kind of assuming. He was a Sony guy. Right.

Yeah. And people, I think, were still in the mindset of. You need a Bryan Singer. You need a guy who has bona fides making adult movies that are good. You got to do probably what Cameron was going to do. This movie has to be really shiny and high tech and whatever, you know? But once Ramey's hired to do this and it becomes the casting question,

all the articles are derisively like they want to hire some lantern jawed, broad shouldered hunk like Wes Bentley. Freddie Prinze Jr. Heath Ledger. There's an article that. Freddie Prinze Jr. Keith Ledger. There's an article that mentions Keith Ledger derisively. One of these pretty boys who can act a little.

Right. It's like 10 Things and maybe A Knight's Tale is his. Right. And Rami's story is that he was watching Spider House. Jude Law.

The Spider House rules. He was watching the Spider House rules. This guy's in a Spider House. It really did make him the perfect choice in hindsight but like franco was a guy who tested like sony wanted like all the coolest prettiest young men right of course he's watching cider house rules with his wife in bed and he's like that's god that's what it should be it should be this and he goes to sony and sony's thing is

but is he an action star and it's such a funny calculation now where you're just like, he's in the costume the whole movie. Who cares? You can't even see his face. You literally can't see his face. You just kind of stumped me into doing it. All you need to do is hire someone to be Peter Parker.

That's the only thing you need to hire someone to do. Of course hire Tobey Maguire. Also, it's like, get over yourself. You cast Michael Keaton. It's like, you've done this before where you cast people who are not like buff guys. Of course. was like a lanky uh yeah he's at least tall right he's very handsome but they were talking he was like a twig when he went yeah he got all right but it's right nowadays they'll be like look we have to cast the personality outside of

the suit and then in the suit this fucking you'll figure mirrors we figure out who gives a shit it's an action figure you move them around on green screen um but they were like so adamant about like it can't be toby and ramey's pushing so hard he convinces toby to want to do it when i think he had been sort of toby was resisting movie then toby gets on board and then ramey's like i'm happy i convinced you now by the way sony doesn't want to hire you we have to convince them together we have to do like an action screen test right like it's it's not just a regular two first they made him take meetings right then they made him do just an actor screen test and sony was like we still think he's not tough enough right so he's the thing with eliza dushku when you i just people should

pause the podcast and go just from that description go watch what they made him do to prove he was tough this is what's crazy is like it is it's like a bruce lee screen test it's so exactly what darkly lit it looks like dark city it looks like burton batman stripped to the waist right he's so they put oh he's shirtless he's shirtless spandex bodysuit to see how he looked in the suit and he and i think what was a smart move on his part very sad oh yeah i have seen was like i'm so ripped let me just like fucking roll this down and show this looks like fucking dog veiler it's just like a door and a lamp so it's these guys who are like holding eliza douche crew up at night yeah it's vaguely the scene with like in the alley where he stops the muggers who are attacking mj that's vaguely

what it's like it's like got like what's the. It's like got like fucking Robocop. What's the douche coup connection? Like, does he know her? She was friends with him. She says she was friends with him. Yeah. Yeah. But it's got more like Robocop, like woman at knife point energy than what happens in this movie. And the stunt guys were playing the thugs.

They say fuck like seven times. They should have kept that. Right. And Toby's like breaking bones. He like, he like, he does the sort of. He's doing Bruce Lee. He looks like seven times. They should have kept that. Right. And Toby's like breaking bones. He like, he like, he does the sort of, he looks like Bruce Lee.

But he's like, and he's, I don't know, he's like oiled up. He's very oiled up. He's very, are you looking at it right now? Yeah.

And like, you know, his frame is skinny. He's skinny, but he is buff. He's buff. Yes. And right.

And the way they, the energy of it is so weird. Especially since like, this is not Spider-Man at all. He's not really like a martial artist. No. This is exactly what you expected at this time to see when you're like making Spider-Man when you watch the channel and go, I guess they had to make Spider-Man like a sort of tough guy vigilante. Like a ninja.

A cool martial artist. Right. Yeah. And you watch this screen test and you cannot believe that they showed this to Sony that Sony went, okay, you're right toby's tough enough to play spider-man and then he went great toby go back to playing puppy dog never do this ever again we're not lighting the movie like this it will never have this menace i know the score to this screen test is so like so that was just to hoodwink sony yeah that's funny let me give you some context on this movie we will rush through this

because I feel like it's widely discussed anyway Canon Films has the rights they buy them in 1985 for $225,000 which could not get you a one bedroom apartment in New York City

absolutely because Marvel is so hard up, I guess. The only thing that they've ever done with Spider-Man is the cartoon. Well, they had a live action. There was a live action show on which is a spin, which is right. Yeah, right. For like a season, maybe two seasons. And is that the classic

you tilt the camera and he's climbing up the side of the building? Yeah, or that's the one where you might have seen like he has like big weird eyes. Yes, it's very creepy looking and like they did a lot of just like b-roll of like they put an actor in the suit and had him stand on top of buildings and they would just like fly around with a helicopter and that was like they used that shot like a hundred times right and though was it the pilot for that was released in europe they released a bunch of there's like two or three that they released theatrically like overseas. Are they good?

It's the guy who plays the director in Once Upon a Time in Manhattan. He's not bad. Like as Peter Parker he's not bad. He's a little older. You know like he's more of like a workplace drama because he's just like a guy at the Daily Bugle. He's not really you know he's not he doesn't read like a kid like Tobey Maguire.

But it's so so canon basically goes under after superman 4 is released it's superman 4 and masters of the universe are the two things in 87 the tank could kill them they of course famously renamed themselves pafe in a weird attempt to buy pafe they'd be like well what if we have the same name as you doesn't work shockingly right it's like how in high school, I tried to change my name to Griffin Alba in the hopes that just God would be like, I guess we're married. And he took my name.

Exactly. Uh, they are sucked into MGM. The rights become absolutely a legal mess. Like, right. At a certain point, I guess.

Carol co gets in charge of it. Cause that's where James Cameron comes aboard. Yes. Well, James Cameron, basically. So I, I was looking at this last night. He has a book, karolko gets in charge of it because that's where james cameron comes aboard yes well james cameron basically so i i was looking at this last night he has a book that came out a couple of months ago you interviewed him and i oh i oh i i did i basically they were like so james cameron does this book it's a really nice book of his like concept art right yeah yeah right and um it's actually the same publisher uh that published my spider-man book and they emailed sometimes they ask me if i want to cover their stuff and whatever and they're

like do you want to come do a roundtable interview with james cameron and i was like i never do roundtable for anything and i will absolutely go and and you had spoken to him before right never no okay but you were in that documentary the sci-fifi series. Oh, yes, I'm in James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction quite a lot. You had him never spoken on it. He wasn't behind the episode of Cameron? I have no idea if he did. I mean, he's on Cameron,

but I have no idea what he was on. He wasn't barking? Yeah. Matt, do it again. Come on, Matt. Not futuristic enough. Put on the dots and jump in the water. We're doing this mocap.

You can hold your breath for 14 minutes, right? But in the book the last two pages of the book are his his artwork for spider-man that he created and then he talks about what he wanted to do with the movie so i'm like oh i'm going and i'm just going to ask him about spider yeah because it is in such an interesting period because post terminator 2 is when he really picks up the baton right right actually it might even be a little before that. I guess it's post-Terminator 2 that he has the clout to demand,

like, this will be my next project. Weren't they, but he's the one who, basically, when canon goes under, he's the one who's like, well,

I've always wanted, he's kind of like Sam Raimi. He's always loved Spider-Man. He wants to do it. He tried, and he's trying for years to try to get someone to get the rights,

because you're saying, like, it's weird. It's all fucked up, because, like, someone owns the TV to get someone to get the rights because you're saying like it's weird. It's all fucked up because someone owns the TV rights. Someone owns the movie. Right. You know, Viacom is involved or whatever. And it's because of all these like.

So he tries to get he's trying to get people to get the rights for him. Somebody does at one point, but then they go under. I guess Kuroko does. But then they have. Yes. Problems. He works on it for a little while and then what happens is eventually sony gets their hands on some of it or they claim they do and he tries to get fox to buy

it yes you basically take them right take out take them on this is so legally the light storm setup in 1997 the film rights for spider-man were awarded to MGM in the wake of Kuroko's bankruptcy as part of a legal dispute over the fate of Cutthroat Island. So it's some weird like judge is like, I guess the Spider-Man rights can go over here. Like he's like dividing up some pie after. And then Fox comes in, James Cameron using them as a stalking horse. Right. And he's got like a 10 year deal. Right.

And he's like, get me the spider-man rights but a Los Angeles court reversed the decision I just described and said the MGM rights were worthless because they had not made a spider-man movie like they were required I think to make one within 10 years of buying the rights right and they never had right so they

never did like the fantastic fourth they never made the ghost movie. Right. And so Sony is given the rights along with the home video rights and the television rights in a very complicated legal maneuver

that like pays off Viacom or whatever. And so now in 1999, Sony has all of Spider-Man to itself and they will never let it go. No. Obviously.

This is... JJ didn't pull this up so I don't have-Man to itself. And they will never let it go, obviously. J.J. didn't pull this up, so I don't have the specifics to cite. So I'm going to tell this story broadly. But there was a thing where once Sony had the rights and they were actively developing the Spider-Man movie and Marvel was still fairly hard up for cash. This is the late 90s. They're in terrible shape.

Right. That's the other part of this that people today would not believe. Marvel almost didn't exist. They they were totally fucked then like they shrank their titles i remember like they had almost no comics anymore yeah there is this infamous moment where someone at marvel be it a rod or whoever says like if you're really bullish on making a spider-man movie for like another 20 million dollars we'll throw in every other character right right right and sony, they send it to some fucking executive

and he goes like, not worth it. Yeah. Iron Man cares. That's when then everything starts to get spread. Except maybe not X-Men, right? Because X-Men was their golden goose in the late 90s.

I guess X-Men was the one that had been set up already. Right, right, right. But yeah. There was a point where Cameron was also considering doing X-Men. He was approached originally to x-men okay and he was like x-men is fine i love spider-man yeah and so that was the thing and he like supposed i mean like that's what he talks about in that book and what i asked him about like indeed in our research

an interview with matt singer he calls it the greatest movie he never made yeah he never made and that he tried to get fox to basically like uh go i don't want to say go to war but like fight for the rights because he thought that sony's legal argument was tenuous and he thought they could get it and they decided it wasn't worth it financially right they possibly could they could have gotten it and probably won it would have cost them money right and that was i mean he says he says uh that's that is actually the quote this is the quote he told me like in the interview he said uh peter churn and the uh former president of fox wouldn't go to bat for the rights he didn't want to get into a legal fight i'm like are you kidding this thing could be worth i don't know a billion dollars uh yeah today 10 billion dollars later per movie exactly right right uh but so james

cameron's treatment which is like a 60 page script so it's it's so yeah he's like i just i didn't want to commit fully to writing a script but i kind of did um he you know he's obviously the one who makes the the web shooters organic his biggest lasting contribution uh yeah i don't know if that's a controversial thing to say and i don't know if that's a controversial thing to say and i don't know if it's just partially generational right that this movie came at the right time for me i'm reading ultimates where they does ultimates do organic or no it does i believe right the ultimate spider-man or amazing at some point makes them organic no no i think the bend is i don't know about ultimate amazing it becomes canonical after the movie for a while

when they take it away because didn't he turn into a spider at one point he sure did that was i didn't like that was wild yeah i was i was anti-bad um this is an obvious question but okay he but uh what are we talking about yeah what's the fucking yeah i i think this is i look i've always liked the organic web shooter thing and i think cameron's point here is really smart it was a thing that people griped about at the time. But in the comics, it was like, when he gets bit by the spider, what does he gain? In Ultimate, he does not do it organically.

Okay. Yeah, I didn't. But it was in main content at that time. In the comics, he gets the strength, right? He gets the spider sense. He can climb walls. He gets the spider sense, and then he he can climb walls he gets the spider sense and then he's like you know what i should have webs and then because he's a science nerd he goes and

makes a web formula and he comes up with bracelets he wears and they have cartridges with web formula and he shoots them i remember this from the animated show right that's the classic movies like in the tom holland movies he has it too like that's what they come back to but but james cameron both had this whole like body horror he's a teenager it makes sense that he'd have this weird you know it's it's yeah you know there's a lot of metaphors you can lay on pubescent but his other point which is very good yeah exactly he does become less of an everyman when he's that level of genius this is a very smart kid I think that he's just like, no one's going to buy that this kid fucking invented this insane thing. The most incredible.

That would be like DARPA level. Right. You know? And it's like, I agree with that. Like, at the time, again,

I was like, again, whatever you can do, I don't care. Right. And I also am not one of those people who's like, yes, Tom Holland made it,

invented it. Good, good. Right. Like, I win. Like, I don't care.

Who cares? Who cares? But also, I like the stupid cartridges. They're fun. They're fun, but it is funny to think about how, like, Spider-Man's defining power is really, he swings and he shoots webs, and it's like, that has nothing to do with the spider bite.

It has pluses. To me, it's like each one has pluses and minuses, right? I think James Cameron's point is very valid. And it does make sense. It's just in the comics, it's a lot more fun because he has to make, he's got to buy the web. He's got to buy the ingredients. And so he's always scrounging for money. That's what I like about it.

That's the part about the web shooters that's fun. Month to month. He can't afford to make this stuff. But yeah, it is pretty absurd that a kid, if you could create those web shooters that's fun. Month to month. He can't afford to make this stuff. But yeah, it is pretty absurd that a kid, like, if you could create those web shooters, you would be a billionaire. You would be rich. Yeah, exactly.

But Cameron wanted to make a Spider-Man movie that probably would have had a similar tone to, like, True Lies and Terminator 2. Like, he wanted to make something that was shiny and sexy and adult. There was not going to be a costumed villain. He said in a statement i don't understand i think he said this to you that he morphed kingpin and electra into one guy

as the villain don't really know what that is but i guess some kind of like gangster ninja villain was part of it at some point was part of many scripts like many of the scripts have these but cameron just doesn't like the villain i don't like the venom and he doesn scripts like many of the scripts have these but Cameron just doesn't like the villain. I don't like the venom and he doesn't like any of the other villains which I guess you can kind of see a fucking amazing villain. Yeah, Kingpin's great because here's his deal and Matt, I'm

going to tell you. Okay, please. I've never what's his name? Kingpin taking these notes. Go ahead. Here's his deal and spider planes big as fucking hell. He is. He is. He's large tall Go ahead. Here's his deal. Spider-Splains. Big as fucking hell. He is. He is. He's large,

tall and wide. It's like a square. Yeah. How does that work? I mean, you just got to see it and believe it. It is funny how in Spider-Man,

like when Kingpin's introduced before he becomes the Daredevil villain. Yeah. Spider-Man just makes fun of how fat he is all the time. Like it gets a little repetitive in those 70s comics anyway uh another interesting point of course james cameron not

getting spider-man is when he's just like you know what i'm gonna do my own thing right no more ip for me i'm going to pandora baby like it's got to be from the brain of james cameron because i don't want to deal with this shit anymore okay Okay. David Fincher, Chris Columbus, Ron Howard. Yeah. They're names that make sense for that era. Absolutely.

Guys who can handle a big project. They want this movie to be big. Hire people who have made big movies that please everyone. So they are the biggest names mentioned. But yeah, Sam Raimi,

like you said, he said, put me down for number 17 and he surges to the top of the list because he's so passionate and fincher had done fight club with ziskin laura ziskin and ziskin was the main producer on this and so people assumed look he's so technologically adept this movie is going to have to break a lot of ground and effects he's also hip and cool and she likes him he's probably the guy who's going to get hired to do this. And then Raimi sees that story that says,

out of nowhere, Raimi has swung into the top of the list, and he's like, holy shit, I have. And then they offer him the fucking job. The craziest part of this is the thing where he was about to go on the gift. Yes. And Sony was like, we will pay Paramount to delay the gift. Like,y was like we will pay paramount i think you delay the gift like he can

shoot it and then they delayed post-production yeah right as long as he goes straight from shooting the gift into spider-man and then he does post on both movies at the same time we'll pay you like a million dollars to delay the editing of the gift for like nine months um so david kepp is the screenwriter but of course he is the editing of the gift for like nine months. So David Koepp is the screenwriter, but of course he is... He's the credited screenwriter. The credited screenwriter. There are many, many drafts.

He's the Sony screenwriter before any director comes on. Yes, he worked off of Cameron's draft. Apparently, Cameron... I gotta get this right. Scott Rosenberg, Alvin Sargent, all had genuine, you know, like rights to a credit. Right.

And they all voluntarily withdrew for whatever reason. Yeah. Probably because they were given money, is my assumption, by the Sony Columbia Picture Corporation. But, you know,

so they were all like, whatever. And Kep is the credited. Sargent, of course, longtime partners with Loras Isken. Right. And then he gets the writing credits on two and three. Yeah think yeah he worked on he kept working on them he's like an old guy right he's like an old hand right he's still alive i know but like oh no no he did i

think he died a year ago what were you saying but i'm just saying when he's writing these movies like he's uh yeah he was born in 1927 like he's an older 70 yeah yeah right and i'm a sergeant for frame of reference he wrote like Paper Moon and Ordinary People. Right, Paper Moon, not Taken by One. Yeah. But yeah, Paper Moon, right.

Right. He's like not David Kapp. No. Not a genre guy. Right. I have always viewed him as the secret sauce to these movies

in a lot of ways. The throwback. Ramey gives him a lot of credit on the commentary for this movie. Yeah. Even though he's not credited on this movie as like,

you know, he's like in scene after scene, he'll be like, Alvin Sargent did some wonderful writing for this scene. A lot of the stuff with Peter and Mary Jane. That makes sense. He gives, it makes total sense.

It feels so old Hollywood. The tone and the characterization. And just how broad it is. Yes. And not sincere. I guess that's the the word right you know like i'm not afraid of being sincere i mean we'll we'll talk about but the monologue peter does to mary jane in the hospital oh at the hospital where he's talking about the thing he told spider-man the thing that of course he told spider-man when talking to spider which by the way that was a

scene i remember seeing in the theater opening weekend where the audience started laughing and they were like this is too much you have 100 one step opening weekend where the audience started laughing and they were like, this is too much. You have not pushed it one step too far. And I watch it now and I'm like, this is the most endearing thing in the world.

Well, because now, like, Kevin Feige would shoot a bazooka at this scene. He'd be like, get it off of the screen. Like, and, you know, too sincere.

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but the scene I want to pin that is the one where I watch it and I go, this would just never happen today. And if it did,

it would not have this tone. It would not have this breaking room It would not have this break. Which Macy Gray performing live. Just wouldn't have the tone, which was a Sergeant note. I heard it was like Macy Gray should be at unity parade. Um, the,

the, uh, Peter, Mary Jane backyard. Yeah, sure. Right. Like when,

where she's, I want to be an actress that, that, that scene and he's, we're going to talk about that. Okay. We'll get back to the original script. We're not going to talk about that For 45 minutes We'll get back The original script

We're not going to talk about it For 45 minutes We have a hard out Electro Sandman Doctor Octopus And Green Goblin All in the original Cap script

Too many So they Sort of slowly Sand him out But it was going to be Green Goblin and Doc Ock For a long time And then they finally

Were like you know what We can't have like A Doc Ock and a Green Goblin origin story. This movie is a tight 121 minutes. Yeah. Now I guess it would be different probably, right? I don't know, but almost certainly. There was a thing. I mean, it's like stupid, right?

But I was like digging into all the merch for this movie and there was an odd item. I remember early 2000s push to revolutionize trading cards where trading cards were CD ROMs. Uh, sure.

This sounds like a Griffin thing. Absolutely. Griffin. Uh, but there was a set. I remember for been planet selling. That was like the Spider-Man CD ROM trading cards where it's like each card has movie clips and bios and whatever.

Right. And so it was a pack of the four characters and it was Spider-Man, Mary Jane, green goblin and the fourth one is just harry osborn sitting at a desk we love it it is funny to think about that being like who's our fourth most merchandisable it's also wild that they take three movies to do him yeah that he's just hanging out in these right that he's just hanging out for three movies like the patience maybe too much patience sometimes, I think it's only that they just fuck up three.

I think they do a good job with him in two. I do too. I love it to be clear. I mean, the end of, with him in this one, the ending is so perfect. I mean,

it's like one of the, just the perfect Spider-Man. I mean, the last like 15, 20 minutes of this movie in general is just so Spider-Man. It is. It is. It's amazing.

But like, yeah, the stuff with, the stuff with spectacular yeah sensational friendly neighborhood sorry exactly the but yeah the stuff with harry at the end where he uh you know he thank god for you peter but he also you know despises spider-man now it's just so deliciously you know that that is the real the real juice of spider-man there is so great it's the same i mean my real juice of spider-man there is so great it's

the same i mean my favorite thing about spider-man is that he makes his money taking pictures of spider-man that his boss will then use to harass spider-man and there's nothing he can do about it like you sit down and you're like why doesn't he just go to and it's like no you don't understand that is part of the existential well the whole the whole existential concept of spider-man is just that he works hard nobody likes him you know one every victory which again like the end of this movie is so perfect for it's like every victory as insane at the end of this movie was allowed yes really insane and i remember when i was a teen people being like why doesn't he get to kiss mary jane at the end yeah

right he like pushes away yeah and he's like, bye, I'm Spider-Man. It's like, roll credits, get out of here. He just mopes away in a long coat from a funeral of his friend's dad. But just the, the fact that every victory as Spider-Man ruins Peter Parker's life. Yeah.

Vice versa. Right. Like that is the, and that, and the Daily Bugle thing is part of that, but just like every element of his life is accomplished with the other. It was one thing can't go right without 10 things going wrong. A hundred percent.

He's unlucky. That's the perfect. In all those feature ads I watched. And the movie just totally gets it. It was the one thing that I thought Stan Lee said to his credit where he actually showed some insight as to like what makes Spider-Man work. Cause he always would just be like, the key is to have good characters. You got to come up with a clever idea for a power.

Right. Like, but then he said, he said, the thing for me with Spider-Man was always, there's a bad guy at this part of town and Aunt May's really sick and her medications on the other part of town. That is every single one of those. The whole thing with those Stanley interviews is I do think if people, not maybe when he was really old, people ground him down, he would finally be like, yeah, you know, maybe Steve Ditko did deserve more credit and I did give it to him.

But like, you have to get through an hour of him being like, yeah, you know, maybe Steve Ditko did deserve more credit and I did give it to him. But like, you have to get through an hour of him being like, my idea was a teenager would be a superhero. You know, like his whole glitzy,

you know, razzle dazzle. to his credit in one of the things I watched, which was shot in 2002. Right. He was like, they call me the creator

of Spider-Man, but the reason I really, truly believe I'm the co-creator is because I only had a thing on a paper. I never could have come up with this design right he did eventually relate oh he became more a magnet once he was over over time right right he was not always that way uh but yes no that's the that's the stuff that just like spiritually sam raimi understands exactly what spider-man movie

needs to be and i remember walking out with my friends and then being like so did you love that was that like your favorite movie of all time and i was like i like it a lot i'm surprised by how much it feels like a comic book and i wasn't saying it as a complaint i was just genuinely it was just it was it was miraculous it was like they pulled it off right that for years the conventional wisdom was you could not do this right you had to do it a different you had to make it look less like this you had to make it right feel less like this right and then that was part one part two was then it made more money in one weekend than any movie had ever made and so suddenly it wasn't just like oh well i think it's great and they pulled it off

it's like oh everyone thinks the monoculture is yes and they're ready for this and they accept it and they like it and that was the other thing that really changed it was the biggest movie since titanic yeah and it just yeah it worked on every it worked and it would work for families i do think that was so crucial to it right it's not just the teenagers and young men wanted to see it which is like the classic right it was like you could take your kids to see this movie and it's not that intense it's a little intense you know no i was like ramey i don't know if it was a panel or press conference or whatever when they were promoting the movie and he just kept on saying like he's just so ramey's so sincere and how he talks about these things but he's like you know my goal was to make a motion picture that

is really really thrilling for the whole family you see sit there with your your popcorn and you cannot believe the things that are on the screen, but there is enough focus on the interior lives of these characters that adults will still be held into the story. And it's like, oh, it is that simple. It's just like, I'm going to put crazy shit on screen. You know, and he talks about for how stylized and heightened this movie feels now.

He was like, I don't want to do Burton Gotham City. I don't want to do this like super City. I don't want to do this like super design thing. But a thing that is so smart is he was like, I want it to be real New York. I want to shoot in real New York,

real locations because that was a superpower of the comics that it was like. And this is the first movie that does that, right? Absolutely. Like this is the beginning

of New York as like a hot filming location. But he was like, we went out of our way to try to find all the genuine locations in New York that feel magical.

So rather than recreating things. Yeah, like that rooftop by the church, you know, where he drops Mary Jane off. Uncle Ben's outside the New York Public Library. Of course.

Even the Queens neighborhood is so picturesque and great. Like a perfect setting for a Queens neighborhood. Uncle Ben drives him from Deep Queens to the main branch of the New York City Public Library. Correct. Takes him to the Lions.

45 hour long. And then he's like, and it's like fucking 1 p.m. Like it's the daytime and he's like, I'll meet you here at 10 p.m. I'm sorry. First he says, hold on a second. He turns Sum 41 off on the radio. Uncle Ben loves Sum 41.

Most recent Sum 41 song, Peter. And then, yes. And then he says, I'll pick you up in 12 hours. What is the lie here? Peter Parker's like, I really got to hit the books so hard. I mean, he is a nerd. He is a science nerd. He loves books. But the main branch, it's like, he is a nerd. He is a science nerd. But the main branch, it's like,

he's gotta be hitting the micro-feast. Yeah, exactly. He can't go to his local library. I mean, I'm just saying, Uncle Ben, he's a mensch. He's just like, sure, I'll just fuck around in Manhattan for 10 hours. He's got Sam Raimi's car. I mean, what are you gonna do with that car other than drive it around? Come on.

You know what's a funny thing in this movie that hasn't aged poorly, but is just very of its moment, and the moment changes maybe right after this? There's the line, it's in that taking out the trash scene, where they're talking about Peter and Mary Jane, what they want to do with their lives, and he's like, I don't know.

Move to the city? And that idea of being from Queens and being able to work your way up to manhattan right is like an apartment downtown whereas i feel now when i tell people i live manhattan they're like why the fuck what's the matter with you right which is a fair question right that you're like if you live in queens you don't really live in new york the city the city you have to live in it's very saturday night fever you know that idea that you know manhattan it's truly like 2002 is like. Yes. You know, that idea that, you know, Manhattan is the jewel.

But it's truly like, 2002 is like the last month before everyone starts to go like. Yes. No, that's true. You're right about that. That is actually true. But everything about this, it's like Cliff Robertson and Merce Marie Harris. Obviously, it's trite to now note that, yes, every iteration of Spider-Man, you know, for the next iteration, they will be teenagers, I assume, like Ben may may um but uh you know he feels like he what is he he's an electrician oh i love that detail yeah he just got fired fired yeah his job

as the chief uh electrician at the plant and now he's screwing in light bulbs right kitchen like what a nice little even the computer have computers have analysts right it feels so throwbacky it's like a single income like outer queen's household right the interior of that house is amazing it's so good old old you know uncle and an aunt or grandma and grandpa house with that wallpaper is she his great aunt you know spider-man lore better than me like he like no he's supposed to be i mean there it makes no sense because in the comics ame is like comically mr burns old right like she's like so decrepit decrepit and like you're like how is this like what's the age gap she's 45 but she's got city miles she's got a lot of um but like you know obviously they they zazz him up but I do love I

I kind of forgot how much I love Cliff Robertson in this movie he's pretty so fantastic in this and it is funny that they talk about like

obviously Rosemary Harris I remember because she's in the sequels and you know she's doing her thing like Dafoe is the only guy who actively pursues

involvement in this movie from the cast it sounds like everyone else had to be talked into it right to some degree by Raimi being like here's from the cast. It sounds like everyone else had to be talked into it to some degree by Raimi being like, here's my take on real vision. I know it sounds like bullshit,

but... I'm going to invest in the characters. I know it sounds like bullshit. And Dafoe was like, it's fun to do a cartoon movie. Yeah, Malkovich was the first choice. I look like a goblin.

Well, I feel like the whole thing with Dafoe is just like, we're making a comic book movie. Who should play the villain? Willem Dafoe. Right? Like, he was just always going to be one of the first off the board.

But he always talks about, he's like, I like sought it out. Yeah, he was into it. I think. Malkovich was their first choice. It wasn't Cage before Malkovich? I don't see anything about Cage. Cage, I believe Cage was the first choice. Well, that's crazy.

He did adaptation instead. Uh-huh. But it was just because Cage was known for being such a big contestant. He just turned it down. And had almost done Superman. But they, they really tried to get.

They were like, you can get an A-list star to play this. And, and he just said, I'm doing adaptation. Yeah. Um. Malkovich got far along.

Uh, Defoe, yeah, he was into it. And he was very into how sincere Sam Raimi was. I don't know. Defoe's just a guy who does anything, right? I mean, like, not in a bad way. Experimental theater, he was like, this is a fun opportunity

to, like, do this much physical performance. He did like most of his own stunts. He was like, I want to be the guy in the suit the whole time so I have the continuity of performance. I want to learn how to do all this shit. Should have painted his ass green, man. He looks like a goblin. I like William Dafoe.

He's a hot guy. Yeah. But he looks like a fucking goblin. You mean like Joe with a prosthetic chin on his ass. Just a slight lengthening.

Paint him with green and just let him laugh. It is insane that they cover up his face. It's so crazy. In profile, he has that great nose where he does kind of look like

the helmet that they give him. Yes. It does kind of seem like a exaggerated version of him. You're absolutely right. I mean, I feel like I remember at the time pre-seeing the movie, right? That was the most controversial thing. People were like, the Green Goblin looks lame. What is this they're doing?

Power Ranger. That was the thing everyone always said. Right. Obviously, he does kind of look like a Power Ranger. The Green Goblin in the comics is, I mean, what they eventually did in No Way Home where they just have Willem Dafoe in a hoodie. Like, I get that. That's a good homage.

But the thing in the comics makes no sense. He pulls off like a rubber mask. This is the whole thing. How are his limbs green? Like, I don't get how this costume is supposed to work. The whole thing they talked about, because there's that amazing, you can see on YouTube,

the Studio ADI test where they did an animatronic mask. Right, looked like a goblin face and actually looked very cool but raymie was like the logic of it always like just befuddled me where it was like he's a guy he puts a rubber mask on and then when he puts the mask on the mask has full expressions right it just looks like a cartoon it's like jim carrey the mask where it's like glued this is the yes yeah yeah i mean it's a it looks incredible it does very fucking cool but you also go but you're right the logic of it is why would he look like right right doesn't make a lot of sense no my big issue with the green goblin get up in this movie is actually not even how it looks but the sound where they don't like his he he doesn't

his all of his lines are like 80 yards yeah later it doesn't match and it doesn't match the visual and his movements and he doesn't sound like he's wearing a mask at all like spider-man toby mcguire yes they do a good job with that it sounds like he's talking through a mask they do the weird thing where you know you can see his eyes you know he'll like pop open the eyes or the mouth sometimes right where i feel like they're trying to get like a match over all right but you're then you're just when you're looking at him you're just like he looks crazy like why they don't totally solve it and it's very telling that no way home they were like all right let's smash the the head right was just like when you're on the rooftop scene, which I like as a scene in itself,

but she's like, anytime it's the two of them talking in full costume, you're losing something because this could just be fucking anybody. Yeah. You know, whether or not you're told it is them actually in there, it does start to feel like

the footage that they inherent on Power Rangers that Saban then tries to dub over, where you're like this is disconnected from the main actors. It's one of the smart things with Spider-Man 2 where he's just like it's just Alfred Molina trench coat. Right. And they also start taking Toby's mask off a lot more often

in 2 and 3 which people complain about but you do need to do. Gotta show. Absolutely. Put him. Yeah. Yeah you know let's just talk about the movie spider-man a little bit should we just take a quick picture before we get into the plot do you guys want to just like all get into a line and then the spider will come down from the ceiling and bite us oh right right for the school paper correct yes right right right i was trying to get us in quick yeah so here's here's the thing with this movie.

You know, I made the very intimate confession to the woman I've been dating that the universal fanfare gets me really jazzed. That there are a few things that get me more excited in the world. And the graphics of the globe and whatever, right? Right. So we're watching this movie.

And she stayed after you said that. We've had a number of conversations. We're working through it. It's a fair question. Any time. She'll throw it back in my face as often as she can. But when we're watching this movie and the Columbia lady comes on, she goes like, oh, does the fucking Columbia lady get you amped too?

No, I'm not some fucking freak. Yeah, but then the strings. Exactly. I have to admit, the strings do get me. They're really good they're it's it's one of those things where just like when you hear the danny elfman batman theme for the first time you're like fuck yeah this is what batman sounds like yeah and i remember just because the trailers used other scores and pop songs and shit having no sense of what the score of this movie was going to

be before sitting down in the theater. And when those strings start just immediately feeling goosebumps of like, fuck, this sounds like Spider-Man. He is like musically captured Spider-Man and no one has improved upon it since him. So to me, like I remember, again, sitting in the theater the very first time seeing this. And the moment for me early on when I was like, oh, we're in good shape, is when the title credit comes up based on the Marvel comic book by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Yeah. They give both of them credit and they're credited in the opening credits, which is something that, you know, like just wasn't.

We're not going to acknowledge that. They were showing that off with. Right. They were like, right. Exactly. It wasn't like something they shoved at the end of the movie or, you know, you know, it was like front and center based on the Marvel comic book by Stanley and Steve Ditko. I was like, oh. But it did feel like-

That feels different. Raimi got the job through enthusiasm and somehow he convinced everyone at Sony to be like, fuck it. We're just going to do this. We're just going to do this. We're just going to embrace it. I was not convinced at all until I was told the story was not for the faint of heart. Then I was like, well- But David, you were assuming he was an ordinary story was not for the faint of heart. Then I was like, well.

But David, you were assuming he was an ordinary guy, not a care in the world. Exactly. And then I was told that someone had lied to me. Someone had lied to us. But that's a great scene too. Like the opening scene. I love the way he's, you know, okay, the voiceover. But the way he's introduced.

The bus. Through, right. I didn't even take this guy. The guy eating the donut. And then he's riding alongside the bus. And the fact that we he's introduced as just like the hand he's almost looks subterranean and what's the end of the movie is him soaring through oh yes manhattan so like the lows and the highs yeah you're telling

me that peter parker kid is the same guy same guy spider-man hard to believe yeah but true but yeah so there's a hyphen between the two like Like, even that stuff, like, structurally is just, like, so smart. Raimi, I think, in what the commentary I was watching, kept on referring to the caverns of New York City, which I thought was such a good term to describe, like, the liminal space between buildings. The building, right. But yes, how much credit does this movie deserve? And I'm asking. I don't know. I think a lot.

does this movie deserve and i'm i'm asking i don't know i think a lot but like all the video games that have come out since then that have had spider-man like swinging where the game mechanics are basically just about swinging around new york yeah how much of it has to do with like this movie and like the shot after he drops mary jane on the rooftop where he swings runs up the side of the building goes and swings away like how many games have just been built on like that one energy that one shot ramey truly nails the swinging stuff so fucking hard which felt hard like it felt like how are they gonna do the hardest thing to do how do you nail the cgi honey whatever yeah yeah and even just what are the physics of this like what is the inner logic of this whatever because it's one of those things the comics yada yada is like he's always he's swinging right mid swing it's definitely something you could say like as great as the comics are they don't have anything

like the actual beauty and physics and grace of movement right a comic can never do that and that's the one thing where they took that like the idea of it the energy of it right and like you can see the individual moments that look kind of like panels, but they gave it this fluidity and excitement and grace that they just nailed it. There were the early 2000s PlayStation and 64 games, and then there's the movie tie-in game for this. And I remember that being the first one that sort of got the mechanics of the swinging down well. At the time, it felt amazing. Spider-Man, the second game, was the one that was really mind- because it had like the open world yes but the first one but the first one was good too it felt like a big-ass deal but even like playing that game i remember being like you're just like

swinging from the sky yes like you just shoot right that was the whole thing like where's the fucking web like you know you in the comics you're just like well you don't think about it and rainy cheats a little but i do think he does a good job especially that first time he's swinging of like he has to go to that building and then he has to find another and like the time when his feet touch the ground and it's like there's momentum he's gonna he can't stop it truly is one of those things where like the infamous teaser trailer for this movie of course was the sequence that was shot only for the trailer that's like the psych out 9-11 I rewatched it it is so

funny that they're like bank robbers like it's like done like a Michael Bay yeah it's so silly like bulletproof vests it looks janky to the yes the helicopter where they're like it won't go like it's like not done by Ramey right but obviously famously the James Cameron script had a climax It won't go! Like, it stops in midair. It's like, not done by Raimi. No. Right.

But then... Obviously, famously, the James Cameron script had a climax of the World Trade Center. FYI. And that the World Trade Center was like his nest. Yes. Like, he had a permanent web up there that he... He says in an interview, like, I love Sam Raimi. I hope he takes it out of there. Right.

Because, whatever. Obviously, he was going to take it out of there. But I do think putting the glimpses of the swinging in the the trailers but that original teaser in the later trailers was the thing that made this like a fucking no but that was the thing the whole thing was like ultimate spin and look at this fucking footage look at how cool it looked it was just incredible and i think ramey nailed it so hard that all the other movies have been fucked because they're just like we don't want to redo exactly what he did well and it feels like feels like Holland doesn't even swing that much. Look, I'll say this.

If I'm, you know, the Mark Webb movie, the guy has the last name Webb. Perfect. You had to hire him. Remember, it had the gimmick of the first person photography where you see him like climb up the wall. Yeah. It was like cool for five seconds.

That was the teaser, but it was only in like one or two shots. They didn't do that much in the movie. I do like in the Holland movies, when with mj that and she's flipping out because she's like this is awful yes i do think that's necessary agree yeah but that's like that's the end of the the very end yeah no yeah the magic of the swinging is a little i mean look how many of these fucking times you know yeah but it is that thing where they're just like ramey nailed it so hard and part of it is like classic ramey ingenuity where he was you know on top of the cgi and everything else it was like let's get a helicopter

let's have a metal like rope hanging from the helicopter and let's have a camera at the end of that and let's just fly a helicopter i mean this is the same ramey thing he's like what can i glue a camera to right they were like throw into space yeah you can cgi him swinging but what's gonna make it feel real is if the camera is also swinging in between real buildings is it crazy to say that this stuff looks better than like no the current marvel swing i mean the current i mean some of it has aged. Some of the CGI has aged, but like the visceral quality of this has not been replicated or matched.

I mean, two, I think it's better because they've learned all their mistakes and it's perfect by two. Two is just like a perfect, they.

The acrobatics of two are so cool. Like, whereas this only has a little bit. Like, this has that one, the slow motion where he's sort of,

you know, zigging around. The razor bats. The razors. Yeah. I do think so much of it is the camera work though. That's why it still looks better. Even if you like hold the CGI up and you're like,

Spider-Man does look a little like silly putty here, you know, Don Burgess, Don Burgess. Well, I mean, how many of them, of them, and I'm not trying to insult John Watts here, but like in general, how many of the Marvel movies do they hire a director in the same way you hire the actor to not be in the suit? How many of them do they hire the director to not worry about the action and they just let the action be like here you've hired Sam Raimi, who is just an incredible visual stylist, innovator. And that's the thing is like

you watch the movie and the camera work and the editing is so precise. And he knows exactly where to put the camera and when to cut. And it feels, and it all feels cohesive. And it doesn't feel like, oh, now here's a random action scene that we storyboarded before we even wrote a script. Nothing like that here. You feel the fingerprints on literally every single inch of this movie. And I do think he's cribbing from himself. There's like the stuff from dark man where he shoves the guys uh the uncle men's killer oh it's the same shot the same

fucking shot and i remember sitting in the theater in 2002 going it's dark man because i was such a big sam raimi fan that he was copying himself i was like i couldn't like they didn't just hire sam raimi they let him make a sam raimi movie but i of his, I mean, he keeps on talking in these archival interviews about, like, I really thought they would hire someone who had made big movies like this before. And he was like, my movies don't connect on that level. They're not at this level of budget. He had never made

a movie. What's his most expensive movie before this? Like, The Quick and the Dead, maybe? Probably. That would be my guess. Like a 40 maybe million dollar movie or whatever. But I think the thing he had going for him was that he was a problem solver and that from a studio level, they're like,

we still don't know how to make these things work on screen and how to make them not look stupid. And you almost need someone who can think creatively more than someone who has. This movie makes everything that could look stupid look not stupid. Yeah. Essentially. The Green Goblin costume shirt. Like there's a couple things where you're like,

okay. That's the closest. But the hoverboard fucking rules. It does. The glider. The glider. It's really cool. The bombs are great.

The glider piece. What do we think of the bomb that turns people into Skellingtons? I like it. I love it. It's one of the coolest weapons ever. Yeah. It never recurs, the coolest weapons ever. Yeah. It never recurs, right?

It would have been funny if he came out in the MCU and Skellington Tom Holland. He's like, I still got these fucking things. Instant death. Yes. If this thing is near you. And then the skeletons turn to dust immediately. They're out of here.

It is a truly deadly weapon. I don't know why the military is not interested that's that was one thing that i was it is crazy the military like norman this is all bullshit i'm like i don't know he has this badass glider and they're like we've seen the glider and it's like i feel like you guys would love the glider it's good it's yeah it's great yeah compared to whatever fucking thing they they go to and then, you know, get a bomb. Oh, yeah, the thing sucks. It looks like garbage. It looks like a cold medicine pill or whatever.

Yes. It's so weird. It looks like a bad Robocop villain. It looks like the kind of thing that, like, they would- It's Ed 201. Right. They would- And it would malfunction and kill someone.

And then they would- And then, yeah, that would be the punchline. It's so fucking bad. It is funny when Remy talks about, like, well, we weren't going to do the fucking prosthetic goblin face because I don't understand the internal logic of that. And we really want to build it up, make sense why he does it. Anyway, his bombs turn you into skeletons. No, no, sorry, go ahead.

No, no. Well, you know what I like about the skeleton bomb thing? It's like a thing you read in one panel of a comic book when you're a kid that clearly was a tossed up idea that you're like, this haunted me for decades. Right, right, right. I never stopped thinking. How would that be allowed?

This one image. I mean, Sam Raimi does like also, he does like skeletons. He does. So it's an excuse again to put a little more Sam Raimi energy into the movie and I like that. If anything, I mean, if he's cribbing his own shots from Darkman, once they turn into skeletons, Green Goblin should take some of their

bones and turn them into fucking instruments again and start doing a little Army of Darkness. Yep. He should play them bones. Yeah, bones. Give me a bone flute, baby. No, what I was going to say is, he's like, I want there to be the process of understanding how this costume would come to be. And the glider is experimental technology. And you have

that one shot where you see the guy testing the glider and he's wearing the suit. And I guess this is the insulated suit. And you're like, okay, I get that's what the suit looks like. And then you're like, and of course he collects rare masks. So then he just makes a vacuform mask in the same aesthetic style as the body suit that looks kind of like his face. Yeah, that's true. I mean, he puts the rare masks in there, I guess, to explain it.

He inhales green smoke. He does. His fucking ass should be green. And I'm going to say- Oh, you're just mad that his skin is- But he has to be able to be, you know, normal old Norman Osborn. He turns and then he, you know, transforms and then- There is a version in the comics where that does happen.

Right. Where he actually turns- Spider-Man, he sort of hulks out. Yeah, he turns into this big, literal goblin character. Not my favorite interpretation. No, but I mean, it's also, do you know what Norman Osborn looks like in the comic? And Harry Osborn?

Show them the hairstyle. I do kind of think, hindsight's 20-20, they never would have done this at the time, but you do sort of feel like he should inhale the green fumes and it should just be whenever he gets wound up, you put prosthetics on Willem Dafoe and he wears a fucking hoodie

and it's like a green face that isn't full monster but is enough different looking So Norman Osborn he has kind of a classic hairstyle that is inexplicable

A widow's peak waves Deep widow's peak Deep widow's peak with these right this kind of like red and black waves Weird ridges

like tight wavy hair Which Harry has as well and then Sandman has which always used to confuse me like why does Sandman have has as well and then Sandman has, which always used to confuse me. Like, why does Sandman have similar hair? Are they related? Who's that second picture? Is it him again? That's Harry. This is his son Harry, of course. This doesn't read Franco

to you? No! He looks like that weird, like, 90s sort of, like, subculture leader. Do you know the fake religion Jim talking about? Jim Jones? The guy with like the pipe. It was like underground zine thing. Okay. I'm talking to the wrong crowd.

I'll figure out what that is. Anyway. Yeah, he looks like Mac tonight is what he looks like. He doesn't look like James Franco. No, he doesn't. It's funny that James Franco is also a concession where it's like Sony screen tested all these like brooding young heartthrobs Ramey put his chips down on

McGuire and then they were like can you at least put fucking Franco as the friend well he makes sense in the movie okay to me he has that same it's sort of a yeah I get you Ben he's like the rich version of his character from freaks and geeks you know the guy who's just kind of like

handsome but dumb he's also a very good match for defoe i i think they are good together very good in these movies and so well cast and it was it is funny to think about what an exciting actor he was it was corny that he had this brando thing right where he you know and eventually he got kind of sick of it but like in the 2000s he was excited really thought and like when he's it will get to fucking oz the great and powerful yeah i really end like rise of the planet of the apes i really feel like it became this kind of thing of like why is franco so phoned in like it's like so boring he got like so dull in those movies and he used to be such a like a live wire i mean i know he's like you know a problematic there's there are a

lot of things going on with him but like yeah it's but i really like him in these movies but it is i mean again the setup of these is so weird where it's like okay they're a bunch of 25 year olds they go to high school i'm like all right whatever sure sure sure sure sure toby peter parker's a nerd he's got glasses see yes mary jane she's she's pretty likes her she's got red hair she's dating flash thompson who looks like a linebacker it's joe manganella and then you're like and his best friend is this guy in like an armani suit with like up hair like it doesn't make sense that they're friends except i guess that norman is weird like it makes more sense that norman's his friend in the comics because he looks like a dork.

Right. I see what you're saying. He should be that in this universe. And then Norman. Harry should be the cool kid in school because he's rich. Sorry, Harry. Yeah, yeah. He's rich and handsome.

But again, like when Harry like stumbles into a relationship with MJ, you're like, this isn't a tough sell for me. The guy's answer. No, I will say I had a friend like this in high school sure who was like absurdly rich and well connected and like so uncomfortable with it and like he's all messed up by his weird dad i get it i get it and like went out of his way to dress down and it was like a thing where people had to realize how handsome he was where he acted so uncomfortable that people had to be like oh that guy's got very good bone structure there is that thing i i do buy in this movie it's a bit of a stretch but i do buy

it that when he goes up to talk to mary jane right it's like the first time that she's actually looking at his face and being like oh you're hot right hot guy i could date you so they go on a classic tour i think the funniest moment, my wife noted this, is when the teacher comes over to Harry and he's like, we're going to talk about how you listen. And I'm like,

he's a grown man. He looks like four years younger than you. The teacher. Yes. Yes. You know, everything's like, we're going to talk about how you listen.

He's not six years old. Also, this is supposedly like a week before they all graduate from high school. Right. What are you going to do to him? This is a a nothing field trip this is one of those field trips that a teacher scheduled because they're like look i don't want to teach anymore i don't want to teach anymore right so uh at this at this tour of a science lab uh peter parker gets bitten by a

genetically engineered spider grip can i just say quickly you can i watching this movie which I had not seen in a couple of years a little while you know and two I prefer as do most people Matt I assume you do as well oh for sure I mean it's

yeah it's not like this is my favorite movie of all time but it certainly was a very important movie to me in terms of when it came out and all that sort of shit I was watching and realizing like

oh I do think this movie perhaps even more so than two just because of when it came out is imprinted upon me in the way that like some people who were like 13 when Jurassic Park came out or Raiders or Star Wars where they're like, I know every fucking line and shot of this. Where I was watching it and I was just like, I know every line that this fucking teacher at the field trip says. I was surprised by how much I remembered everything so perfectly as well. The timing of it.

Because I don't think that this is a movie that I endlessly rewatch. No, I don't either. I might have been. But this is what I'm saying. I've seen it a lot, I guess. I saw it at least

three times in theaters, but I do think it was just such a big cultural moment that it was like everything from that first viewing is burned in entirely

down to little things that just as they came up, I was like, right. When there's that tracking shot through the bus showing like all the nerds on the bus to Mary Jane. Right. And or it's when he's looking for. He's looking for. And everyone's like, no way, buddy. Yeah.

Yeah. There's there's the fat guy eating a donut. Yeah. And clearly, Ramey wants the gag of the jelly. The jelly coming out of the donut. Yeah. And clearly, Raimi wants the gag of the jelly coming out of the side of the donut. Yep. And in order to get

the maximum impact of that, he's taking a bite out of the wrong side. Yep. So there's the side with the bite already out of it, so the opening is there for the jelly to spill.

You're right. You're right. Right. And then things like that where I'm just like- But you're like, I remember exactly that approach to donut eating

or whatever. It's burned in my memory. And then this fucking teacher being like, I swear to God, we're going to talk about how you listen my last morning whatever he said you were talking during that entire woman's speech but he's like got that weird vibe who's the woman she's so recognizable she's one of those people who's in everything the the um yes the lab lady yeah yeah a spider sense i do like that like i just the rhythms of every line reading you know

even more than the direct i just love the way they introduce like here's this power here's no they do a good job and then it's like and here's all our super sauté but there's one missing you know and you look at your watch and it's minute six and there was a three minute credit sequence like this movie is it's economical well when you once you've been told the story's not for the faint of heart no it's really not a lot more runway you need to lie and they they've also, that's the thing, they've let you down easily. They've let you know that you've been lied to

and they're going to take care of you from here on out. Peter gets bitten by a spider. Oh, really? Right. And he gets the powers of a spider through this bite. Yeah, it'd be funny

if Stan Lee's origin was just like, I got bitten by a spider. And this one time, he turns into a spider with no radiation at all. Go hunt spiders, kids. In parallel,

and I forgot that it really is in parallel, is the Norman Osborn origin story. Like, it's pretty much at the same time. Which is why Raimi cut Doc Ock, because he was like, I really want to kind of go 50-50. Yeah, yeah. And so there's just a lot of the bored,

Mendelstrom, which is the kind of thing MCU would never do. You're not burning a minor villain on some guy who's in two scenes. No, no, no. Another line reading where he's listing the side effects and he goes, back to formula. Insanity.

Enhanced aggression. And then he takes the pause. Sanity. I just love back to formula. That's my favorite line in Spider-Man. I mean, I forgot that Norman drops, you know, I'm something of a scientist myself. Like that's right at the start, basically. That's pretty much his introduction.

His introduction. He is something of a scientist. Defoe talks so much about how he is like an objective based actor. He is based. I mean, I agree. He's a base guy. No, but like he,

Defoe is so non-Method-y that he's like, here's what I do. I read the script and it tells me what to do and then I do the thing. Yeah, I mean, and I've heard. He's like, I don't internalize it. Right. Like when I interviewed or talked to Eggers for The Lighthouse, he said like how Defoe's approach really freaked Pattinson out. Right. Because Defoe's just like, let's do

stuff, baby. And Pattinson's like, no, I've been like thinking very hard about this and like rehearsing this character. Defoe's like a golem. Like you write something down and put it in his mouth and he's like okay you know and he talks about it's like it's why he wanted to do this like he was like a cartoon movie that's fun like i'll go big and i'll do all the moving and everything is it okay if i go big right yeah he's right off his nomination his first first Oscar nomination. Oh, his second. Second. Shadow of the Vampire. But yeah. Yeah. He's good.

He's so fucking good. Can I have a very hot take that's probably not true? Okay. I think he's better in two. I kind of agree. In that just one scene. Because that one scene

is the scene I think about the most. Maybe it's because I've seen two more. Yeah. But avenge me! Like, I think about that all the time. That scene's incredible I've seen two more. Yeah. But avenge me! Like, I think about that all the time. That scene's incredible. I do think he has the benefit

in two of never having to wear this fucking costume. Yeah, maybe that's it. I've come all the way around to not having a little bit of affinity for it. I don't know if it's just nostalgia at this point.

Because even at the time, I was like, costume's a tough pill to swallow. But no, I mean, the fucking mirror scene, that's the one I just remember a.o scott waxing rhapsodic about where he's like this movie just stops cold to let a good actor stare at a

mirror and have a conversation with himself for five minutes that stuff's all great and there's like no effects and there's that moment where he's like he's so good that the way his face changes and shit is before gollum had entered the scene i guess he was briefly but but you know that moment where he's like holding the newspaper up to himself as like green goblin and then you see within the one shot with no putts he just drops the goblin and looks at the paper you know like but this is the thing he's best in those yes back to formula when he grabs him back to formula he's so good at the physicality of just kind of you just feel like his uh that freak yeah yeah it's like beans pulsing it's just a lot of fucking

shirtless defoe turning green and giving him slightly like a little bit of a nose or contact lenses or fucking whatever ben's nodding enthusiastic nodding percent so that he's unrecognizable and you put him in a hood cause also didn't he wear a hat in the comics didn't he have like a goblin hat he has like this goofy like cap

this purple cap I miss the cap I like the hat it's why his head is so like yeah they're trying to mimic the shape with that

with the helmet it is so he has some great lines though I mean yeah he's good in two but like you're like talking about ravening wolves

no he's really good I mean I love him in this. I do love it. Think about it. Hero. The heart, Norman. We attack the heart. That's the one.

All these lines. In the matters of pain and loss. Looking at his fucking armchair. What do you want from me? The heart, Norman. I mean, the same. We were texting about this last night you know to move back to peter's storyline obviously he he enters an amateur wrestling competition or i guess semi-professional i don't know how are we describing this event i'm sorry the wrestling i mean just from the very beginning of spider-man the wrestling is very

i mean it doesn't seem like Stanley knew that wrestling was fake when he made Spider-Man and they've sort of maintained that through the years which is sort of hilarious Bonesaw just sells every line so perfectly I'm sorry I just need to say three things quickly before we get to Bonesaw I know we're moving very slowly through this movie we are we need to move a lot faster

I don't have to leave by the way so we can just talk I still have it. I know. You have to leave eventually. I just want to say a couple quick things. Yeah. Just incredible little Raimi things, okay?

First of all, obviously, the gag with him catching all the food in the fucking tray in the cafeteria. Incredible. It's so good and truly seared in my memory. Every catch. Yes. Every, yes. Right, because it's just like a perfect, simple effect.

It's the stuff that Raimi's so good at where it's just like, this is the cheap stuff. This is him jerry-rigging. We went to, Ben and I, we went to a bar the other night. We were playing darts and there was a guy impatiently waiting for the darts board while we were fucking up and doing a very bad job. Duh. You guys were not good at darts? Shocking. You would be astonished.

But then we ended up realizing this guy was fucking worked on vinyl i knew this guy back then then we were talking about ramey he worked on spider-man two and three and he was saying the thing that was incredible about ramey was if he wanted more smoke in a scene he would like grab a grip who smoked and just be like here's a tube just start puffing cigarettes and blow this that feels very evil dead right Where he's just like, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just think they're those gags like that. Another image that's here in my head is when Peter gets chased out of the cafeteria because he's fucking slammed the tray on Flash.

And the tray going up the door is so funny. Things like that. They're just very tactile, very simple in camera, whatever. And then that Flash fight is so well done. It is. And it's specifically the thing that like the Garfield movie fucks up so badly where you're like this scene feels mean yeah well in the garfield movie does he fight them in a subway train or something that's it basketball yeah and it does feel mean it feels like he's being a bully right

and he keeps on doing that thing there's the spider sense moment where there's the cgi like spitball and the paper airplane but there's more the thing where Flash punches him. And he goes like, what? He pulls his head back and he takes the look and let him stop. Right. And every time he lands a punch on Flash, he's like, huh? I'm like, surprised. It has this great energy of that whole part is like

first the stuff in the cafeteria is super nightmarish, like where what is this coming out of my hands and why can't I get rid of it? And now everyone's looking at me. It has that- Very teenage nightmare. Yes, that teenage nightmare of, I forgot my lines in the school play. I forgot to do my homework. You have two separate moments where he thinks Mary Jane is waving to him and

it happens outside the field trip and again by the lockers. And then with the fight, it has this wonderful fantasy element where he actually gets to beat up his own bully the thing that every nerd ever dreamed of in high school but then again it immediately turns where one of the other guys who i don't think is named i don't know who that character is or the actor who's like wow chad some chad is like wow parker you are a freak so like his one moment of triumph immediately again that whole spider-man has to ruin peter parker's life it immediately goes from i did it to oh i am a loser right it has to be like step

forward to step back yeah ping-ponging back and forth between nightmare and fantasy is amazing same with the wrestling of course he's triumphant he does great but you're not gonna get any money exactly of course back the clean line of like he sees her get in the car with flash thompson that's the thing he'll never have i mean flash is so cool the spiky hair the tank top 30 years old he's the world's tallest man he's gonna be in magic mike xxl at some point big dick richie he'll play uh big dick richieie. No, I know. Is it Deadshot? Or what DC character... Deathstroke. Deathstroke, sorry. Right, right.

I always... Wade Wilson. Wade Wilson, right. Slade. No, right. Slade Wilson. Because Wade Wilson is a joke version. Right, right.

Jesus. Do you have that Deadpool comic where he goes back to Amazing Spider-Man 36 or one of... Right? I don't think I do. It's such a... It's a Joe Kelly one.

Do you have it? Have you ever read that? No. You know, like... And every time he sees Norman or Harry Osborn, he's like Joe Kelly one. Do you have it? Have you ever read that? No. You know, like, and every time he sees Norman or Harry Osborn, he's like, what is the matter with your hair? Like, it's so good.

He goes back to the, one of the Craven, anyway, it's a really funny guy. Yeah. And we don't have time. We should push along, but just shout out Macho Man. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Now we're going to,

now we're going to. We do love the cost. I assume we all love the costume designing montage, something that is never in these movies anymore. No, and feels very, uh, uh, dark Manny as well. Very. Yeah. Yeah.

Sort of a lot. Like, all right, get some graphing paper and I'm going to, I'm going to really like, and you're like, this guy's a good draftsman. Like you got a clean line. He could probably draw comics if he wanted. Cause it's like, it's what's so annoying about the MCU. In the first Iron Man, he builds that suit. It's so crucial to the evolution of the story.

But then after that, is it just like, yeah, you had some guy knock this together for you. Yeah, right. You know, when we meet Spider-Man, obviously. And I just love the fucking thick marker coloring it in. It's so good. There's the MTV Movie Awards parody of this from this year when Jack Black and Sarah Michelle Gellar hosted the show. And it is crazy how, like, iconic this movie was already.

That they're not just referencing and parodying plot beats, but they're also parodying the sort of, like, the visual language of this movie. And it was already specific enough of, like, this is what the costume designing of this movie. And it was already specific enough of like, this is what the costume designing montage looks like. I mean, I do also like the connecting the dots of the screenplay where it's like, MJ goes off with Flash in his car and he goes to look at cars, car ads. He's gonna buy a car.

Wrestling, dollar signs. And that's where he sees the wrestling. Like the way that they connect it actually is just very nice. How it all structured and flows together. Remy said that like he credits Spider-Man comics in particular with being one of the things that taught him how to be a filmmaker. Because it was like, how do you put as much story in one image? If A then B needs to be right there. No, but you're right.

The storytelling aspect. The screenwriting aspect. He was like, how do you put as much story in what image and make it sort of graphically exciting and that whole sequence feels like how do you establish in two panels why he needs to do all of this yeah now in the comics matt you can probably confirm this for me right it's crusher hogan is yes is the wrestler that is the name of the wrestler which is a fine name it's not a bad name but bone saw mcgraw who is so good and I truly do wish I was one of those people with the you know the like a cardboard saw

going like this. So the only times you wished you were on camera yet another Ramey esque not himself having the guys sawing. Yeah, it's true. It's true, but I just thought the thought process. Someone's like I love in the scene of course that underground wrestling thing

with the sort of roided up guy. He's my favorite. I'm going to make a homemade saw. I love it. I love it. And it's so funny that it is Macho Man. Yeah.

Not playing Macho Man. Right. Macho Man is so distinctive and they come up with this other thing for him. I mean, when we recorded our Darkman episode and we were asking

why it's what he thought of the Spider-Man and he was like, I took Nick Holt to the first one. Is the first one the one with Bonesaw? Like, you knew?

Not is the first one the Green Goblin, but I feel like Bonesaw lives- Just give me a couple lines. He lives in our heart. Ready? Hey, buddy. You ain't going nowhere.

Bonesaw is ready. I got you for three minutes. And he does three like this. His fingers look like Vienna sausages. Everything about him is just like the fucking casing is overstuffed. What an actor. There's a lot of great stuff in this movie.

I cannot believe he is not like bursting blood vessels on camera. And I actually have a later moment that's my personal favorite moment in this movie. I think you could argue this is the best part of the movie. Unbelievably. A case could be made. A case could be made.

Just the, just like the, I can't believe it. Right. Yes. The power for every line reading. Bruce Campbell doing a great job, obviously.

Yeah. That's every bit of that is hilarious. Yes. Like, I mean, the way they drag that out is so good. The cage coming down. What is this event?

Octavia Spencer, an incredible one. She's really funny. That was her. She would pop up in movies for one scene. This was her whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's like a sassy lady. I mean, before she became a multi Oscar nominee and winner. Yes. No, but Campbell names Spider-Man. He gives him the name, which is another, I think, huge Rami-. Yes. Bruce Campbell names Spider-Man. He gives him the name. He does. Which is another, I think, huge Raimi-esque touch that Bruce Campbell

is the one who gives him the name, the amazing Spider-Man. The shitty, unscrupulous wrestling promoter. Like, all of this is so fucking good. Bonesaw's so funny.

Obviously, the did your husband make it for you joke does not age well. Yeah, no. That is one of the moments that feels very dated i know and

feels even just a little too mean it also it feels like a writer's room thing right like some yeah that would never fly today well it should not i feel like even when people were critical of toby they were like that is the one scene where he's like up against a wall cracking jokes at a guy you know he's like taunting the dude a little bit and it feels good natured. But of course, and he's not fighting a criminal yet. Who's the guy who plays the criminal? Michael Papajohn?

Michael Papajohn, right? We talked about him, right? He appeared in one of the other movies. He's in For the Love of the Game. He's Sam Tuttle, of course, the feared Yankee batter. Okay. He's one of those guys who I think works

very often as a stuntman or stunt coordinator and then does some acting on the side. That's his on-screen. That's also he's one of those guys who i think works very often as a stuntman or stunt coordinator and then does some acting on the side that's his that's his on screen that's how he reads right right right this is one of his bigger parts in terms of yeah i don't know i'm trying to i'm trying to look up how the thief looks in spider-man obviously it's right the way they render it visually is very similar varies from time to time here they give him like the fucking Corbin Dallas. Yeah, he's got this like. That's exactly who it is. But it's also grown out so the bottom half is dark now. Yeah.

A little sleazy. Yeah. He looks crazy. He looks. Yeah, I guess in the comics he has blonde hair. He generally has blonde hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it with the brown jacket and the green hat? Yes. So I guess they're trying to kind of evoke that. It's vaguely reminiscent. Yeah, i do love him going thanks as the like that's the the real well the two parts the two parts that are amazing about

the staging and again like sam ramey just like shooting and state is is that it's not just that he lets him go he moves out of the way to like and then of course it's not just inaction it's not just inaction it is that he moves aside and that the burglar acknowledges it and says, thanks. And that he has that shit-eating grin

when he says, I missed the part with that. That's my problem. I mean, look, the guy screwed him out of three grand.

It feels good in that moment when you're watching it even though you know what's coming. It's always one step forward, two steps back for Peter. Exactly. That has to be the formula

for any good Spider-Man story. The promoter is our friend from the bar in Love of the Game. Yes. Yes. Yes, right, right. Yes, yes, of course.

And of course, Rosemary Harris is in the gift. She's actually borrowing a lot of his recent JK Simmons. JK Simmons is in the gift, too. JK Simmons is in the gift and in for Love of the Game.

That's the funny thing. It's like now the last two people to play Mary Jane have been Academy Award winners. Right? Yes. And even like Lily Tomlin

in Spider-Verse. And Cliff Robertson they talk about JJ Haddon the nose that he was like He's an Oscar winner? The guy they were really trying to sell

where they were like we need you to be our Brando you're our like gravitas but it's like he's a guy who won Best Actor like 50 years earlier. 40 years earlier? Yeah. In the 60s right? Charlie. Rightitas. But it's like, he's a guy who won Best Actor like 50 years earlier.

40 years earlier. Yeah, in the 60s, right? Charlie, right? It's like Flowers for Algorand. I've never seen it. It's not like they're

getting Gene Hackman to play. Rosemary Harris has an Oscar nomination too. I mean, let's give it up. Tom and Viv. Tom and Viv. Yes.

Somewhat recently. I'm just saying, Cliff Robertson, excellent in this fucking movie. But it's like, five years later they would have been like we need the number one elder statesman in hollywood a hundred percent well

they got martin sheen for the for the exact sheen is really good he's fucking in that movie yeah i mean he's so suited to it yeah yeah but there's something sally field is really good too like everyone in those movies is good it's just those movies Yeah, it's not the cast is like a plus talk so much about Leary's incredible. You know, and like obviously Stone is wonderful. Don't Garfield have genuine chemistry together. Garfield's really good. It's just that the movies

are look shitty and are bad. It's weird that you say Garfield. Well, I know this is like Mondays. Yeah, he hits him. We're recording onay and it's rude you that's rude well that could but we're not recording about his movie so thank god sure he hates it by the way we're doing the two garfield movies on patreon i mean honestly fine we'll fall asleep though i mean they're bad you're tired i'm trying to do you a favor you're always asking for

a nap uh so you know yeah he learns with great power comes great response i think the uncle ben scene is really tough it's good oh it's so good you know yeah he it's not he doesn't have like a like a he doesn't say something crazy doesn't get to say like it's okay like he's like in agony yeah like crying the last thing they did obviously was they fought and peter says i'm mean to him yeah i mean another dad he turns off some 41 on the radio. Of course. Maybe that's why he's so upset. Painful pleasure.

I mean, we're going to talk about the soundtrack, but it is funny that that's the only one of the songs that actually gets used in the movie and it gets used for like five seconds. He's like, I turned this garbage off. No, in terms of things that are seared in my mind about this movie, there's something about the angle

from which Raimi shoots Cliff Robertson. Yeah. When he's lying there dying. Yeah.imi shoots Cliff Robertson when he's lying there dying and like Cliff Robertson you know I think had some work done to his face has weird old man Hollywood sort of like trying to fight Asian a little bit he's got that kind of funny hair I think early hair plugs

I mean I don't want to disparage that is the vibe no but there's something about like when he's lying there his like upper lip is hanging to the side. He does this. There's something so unglamorous about the way that he dies. It's not a my final breath I bestow onto you.

It's upsetting. He looks scared. He looks scared to die. He looks scared and sad and he can barely get the words out. Poor Uncle Ben. It's still wretched. We should mention Uncle Ben's car, of course, is the classic. It's Remy's car. It's Remy's i mean it's still wretched we should mention uncle ben's car of course is the classic is ramey's car the ashes car yeah um you know and he found a parking spot right there on fifth avenue and 42nd street no what is a great place to park you just sit in the car and listen to the fat lip did he like go to jay in our music world like what the fuck did he

do like i just don't know what he did all day i'm gonna go get some noodles um he could drive like forward and back to queen just over and over again like very sweet moment of peter coming home to aunt may yeah i mean that that stuff is all really good like and him talking to her about the last time they talked and all that right she's it's so corny you couldn't do it now no i'm not even criticizing like the the new movies like you just couldn't do it now it's just too straightforward people would yeah people would just be like no but she she is so fucking good uh she is great uh i mean she's obviously she's such a favorite from dank meme lords right like i mean the scene of her praying yes and green goblin breaks through

the window it is undeniably funny out of context someone she just like she has the exact deliver us from evil well and then the fucking moon dance cafe yelling back at her boss yeah that is i

forgot that i don't know how i forgot that she works at the Moondance, but she does. She should have been in the Tick Tick Boom montage. No, but it's great. It's like Ramy. Mary Jane worked here. But Ramy trying to like weaponize like what is the magic of New York City, right? It's like the Jonathan Larson fairy tale of like this guy worked at this diner. Meanwhile, he was writing Rent.

Who knew he was going to change Broadway? It's like mary jane is working at the place where she hopes that she's about to have but like all i i three i just don't know as well but the first two you know spider-man working at the pizza place like yeah spider-man is these movies are so good at the new york which was a real pizza place i don't know i don't think it's still there anymore they moved it two doors down okay but now like when i moved to new york it was there and i was like i'm going to get a slice no this is one of the best places in new york city pizza place it's time it's two doors what pizza time pizza this is his line it's two doors down on the same block on the other side

around the corner but they still have the sign that says spider-man 2 was shot here um but uh all that stuff is great but yes her mean boss who's like hey mary jane i'm talking to you like okay jesus you know like excuse me miss watson this was the rhythms of these lines i know so well the energies that actors are bestowing upon them so he's the freaking guy he's got webs coming out of his fucking hands or something oh he shoots him on the ropes and then he climbs up i love that that guy is clearly not an actor that they were like no way shoot fucking Jim Norton

and people let's shoot Lucy Lawless I think he stinks is that what you're saying I don't like him and I think he stinks but then there are

a couple like the entire like the lighting style is different on that guy where they clearly went to some real New Yorkers and went describe Spider-Man he knows right

he does the thing when he shoots he goes like this yeah and the ropes come out he shoots, he goes like this. And the ropes come out. He's doing jazz hands. Not even close to the fingers. Again, you could never do this. The man on the street, shit.

I think he's got a cute little butt. And like cutting before she says butt or whatever. Guy dresses up like a spider. Obviously, it's around now that you bring in J. jones jameson right like it's somewhere there right it's right after this i mean so what you have great great power of great you know he makes the costume you have i just well he catches the boy he stops the burglar we

didn't totally skip right well of course right which it's another thing but that's the only scene in the movie that kind of feels like it's out of a 2002 action movie where it gets sort of dark and upsetting it's a little too violent and it has to be like oh he's not going to do this again yeah and he doesn't kill him but he kind of you know he falls out of the window right but that's another another classic spider-man moment he falls you know he gets his revenge or avenges uncle ben uh it doesn't feel good it doesn't feel. And immediately the cops show up and think he killed him. And so he's immediately a wanted man and all that. Just classic Spidey.

More. I keep, I'm, I'm, you know, repeating myself, but no, you're right.

Spider-Man touch. And the JK Simmons, it comes right out of that montage. The New Yorkers talk about a montage, the, the subway busker who sings the really good version of the Spider-Man song. We should give him a nice big hug hug i truly think the first donner superman is the only other one that does this where it does very well we need to sell how important this character

is and every step of how he gets to this point is like is a mythical status now it's not even like oh the lore we have to get the lore right. It's like, you need to understand what this guy represents to people. And I rewatched The Donners and all the multiple cuts recently,

and like, The Donner has that feeling that is so incredible, but you're like, half of that movie is the most boring shit. It's a little. The last like,

hour is like, impermanable once it gets into the Luther, like, land grab and everything. This movie, I always in my mind's eye was like,

oh, it's a little bit like that where when it works, it's like magical and there's stuff that's wonky and you and i were texting about it and like re-watching and now you're like what complaints did i ever have about this i just the complaints feel trained by this just feels like a special thing and even just the energy of that fucking montage going to like camera in the web as he's like busting the cops and then like the newspaper spinning and then landing on the desk and then just like full screwball banter

you know but also just the rhythms of it are so perfect you know the wife's on the phone like you know Ted Ramey coming in yeah there's a problem with page Friday all of a sudden it's so good exactly what you need bill nunn bill robbie robertson of course great calm energy right in between albums

in between scorsese soundtracks but i mean they even gave him the hair the flat top yes i mean that was the other part i remember that you know in the it's sitting in the theater where i was like holy crap. Like, they have gone full comic. Yeah. Because they have brought all the characters. You've got Robbie Robertson. You've got Betty Brandt.

He's got the flat top. And he's doing, like, a really intense, like, it's like, you know, like when you're saying, like, watching the cartoons of Spider-Man. Like, that is as cartoony a J. Jonah Jameson or more so than any of the cartoons were. And Simmons' audition is fascinating because obviously it's like Raimi likes the guy. I think he, you know.

He'd done two movies with him. Right. Was pulling for him and whatever. But you're like, you can tell that Simmons doesn't think he can go this far in the audition.

He assumes. He's trying to put a realistic sheen on it or whatever. And Rami's like, go full Howard Hawks. This is, yeah. I mean, I love, I mean, J. Jonah Jameson is like one of my favorite comic book characters.

It's funny how he's like an Oreo Hydrox thing where you're like Perry White is first, but J. Jonah Jameson is so much better. The ripoff is like so far superior. It is. I love that they do have the detail here that he does stick up for Peter in that crucial moment because the whole thing with J.

Jonah Jameson, he's not really a bad guy as a journalist generally, except that like Spider-Man is this weird blind spot. Right. He cannot get over it. He despises Spider-Man. But like, there's so many good marvel plot lines

where he's kind of like a sort of woodward and bernstein-esque like journalistic figure and i do so i do like that they give him that little moment but obviously he's mostly this cartoon who wants his wife to not you know spend money it's also just you talk about fucking maximum impact freelance he's the best thing in the world for a guy i'll send you some christmas meat love that sorry there's the moment where he does the finger point yes yeah the door which is everything about this it's like that's what's good about screw like full exchange of one sentence each that get it down to one word each and then get it done to just face gesture and just the way this shit stacks and two and three have so much more of him because they're like people love this but it's just two scenes basically

pretty much yeah it's like two scenes i think five minutes of screen time that are so fucking impactful where i just remember that like playing like fucking gangbusters with the crowd where people just like the energy of it was unstoppable every single line every look is getting like a laugh and then you have that thing where he's the what where robbie robertson says like eddie's been trying to get a photo of him all week and fans are like can you believe they almost had him in it right like they they had like a deleted scene or something or they they cast someone to play eddie oh yeah yeah anyway on. No, but that was the kind of thing where you're just like

they really made this for the fans. In one scene, they refer to a guy by his first name. Right. Who we know later is a guy. It's funny how that used to excite me.

And now, like when the MCU does it, I'm like, fuck off. Get the fuck out of here. You know, like in the Winter Soldier when the guy's like,

Doctor Strange. I'm like, I don't stop trying to jerk you sorry i do it was still again this is another one of those things that this movie was really one of the first to do because now it's just every movie and we're sick of it and in this every movie someone loads a database where you see 14 names exactly right and and you know again most movies try to try to avoid all that stuff at the time. You don't want to scare anyone off.

Right. Exactly. So, you know, Spider-Man fights crime. Norman Osborn pushes back against, I will say, quite fairly pushes back against some pretty nasty corporate warfare. Yes. You know, I think he did invent the company. I built this company. It's called Osccorp there's

like we're selling it and you're pretty weird so you're out of the deal but he's still like doing the work he's not just some figurehead he's like in the lab tinkering every night like yeah i mean i will say right i mean there are some downsides such as he takes his own formula makes him insane back to murder no but i'm saying he's not like steve jobs where he's no no he's come up with a goblin post his shirt sleeves are rolled up yes yeah it'm saying he's not like Steve Jobs where he's going to come up with a Green Goblin pose. His shirt sleeves are rolled up. Yeah, it's true. He's burning the midnight oil. He has a fair point.

And that's, look, it's a thing that Raimi is really smart about. Like, just all the characterization in this movie is so clean. But just like the idea that you immediately see the something of a scientist

myself moment hits because Norman loves that he can talk to a fucking kid who gets it. I like the little bits in the dynamic there where he's obviously more he doesn't like his son. He's disappointed in his son. He's sort of interested in Peter. The movie's not going to go 30

minutes into like Norman mentoring him. But there's a nice parallel to how Green Goblin is like, Spiderman, be crazy like me. Kurt Connors and even Octavius in 2 and 3 are much more really guiding him in the early stages. But there is just the thing that he immediately takes a shine to this kid and it immediately makes him resent his own son a little more. Who's this mopey fucking loser who hates how rich he is

and doesn't even know how to make formulas? I just want to... The Green Goblins are... Okay. He's mad that they're going to sell the company and not buy his thing. Right. Then he goes back to formula. He kills them so they can't sell the company. Right. And then he finishes everyone else off at the World Unity Parade.

Right. Turns them into skeletons. Right. After that, he is kind of out of mission. Yes. And so, so again i guess he's just angry at spider-man he's just pissed off at spider-man slash maybe for fucking with him right yeah yeah for yeah and then become sort of like obsessive power i mean he's legitimately insane he's mad he's a mad man sort of fixates on this person but it is a very simple he doesn't you're right he doesn't have a lot of other objectives he actually achieves his goal that's what i'm saying he actually 100 he succeeds but then but

then he keeps going what what is the joker trying to do an 89 batman i can't remember rob art mischief like the same thing with the penguin where he's like i hate everybody he wants to be the mayor at least he does uh i rewatched this the other night he loses the mayoral campaign there's a lot more audio of him speaking disparagingly about the citizens of the town i don't like gotham and then the last third of the movie is just like chaos yes sure no you're right it's sort of it is sort of a trope it is how it goes right it's it's another smart thing that ramey finally does in spider-Man 2 where he's like, let Doc Ock rob some banks.

Let him like, he needs money to build his thing. And he needs to get sacks with dollar bills signed on them. He sure does. From Joel McHale.

Yes. Yeah, no, I'm just like, it's just, Spider-Man solves crime. Obviously, he beats up robbers who tend to wear tight-fitting black clothing

and, you know. Ski masks, right? But there was no Green Goblin end-of-the-world plot. There was no greater thing. He's not trying to destroy New York City. There's no portal opening in space. There's no blue laser beam. It is insane for how

much this felt like the biggest movie in the world at the time, and it was just shorthand for like expensive, overly promoted blockbuster where you're like, it is so gentle in its tone. It has like seven primary characters. Most of them are civilians. Yeah.

Some of the crucial scenes, like you say, are, you know, Mary Jane talking to Peter in the yard, the Thanksgiving scene, you know, the,

the weird dynamics. Even the final showdown happens in like an abandoned greenhouse. They throw each other through some windows my personal favorite sequence is the fire um oh sure when he goes in to rescue the baby and we don't follow him in and ramey just keeps the camera on the mother's face yeah she's freaking out and then he comes out with the baby right you're like holy shit that was so effective and nothing even then of course he goes back in and green cup was wearing an old lady shawl and you know there's plenty of stuff that

doesn't really I just love obviously that but I do something but I the simplicity of the baby and the burning but again you couldn't do But I do something. But I, the simplicity of the baby and the burning, but again, you couldn't do it now. No, no.

Tom Holland does that. It's jokey. It belongs to another age. I think I said this to you, but when I saw no way home and the first two hours, I'm like, yeah, I get it.

I get it. Fine. There's no way home. We understand. He's tried. He's the back end. Imagine if this movie had the pod, no way home where he's's tried he's the back end imagine if this movie had the pod no way home where he's like has to go to dr strange i can't get into college okay i understand but it's not about me it's more about my friends

um have you ever used a potion on a bad holiday party carry on you go you, it's the worst. It's terrible. But, but, I'm sitting there the whole time and I'm just like,

I think Bilger wrote a similar review where he's like, Spider-Man is the most cinematic of all superheroes. Like, his power set is so cinematic.

There's so much you can do with it. Even for how much I think the web movies stink. And a lot of it probably is sort of second unit viz effects design teams. There are like striking images. There's some cool web slinging. And a lot of it probably is sort of second unit viz effects design teams.

There are like striking images. There's some cool web slinging. They get some good things in there, right? And I think the web movies have largely been, I'm sorry, not the web, the fucking, why am I forgetting his name? Watts? Yes, the Watts movies have largely been devoid of that. Low wattage? I'm sorry?

They've been low wattage. Okay. Here we go. Okay. One comedy point. Thank you. The first moment in No Way Home where I got, like, the goosebumps feeling. Yeah.

Was when they're in fucking Ned's grandma's kitchen. Mike Mitchell's least favorite location in the history of cinema. Yeah. And they're like, prove that you're Spider spider-man and he walks up the wall he just and it's just garfield clearly in a fucking harness holding up the wall and it's like the sort of spider-man running to the building coming out like the times where it's spider-man is just on the ground and then like toby has to like take three steps and run and just jump off camera and you don't even see him swing you know like on the rooftop when he's like your friendly neighborhood spider-man and run and just jump off camera. And you don't even see him swing, you know,

like on the rooftop when he is like your friendly neighborhood sweater man. And then he just runs out of frame. There's something about, he jumps over like a trampoline that was very clearly hidden, like just below the, the bushes. You can't see it. The fucking fork being stuck to his hand and the cafeteria,

like these things that are just the simple, it, it still is the stuff that hits the fucking hardest. Well, and Macy Gray. That hits hard. Macy Gray hits hard. I'm trying to think when the backyard scene happens. Between Mary Jane and Peter?

Between Mary Jane and Peter. We're already way past. I know, I know. Is it before Uncle Ben dies? No, it's after Uncle Ben is dead. It's after he's gotten the bite because there's the thing where she's like, you're taller than I realize. And he goes, I slouch, which is somehow the most erotical.

Well, it's right after the fight because he asks how Flash is. Okay, so it's before Uncle Ben dies. Right, right. That moment, I mean, first off, it's just like coming out of the, I don't think they overdo the sort of Watson household shit.

No, but you know. But she plays it very well, and there is that energy of, like, talking to someone when you're witnessing them in the world of emotions. It's a very intimate thing that's, like, you know,

very personal and whatever. There is a line reading that Toby has that every single time makes me want to cry in just how, like, delicate it is where he asks her

what she wants to do, and she's like, it's fucking he asked her what she wants to do. And she's like, it's fucking embarrassing. I want to be an actress. I want to be a bro. And then she starts talking about her dreams. And he says, that's perfect for you.

And she cried at Cinderella. And she said, Peter, that was like kindergarten, fifth, first grade, first grade. And it's still,

it's that, it's even so. He like takes a long time to consider. Such a corny reply. He's not embarrassed at all. Yes. He's like, even so. He doesn't do the, that's awkward thing.

Well, you just know. The nice part too about. You see people and you just know. Yeah. The nice part about that stuff too is kind of like with the burning building is Raimi never goes into that house. No. You just see the dad in the window. You are with Peter. You're observing it. You're overhearing

the snip. So you get the flavor of it. You know what's going on there, but he doesn't, like, it's much more of the observer witnessing it. Here's another thing I love about it. He's not Spider-Man yet. He's been part of this fight. The fight ended up freaking people out more. Even when she brings it up, she was like, quite a display earlier.

Right. She's not into it. It's not that she's now into him because he's Spider-Man. She's sort of noticing him for the first time, even though he's been next door her entire fucking life. But the difference is that he's got a little confidence now. Like for the first time, he has the wherewithal to actually like look her in the eyes and stand in a place and not slouch

and all that sort of shit. It's like it's such a sweet tender quiet scene i agree i mean i don't think dunst has a ton to do in this movie like she gets more in the second one she is very damsel-y in the back half obviously it's also funny that her she's not a redhead in this movie she has red hair yeah it's the color of blood her costumes too are very like that's another thing about this movie that i feel like has red hair. Yeah. Her hair is the color of blood. Her costumes, too, are very, like, that's another thing about this movie

that I feel like has dated. 2000, the midriff. Yeah, a lot of midriff, a lot of cleavage. Yes. A lot of tight shirts. And then, of course,

the iconic, insane kimono thing. Wet t-shirt up to Duncan. Well, that as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, but the Unity Day. The World Unity Day. The way she is sort of

costumed in the hair and that would, that, I mean. Very weird, of costumed in the hair. And that would that. I mean, very weird, by the way, the Harry's like, why aren't you wearing black? My dad loves black. My dad loves talking about. He wants your girlfriend to be in a cocktail dress. Like, what do you what is anyway? So strange.

Can we do a sidebar for a second here? Sure. The Spider-Man action figure line. No boy. Matt has brought a representative. Should I go to the bathroom? No. No, you shan't.

Okay, go on. First of all, I think it was in this weird transitional stage where after this, they were like, oh, we only make the heroes and the villains.

But the Spider-Man action figure line, because the movie was just so fucking anticipated, they did like all the civilian figures. Oh, it's great. So Matt has brought his Peter Parker. Tobey Maguire.

He's doing a web. It's exactly the scene where he's practicing the webs in his room. And he like grabs the can, the Dr. Pepper product placement. With the fucking bookshelf with like individual chess pieces and the lamp and all the things that you could knock down. He has a backpack.

You squeeze it and it shoots, uh, water out of his, his web. Which is smart. That's the smartest way anyone's ever done his fucking web shooting as an action figure. I like that, yes,

it's an action figure of just him in his bedroom with a fucking bookshelf knocking things over, okay? The Mary Jane action figure was her in the kimono and her action feature, because they have to make it exciting

to sell to little boys. She came with the little balcony and he pushed a button and it fell over. It would fall over. She literally just had to- That's very Broadway. It feels like the chandelier in Phantom.

Damsel in Distress. Attachable balcony. It was Damsel in Distress action where you could just mount it on the wall and push a button and have her fall down so Spider-Man could catch her. I mean, yeah. Maybe my favorite action figure of all time, the J.K. Simmons. Oh, I was just going to say, the best one though is the J. Jonah Jameson. It has desk slamming action.

Yes. There's a button on the best one though is the J. Jonah Jameson it has desk slamming action yes there's a bun on the back he slams his fist up and he holds his pointer finger up and they built the desk where it has like little rattling pieces that will actually like

rattle and move right there's like a bottle of heart medication and like a stack of files and whatever and they're attached but loosely

so when he slams it everything shakes that sounds great and there's a fucking Norman Osborn figure that's him just wearing a nice button-down shirt

with rolled-up sleeves and he comes with his comfy chair with the mask on it and the chair yells at him. That's great. It's just an action figure that looks like a dad

and then you just push a button and it goes like, fuck you, Norman. You got back to formula. The heart. I'm trying to think of other things that are happening never made a bone saw though

no that's weird I know especially because maybe yeah maybe Macho Man had a thing did he go over to WWF

at that point no he never went back to WWF he just had both licenses at the same time you're absolutely right actually very weird

I always wanted a bone cell. Can we talk about the kiss? Kisses. Because that's a pretty iconic kiss, I'd say. Huge. I'm looking at you, David. It is iconic. Yeah, you're looking at me because, see,

I don't actually like it as a representation of realistic kissing. It makes no sense. Yeah, an upside down, then right side kiss. And, of course, like, Kirsten Dunst and Toby McGrath talk about, oh, it sucked, the upside down, then right side. And of course, like, Kirsten Dunst and Toby McGrath talk about, oh, it sucked, the water was going up her nose. JJ, like,

had a full page in the dossier about them just being like, truly the most unpleasant, complicated, difficult, technical. And it rained me the whole time. It's just like,

yeah, but it's gonna, it's gonna work. He was right. But he was right, of course. When she peels the mask down, you see,

like, he's got fucking macho man neck we're like yeah it's just weird yes like the blood vessels are popping out and everything's hanging upside down they're pouring water on us like we're kissing on one side the other side we're exhaling because otherwise it's essentially like waterboarding him i always just think though like that is there a sexier moment in superhero movies since then like superhero movies today are so sexless yes that that that kiss as awful as i'm sure it was to film no no it's at least legitimately like there's you there's like some chemistry there there's some 100 and it's just like how how sad is it that 20 years

later i don't know that we've gotten a better like a sexier moment in a superhero well and it's just like how how sad is it that 20 years later I don't know that we've gotten a better like a sexier moment in a superhero well and it's the thing the first four the the guff

Hingle Spider Batman quadrilogy get as well which is like part of the appeal for these women

is the weird costume and shit like the mystery guy thing you know that she's like turned on by the idea of Spider-Man yeah Chase Meridian of course is know? That she's like turned on by the idea of Spider-Man.

Yeah, Chase Meridian, of course, is very into Batman. She's chasing him. She is chasing him and it's Meridian. But that thing where she's like willing to admit to him like, I have a crush on somebody. It's Spider-Man. That whole scene is really great. I already mentioned it, obviously, the monologue he does.

I cannot believe they pulled it. It is. And like you said, I do remember, yes, at the time, like this is the thing. The audience was like, this is too far. Right. Me and my teenage boy friends who went to see it all in a group. We, I'm sure, I'm right, Cameron, you know,

we probably kind of zoned out during that scene. I remember a lot of scoffing at the, you messed with one New Yorker, you messed with all of us, just because it felt very on the nose. Well, and you saw the movie in New York. I saw it in London of course at the Odeon Leicester Square that's weird where I grew up where's that London

because I guess it's May it's early summer so school wouldn't have been over yet early May no indeed and I mean like it's 2016 so we're fairly I feel like it's 16 we're you know we think we're smart well we are a bunch of lads but you know I feel like we're fairly I feel like it's 16 we're you know we think we're smart

well we are a bunch of lies but you know I feel like we're also just like well that was inserted you know because right to try and you know it's a post 9-11 thing right like we felt we felt it as this kind of awkward like right New Yorkers see I saw it regal Union Square

and everyone was six months after 9-11 even if people were groaning they were like come on now I fucking give it to them now i watch it i'm like this is great the whole movie should be this like it's so good new yorkers right every movie like this needs to i feel like the the first avengers is like the only one of the marvel movies that gets a little bit of yeah new yorkie the watts i mean zach cherry doing a flip as the dude in the watch movie right but like the first avengers has the like cap fighting with the cop yeah and what's her pants as the waitress or they try to do a little bit like this is happening right in new york city yeah yeah but it's just i

fucking love all of it in this um i love it more in the second it's sort of interesting that like that you know Jameson hates Spider-Man the newspapers are printing he's a menace and the cops are after him but all the New Yorkers like the true New Yorkers they get it they know he's a good guy you know like I think that's a big part of that it is classic Spider-Man right yeah

I do like when the cop though is like you're under arrest and he's like I'm going up there and the cop's like I'll be here when you get back. I'm not coming back. All right, go, go. I love that. That's really my favorite scene. You know what's funny?

Like, I agree that the Green Goblin, like, there is something about the voice feeling disconnected. Obviously, I'm sure most of that, even though it is Dafoe in the suit, had to be redone just because you can't hear anything through that fucking mask. Right. It helps Spider-Man that Tobey's voice feels disconnected. There's something that feels like a cartoon show about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's a little unreal. Like you don't see his jaw moving. Yeah. Gestures don't perfectly line up, but there's something a little unreal and unnatural about it. Yeah. Whereas the Green Goblin, of course,

is very natural whenever he's on screen. My friend Michaela, this was my 13th birthday party. My birthday Green Goblin, of course, is very natural whenever he's on screen. My friend Michaela, this was my 13th birthday party. My birthday was in February, and I said to my parents, I'm punting my birthday party all the way to May because I want my birthday to be Spider-Man. And so all my friend's parents were like, I thought your birthday was like four months ago. And I was like, it was. I was just waiting for Spider-Man. But I went with a bunch of boys and my friend Michaela.

And she always talks about that rooftop scene where it's like what the fuck is this thing where he's like leaning up against the wall me like listen here spider-man we're not so different you and i he's got that thing where he puts the elbow up it's really a terrible pitch by him he does an awful job being like joint forces but he's really offering nothing except like we should be i won't kill you jj made the tweet about it but the like cancel culture is coming for both you and i you gotta go to patreon um what are some other things apart from the you know you know it ends with the queensborough bridge and then the big fight but is there anything else we're not i have like a more general thing a real thing that I wanted to talk about yeah

which is the thing that I like about well we've said a lot of things that I like about this movie but you know Rami I've been like because I've been re-watching

a lot of his movies not just for this but you know we've got the new one coming out and so I've been re-watching like all of his movies because it's been so long since he's had a new movie

sure that's why we're doing this series right and I've been like wondering if this is a crazy kooky and you can tell me to shut up but i'm almost wondering if if we could give sam raimi credit in a weird way for like invention and inventing torture porn in a very different way go on because all of his movies are about torturing ash and getting off on that obviously it's not as violent it's not as it's cartoony right but his whole vibe is like isn't it fun to to watch this guy

go through hell suffer it is funny that like and it seems like dr strange too is gonna have that vibe a little bit i'm hoping it's like it's but it's you're right it's a little more psychological torture porn even though with things like evil Dead, it will become physicalized. But, I mean, you just get the sense watching Evil Dead 2 and especially Army of Darkness that he's just having – you can hear Sam Raimi laughing from behind the camera at every horrible thing he does to Bruce Campbell. And I think he had the same relationship with Toby. That energy is in this movie. And that energy is in Spider-Man comics is the other sort of thing that i want to get at is like part of the fun quote-unquote of spider-man is watching him be miserable right he's never going

to be successful every issue like when i wrote that book like you go back and reread the classic issues and it's like every issue ends the exact same way spider-man wins but it screws up peter's life and every last panel is peter walking off alone into the distance yeah with a big shadowy Like every issue ends the exact same way. Spider-Man wins, but it screws up Peter's life. And every last panel is Peter walking off alone into the distance with a big shadowy like Spider-Man image watching over him. Which is essentially what this fucking movie is. That's exactly how this movie ends. And it's just like over and over again. It's like it is it is like watching this guy. I think you said like a step forward, two steps back.

And, you know know even little details like watching him getting bashed by bonesaw like you know watch like he gets the and getting the crap kicked out of him at the end of the movie by the green goblin and his his mask is all shredded and he looks horrible the one strand across the face which they also made a toy of yes like that'll ravage spider-man like there is just like he, wallowing in, like, making this guy's life miserable, which is, like, to the core of Spider-Man. It's funny. Yes. I mean, he's inherently a good fit for this material in terms Simple Plan episode, but you realize like almost all of his movies are about people who make one decision or experience like one moment that fundamentally

changes them for the rest of their lives. And in almost every other one of his movies, it is that moment dooms them. Right. You play the tape, you open the book, you find the bag of money, right? Yes. Like a dark man getting burned alive, like all this shit. And then people just become monsters. They lose their they go insane all of that and the difference is with spider-man it is the great power great responsibility the fact that someone says that to him you know and

it's like he's gotten a spider bite he has the moment where he could become a monster and it's checked and then there's this morality in place where it's him still fighting a universe that constantly is fucking with him and fucking him over but he still kind of can't really let go of his fundamental goodness there's a lot of ash like in spider-man like i never really thought about it until sort of recently but like even just like you're saying like the fact that they're both sort of like people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time and sort of one gets bitten and one listens to a tape and they're just sort of set off on this journey that they're totally ill-equipped for in the beginning

and they didn't right they didn't crave they don't want to be like every other movie it's a curse yes yeah and it's still sort of and it's kind of he says it's my gift it's my curse at the end that's the difference right spider-man he's putting the balance in right right i mean it's just this is kind of stuff it's just gift. It's my curse. That's the difference. Spider-Man, he's putting the balance in. Right, right.

I mean, this kind of stuff is just not for the faint of heart. It's not. And someone told you he was running out of time. They lied. There's a thing that was pulled up in the dossier about like, I think when he was filming the gift and working with Blanchett, and he was like, this was such an incredible day.

Do you want to say that? Oh, I can find the quote, but it's him being like, I need an actor. I need a real actor who I can talk to in this way where we have the same language and the same level of interest.

I mean, rude to Freddie Prinze Jr., by the way. I don't think that guy, no, let me find the, I learned after watching Kate perform so well for so long, I decided that's what it's all about. It's about a great actor or actress. That's what I need. That's why I learned after watching Kate perform so well for so long, I decided that's what it's all about. It's about a great actor or actress.

That's what I need. That's why I went after Toby McGuire so hard, harder than I should have. Yeah. Bringing his doorbell at midnight or I don't know. Right. But yeah, like what you say, someone I could talk to in an intimate way

to make sure he understood everything I did. Right. So it was a two-pronged thing where he needed someone who was like that adept, intelligent as an actor, but he also needed to find a Bruce. Like he needed to find someone who could be a collaborator for him

and he could have that same sort of friendliness with. And there's a thing in one of the five billion featurettes I watched where Dafoe is like, I actually like, Toby is good at the thing that I'm not good at, which is I just read the script and do the thing. And Toby is a guy who like obsessively studies the script and internalizes it and ask questions

and pushes back and wants to like, and his performance feels so natural in this movie because I don't really think he's like trying to outwardly act it as much as he's just really thought about everything this guy needs to represent. But that also Raimi can speak to him in broad terms about like, this is the scene where we all get off on your misery.

You know, like you have to be really pathetic here. It has to work as like a color in the palette and all that sort of stuff. And he would like sit down with Jim Norton and be like, you don't like him and you think he stinks. You think he stinks. Like smells. He offends your nostrils. Stink lines.

Wafting around. I'm trying to think of other yeah i mean i really like the thanksgiving scene just because it's bizarre why are they having thanksgiving at their soho loft and not norman's mansion or peter's nice queen's home right and it's also this is the first time he's meeting mary jane. It's like the worst this could possibly go. It doesn't go great. It's clearly for the reason of they, to stage the great moment. Which is great. Which is amazing where he comes in

through the window upstairs and they search for him and Norman thinks, you know, like that's the reason is that you couldn't have him like sneaking around in Norman Osborn's mansion. Like that wouldn't make sense. Also that amazing Raimi transition

where it's like the laughing goblin face engulfed in flames. Transitions into foes. Sort of like heat stroking in the elevator. Some of those, like obviously the explosion to the mortarboards. The mortarboards is so good. But once again, this is like a

scene that's like a weird comedy of manners. Yes. Where most people would play it just for tension of like, I'm sniffing him out. i figuring out his identity instead you have like aunt may knocking which which is norman's hand again hand when he reaches for the candy mac and testify that that weird comedy of aunt may is very present in those early things that like most people would be scared to work into the film i do love her knocking his hand it's very yeah and then his look where you're like is is he going to murder her? Yeah.

Of course he does try to murder her later, basically. He blows up her house. The carving of the turkey, him with the knife, and then like, right, the thing where he steps outside

and it's like so fucking awful the way he talks about Mary Jane. He's like, have your fun, then dump her, you know? Broom her, is what he says. Broom her.

Like, just fucking, like, get Sandman at the Apollo out to give her the fucking dance off. And when he mentions the ravening wolves. Yeah. That has to be the only movie in Hollywood history where someone talks about ravening wolves. Like, what a fucking awful evening for Mary Jane.

And by the way, they never even really got to eat. Yeah, they didn't eat. That's very frustrating. They don't even eat. He leaves Thanksgiving with 40 food. It's a good looking turkey. Yeah. And I love the fucking consolatory phone call that Harry does afterwards

where he's just like such a putz. Like he doesn't know what to say. Franka's just really good. He's really good at being weird. Yeah, weirdo. Can I buy you? Yeah. I think the other one other thing that that's like a rain, the rainy part that I really like is rain the the ramey

part that i really like is especially like as we're talking about the ending like the intensity of like the punches yes uh is something that again like i don't think you like you really feel how hard they're supposedly hitting each other i don't know if it's the zooms if it's the editing and the sound effect whereemy's so fucking good at sound effects for impact. People, you know, like Peter gets punched and he flies halfway across the building. And it's just like, the movies today, maybe it's because it's all CGI

and it's less stuntmen, or it's more intricately choreographed and it's a lot of flipping and spinning. This is just like people punching each other. And it's a lot of coverage. They shoot these things a thousand fucking ways, which means you can be less specific about it because you need it to be a little more modular

for the pieces. And Raimi always shoots for the edit. Like he edits in camera. The precision. And it's like this one shot is only going to work for this one punch. And I'll take four hours to set it up because it will matter.

Yeah, even though it's a PG-13 movie, there's like an intensity of like an Evil Dead movie in like the punching. Yeah, again, two ups the ante with that, right? Like the hospital scene or something. Yeah, like he's a little more free to do that stuff. There's a default line I love where he's like, you know, we weren't sure how the goblin was going to move

and I did like Muay Thai and I did all these different martial arts techniques. We were trying everything and then ultimately it all looked a little goofy. So Green Goblin ended up being more your mean potatoes, punching and kicking guy. Puncher. He's a big puncher.

A mean potatoes punch. What do you guys think of the, I feel like it was a real trope at the time that, you know, the gliders coming at Green Goblin. Yeah. And then we cut to like a separate shot of Willem Dafoe going oh and then like it kills

and like they did that in a bunch of movies what do we think of that in this it's so effective it's very effective I think because he doesn't say it in a jokey way

it's truly like oh and I really like him afterwards saying don't tell Harry that's the part I love that's the thing don't tell Harry

yeah which is again another huge like Spider-Man-y thing where it's like he's defeated his enemy but now he has he feels responsible enough that he's going to obey the wishes of this lunatic and ruin his relationship absolutely tell harry yes yeah he's got it and instead he ruins his relationship with his best friend and dooms like there then he's going to become the goblin himself and yada yada yada. It's just like awesome. It's just funny. I feel like

the whatchamacallit. Glider? No, the what is it? The tram. Oh, the Roosevelt Island tram. Like that moment, the bridge, I feel like that was sort of being like positioned in the trailers and everything as like the big

final action. Yeah, of course. Because you're also echoing the like Green goblin dropping Gwen Stacy are they gonna fucking do this why'd they flip the order of the girlfriends kind of thing and it is like it does then just transition to these two guys in like a pretty compact space just exchanging blows and then the death is so intimate like he gets a fucking inch away from this guy who is sadly telling him not to What does he say right before he kills him is it it's not goodbye peter it's like sayonara no it's not what the i can't remember now i'll say the quotes page for this movie is 47 pages you're kidding me

uh shit i can't remember well whatever i just like the way his face changes and he's gonna kill him right it's also the great thing where he says you know thank when he pretends to be norman one last time that's right that's he says thank god for you peter and then of course harry repeats that at the at the funeral and says thank god for you peter you're the only family i have like that's another really lovely like touch as well it is it's it's good stuff it is just kind of incredible though watching this where you're like man two just takes the ball and runs with it like it unpacks everything that this movie set up well and just expands where i'm like rosemary harris is so good in this and you're like right but in like two they give her like these fucking scenes and like jay jones jameson has like several bits you know and harry's really angry

two is better than this movie in every way but you know this movie was proof of formula or whatever or proof of proof of concept back to formula back to back to formula no it's funny because nothing else is really like this but i think the thing that everything cribbed from this is oh we don't have to be embarrassed we can do the faithful version of it you try to represent what the comic actually is and work as many of the true details is when you're reading those fucking pitches of like the different developed versions there's like

the 1984 version of the movie was like a guy gets bit by a spider and he turns into a spider monster he turns into a tyrannical

right like they wanted Spider-Man as a movie to be the fly right their sort of initial idea of maybe Toby Hooper directs it

will make it for 10, 20 million dollars. Right. You know. Yeah. I mean it's just a sign of how these things

changed in the eyes of Hollywood which is not crappy genre pictures. It's going to be a marquee movie. It's going to have a soundtrack

that we should briefly discuss. Music from and inspired by. Now what's interesting about this is almost none of these songs are from the movie.

So does Hero play over the credits? And credits. And credits, yeah. And I think the only other song that was written for this, or at least was unique to this, was the Sum 41 song, What We're All About.

What We're All About. Right, which had, that had a Spider-Man video as well. But, like, the other 10 tracks. Did you like Sum 41, Ben? Did you think they were all killer no-filler? Yeah. I saw right through their asses. Exactly. but like the other 10 tracks. Did you like some 41 Ben? Did you think they were all killer? No filler. Yeah, I saw right through.

I must've seen the music video for fat lip 4 million. I'm always on MTV. I'm just putting together now that Avril Lavigne married both of these guys, Chad Kroger and Derek Wibley, Derek Wibley, Derek Wibley. She must've fucking loved this album.

She just, well, cause now she's going to marry Julian Casablanca or, wibbly yeah derrick wibbly she must have fucking loved this album she just well in the neck well because now she's gonna marry uh julian casablanca or um the guy from alien and farm right yeah the guy from alien and farm she's gonna marry him she's gonna go down the list this is what i find funny about the soundtrack is that they claim its music from and inspired by which was a trick that these soundtracks were doing all the time now where it's like batman was like we're gonna have a seal track and a u2 track and a smashing pumpkins track and maybe not all of them are in the movie right this they had like two songs that were for the movie and then they just

picked 10 songs that were big in like there's a hive song that's already come out in other albums right they're just songs it's just a mixtape but as we were saying before recording it's like thank god that they didn't try to show they insulate the movie can you read the full list quickly uh we've got a theme from spider-man classic yeah that's right the cartoon show themes hero by chad kroger featuring josie scott josie scott from uh the band saliva correct i just like that it's also not a nickelback song it's like we picked two guys from different well because the nickelback guys did not want to be a part of that. Yeah, they were embarrassed by it. Nickelback and say, yeah,

what we're all about by some 41 featuring Kerry King from Slayer. Oh, learn to crawl by Black Lab, right? I think they picked that because it has crawling. Sure. Somebody else by blue, blue,

blue, bug bites by alien. And this was right. They just anything that had a buzzword, something called blind by a Canadian rock band called Default. Okay. Something called Bother by Corey Taylor, who is from Slipknot. Okay.

Shelter from Green Wheel. I truly don't know what some of this is. Then When It Started by The Strokes, which is the... So bizarre. It's the song that's not on Is This It, but then got put on Is This It when they took out New York City cops post 9-11. Yes, it was on the American version, David. Yeah, it's not on the British version, which is the one

I owned, which is also the one that has the This Is Spinal Tap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hate to say I told you so by the highest which is truly just like a rock song of the moment. Yeah, right. All these songs were like in circulation. Invisible Man by Theory of a Dead Man. the moment. Yes. Yeah. Right. All these songs were like in circulation. Invisible Man by Theory of a Dead Man.

So many Canadian bands. Yeah. Pete Yorn's undercover. So bizarre. There's a lot of Chad Kroger credits. If you look at the- Yeah, you're right. You're right. He wrote a lot of these songs.

He wrote Invisible Man. He produced a lot of these songs. So he's kind of the mogul. It was just a Chad produced. Yeah. He's getting your guys in here, Chad. We need 21 tracks. So- Yeah. they must have just said

Bring in who you got Who else do you have Of course Macy Gray Performing my nutmeg fantasy Which I guess is Tom Morello With Tom Morello Angie Stone

And Moe's Deaf I just remember Even when they announced Like the Injected A band called Injected Had a song When they announced

The Garfield reboot People were, they're rebooting already? It just so happened. And I'm like, the first Spider-Man movie has Macy Gray doing a concert. It wasn't just... Enough has changed culturally. You can reboot this. Yeah. And then theme from Spider-Man by Aerosmith.

What's going on there? It's just Aerosmith doing a cover of the cartoon Spider-Man theme. And of course, as a tribute to this film. Is there lyrics? Spider-Man. It's like Steven Tyler singing does whatever a spider can. As a tribute to this film, Weird Al on his album

Poodle Hat has the song Ode to a Superhero where he recites the plot of this film to the tune of Piano Man. I like it. This, though, we were listening before you got here, Griffin, to some of this album and it's truly some of the worst music. It's terrible. I remember having it.

I had the album with the lenticular cover and I was like, gotta have the Spider-Man soundtrack and then the only thing I ever listened to was the two tracks of Elfman's score. Right, right at the end. And at some point I found out like, oh, I could just buy that. You can get that. I don't need this fucking dumb mix CD. It's also available. Yeah. I'll just

listen to the whole score. It really puts you right back into 2002. When you put it on, it was like, wow, I am right back working at a comic book store and... And then, I mean, we'll talk about it, but like, album two is mostly emo. It's got the Dasport Confessional song and album three, the single is Snow Patrol.

And it's very indie rock. And apparently Kirsten Dunst had more of a hand in it. It includes a Coconut Records song by Jason Schwartzman. Yeah. Anyway. The other thing we have to mention is that this film opened to $114 million. I mean, and historic. It was the first over 100.

Which I think nerds like us were just like, can it ever happen? It can't be done. People thought Harry Potter might do it. Well, obviously James Cameron's Aquaman beat this number a couple years later. But later. It's within the entourage universe.

No, but I remember the whispers of people being like, is fucking Harry Potter going to make $100 million? Right, and it made like 90 something or whatever. Right, and then we all went, I guess it's within the entourage universe no but I remember the whispers of people being like is fucking Harry Potter gonna make $100 million and it made like 90 something or whatever and then we all went I guess it's mathematically impossible I guess if it couldn't be done and the fact that it not only did it but it did it with like 14.7 114.8

million dollars a per screen average of $31,000 which is very high for a movie it changed everything it changed very high for a movie yeah no it was just it changed everything it changed how much money

a movie could make yeah it changed how little embarrassment you need to have over the thing you were adapting made $821 million

globally there was no shame in being an actor and doing a thing like this $821 million would be a very healthy total worldwide now

today I mean yeah this is obviously 20 years ago even the opening21 would be a very healthy total worldwide now. Today. I mean, yeah. This is obviously 20 years ago. I mean, 100, even the opening weekend would be a great number now. Fucking Dumbledore's

mystery barely crawled to 40. There was that funny thing for so long where it was like Titanic was 600 and then through multiple releases

like E.T. and original Star Wars were both in the 400 range. This movie did like 400 on the nugget. No movie could get to 500. No.

It was Dark Knight, right? Dark Knight finally did like 520 or 540 or whatever and petered out but there was like a run. Yeah, this was the

biggest movie in a very long time. But what was the second biggest movie of this weekend, Griffin, at the box office? Okay, it's a great question.

Now, I know Insomnia is in this five or does that come out the Attack of the Clones weekend? Yeah, Insomnia is not in this five. Okay, it's a great question. Now, I know Insomnia is in this five, or does that come out the Attack of the Clones weekend? Yeah, Insomnia is not in this five. Okay, I'm sorry. Number two at the box office had been number one

for the previous two weeks. And it's a film we've covered on this podcast on Patreon. It's a Patreon movie that we've covered in the year 2002. Speaking of Bonesaw McGraw, this film also features a wrestler.

It's the Scorpion King? It's the Scorpion King. Oh. Spider-Man, Scorpion King was pretty sure he was going to get a third week at number one, but Spider-Man knocked him off.

You're like, what do you think we're going to do in our weekend? 600 times? The Scorpion King. Did you see the Scorpion King in theaters? Oh, absolutely.

I saw the Scorpion King. Yes. I definitely saw it in the theater for sure. Yeah. Scorpion King's in it. He is. He is in it. Above the title. Yeah. Grant Heslov also in it, of course. Of course. Number three at the box office is a well-done adult

drama. And we probably discussed some of these on our Scorpion King episode. Yeah. It's a well-done adult drama. It's chasing lanes. And changing lanes changing chains of course ben affleck and samuel jackson getting a traffic accident that's a movie is amanda that's a summer movie yeah pete's in it right yeah are we in the pete zone with that one tony collette sydney pollock william hurt yeah richard Tony Collette Sidney Pollack William Hurt Richard Jenkins Dylan Baker I'm going and I'm seeing names

I bet Sidney Pollack is weary and gives some tough lessons that people don't want to hear I saw it in theaters and liked it I was 16 years old Roger Michelle

this is the kind of stuff this one I did not see in theaters fair enough I saw the Scorpion King did you see the hit murder mystery that's number four

but not a hit actually murder by numbers murder by numbers with Sandra Bullock Ryan Gosling I don't think I've ever Did you see the hit murder mystery that's number four, but not a hit actually. Murder by Numbers? Murder by Numbers with Sandra Bullock, Ryan Gosling. I don't think I've ever seen Murder by Numbers. It's not that good, but it's okay. It's not accurate or that good? That good. That good.

I don't think it's accurate either. It's not medically accurate anyway. I just think it's a weird 100%. Murder by Numbers. Have you seen Murder's a weird... 100%. Murder by numbers. Have you seen Murder by Numbers? No, I haven't. My main knowledge of it is just that weirdly Bullock

and Gosling dated after that movie. Right. Even though she's quite a bit older than him. That's not what I think is weird. I don't put that judgment on me. You support that. That's your own opinion. Yeah.

Number five of the box office... He was very young at the time. ...is a basically forgotten romantic dramedy starring a very major actor who's not yet she's not yet uh super famous well actually yes she is she's an academy award-winning actress what she is that makes her pretty famous because she is famous i forgot that this is 2002 yeah she's won her os. She's won her Oscar. It's not Halle Berry. It's not Gwyneth Paltrow. No.

She won a supporting actress Oscar. Is it Life or Something Like It? It's Life or Something Like It. Yes. With Ed Burns, Tony Shalhoub, and of course, Angelina Jolie. Never seen it.

Don't know. It's one of those movies with a title where you're like, what the fuck is this about? That movie no longer exists. I believe she's a TV reporter who doesn't care about other people and she's mean to a homeless man played by

Tony Shalhoub and he's like, I place a curse upon you. He's a prophet. In 24 hours. And it's how do I spend my last 24 hours? Right. But the big thing was her being blonde. She's blonde. She's got kind of like a Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe hairdo. I can sort of visualize Other movies in the top 10

The Rookie, Dennis Quaid pitches Brian Cox. Good movie. Grovels A new release Deuces Wild. Oh yeah Don't know what that is. Franco All the young men Franco, Renfro Steven Dorff

Dorff was the mirror thing. Yeah. Furlong Is Furlong in that? Frankie Muniz is a character Called Scooch Yeah he's the kid Balthazar Getty Yep all these guys Number eight An animated film

That I went to see To see a specific trailer This is in Britain remember I believe the trailer Was attached to something else In America Huh Was it

You went to see A specific trailer Yeah I took my brother To see it No It wasn't Attack of the Clones trailer It was the Attack of the Clones trailer That's why You went to see a specific trailer? Yeah. I took my brother to see it. It wasn't Attack of the Clones trailer.

It was the Attack of the Clones trailer. That's why it was attached to Ice Age. Okay. I'm thinking like Fox, right? Ice Age is still hanging in there. And David, can you scroll down and tell me what My Big Fat Greek Wedding is doing this weekend? My Big Fat Greek Wedding is in week three and has made $2.5 million. Everyone's happy people

cannot believe how well this movie has done you've also got Jason X yes an underrated film in my opinion I don't know how you feel about Jason X Matt I've read your Friday

the 13th list but I can't remember it off hand yeah I feel like you've done one I definitely have done one I mean I think we agree that six is really good six is the is the

is the really fun one is the belay of the Friday franchise. I agree panic room. Of course, what Fincher actually does. Yes, I was going to say, yes, actual 2002 movie different David Capsoni and then opening this week to Rex Reed's Eternal Delight

Hollywood ending number 11. Yeah, those are the you got the sweetest thing remember the sweetest thing yeah i'll they see a penis song i gave that a spin recently oh did you you went for the ultimate no no no not a good movie no no because that's one of those things where people were like are we ready for a female driven raunchy comedy right and we were not like you cannot have women do dirty things right they

can't talk about it i was like i'd like to watch this in a post bridesmaids uh landscape and see if this holds up and it's like no this bomb because it was bad it was bad that's a very bad bad unfunny and unpleasant you can't just have women be dirty and be like we did it like i have no further work it doesn't have to be well it. It's in that post-Fairly Brothers American Pie thing where it truly feels like they have 15 scientists going like, what are the sex organs, bodily fluids, what are things that could happen? Weirdest thing about the strangest thing.

She's got a tongue stud and she gives a guy a blowjob. The dick gets caught on the piercing and you're like, this all is... That's the whole post-American Pie. Can we reverse engineer scenes? Yes, it's all that and none of them really make sense

based on the life of Kate Walsh the actress right and Nancy Pimento who wrote it Pimento Jimmy Kimmel's

Win Ben Stein money replacement everyone thought it was going to be a hot screenwriter she was like I'm just going to write a movie

about me and Kate Walsh hitting the bars going out getting fun and they were like it's alright it's a go picture I want to love that movie I would I would enjoy the shit of it if we're even half good and it is uncomfortable named

after a you to song yeah that's another thing the title doesn't fit Thomas Jane and Jason Bateman are the guys in it I'll watch it someday yeah Roger Cumble picture all right well I kind of I mean I like just friends mean, I like Just Friends. That's the other reason I would watch it.

I like Cruel Intention. Okay, yeah. What's up? Three hours. Yeah, we're done. We're done. We're done. Great.

Let's wrap it up. Spider-Man. Spider-Man. Just do Bonesaw one more time. Yeah, let's go out on Bonesaw. But we should thank our guests. I got you for three seconds.

Minutes. You're going nowhere. Three minutes. I just like when he does the you're going nowhere, he like looks around both sides. It just feels like he's not real. Like he can't move. Like he's an action figure or something.

Right. He's got limited points of arc. His hair is magnificent. Everything about him is incredible. Matt, as the person who wrote the book on Spiderman, are there any final thoughts? Any things you think this movie does well or that since you will

not be on our sequel episodes you want to say about the rest of the franchise yeah how do you feel about three these days you know I I think that three

has a little bit of a bad rap I'll be looking forward to hearing what you guys have to say I think we all agree I don't think it's I mean it's obviously the worst of the three

it's very messy but it has a lot I think it has a lot of things to like about it I look what I said to David and I haven't rewatched it in full in a very long time, but what I said was like, it still

has that thing where like when you're watching a shitty MGM Golden Age Maneli or Donnan movie, where you're just like, it's got sequences that are as good as what anyone can make, even if the whole thing doesn't fucking hang together. Totally. And you can feel all the studio. Maybe not the ultimate spin. Maybe not the ultimate. But it's close.

It takes you on a spin. Right. David exhaling loudly. I'm ordering myself some lunch. You know, I have another podcast I have to do.

You have another podcast to do? Yeah. I mean, I've had a long week, guys. I know no one, this is coming out in a month or whatever,

but just for the listeners. This story, I've had a long week. Not for the faint of heart. David's week has not been for the faint of heart. But yeah week has not been for the faint of heart yeah

but yeah no we're all done though where are you gonna get lunch what are you doing for lunch I'm gonna pick up a sandwich on my way home what kind

probably a baguio probably an Anthony and Sons I was gonna suggest that we go to that new place or that place I can't today maybe another time

it's David you're gonna love it I'm excited what's the place called oh you don't wanna say I don't wanna say he doesn't wanna I don't wanna blow up

it's spot is too good. Right. We'll take it for an ultimate spin sometimes. Matt, people should buy your Spider-Man. Sure. Absolutely. From amazing to spectacular. Anything else you want to plug? Yeah, I mean, Screen Crush is the website

I work for. Absolutely. I mean, that's about it. You're working on something, but you can't talk about it. I'm working on a new book. I mean, I can talk about it if you really want to's about it You're working on something but you can't talk about it I mean I can talk about it if you really want to talk about it Are you writing a book on Venom? I wish He's got a bad attitude

I'm working on a book about the other great odd couple of our time which is Siskel and Ebert Not Venom and Eddie Brock Very up Griffin Street I feel like this movie didn't have the same level of like insane Not Venom and Eddie Brock. Very up Griffin Street. Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say, I feel like this movie didn't have the same level of like insane

Franken foods that you so often write about. You know, it's funny that you mentioned. There were the Pop-Tarts which were actually really good. I was just about to say, I loved Spider-Man Pop-Tarts. Wildberry Pop-Tarts. No one was paying me to eat that. Or Spider-Berry, whatever.

Spidey Berry. Spidey Berry. Frosted Spideyberry. Right, and they had little like sort of spider-shaped parallels on the webs. They were red pastry with blue frosting with gray webs. They were delicious. They were phenomenal. And I even think they brought them back for the first Garfield,

but they should bring them back now. I think they have brought them back, but they didn't make them look as ridiculous. They were literally red moon. Sort of an ecto-cooler thing. Did you immediately get purple diarrhea after ingesting one? No, I don't. They were good. They were literally red, blue, and gray. Sort of an ecto-cooler thing. Did you immediately get purple diarrhea after ingesting one? No, I don't. They were good.

They were good. They weren't a problem. They were so good that when I sensed they weren't a problem. Matt knows from weird color diarrhea.

No one was forcing me to eat these terrible things for people's amusement at this point. This was just doing it because they tasted good and I loved Spider-Man. A cereal that I remember

being exactly the same as honeycombs. I never had-Man. A cereal that I remember being exactly the same as Honeycombs. I never had the cereal. I remember, what I remember is when the, when the, when I sensed that it was like a month or two out from the movie, I was like,

we're going to, they're going to get rid of these Spidey Berry. Yeah. So you, you stockpiled. I literally went to the store and bought every box and then like savored them over a period of a couple of months. There was a fucking Batman versus Superman,

Dawn of Justice cereal. That was like, Justice cereal that was like the Batman one was like strawberry peanut butter or something and after that movie underperformed I went to a dollar store

and bought like it was fucking good. Yeah. I wish I had some right now. It tasted like peanut butter and jelly. No it tasted like justice. The dawning.

Well it did. The dawning of justice. Well at the dawn I wake up in the morning I would love some Spidey Berry Pop-Tarts right now bring it back

bring it back yeah bring them back Matt thank you for being here my pleasure and thank you all for listening long overdue you I mean

it is one of those things look this was a perfect way to bring you back for but sometimes we look at the books and we're like Planet of the Apes five years ago what the fuck are we doing

we're sorry four years whatever it's been I I don't know. Time doesn't make sense anymore. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping make the podcast and a bunch of other ways.

Joe Bone, Pat Reynolds for our artwork. Lane Montgomery, the Great American Elf for our theme song. J.J. Birch and Nick Lariano for research. A.J. McKee and Alex Barron for editing. I think that's everybody. Go to blankcheckpod.com for links to a lot of nerdy shit.

You can go to patreon.com slash blankcheck where we are now done with The Matrix and we're doing hashtag not all Batman, all the Batman movies we haven't covered before, i.e. the ones not directed by Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan. Tune in next week for, let me check my notes here, Spiderman 2. Still for my money, the best superhero movie ever.

I'm excited to rewatch it. And as always, if someone told you this was an ordinary podcast they would hey freak show you're going nowhere