House of R - ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Deep Dive Analysis

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

A note up top: This episode contains content that details the entire MCU. Proceed with caution! Your friendly, neighborhood Ringer-Verse gang is here to break down the latest in the Spider-Man series, ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home.' The duo discuss Spider-Man as a character and his many iterations (24:00), overall plot points (1;02:00), their thoughts and predictions for future installments (1:49:50), and more.  Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Associate Producer: Lani Renaldo  Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production: Steve Ahlman, TD St. Matthew-Daniel, and Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From reviews to rankings, the big picture is all things movies. From in-depth analysis of the latest flick to sit-down interviews with some of the biggest movie stars and filmmakers on the planet, Sean Fennessee and Amanda Dobbins have got you covered. Check out The Big Picture on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trimphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

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Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. We started getting some visitors from every universe. Greetings. And welcome into the Ringerverse here on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin. And it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only to the Midtown School of Science and Technology, but also to join us on the Ringers Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom.

Joining me now via Slingering Portal! It's my House of Our working title, co-host, my favorite web crawler. ringer senior staff writer joanna robinson joe what's up oh my god hello mallory this is what i have to say about our friendship even if i were ever to forget you via some sort of magical spell i will still wear a shard of venetian glass that you bought me on our school trip around my neck is that because it reminds you of me or the murder both touching touching either way that's Really beautiful. That's lovely. Joe, we have a big show today.

We are, of course, here to chat about the cinematic event of the season of the year. Spider-Man, no way home. Let's quickly issue some programming reminders before we swing into things. It is another busy stretch on the ringer-verse feed. A lot of pods. The Midnight Boys, Dan and Charles. Poo-Pew! Do you do you.

I already have their No Way Home instant reaction pot up for you. And they went house of our length on this one. Two hour instant reaction. That's how much there is to talk about. Listen to that if you have not already. The Midnight Boys will be back in mere days. They will be with you on Wednesday with their instant reaction thoughts on the Hawkeye finale because somehow the Hawkeye finale is already here.

What is time? I don't know. then we will be back on Friday with our Hawkeye finale Deep dive. Keep an eye out for some Matrix chat on the feed as well. And then, of course, head back next week because it's Star Wars time. Next week is the Boba Fett premiere and we will be here with you to dive in. How can you follow all of that, Joanna? I'm so glad you out.

I could tell you we're about to ask. How can everyone follow that? Where? Follow the pot. On Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Follow our social feeds. The ringerverse is on Twitter. The ringer verse is on Instagram. The ringer versus on Facebook. And of course, one more note. And this is a big one today. I mean, it's always a big one, but it's a really big one today. in mind our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. We will be going into great detail on the plot of Spider-Man, no way home, and we will be doing it right from the jump. So if you have not seen the film, please come back and listen to this pod after you have. We will be talking about the entire MCU run to date, including some Hawkeye talk. We're going to get into some Hawkeye talk later. So keep that in mind as you go. We are going to be talking about all of the Sony Spider-Man movies. We're going to be talking about Marvel, Spidey, comics, canon, all of it.

This is a vast and sprawling spoiler warning. So please proceed with caution. Proceed with more caution than Peter did when he asked Dr. Strange to amend his spell. Okay. Okay. Programming notes issued. Quick question for you. Web shooters at the ready?

Wait, wait, quick, quick overarching ring reverse question for you. Yes. I know you were so excited to talk about Book of Boba Fett. It feels far away because we've got like 90 shows to record before then. But you're so excited to talk about Book Bovette. I'm also excited to talk to you about it. I'm going to drop you this prompt now. Hopefully you can talk about it for a Hawkeye episode.

Can you give me like a primer of like what I should watch to get ready for BovaFet on the Hawkeye episode in a couple days? Absolutely. I'm putting in that request now. Absolutely. Great idea. I want to get on your level. I'll need you to remind me between now and then. I will remind you.

I want to get on your level, Mallory. Great idea. I'd love to introduce you to 140-some episodes of Cloud Wars. You have time for that in the next week and a half? I'm asking you to... Give you a more targeted list than that. Guide me through 140 episodes of Club Wars. Anyway, we're here to talk about Spider-People.

Let's do it. My Boba prep list for you will just be showing you pictures of my boba-legal helmet. No, I'll give you an actual list. It'll be great. This is going to be fun. We get to talk about Star Wars together. What a joy. What a time.

Can't wait. One more thing, actually, before we start today. Got a shout out, Lonnie. Lonnie Ronaldo is here with us today to produce this episode, helping out on the ringerverse. What a first ringerverse episode. Lonnie, here's our promise to you. And by promise, I mean, we're going to try. We're not going to go longer than the runtime of the film.

Okay? If we do, we can ask Dr. strange to cast a spell so that everyone forgets I ever said this. Lonnie, I hope you're well hydrated. Let's do it. Let's go. Okay. We are here to talk about Spider-Man, No Way Home, directed by John Watts, written by Chris McKenna, Eric Summers, directed, of course, by, I already said directed, produced by Kevin

Feige and Amy Pascal, a joint Sony Disney Venture runtime, 148. minutes. This is, of course, the fourth film of phase four, 27th, MCU film overall, starring quite a cast, including some delightful surprises. We have so much to hit on today, but as always, we're going to start with some big picture thoughts, not to be confused with the big picture podcast, where you can also listen to some Spider-Man No Way Home Doc. Overall impressions, Joe, a snapshot of your thoughts and your feelings, all of which we will return to in more depth throughout the discussion today. How'd you feel about No Way Home?

Well, I will just say, so if people have been listening to us talk about this leading up to the release, you will know that I was deeply cynical and skeptical doing my full MJ skepticism vibe going up into this. And then most of the Ringervverse folks, everyone else actually, the Ringerverse, saw this a day before me. And so I was so eager. Oh, I missed you. I was so eager to hear what they thought. And even the most, like, even my co-skeptics liked it.

So that put me in a skeptical but hopeful place when I saw it at the press screening that I went to on a Tuesday. And you guys went to a really rowdy-packed screening. Mine was the usual San Francisco quiet, socially distant, 10 people in a room screening. So not the same experience. However, I loved it. And I cried as I texted you afterwards. I, like, wept into my mask for half the movie. And that's how I feel.

And would I say, I mean, A, I think my low expectations helped me love it, honestly. And B, I would say that have I thought about a lot of details that don't make sense in the ensuing days? Do I have issues with some of the story elements? Yes. But I'm not going to ding it for that. We're going to talk about it. But I'm not going to ding it for that because they landed it emotionally. And that's ultimately for me.

matters at the end of the day. So they got, they landed all the emotional beats they needed to get me fully invested in the story. And so I have a lot of praise for this film. They did it. Mallory Rubin. What's your, I know, I mean, I listened to the big picture pod, so I already heard your big picture thoughts, but I want to hear your big picture thoughts here on our show right now. Joanne, I loved the movie. I loved it so much. It was a delight and a joy. And sincerely, it's something that I will remember seeing and feeling for quite some time. I mean, getting to see this again, you were sincerely, deeply miss. Getting to see it with most of the Ring or Verse family was such a treat.

And, you know, I knew how I was feeling about the movie watching it. A lot of laughter, a lot of tears, a lot of gasps, a lot of clutching the arms of the people sitting on either side of me. And in the instant moments after debriefing, two things were clear to me. Charles liked the movie a lot and Amanda liked the movie a lot. And that was why I knew that they had done it.

Wild. To Sean, they got Charles, they got Dobbins, they fucking did it. And they did, they did it. I love the movie so much. I mean, there were so many moments that I will remember like exactly where I was and who I was with

and how it felt to see them for the first time and to experience them in the theater. Like this was, you and I've discussed this before, but this was for me probably the first, boy, am I glad I saw that in the theater with a lot of people sharing that moment together experience for me in a couple of years now. The portal opening, Andrew Garfield coming through,

the three Spider-Men swinging together, the look on Peter's face when he doesn't tell him, when he doesn't read the letter at the donut shop on and on the list goes, there were so many impactful, powerful moments in the movie. And broadly, it felt like, I think the way that it concluded is an on-ramp to a number of fascinating possibilities for future installments, which we will obviously discuss later and speculate about later. But it felt like a culmination and a celebration, not only of the MCU Spider-Man

trilogy. But of all the Spider-Man films before, more broadly of Spider-Man as a character, recognition of why fans love this character and this part of the superhero universe so much. And it was just a splendid thing to be able to watch and share together. I'm delighted. I was nervous and I am so, so, so relieved and thrilled and delighted. And guess what? We're not the only people who like the movie. It's a smash it. Well, yeah, it's it because both you and I think Steve said this on The Midnight Boys and I do like, I don't know if envies the word, but I do think that, you know, that added theatrical thrill of people hooting and hollering at certain spots. There's only one hoot and holler in my screening and it was like when Charlie Cox appeared. And I think that person was like,

oh, I'm the only one hooting. I won't hoot again. You know what I mean? So it was like a pretty quiet screen, but I still, I think I probably would have, I don't know, I don't know if I could have loved it more because I really, they got me emotionally and that's like what I was looking for. And maybe, maybe my closest analog in the last, in the post-COVID, except we're not post-COVID, but like in the, we're going back to theater's phase is Dune, where I felt this like theatrical shock and awe of seeing Dune. But, but yeah, I mean, I'm so glad you guys had the hooting and the hooding and the Howling, tell me how much money this movie, how grossly we underestimated it when we predicted the box office last week.

Yeah, the studios are hooting and hollering. That's for sure. It's true. The numbers are massive. No Way Home netted $260 million domestically, $340.8 million internationally, $600.8 million globally. That's the second biggest domestic box office. opening ever and the third biggest global opening behind Endgame and Infinity War. That is astonishing.

The reception is also matching the box office. This is an incredibly well-reviewed film. Critics love it. Fans love it. There seems to be a lot of shared euphoria. I think that the relief aspects that you mentioned going in maybe with some healthy skepticism, that MJ-esque idea in the movie itself, you know, if you're expecting to be disappointed, the fact that they pulled it off and that this felt so fully realized.

And I think there is this larger sense of like all of us being able to just say, hey, look how wonderful this thing is. They did it. What an amazing marker not only for the MCU and the superhero genre, but what this might mean moving forward. And that's one of the things I was curious to ask you about because there have been, you know, I think I've enjoyed phase four so far. You know, I love the Disney Plus shows,

so that's really helped my phase four experience overall. But I think that there's been some, oh, how is phase four going? Yeah. Shatter, right? Yeah. Out there in the viewing public. How big of a deal do you think this movie's success is? And I'm curious for your perspective in two different lanes here.

For the movie industry, more broadly. Yeah. But also for the vibes around the way phase four is taking shape. And, you know, within that, too, the Sony of it all. Because obviously this is not just a Disney MCU vehicle. This is a joint venture with Sony, which is in the midst of unspooling and expanding its own Spider Universe.

Yeah. The movie industry question is complicated because it's, this comes off. the disappointing box office returns for West Side Story, massively disappointing box office returns for West Side Story that had people really worried about the future of theaters. And I think this, despite this being a big win for Sony and Disney, this still has people worried about the future of movie theaters because it's not that people aren't coming out to the movie theaters at all. It's that they aren't coming out to anything but a big spectacle movie. And that I love a big spectacle movie. We do a whole podcast, long podcast about them and I love them. But like,

like most movie fans, I would like a variety to be able to live and thrive at the, this is the doom and gloom sort of forecast that people who have been, you know, low on superhero movies have been saying that, that it would squeeze out other films. And I've been resistant to that, but like this is, I don't know, I'm having to think about it this week, for sure. It's hard to read the tea leaves of the box office metrics right now. at all though because of the COVID factor. Right. Which is a real thing.

Absolutely. I know people who are huge movie fans who liked this movie and are still a little troubled by the disproportionate responses, those two movies. It's Disney movie versus Disney movie. So we'll all be living in the House of Mouse anyway at the end of the day. So we're going to get into the future of the Spider franchise a bit more later. But I will say that when it comes to to, the bargaining table that they might want to be headed to,

to negotiate certain people's contracts, etc., etc. The financial success of this movie is going to be a huge factor in what people are willing to pony up to have another go at this. And then in terms of the phase four of it all, I think that if this movie had whiffed, there would be so many headlines of Marvel and trouble. You know, because I think, I love you saying, You love the Disney Plus shows because that was one of my favorite exchanges on the big picture.

Sean is like, they're just fine. You're like, they're great. And I love you. Sean is wrong. And that's fine. But I think people are feeling like a kind of, this felt like, you know, people are talking about this like an end game level event. And the shine of bringing Toby and Andrew and all the villains into this, plus casting forward

by bringing in Charlie Cox, all that sort of stuff. There's just a lot of dazzle and star power. to this that maybe some of the new movies like Shung Chi or Eternals, even though there's a lot of star power in Eternals, like, these aren't characters that we like know when are excited and are like screaming to see. These are characters we're getting to know. And it's worth remembering that like, you know, when, when Thor debuted and when Cap debuted, like people were only mixed excited about those, you know. So I think you needed something this big and familiar to get people to go oh yeah. Oh yeah. I remember. I remember what Marvel could do. I don't know. What do you think?

Yeah, I think that's that's a great point because it's often difficult to send ourselves back mentally to the dawn of the MCU, you know, the pre-Ir Iron Man moment and to think about how much of that choice to launch with Tony Stark stemmed from IP rights. issues, right? What was even possible? And focus groups centered around toys and what the people looking to make money thought people would buy. Like the fact that the MCU, and of course, you know, we are both as deep into the nerd versus we can be, we love this stuff. We love the comic books. Like, we're the target audience. So the tradition of fandom dates back decades and decades and decades. You know, Spider-Rum is about to celebrate a 60th anniversary as a character, right? It's not like this is new, but superhero movies becoming the central driving force of mainstream pop culture. Yeah. It took a lot of things and a lot of surprising developments to get us to this point and to go

this way. And so I really love that last point you made because the end game comp is really interesting. I think they are obviously different movies and the things that built up to them, you know, the Infinity Saga for Endgame and then all of the Spider-Man movies here are different. But there is this massive backlog and shared history of watching all of these Spider-Man movies and reading Spider-Man's stories over the years. And in that sense, even though I think there is this for fans and the people making movies alike, probably this sigh of relief that this is so beloved and sparking so much excitement and could potentially spawn so many wonderful and thrilling stories to come in some ways it is still an aberration even inside of

this context because Spider-Man is the most popular Marvel character. And of course, there are other very, very, very popular Marvel characters, but Spider-Man is a character who just means a lot to a lot of people and has for a long time. And I'm curious to pan back even further for a second before we dive into the film and the characters and the themes to ask you about that. Like, what is your relationship to Spider-Man as a character and to the previous films inside of the MCU and out heading into No Way Home and how did that inform your expectations and your experience with the movie? Yeah, I mean, I'm a spider fan. I'm not a born and raised on the comic Spider-fan, but like been a fan of the movies. My opinion of the movies have changed over the years, but I'm a huge fan of the movies.

of the Tom Holland Spider-Man I know not every. I don't know. It's so interesting because you hear different, like I thought I understood what Spider-Man purists, like people who were longtime comic book fans

and they're like, this is who Peter really is. I thought I understood what they wanted, but I actually feel like I get different, takes from different people about like which iteration, which cinematic iteration feels the closest to what they think Peter Parker really is.

I don't think there's one. What's fun about it, right? That the character means different things to different people. Totally. Totally. But there isn't one like all the purest cosine, you know. The platonic idea of this adaptation. Or Andrew or whatever.

I think my Spider-Man fandom leapt several octaves up after Into the Spider-Verse. I think that's one of the best comic movies all time. Strongly agree. I got really, really into the world much more after that. But I think that, I think it's interesting to think to, the Spider-Man legacy in the MCU is so important for the origin story of everything. It's impossible to overstate how important the Sam Ramey films were for what Marvel Studios is today, not just because, you know, the amount of money they made showed, showed a Marvel proper how much money they were leaving on the table by farming the rights. of their characters out, so they wanted to bring it all sort of in-house and do the movies themselves.

That's one aspect of it. But also that Kevin Feige himself was working on these films as like an assistant. He was on the set of these Spider-Man films observing, I mean, he shouts out Sam Rameen, he shouts out Avey A-A-Rod, though my Avia Rod feelings are very complicated. But the other person he shouts out that I think gets forgotten is Laura Ziskin, who was the head producer on the Sam Ramby Spider-Man films and the first Andrew Garfield film and then she passed away. But a lot of people talk about her as this guiding force. Amy Pascal is also obviously, Amy hired Laura. Amy Pascal has also been a huge part of this whole legacy. But my

understanding is that Laura's attitude on that set was very much like, let's not be afraid to make a comic book movie. Whereas on the X-Men set, the X-Men, Brian Singer X-Men movies, Brian Singer banned comic books from the set, right? Those characters were not allowed to wear the yellow suits. You know, they had to wear these, like, black leather tactical suits and stuff like that. You know, it was very much like,

we're not making a comic movie. We're making this. And Laura's like, how about we make a comic book movie? And I think that that spirit of, like, joy and, like, childlike wonder that comes from bad attitude that Laura had, that Sam Ramey had. I think Kevin Feige has said that Sam always talked about making the movie with the childlike wonder

of the audience in mind. All of that stuff just goes down the decade with Spider-Man. So it's just a core story of the... It's like the keystone story of the Marvel cinematic universe, I think. That's fascinating. I think that what you said, about the way that people have like different feelings and thoughts on the ideal version of

Peter and which of the actors is there, Peter, etc. To get to midnight court to hear a ring reverse debate on this very subject is always so interesting because again, the character means different things to different people. Some of the response is universal and some of it is so highly specific. And that's one of the reasons that we love stories and we love worlds that we can fall into immersively. I love Spider-Man. Let me say that, Joanna.

Let's get that on the record. Hot take, hot take now. Scorchy take, come from here. I love Spider-Man. I love Spider-Man movies. I have re-watched the... I have re-watched all of the Spider-Man movies, the Toby movies, the Garfield movies, the Holland movies,

twice now in the last few months, because I watched all of them to prepare for just the trailer. It just felt a compulsion. Guess what? It was a blast. And then, obviously, this past week did a full rewatch again. Obviously. I love you. Spider-verse, I think we're all in agreement that

Spider-verse is an all-time achievement. Just an absolutely astonishing, sublime movie. My feelings on the original Ramey trilogy are complex. I think the best way, no, go ahead, go ahead. They haven't aged super well for me. Every time every we watch them, I have a tougher, tougher hang with them. Yeah, I have a similar experience with it where I think, like, I recognize and always will how

important they are. And obviously, Spider-Man 2 in particular is like seminal, right? And the role that they play not only in getting us to a place like No Way Home, but more broadly, the superhero movie genre is irrefutable. It's not my number one Peter on the power rankings, and that's fine. The Garfield movies obviously are flawed, but I've always thought that Andrew Garfield was a fabulous Peter Parker and a fabulous Spider-Man. And we're going to talk about him more in a minute, but getting to see. see, I mean, getting to see both Toby and Andrew was a delight, but getting to see Andrew

Garfield get another crack at this was just such a treat. Tom Holland is my favorite Peter Parker. Again, check out Midnight Court for the winning argument that Jomey and I delivered. But part of that, and I know that this is not an opinion that everybody shares, part of that is because I love the way that Peter Parker as a character has been deployed in the MCU across the shared team-up movies and the standalone films alike. One of the things that I love best about the standalone MCU Spider-Man films is the way that the trilogy functions as a coming-of-age story. I mean, Homecoming.

We talked about this a bit. Sean and Amanda and I talked about this a bit on Big Pick, and Jason and I talked about this for hours on binge mode. John Hughes-esque, like true, let's make a high school movie spirit inside of the superhero rapper, you know, one of the shots that I love best in the MCU when Peter has trapped in the facility chatting with Karen and he's wearing his full Spider-Man suit, but he has the midtown tech debate jacket over it. And this is perfect encapsulation of the dissonance and many realities in his own life, right? this movie No Way Home one of the things I loved about it so much

is that it is a recognition that a coming of age story necessarily features evolution and growth but you don't ever have to lose that spirit you know the coming of age aspect of the story growing up

losing the people you love making choices about the next phase of your life that is still so central even inside a very dark film. I think that there's been a tonal progression across the three movies. I think that far from home is actually quite heavy

in many respects, coming on the wake of end games. So much of that movie centers on Peter grappling with the burden of inheriting Iron Man's mantle. But this movie, No Way Home, is like a recognition, recognizes and engages with how the intervening years

have been a coming-of-age story more broadly, not just for the Tom Holland Spider-Man, but for Spider-Man movies and for the superhero genre as a whole. And I think that that was one of the things that made this such a rewarding movie-going experience. It is so self-aware,

but not in a way that felt like cheap or overly navel-gazy. It was really impactful and insightful and smart and funny and poignant and I just loved it. Did you love it now? Did you love it? I loved it.

It's interesting that you point that out because, you know, when I came out of it saying I loved it, my friend and your Dave Gonzalez, who is the number one Spider fan that I know, was like, oh, you loved it, did you? Let me give you a litany of reasons why you shouldn't have loved it. And though he didn't, like, move my needle on my love meter. God, I don't know. I didn't know how to say that. One of the things that he was interested in talking about,

talking about was that idea that the prompt when they made this was like, okay, so basically Feigey works on the original Remy trilogy, not in a, you know, super official Marvel Studios capacity. He is a producer, exact producer on the two Garfield movies because that's part, that was part of the whole Sony Marvel deal at the time is that Marvel gets to weigh in. And if you've read some of that leaked-tacked Sony emails, which you can feel one way or another about, doing that but if you have you know that figgy was giving active commentary on the andrew garfield films it's just they didn't have to listen to him they didn't want to but like he was allowed to weigh in as per their contract you know um and then he gets to make the tom holland movies the tom

holland movies are figgy being like finally like i watched i watch some things go down as an assistant i watch things go down as an executive producer without a lot of power and now i finally get to like steer the ship how I wanted to go. Amy Pascal had this really interesting quote about Kevin Fagie where she was talking about how he was the assistant who was in the room for years and said nothing and was just sitting and listening and fetching coffee and saying nothing. And then when he finally opens his mouth, she's like, oh my God. She's like the strength to probably have better ideas than most people in the room, but know that you're working your way up the ladder so you don't say anything, but you're just holding onto these notes you have. So then he gets to make this

movie, which is not just a culmination of the of the Holland trilogy that he had a heavy hand in crafting, but him getting to sort of like put some spit shine on these two other franchises that he was less empowered to work on. So it's the ultimate, this is the ultimate Feige Fix It moment, right? Like we talk about that with Ultron. We talked about it with Thor. the dark world and the way in which those rocky Marvel movies have been sort of polished up by some recent phase four slash end of phase three properties. This is the ultimate version of that of like, I can fix how you feel about the tommy McGuire movies. I can fix your bad opinion about Andrew Garfield because those of you who are saying he wasn't good. No, he's great.

Guess what? Let me show you. All that sort of stuff. But what it does do in the process is get away from the original prompt, which was, we're not going to do the same Spider-Man story. So in this story, you have the Spider-Bite is mentioned. You've got the Uncle Ben moment with Aunt May. You know, you've got all the stuff that they said they weren't going to do, that they kind of do it here. I'm not mad about it. And I like your point about you need evolution, you need growth, you need. Maybe we've just been watching a three movie origin story.

Like maybe that's all we're talking about. but basically, essentially, at the end of this movie, Tom Holland is placed in the exact same spot that all the Spider-Boys have been placed before. Yeah. When Marvel and Sony did such a good job of giving us something so fresh, do you know? So, again, that didn't change my, that didn't make me have a bad opinion of the movie, but I don't know, it is interesting to think about it. And I am less, we're going to get to all of this, but I am less excited about the movie after this. that makes sense. Oh, interesting.

Potentially. We'll talk about it. It depends what it is, but yeah. I'm glad you just mentioned that because I've been thinking about that a lot, actually, in part because of the fact that I love the MCU Tom Holland movie so much for all of those reasons. Like, in terms of the, I mean, we honestly, we could just talk about this part of this for two hours, but as well, in terms of the number of moments. in the movie where there's this like self-referential self-deprecating quality, you know, making

fun of a rhino, like iconic. I mean, there's just so many great moments that fall into that, that figy polish job that you're describing. And as you're saying, the inverse was also true, which I thought about a lot. I was actually thinking about that quite actively in real time watching it because it is, it hits you when these things that you have grown accustomed to not. seeing in the MCU are suddenly there. And that's a delicate balancing act.

I mean, the MCU movies are, in a lot of ways, a active response to the structure and the recurring beats in the prior films. And honestly, in so many of the comic versions, even though, of course, those are like the DNA strands, radioactive spider bite modifications and all. that allow all of these things to be possible. But think of something like, this is true, not even just in the standalone films,

but in the conversations that Peter has in other movies, you know, in his introductory scene, his first conversation with Tony and Captain American Civil War, where he talks about like how he'd like to play football, but I couldn't then, so I shouldn't now.

And compare that idea to something like Garfield's Peter dunking on Flash and shattering the backboard in that movie. Or, of course, not showing Ben's death. Peter mentions to Ned, you know, the spider bite. We hear them talking about it and Homecoming, but we don't see that. We don't go through those origin story beats.

The Ben death is really interesting. I think we'll circle back to this point specifically when we talk about Aunt May, RIP in a little bit. But I always thought that when Peter said to Tony in Civil War, when you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you. I always thought that that was the MCU's way of saying,

Ben Parker lived and died, and a choice that Peter made somehow directly connected to those events, just as you have always experienced, and they're often experienced in these stories, but we didn't play out those beats in the MCU. Now, another thing, This is a small one, but this is always kind of stood out to me. Heights.

The way that Peter swings when we first see him. Like the fact that he is scared to scale the Washington monument and Homecoming because it is so high. And I've always been struck by there's a, there's a 2017 Q&A in the Hollywood reporter with Aaron Couch, where Jonathan Goldstein, one of the screenwriters for Homecoming, said, quote, we wanted the movie to focus on him coming to terms with his new abilities and not yet being good with them and carrying with him some real human fears and weaknesses, like a fear of heights, because nobody ever dealt with that before. You just sort of assumed he gets bitten by a

spider. He's totally comfortable on top of tall buildings. But why did that have to be the case? And I always thought that that was such an interesting question and one that really tapped into the overall perspective and approach of homecoming and of the deployment of Peter Parker inside of the MCU. So that can all, it's great. It's great, right? Because right, why would he just immediately be comfortable swinging from the highest buildings in New York. Why? It's a fascinating question to ask. And I think we got a lot of really interesting movies because they asked those questions. So all of that is true. And all of that was important to giving us this version of Peter. I think, and this is sort of where I've landed after thinking about this for a few days,

I think that all of that can be true and is elemental to our MCU experience. And it can also be true that this movie is a recognition and celebration of the shared universe. and evolution and impact on the masses through that. Because something like what you said about how Peter ends up where Spidey tends to be, I'm saying Peter, everyone's Peter. Holland's Peter. He should have come up with like a code of them nicknames. Peter one.

Peter one, exactly. Peter one. Oh my God, the Peter two, Peter three things so funny. Just great stuff. Peter three. God. That's incredible. Andrew Garfield.

Peter one ending up sewing his own suit. I think like a lot of people are like, oh, fine. finally, Peter made his own suit. And I'm like, well, he started with a suit that he had made before he took the Stark Tech. You know, he had his little sweatsuit, Spider-Boys, by the lady. Exactly. Like, and even the moment when he's, yes, he's using Stark Tech on the plane and far from home, but he's making his own suit and these connections to Tony and the roots inside of the M-Soup, but also Peter's origin, the fact that he's going into an apartment that, of course, makes us think of Toby's apartment in the Ramey films, right? Fix the door! All of it. And he's going. is alone and that is so deeply sad and there is a part of me yes that agrees with dave and thinks is it strange to have worked through three movies plus all of these other team up experiences to get to the point where we're used to starting i think there's something that is philosophically and thematically incredibly rich and interesting to parse there though about

the core of peter's character and the way that loss shapes his life I want to zoom back to something you said about the different ways that the Peters react to getting their powers. This is this sort of revelation I had rewatching the Toby and Andrew films, which is like, why do I love the Holland films so much more than the Toby and Andrew films? One of them is like the way in which women are used, it feels fundamentally different to me. because if you go back and watch the Toby films, the way that Peter is like spying on MJ while she changes and the way that MJ is such like an object to be like thrown off bridges or one passed around

between male characters, like all that stuff really bugs me these many years later. And then I was even in the Andrew films where like Gwen Stacey's given a little bit more agency but like the first thing that Uncle Ben says about her is like that's a pretty girl. And the first thing that Aunt Mays about her is that's a pretty girl. And I'm just like, okay, but like, compare that to like how

MJ. Let's talk about her being valedictorian, damn it. Right. Let's talk about her. Getting into Oxford. wearing thigh highs while she does it. You know, like, so, you know, we get to MJ, we get to Zendaya, like, it's such a breath of fresh air. And then what's also true about Tom Holland. And I've been thinking a lot about the lip sync battle umbrella dance. an iconic moment in internet dumb and TV dumb, right? That Tom Holland goes on lip sync battle and does singing in the rain

and then he does wearing Rihanna's umbrella and he does it straight and by straight I mean he's not making fun of the fact that he's like doing this thing in drag he's just like I'm doing this. And automatically I think a lot of women watch that and feel like safe. Like this is a guy who is like respects women.

That's how, that's what I feel coming off Tom Holland. I'm not saying Andrew Garfield doesn't or Toby or doesn't, but we don't have this moment in the spider. It's important. It sounds silly, but it's important. And

when I was rewatching those Andrew and Toby films, I was like, there's this Revenge of the Nerds vibe about these Peters, where it's like these Peters who have been bullied are like, ha ha, now I'm top of the world, I'm going to show you. And that's just never the vibe that you get off of

Peter 1. He is remarkably unchanged by this big change that happened to him and that's I think why this trilogy has been my favorite barring into the Spider-verse has been my favorite. Anyway, I think we're maybe a little lost in the weeds but

that's that was sort of something I was thinking about a lot and we're going to get back to it when we circle back to like May but like the way that the Spider franchise treats women in general is something worth talking about, I think. An extraordinary number of moments in the original trilogy where if you just hit pause at any point, you would pause on a screaming woman.

Being thrown off a building of some sort. You know what I mean? And what I loved about the Holland trilogy is that a woman was never thrown off a building until now. And so, you know, and did I cry? I'm curious to hear your thoughts about that scene, yeah, given that, yes, I cried. I cried. Yeah, he did.

I cried. The three Spider-Man. Let's talk about what happens in the movie a little bit more here. Let's do it. Joe, they did it. It was rumored, talked about for Ions felt inevitable. And yet, I can only speak for myself here. But I'll say this too.

I would draw the distinction, and this will we can talk a little bit about how we personally navigate the internet between rumors and leaks because I actually did not know definitively. I try to avoid leaks and don't always succeed. The internet is perilous, right?

But I try. The rumors were just so pervasive that this felt flat out inevitable, right? They were going to be in the movie. It would have been, I think, shocking if they had not been in the movie. And yet,

when Ned opens the portal and you see Spider-Man and then he turns around and you realize the shape of his body, his height, the length of his neck, the exact details of the suit, all of it, you realize it's, it's Andrew and everyone gasps and shouts, Charles and I were like clutching each other. That goes high, high, high, quickly, high on my all time. Like, I will remember how that felt seeing that for the first time list. It was just so incredible. How did that movie land for you? And more broadly, what did you make about the amount of time

that Peter 2 and Peter 3 were in this movie because I was shocked, delighted, but shocked that they were in so much of the movie. I thought we would spend a few scenes. I didn't know how it would happen, but I thought we would spend a little bit of time with them. Overall, that's one of the things that impressed me most about the film, both with the three Peters and with all of the villains,

so many moving parts, so many things to balance. The calibration somehow just felt exactly right. Yeah, I mean, I will agree with that with the Peters. We can talk about the villain stuff in a little bit. But like the Peter stuff, oh, like those are my favorite scenes. And watching the movie again, they remain my favorite scenes. They're charming. They're funny.

They're emotional. When the three Peters are like crying together on the roof talking about loss and Peter, Peter two and Peter three are forced into these mentor roles. I just, I absolutely lost it. Yes, I knew they were coming. Yes, I knew how they were coming. Yes, I knew when in the movie they were coming because I, I do read all the leaks. It didn't, for me, honestly, it didn't change my emotional reaction to it.

I still started crying when I saw Andrew Garfield's giraffe neck. I got so excited because I love Andrew Garfield so much. And then I felt, and I didn't expect to feel anything for Toby. And I felt it. You know, and I part, I want to talk a little bit about Nostal. in this moment because weaponized nostalgia is like, you know, one of the strongest engines driving Hollywood right now where they're just sort of like, we're going to get you excited to go see Neo again. We're going to get you excited to care about BobaFet. We're going to get you excited about

it. It's all IP, including your feelings. It's all familiar, you know, stuff like that. When nostalgia is most like artistically used is when the passage of time matters to the story. And so, seeing Toby and seeing Andrew, both of whom look great and fit and great in their Spider-Man suits. How about the youth pastor outfit for Toby? Incredible moment. Like, that's maybe one of the best lines of the whole movie. So funny. The youth pastor vibe off of Toby.

But like, but the passage of time is on their faces. And these are older Peters. These are Peters who have endured something. And it's especially great for Andrew who, I mean, both of those men had to pretend to be teenagers when they weren't. But like, it's just especially great for Andrew to just be like all the care, all the trauma is on his face as he's talking about everything. He's not clean shaven. Like, it's so, it's so interesting what they what they did with his character. And like when Electro says something like, you're just a kid.

And he goes, eh. Like, I'm not a kid. I never was. I was always like a 29 year old playing a teenager. But like, I just, I love that moment. of putting them, you know, we talked about the various mentors that Tom Holland's Peter has had. You know, Tony's, a big one. Dr. Strange isn't really that character in this film.

He kind of is, like especially his goodbye to Peter is emotional. But the mentors in this film are himself. And it's that into the Spiderverse magic of no one else in the world can understand what I've gone through. accept myself, you know? And so like the three, these three men who have carried this burden of what it has been to be Spider-Man to finally have someone else who immediately understands. Yes. Exactly how you're feeling.

That's so powerful. So yes, I knew it was coming. I don't think me knowing, dampened my experience whatsoever. Here's what happens when I like spoil myself, quote-unquote. This is why I don't think spoiling. matter that much, though I respect everyone's individual spoiler boundaries. Spoiler is a consent. You have to consent to being spoiled. But I just, I don't think shock and surprise is the most valuable thing in a storytelling. Because like if the shock and surprise it happened and they like,

and then the Andrew and Toby stuff was boring or not funny or cheesy or whatever. But it was emotionally rich and all that sort of stuff. So I just, I, I, I just get excited. to watch how they're going to, you know, execute the thing. Yeah. Yeah. I, obviously, you know, we have a, I think a different relationship to the leaks, but I agree with you, obviously, that ultimately what matters is not just the moment of the reveal, but how the story is told, how it's executed, how it lands. And this was just, this was so, so poignant. I think that even beyond this movie, part of the reason this got me so excited about the MCU moving forward, and I think this is also coming on the heels of Loki,

where there's a similar quality at play. This successful rendering is what excites me about the promise of multiversal storytelling in the MCU. That idea of being able to confront and challenge and learn from other versions of your stuff. self and there's so much comedic potential. I mean, the web shooter chat. Again, iconic, love the organic web shooters are so divisive. So just engaging with that and interrogating, that was great. But you know, you get a little, oh, where else can you, in your body, can you sling

white goop from kind of moment, like a joke that blue humor-leaning fans like yours truly have made probably 4,000 times in the last three months alone. Like all of that just felt like simultaneously the conversations that we as fans have about how these things would go. And also like a conversation that only these three people could possibly ever have together. And that is like a magical combination and a magical brew. The discussion about loss and Ben and May and Gwen and the weight of that discussion, the discussion of that lesson about responsibility.

I think what you said about the passage of time is so crucial here, especially given, you know, I guess I will say like the contrasting point to, oh, this is the possibility that multiversal storytelling affords is, of course, well, can we track it? Does it all make sense? To what extent does it need to? How much do we have to be able to grasp the magic of it?

It's not like a one-to-one, but there's like a some corollary to, you know, did the time heist, time travel mechanics and endgame? Totally makes sense for everybody on first viewing in particular. Did they need to, et cetera, right? But when we get to hear Peter 2 and Peter 3 talk about their lives since we've left them. Because they're not pulled out of the timeline of the earlier movies like their villains are. lived their lives and to hear them talking about relationships and like I'm seriously might start crying here because it's like it is him so hard watching the movie whether they have anybody

and when we realize that Andrew Garfield's Peter is just like alone and has not allowed himself to love again and open up and like have somebody who he can love and can love him because he is just consumed still by that loss and that guilt from Gwen's death is devastating. So we have not been there with him all of those steps along the way, all of those intervening years, but we are able to glean this defining truth about who he is and how he has spent that time. That is like an incredible thing to be able to pull off in a movie with this many characters and this many moving parts. And then you combine something that emotionally resonant with something as just

levity induced and rich, like the back pain sequence. Some of that is like the meta wink to Toby's back injury. Yeah. Right around Spider-Man too. But just like, again, well, what would it be like to swing off of webs for this many years of your life? I've been stabbed before as a little line in the moments where we could think of having seen that.

Like, it didn't, it could have gone wrong. It could have gone wrong in so many ways and it didn't. And then you get the payoff not only of those emotional conversations, but something like seeing, seeing them swing together. Really was just a incredible all-time moment. Like, not only for the cinematic, yeah. Yeah.

Not only the cinematic thrill of it, which of course is one level on which we're just like, holy fuck, we're floored by it. But the commentary at play there on who Peter is and the role that teamwork plays in his life. And again, what that speaks to about how different these movies have been, right? With, like, Holland as part of the Avengers. You also get that, like, okay, oh, they don't know what the Avengers are. Well, like, yeah, the Avengers aren't in the Sony stories, right? But also, like, some of that is studio IP meta commentary.

And some of that is, like, those Peters were so alone and used to working alone. And then we have R. Peter, who has been a part of this, you know, Earth's Mightiest Heroes, this elemental team and has to now face what it might mean to try to do this without anyone. It's just incredible. Yeah. Andrew's line reading of, are you in a band? It's like, so good. He was incredible. Was he the MVP of the movie for you? Yes, absolutely. 100%. Andrew Garfield. But like, to go back to the to the MJ drop, and the Gwen Stacy death, even though it is for a minute. It's an iconic comic book move. Yes. Has always rubbed me the wrong way.

That movie's a mess. I rewatched it as much as I love Andrew Garfield. The way that they try to jam the Green Goblin storyline in there, and then it just doesn't work. The Green Goblin stuff in that movie is very poor. It's abysmal, and the Electro stuff is not that much better. You know what I mean? And what the jewel?

of those two movies is the like electric chemistry between emmiston and andrew garfield who of course were dating in real life actually i just found this week i didn't know that kirsten dunson tommy mcguire dated so that's all three spider man in there plus once have dated unbelievable unbelievable but emerson andrew god their chemistry that love story mean oh my god and so then they killed her off and you're like well why bother making more movies when you've when you've killed like the the heart of your of your And Emma so. Ash was such an incredible. Oh, so good.

She's fantastic. Fantastic. And so, like, that has always bothered me. It's always run me the wrong way. And, but to make it so important that it's something that this character is still hanging on to whatever, a decade later in his life, you know, at the end of that movie, you see him standing in the graveyard for, like, all four seasons of the year or something like that. But he's like, well, time to get back to work and fight the rhino in the street, I guess, you know?

And so, but this is like, no, he's like still in that cemetery. You know what I mean? It has been until he catches MJ. So I do not love that they threw Zendaya off scaffolding. I saw it in the trailer. I didn't like it. Everyone was like, well, the danger's going to come in and catch great. So I expected that that was going to happen.

Okay. I was still like not happy about it. And then he cried and then I cried. And I was like, well, okay. okay fine it worked on me i was mad about it but i worked on me i i think i feel the same way about it as you do you know i've always i've always found the decision to kill gwen in the amazing spider man too very upsetting even though i also felt that that scene in the movie was incredibly impactful same thing here like do we do we need to throw mj off the statue of liberty we don't but i i

I must be honest with you that I was a puddle in my seat watching that. I mean, when he says to her, you know, is asking her, are you right? Are you okay? And the emotion and the history and the feelings playing out on his face in that moment, I mean, it was gut-wrenching. And she says, are you okay? God-wrenching. Yeah, by crying. Oh, my God.

It's just, yeah. is incredible. So again, that's what I mean about like, spoiler leaks versus execution is like, I knew it was going to happen and I wasn't happy about it. And then I saw a play out and I was like, actually, I changed my mind. You know, so I still, I mean, I still wish there was a way they could have done that that didn't involve. I mean, when I expressed my feelings on Twitter about them throwing MJ off the Statue of Liberty in the trailer, a bunch of people were like, well, what, you know, what are you supposed to do with a,

with a hero who swings around from things. You got to throw people for him to catch. And I'm like, I don't know. They did a pretty good job in the first two movies of not doing that at all. You didn't miss it. And it doesn't happen into the Spiderverse either. And I think a problem, I mean, we'll get to this more when we talk about May, but like I think a problem in the Spider films is like, if you've got a Spider-Gwen, you know,

or like a Jessica Drew or a Silk or something like that, like, I'm less worried about a woman. in peril because you've got women who are like doing some of the active fighting as well. And there's a lot for MJ to do in this movie. And I am grateful for that. But it's, I don't know, my feelings are complicated. Yeah, I think there's the rational assessment of the storytelling choices at play. And then there's the emotional impact, which we agree was. Yeah.

Forceful in that moment. I mean, I really was. I was like, I was a weeping. Really weeping watching that. And it's also like you have, again, to kind of think about like the meta aspects. I think he do have a moment there where you're thinking about Andrew Garfield, the actor, not just the character and everything at play there and this like moment of real closure. And I was thinking too of like the line in Amazing Spider-Ramire 2 where he says to Gwen, you know, we're not on different paths. You're my path.

And you're always going to be my path. And you just feel in this moment, and also when he's talking, you know, about how he had let the rage guide him, you feel how true that is, how much she has remained his path, even through all of these ensuing years. And part of what I really love about thinking back to that and how a moment like Andrew Garfield's Peter asking MJ if she is okay and everything that we're thinking about and we know he is thinking about in that moment is that it does. doesn't just work for his Peter and his character because you think about that path line. And then when we see Tom Holland make the choice that he makes at the end, not only to have everyone forget him, but then in the donut shop to not read the letter to MJ and not remind her. And you think about his path. And are MJ and Ned going to remain his path? Does he have to find another path without them? What does it mean to make a choice like that when you are doing it because

you're trying to protect people you love from the pain that you know, just the reality of your existence can cause them. Yeah. When the last conversation that you had was, I will tell you, I will find you, we will be together again. And the choice that he has to make there, and let's talk about Peter's choices for a minute here, because can I just really quickly say, I don't love to like ascribe motivations to people, like real life motivations to people, but I did put in my notes the best. a relationship stuff with Emma and Andrew, right?

Because like, the Emma and Andrew stuff is, if you've read any interview with Andrew Garfield, like post their breakup, you know, he's just constantly like Emma's it. Like Emma's my desert island pick, Emma, Emma, you know what I mean? So I think he,

again, I don't want to put like real world thoughts in someone's head. But like Andrew Garfield seems like the kind of actor who would access his own personal pain of a separation. in a moment like that and it pays off. So yeah, okay. So back to Tom.

Back to Tom. Tom and Zendaya who hopefully will never break up and we'll be together forever or not, whatever they choose. This episode is brought to by Weather Tech.

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Sterling Point and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. Parker, don't you realize that in the multiverse, there are an infinite number of people who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

And if that spell gets loose, they're all coming here. Look, I know, I get it, but we can't just send them home to die. It's their fake. Peter One. Peter One. and his choices, his choices which drive the story.

There are a few of them, Joe, we can kind of quickly parse. Let's start with Peter deciding to ask Dr. Strange for help in the first place, and then hedging and making all of these amendments and messing up the spell. The movie starts right, right. where far from home concludes with J. Jonah Jameson, revealing, thanks to Mysterio's fake news, Peter's identity to the world. Now, the question of Peter's identity and who could know and when has, of course, been a through line of his MCU films. You know, think of when Ned first learns as he's there with the Lego Death Star and sees Peter crawling on the ceiling. He's like,

I'm going to be your own deal. I cannot keep the secret. And Peter begs him because he doesn't want to put May through more. Then, of course, May finds out. And it's okay, well, if you send me to Prague, this is what he tells, you know, fake Nick Fury, Delos, and far from home, all my classmates are going to learn who I am, can't have it. I always think it's worth remembering that while Peter's secret identity is elemental to the Spider-Man, canon. Of course, Peter revealing his identity in the comics in the Civil War storyline is what sparks then the ensuing highly derided, widely derided, one more day, comic line that actually

has a lot of connective tissue to this story. Another example, I think, in many ways of what you'll like to talk about of, you know, kind of like updating and improving existing canon. Peter's secret identity is a huge rarity in the MCU. This is not common for the heroes in the MCU. Everyone knows that Tony Stark is Iron Man. Everyone knows that Natasha Romanov is Black Widow, on and on the list goes. Peter Parker is a kid. When we meet him in Homecoming, he's 15.

We meet him in Civil War. But when we are with him in Homecoming, and he's talking to Tony and Tony says, you know, if you're nothing without that suit, then you shouldn't have it. All of these reminders time and time again that he is a young teenager just beginning to make his way through life. He does not want people to know who he is, but not just for himself, for the people around him to keep them safe,

to avoid a comics-esque kingpin. Wouldn't be a pod on the river verse this holiday season if we didn't mention Kingpin, targeting Aunt May to get at Peter, etc. He doesn't want that. And so this desire to roll back the clock and go back to a moment in time where people do not know who he is is the inciting event from which all of this unspools. What did you think of Peter's first choice here to go to Dr. Strange in the first place? Seems like something a teenager would do.

Yes. I think it's a bad idea. The fact that Strange decides to go with it, Can we just talk about this? I know we're supposed to talk about Peter and his choices for a minute, but while we're here, can we just talk about the Dr. Strange thing for a second? Yeah. Okay.

This is my single biggest nitpick of the film, of all of the, does it make sense things? Dr. Strange would not watch that spell like that. No, I don't think he would do that spell in the first place. There's a couple things at play here. Number one is whatever muddiness is going on with the fact that, Multiverse of Mattis was supposed to come out before this movie. So, like, there's just been a lot of storytelling, moving of parts to make the story work in reverse, you know, because we know we're going to get into, like, the Dr. Strange,

the full Dr. Strange trailer that we get at the end of this movie. But, like, it seems he's being, like, punished for what he did here when, like, anyway, Anyway, my best assessment of Stephen's motivation here is a sense of injured pride that he's not Sorcer Supreme anymore and just sort of like feeling emasculated by Wong, et cetera, and having and wanting to just sort of like prove himself. This is Wong's time. Let Wong thrive. Yeah.

Wong's time to shine. Exactly. So what is fascinating is that the line that Wong says in the trailer, don't do that spell, is not in the final cut of the movie, but it is in the trailer for Dr. Strange. So I don't know what to tell you about all of that. But that's my best, that's the movie's best reason for why Stephen would even do the spell in the first place, let alone, you know, mess it up. I don't know.

It's one of many nitpicks that I'm like, if you pull up, if you pull it this movie, it falls apart so quickly, but I'm not mad about it. I don't know, what do you think? this is the the strange aspect of it is i think again the thing i have like the hardest time with because in the one hand sure strange working spells whether people can remember peter that is you know all a part of the comics canon that at least in part inspires some of these events however they change things from the comics all the time right and so i don't know if the mc u's version of Dr. Strange would agree to do that spell in the first place. I have a hard time with that.

His whole, you know, I always like to quote him saying to Tony and Infinity War, like, protecting your reality, douchebag. That's his whole thing. That's the one job. Protect a reality. But he doesn't have his Infinity Stone anymore. He's feeling, you know. It's true. He's operating in a new world. And that would be consistent with phase four where the characters are, becoming accustomed to this new circumstance, I think there is an aspect of of Stephen Strange's hubris that would lead to this, right?

Where he's like, I can do anything. I'm the best. Jomey agrees with you. I mean, it might be the same thing that leads Tony Stark to, like, create Ultron. Do you know what I mean? It's just that sort of like, I'm going to keep pushing the boundaries of like...

Ultron, my fault. It's true. Maybe we'll get an Ultron my fault, as line from Strange. But the fact that he would, again, I get that the, The magic becomes very complex as Peter keeps amending it. But the fact that he would botch it like that, I just have a very hard time with.

He's the, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's the pinnacle, you know? It's very tough. Anyway, in terms of Peter making the ask, the next big choice that he makes, many little choices along the way. But in terms of driving plot engines in the film is the decision to try to cure the villains. There's been a lot of fascinating, discussion and fan debate about this, about whether this is a thing that Peter would or should do. Did this strike you in any way as surprising or does this feel completely consistent with

Peter Parker? Well, it's not something he decided on his own, right? It's like May's heavy influence is what it gets him to do this, right? So that I buy into should. That's a great question, Mark. And I mean, that's the whole Dr. Strange point or whatever. It's like, whose life is more valuable, et cetera, and all of this. And the cost, the great personal cost of trying to save these guys.

I don't know. I think it's, I think it fits with the film's overarching message coming from the two Peters of like, don't let grief. And it's not just the grief of losing May because it's the grief of like the shock of being exposed or, you know, the grief of losing your shot at MIT or whatever. Don't let that push you into such a dark place that, you know, you lose yourself. So I don't know. This works for me.

What's the fan debate? Like, they think he would never do this? Well, like, Sean mentioned this on Big Picture. It's come up a few times. Like, would Peter think that these characters were worth trying to save and at this cost? I think I have the same read on it that you do. it feels consistent to me in a couple different respects. One, the may point is, I think, key, right?

The fact that she is pushing him and encouraging him to try to help and to try to make a positive impact is like a direct cause and effect variable, just just inside of this movie. Yeah. Broadly, if you pan back to the MCU and then to just Peter as a character, I think it works in those respects, too. You know, the MCU at large, now of course, to be clear,

I see the distinction between heroes and villains in this respect, but even if you think of something like Caps, we don't trade lives, vision, line, and infinity war, you know, the calculus for the characters is going to be, how can we try to save and help, not just, and in particular because they know, know that they would be sending them back to this moment of demise. There's a finality and a definitive quality to that where the stakes are really high. With Peter in particular, Peter

wanting to help. You know, it makes me, it's like we can get into like the lost do no harm aspect here, right? But having to really wrestle with what it means to do harm and the weight of his actions and his and his choices what the consequences of those are and to see it crystallized so definitively here is a heavy heavy thing and we know that peter doesn't want to kill doesn't want to harm wants to see think of even like in spider-man homecoming vulture i mean at the near cost of his own life peter's like i'm just trying to save you he doesn't want to let him doesn't want to let the wingsuit explode but he doesn't want to let him die. And then I think one of the other ways that it really works

is that what's one of the final notes in Far From Home, which again is right before this, it's mysterious saying to Peter, you're a good person, Peter, such a weakness. Like, you can't let the villains win by believing that's true. Being a good person can't be a weakness for Peter. That has to be the source of his strength. And so I think him attempting to work toward a solution other than press the button and send them all back to their demise feels true to the spirit of this character.

So I was fine with it. I think what's also true is that a friend of mine pointing this out to me yesterday when he got out of his screening. And he was like one of the things that I've always disliked about the villains in the Toby and Andrew movies is that they all feel the same, which. is like some good guy twisted by science, right? Some good guy who science gets out of control and twist them in some way. And like, that's a hallmark of a Spider-Man villain, right? Is like someone who botched a science experiment, which is lamshaded a bit in the movie, which like, you know, careful how you fall. But like, at the core of them, they're all like nice guys who, who get it twisted, right? Whereas the Holland, the Tom Holland villains are all.

I mean, you can argue with me about nice guys who get a twisted. That's fine. I see your face. But I don't know if Norman Osborne was ever a nice guy. Sure. Fair. Genius scientists. Sure. But the Holland villains have all been, they've been byproducts of Tony Stark's mistakes, right? That's different. They're not in the same rogue's gallery as these other guys. So I think, okay, barring Norman Osborne, when you talk about Kirk Connors or you talk about Octavius, like all of the, all of those. those characters are characters maybe even more worth saving than Jake Jillenhall, who's mad about Tony Stark. You know what I mean? It's, it's complicated. It's interesting. And I think, I think it's actively engaging with how the villains have played out in these other five films. Yeah, we'll talk about the rules a little bit more, but I thought it was one of the, one of the from our choices was bringing Doc Ack back into the alliance fighting for good, you know, by fixing the inhibitor chip earlier than that had to happen for that reason in particular,

because, you know, I think that there's a lot to parse in terms of like hubris and greed and what drives a person to think that they can make certain decisions and do certain things on behalf of all mankind. But I think, you know, again, plenty of people would observe that Tony's no different, right? He does that time and time again, too, but we root for him and we love him. And, you know, the, yeah, I do. The, the fact that characters make mistakes is not inherently what makes them villains, right? Our heroes are ultimately going to be the most impactful and linger with us and be the most lasting if they make mistakes too, because that's what makes them human beings. You know, if they're perfect,

that's not interesting. They have to be flawed. That's what makes them human. But it's the intention. Like, we talk about this a lot, right? It's the intention that that, that, that, that, stands out as the distinction. And it works thematically because Peter's intentions are at the core of all of these decisions, including ultimately saying, okay, got to erase myself. We're going to come back later today when we talk about, you know, where the end of this movie, what that might mean for future installments, but also some of the, you know, we have a lot of mailbag questions about some of the potential ramifications of the magic

and having everybody forget Peter Parker. We don't necessarily have the answer to those questions, to be clear, but we'll talk about a few of them. So there's a lot of that to circle back to, but just in terms of the emotional impact of Peter's sacrifice and the way that his relationship to, you know, opportunity and longing, wanting more and homecoming and then feeling weighed down by the burden of it

and then this clarity here, how did that all, how did that all work for you? again, it's like a classic, you know, Spider-Man films, the first Andrew film and the first Toby film end with him walking away from like his love interest to protect her. Right? This is like on a small scale, a choice that these cinematic Spider-Men's have had to make in the past.

They don't hold to it longer than one film. But, you know, it's something that they've tried to do. This is such a bigger, bigger choice for, erasing Peter Parker. It's hard not to see, we talked about this a lot leading up to this film. It's hard not to see the pragmatic film business reasons to do this, right?

Leave all options open. Right. This film ends in a way that if Marvel and Sony don't collaborate again, you could do Tom Holland off on his own adventure and you don't have anything tying him to the MCU at all. That's an option. If you wanted,

if Tom Holland decides he doesn't want to do any more Spider-Man films after this, which he hasn't made that decision yet. You end his trilogy in a way that feels tied up and satisfying and, you know, close, close the book on that chapter in his life. So all of that stuff is sort of in the mix. But it's a very profoundly moving sacrifice that he makes here. A very, very moving moment played excellently with Bennett to Cumberbatch. Again, there's a meta quality to it because, like, have you seen those supercut videos of Bennett-Cumberbatch and Tom Holland on the on the promo circuits for endgame?

I don't think so. Okay, so basically here's what happened. Tom Holland, as we know, was so bad at keeping secrets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That when they sent him out on the end-game tour, they sent Bennett-Cumberbatch out as his babysitter. So it's the two of them paired in every interview.

It's Bennett and Comerbauds and Tom Holland. And every time that Tom Holland starts to say something, Bennett-Cumberd is like, uh-b-uh-uh, right? Okay, so like, they spent a lot of, time together these two even though they were only in a little bit of a movie together like they bonded on the road and so bett it comes up being like we got the what is he your ward line so right but like we got it all really all of us who love you sort of thing it's like if if tom doesn't get

to work in the MCU again like this is a goodbye to these actors as well so i don't know i thought it was really really powerful while also acknowledging the like scaffolding of movie business choice isn't it? Agreed. And I thought that the choice after the choice, going to the donut shop, preparing to tell, to help MJ remember seeing Ned too,

and then not doing it because he sees that they are getting to do the things that they wanted to do. Going to get to go to MIT. They're happy. Their lives are full of possibility instead of compromise and sacrifice, makes him feel that then his sacrifice needs to be lasting.

And I just thought this was like that donut shop scene, I thought was just completely anguish-inducing. Great performances from Zendaya, Jacob, Tom, all of them. That trio is just such as a light. I will be very, very, very sad if we don't get to see them in another movie together. I really hope that's not the case. But I thought that this landed so, so, so powerfully. We got a lot of mailbag questions that boil down to some version of,

why can't any Peter be happy? And I'm curious what you think about that. Well, I mean, youth pastor Toby seems to have found some manner of peace with whatever arrangement he has with MJ. It's true. Says they work through it, right? Yeah. That's something.

I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting. I was wondering the same question. I mean, this fees writing to me wanting to talk about Aunt May. I know we've got a few other things to talk about, but I don't think anyone in the Marvel world is marked by loss the way that Peter Parker is. I mean, in the DC comics, like the death of the wanes or, you know, Superman's exile from his home planet, all that trauma is the foundation.

And most superhero stories originate in some kind of trauma. And that trauma, that wound becomes their greatest weapon. all that sort of stuff. But all that good Joseph Campbell stuff. But I think Peter more than certainly anyone in the MCU has been marked by this idea of like what is what does Jay Jonah Jameson say on his everything Spider-Man touches turns to ruin and you can't disagree as Tom Holland is like freely bleeding in the rain while while he says that in front of one of the many big screens that are set up around the city for people to watch this. this news blog from some guys home.

Anyway, yeah, why can, I don't know, Peter Parker, there's a thing about Peter Parker, that he is like, he's forever mourning. He's in a cemetery a lot. That's his thing. He is in a cemetery a lot. I think that ultimately this version of Peter can find connection and belonging again

and that that will hopefully be a part of his journey moving forward. I think that the idea that happiness is an impossibility for him would be like, that's almost like too deflating for me to accept. But I do think that it's true that loss and grief are a through line of his experience and that that is one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons that he's such a relatable and meaningful character for so many people. You know, not everybody who's reading a Spider-Man comic or watching a Spider-Man movie

has wielded an infinity stone, right? But speak for yourself. Well, I've never had the pleasure. I do have a Lego gauntlet behind my head. But we've all lost somebody, right? We've all had to move beyond a certain phase in our life and try to find our way into whatever is next. And that is, despite the, of course, unique and specific.

aspects of everybody's experience in everybody's life, that is a universal quality that makes Peter such a lasting character. I think that before you're right that we should talk about May, I think the only, probably a million other things to say, but the only other thing I think that I wanted to mention about the three, the three Spidey's and Peter won and the setting and the backdrop for this film, I thought it was fascinating to place the final battle on Captain America. has fallen shield, the shield that has fallen off the new and approved Statue of Liberty, which you can also hear about at Hawkeye. We'll talk about that more in a few minutes. This, again, simultaneous, for the MCU to date and the Spider-Man to date,

this simultaneous recognition of the past and shared history and mission statement that we are moving forward into something new. I thought that was strong symbolism. Yeah, and this idea that Peter learned so much from Ironman from Tony Stark and he has in many, has been in many ways positioned to be a new sort of Iron Man-esque figure, but he puts himself, like when the Avengers assemble, it's cap calling the plays, not Tony Stark usually, unless they're fighting on a tarmac and they're on different sides. And so when Peter puts himself in the position to call the plays for the team, like he puts himself in the cap roll, which I think is so interesting. But then I thought it was so interesting

when he has the glider and he's facing down Norman and Toby's Peter steps in and he grabs the other side of it. To me, it looked framed so similarly to Cap and Thanos with that gauntlet sort of power struggle moment from Infinity War, that iconic moment. And putting Peter in like the Thanos position, I thought was was a really interesting moment. And that, and that, that internal struggle. I mean, it's so cheesy, of course, to, on the one hand, to say, like, it's Peter fighting his, like, worse nature or his younger self or whatever, but it's, but it works. It just works emotionally so well. It's just beautiful. That's a part of the Spidey Canon, too, right? There's that line at some point in one of the classes, like, I had a professor

once who told me there were only 10 stories that were told, but there's really only one, who am I? Right. And like, that's the truth of, that is the truth of the heart of the story as it is for so many of the stories that grip us. Should we talk about Aunt May for a minute? Is it time? Let's get out the tissues and talk about Aunt May. How did you feel about this death? I have a few conflicting thoughts.

I thought Van and Charles did a really good job talking about this. And I was really gratified. I love those boys so much, but I was really gratified to hear Charles talk about the idea of fridging in general. That was really made my heart hole. I don't know if I'm ready to call this a fridge. moments. I don't know because so much of it is tied into Aunt May's own like storyline in this film, which is like her determination, her, she takes an active role in, in this.

She joins the fight actively, so like that. But again, when you only have two women in your story, when you've got five villains and they're all men and you've got Dr. Strange and you've got, you know, Ned and you've got all, you know, all this stuff and you've got literally like two women. it's tough. It's a little tough. Again, if the Spider-Man franchise didn't have such a, like, dicey history in my view of, like, how it traces women, like, I would maybe not be carrying so much baggage into this decision. And last one at least, and I found this out recently, both Marisotomi and Sally Field, really not having a great time playing Aunt May, is my understanding. They think that Aunt May is just, like, Sally Field was like, I hated that role. I only took it because

my friend Lores Ziskin asked me to. I had a really hard time finding any kind of character in there. Not a fan of my time with that. And Marissa Tomey has said similar things about how she was like horrified when she found out how old Aunt May was supposed to be in the comics. Like she didn't know that she was signing up to this sort of like matronly role or whatever. And she was like, it was the character was supposed to get a refresh, but it didn't and all this sort of stuff.

So like... Do you agree with that? I mean, who am I to Dane to VIII? to question the absolute legend Marissa Tomey, but do you agree that Aunt May didn't get a refresh in the MCU? I don't agree with that. I feel mixed about it. I think it's definitely a massive improvement, but at the end of the day, May is always a character who's just there to sort of hold like Peter. Do you know what you mean? And that's that's okay. There are characters like that all over the place. But again, MJ gets like, I think such a big, Michelle is such a different

character than Mary Jane, and that's, like, huge. So they've done a lot of movement here. I still think there's some room for improvement. I mean, like, you know, Amay is almost entirely sideline from the second film, because it's a, like, European vacation. She's barely in it, right? And they tried to give her some storylines, like a romance with Happy or, like, her charity work or whatever, but it still just feels like her job is, you know, to be there for Peter, which, you know, all, all heroes have characters around them like that. And it's, you know, it's not unique to this role. But I just thought it was interesting that the actresses,

who two of the actresses who played M.A. were like, eh, not my fave. I don't know. What do you think? I mean, I larb, I lard,

Marissa Tomey's Aunt May. Mama. I larp her a lot. I larp you. Do larby? Not larby enough. I love a larv scene. She is, obviously,

Mursa Tomei is, you know, she's incredible. I have enjoyed the elements of the MCUs May that do feel refreshed, you know, obviously, just a younger character. You know, I think Marcus and McPhile, because obviously May and Peter were introduced in Captain America Civil War before the standalone Spider-Man homecoming launch. They've talked in interviews about, like, why would May have been? as old as she is typically rendered. If they and Ben should be peers to Peter's parents.

So like all of that, just the fact that she's got this like, you know, the charitable work and her efforts to help people, which obviously we just talked about how that comes into play here in terms of her guidance for Peter. The fact, like the fact that she's got this love life

and this just independent life that Peter's like, I'm going to sit you guys down and ask you to tell me about this because you've got your own thing going on. You know, I agree that it would always be nice to spend more time with Marissa Domey's Aunt May. I would love it. But I do think that there have been some updates. So again, of course. Yeah. Like, who am I to argue with the person playing the role?

That's not my intention. For the death itself, it's a little bit similar to looking back to Gwen or the way Gwen's loss is referenced and called upon here, where I have some dissonance and a couple different responses to it. Emotionally, the scene watching May Die, watching Peter grieve her, even seeing Happy pull up and realize

what had happened, devastating. Devastated. So soaked my mask with tears. It's just like absolutely heart-wrenching. Very, very, very, very, very, very sad. So good. This scene landed for me.

I will also say, though, and I agree that Van and Charles had a great discussion about this. I don't love deciding to update Ben's death by killing May instead. Again, there's this aspect where like her, May being in mortal peril is a part of this comic line that some of this story connects to. But again, that comic is like so, so loath that I don't think that aspect of it needed to be maintained. I don't think that's why they did it. That's not what I mean. But you know, you can always say, well, has this happened before? What does that mean?

Let's update things that don't work, though, right? That's part of the point. So to update Ben's death is essential part of Spidey Cannon by killing off one of the most central women in the story is very tough. I think Van also had an interesting point with, like they really killed Aunt May so the green goblin could live, which is a good note. I mean, it's a good note. But obviously, like, they're getting Peter to this point at the end of the story where he has nothing. But I think that he could have been facing the same dilemma with May that he is with MJ and Ned and that very touching scene with Happy at the grave where there were ways to lose people and feel their absence in your life without killing them. So it makes his choice even like tougher if he's also giving up May.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Agreed. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, some nitpicks there, but it did, it did still land emotionally for sure. Again, I have so many, I have so many issues of this movie and I don't care because I loved it, you know? How did you feel about May delivering the responsibility line? The, and we should say, by the way, she says with great power, there must also come great responsibility. So she reads the comics accurate line. I just rewatched the Andrew films over the weekend. I don't think that Martin Sheen's character says with great power comes great responsibility.

No, they talk about responsibility. Yeah, they talk about responsibility, but it's not the exact. But it's not the exact line. Yeah. So I thought it was fine, especially because she had been talking about responsibility, you know, in previous scenes in this movie. I thought it was fine. but then I thought it was really powerful when the three Peters bonded over it. I liked the payoff of it.

In the moment, I was like, okay, on the one hand, it's always going to hit when you hear that line. On the other hand, to get back to what we were talking about at the very beginning of the show, I've actually always really admired the MCU Spidey films from not feeling like they had to hit every single beat before. So on the one hand, I was like, ah, you actually didn't have to do it. It's really been okay without giving us that line. We all know the line.

It's a part of our Spider-Man experience to this point. we didn't need it here. On the other hand, it does build toward that shared connection that is so rich and rewarding when we see it with the, with the Spydies. Can I ask you about Happy for a second? You think he's going to be okay? Very worried about our guy, Happy Hogan. Well, he gets to get a new apartment, I guess.

I mean, I hope he goes. I love that he had dummy hanging out in his apartment. Just great stuff. My guy, dummy. The whole design of his sad condo was a lot for me. like the anyway um i hope he goes to stay with pepper for a little bit and just sort of like you know gets to be the godfather for a bit um that would be nice yeah some cheeseburgers with morgan yeah that's exactly what happy need that what he needs yeah that's a great one mj and ned we've

talked about them a lot today anything else you want to hit on there are a few a few things here we talked about how meaningful their trilogy their their their this trio is to this trilogy and to these stories. I think again, maintaining that coming of age spirit in a story of this dark was really important. Having so much room for them in this movie that is so crowded, I thought it was incredible work.

Because they are a part of Peter's journey and of Peter's life, and it makes you feel the absence so keenly at the end. Like, what does life look like for him without them? It's really, it's painful and hard to think about. And I mean, I will say the MJ thing is interesting because she, when he makes that big decision to do the spell and then afterwards is basically like, are you guys mad at me? And MJ's like, no, but like, hey, if you're going to make a big decision like this, like,

maybe include us and we can talk about it. If there are other solutions. And then he does the same thing again at the end where he like makes this big decision without talking to them about it. It's a beautiful sacrifice. And then she goes, no, I don't want this. I don't want this. I don't want this.

Right. Then he's like, I'll come find you and I'll tell you. And then he doesn't. Yeah. And you're like, okay. But the sling ring. I didn't know this was such a big deal until Jomey let me know that apparently it was all Vann was talking about when you guys got out of the theater, Ned using the sling ring.

And I think, I mean, it's an extension of the of the quarter debate that's going on around Hawkeye, which is just like, I don't think it's a, it's not a gendered thing. It's like a van has a very strong opinions about if something looks like it took a while to learn, it should take a while for the next person to learn how to do it. It doesn't bother me at all, zero percent. I'm not bothered by it, especially because, like, Stephen kind of, Stephen's like, you open a portal? And it's just sort of like, hmm, you know what I mean? Like, Stephen acknowledges like, this is, this is interesting.

And, you know, we get this, you know, idea that there's magic that runs on their family, all that sort of stuff. But of course, it's just an expedient plot thing. I'm not mad about it because it gives us that Andrew Garfield moment. So who can be mad. Again, the payoff kind of helps us accept anything. And that's definitely true across the movie. It's also helpful that he's not very good at it. I was going to say that too, yeah.

The fact that he doesn't know how to close the portal at the end, it's not like he has complete dominance of this ability. So far I was rewatching the training sequences in Dr. Strange. And, you know, there's a handy bit of exposition from Mordo where he says, all you need to do is focus, visualize, see the destination in your mind, look beyond the world in front of you. Imagine every detail, the clearer, the quicker, and easier the gateway will come. No, on the one hand, you can say, well, no one ever told that to Ned.

but I think that it helps us a little bit except that this is possible. Yes, with training and tutelage, but possible. But speaking of the training and tutelage part, it does get me excited for some future possibilities with Ned. Like, on the one hand, I love that we got the supervillain exchange about, you know, with Harry, right, and Peters. I love Godlin. Best friend betraying him and then dying in his arms.

And Ned's like, oh, my God, like, am I going to become a super villain? and you've got the hobgoblin. Very complex, we should say, comics canon with Hobgoblin, but still that was a fun little wink. Wait, I just need to really quickly shout out Andrew Garfield, two moments there.

One, Toby tells the story, straight-faced while, like, working a pipette, you know what I mean? Like, he's doing science while he's talking about this. And Andrew, just in the background, just goes like, dude, incredible line. I love that whole scene. And then when Ned promises Tom,

Tom Hollins, Peter, that he's not going to betray him. Andrew just gives him this like shoulder grab and nod of like, it's okay, buddy. Just great. Just great work from Andrew Garfield. All the way through. That's the spirit, Ned. Do you think that we will see Ned in like a strange academy style Disney Plus show or story in the future

while he would be studying the mystic arts? Well, a follow question. Who owns? Ned. This is like where will Ned and all of these characters be? I mean, I don't know if we'll have room for this specific prompt when we get to our questions later on what's to come, but this is definitely one of them because there are some fascinating setups. I have read the contracts about, because there's 900 characters, I think, that Sony has ownership of. I think it's something like that. And I've read the lists of what they have ownership of, and I'm pretty sure that they own.

I mean, this is the hilarious thing about the Sony leaks of the emails. right, which is that Amy Pascal said, how am I supposed to build a franchise? All I've got are villains and girlfriends. I've got one hero and villains and girlfriends. And that just shows you like the limitations of like Amy wasn't thinking galaxy brain. You know what I mean? And like into the Spiderverse shows this one thing.

Like, oh, you've only got Spider-Man? No, you've got all the Spider-Men. You know what I mean? Amy, you could do all this sort of stuff. And oh, you only have girlfriends? it's okay, but they could be MJ and rule. I think Sony owns Ned. That's what I think.

Interesting. Okay. MJ, we get the Watson name reveal in this movie at long last. Michelle Jones Watson, not Mary Jane, but. Love the coordinated. Don't say anything without a lawyer of Aunt May and MJ at the same time as they're walking through damage control. Man, damage control. Those fuckers.

Never up to any good. Villain time. Chat about the villains for a few moments. They've obviously come up throughout our discussion today, but we hinted at this earlier. The overall balance, the deployment across the movie,

we get one villain from every Toby and Andrew film, obviously Green Goblin, the first Toby movie, Doc Doc the second, Sam Man, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 3, Lizard, the first amazing Spider-Man, Electro, the second,

amazing Spider-Man. For me, I thought this could have been very unfocused and overly crowded and convoluted. But I thought that the balance worked, as is so often the case, that balance is key inside of a Marvel movie. I often cite, you know, Infinity War and the character pairings there and the math of how long we're with which grouping and how well it works. And they just have such a knack for being able to nail that. And I think they did a good job of it here too.

and more broadly, a discussion we have a lot, turning a weakness into a strength. I think that is very much at the fore here because while the villains are not necessarily the thing we all come out of the movie talking about, obviously we're talking about the three Spider-Man and seeing Daredevil and the Doctor Strange trailer at the end, et cetera.

But the specific critique of too many villains poorly deployed is a really central part of Spider-Man movie past with both Spider-Man 3 and the Amazing Spider-Man 2. And so not being afraid of that and actually working to bring some of those characters in here

and try to make that part of the movie home, I think is pretty impressive. We obviously did not get the Sinister 6 quite literally, as many people expected. We didn't get a Holland villain to round out the 6. I guess you could say, like, having venom at the very end is

kind of a way to get a six, but not really. We get five villains in the bulk of the movie. And the media, maybe the media is the sixth villain of this all. They made some really smart choices in making essentially Dr. Connors and Sandman like barely characters, right? They're sort of barely here. Thomas Hayden Church and Recyphins did one day, you know, basically on this film. And the D-Age, I don't know the, I don't know the mentality behind that. The D-Age is sort of like a mixed bag.

Like it looks, they spent all the money on Willem Defoe and Alpha Melina. And they're like, Thomas Aiden Church. They're like, eh, you're just going to see him for a second. It'll be fine. So, yeah. So balancing the scales there, they, like, put those two guys, you know, on the real back burner. Jimmy Fox also, like, doesn't have a ton. He's really Docok and Norman Osborne, right?

like electro and we should say this electro doesn't bear much of a resemblance to the electro from the Andrew Raphael films at all. He doesn't look like. Yeah, but again, yeah, that's that's that's the foggy whole thing of like let me pluck what works and ignore what doesn't. And I think with like Norman dropping the Green Goblin mask into the dumpster right away, he's like, we're going to keep Norman, we're going to ditch this dumb ass costume.

We don't like it. We'll put it there for the original fans, but it looks like a Power Rangers villain, so we're going to dump it right away, right? And Electro's design in Amazing Spider-Man, too, was pretty garbage on both ends of the spectrum, so we're just going to have them look like Jamie Fox. And you know what?

That's great. Logistically, this is the biggest nitpick of these villains coming over, because one theory is they're brought over right before they die. Another theory is they're brought over right before they die. Another theory is they're brought over right when they find out who Peter Parker is. But neither of those theories apply to all the villains, right? Because not all the villains know who Peter Parker is and not all the villains die. Right. Sandman and lizard don't die.

Electro doesn't learn exactly who's under. At all who's under? Yeah, he doesn't know that Peter Parker. Yeah. So it does not at all make sense that all five of these villains were pulled through. in any of the various theorems that these heroes put forth. And I don't care. Or why wouldn't other villains come through?

Why wouldn't other people who knew Peter, those Peters come through? I mean, ultimately the answer is because they wanted those five villains, one from every movie in the story. Why did venom come through at all? So my read on Venom is in the Venom, let there be carnage, stinger. where we see Peter. Yeah, I think so, right? Because Venom is connecting to the symbiote hive mind, accessing all of that shared knowledge. And so a version of Venom knows Peter Parker.

And so that is how he's called through. That's my sense of it. Yeah. Why a little piece of him is left behind when the magic sends everything else back is, I guess the answer is again, because they have movies to make. And I was, you know. Is Danny Rojas in trouble? I don't know. Amazing to see him.

That was a delight. Did you think, I'm curious, like, I was a little bit surprised. I think not in a bad way to be clear. But Green Goblin is really the main villain, even inside of this team of villains. I thought just from the marketing and how central Doc Ak was that he would, he would probably be the primary antagonist, but ultimately I really liked the way this played out because part of why Spider-Man 2 is such a cherished movie

is Alfred Molina's Doc Doc. And that portrayal and that character and the tragedy of Otto Octavius, you know, the power of the sun and the palm of my hand. I do love the holding the arc reactor. And it's like, yeah, you know, again, like Tony kind of just, you know, did a lot of the, Same stuff, but he was a hero and it worked.

He made it work. Good for you, Tony. You made it work. The fact that Doc Ack is ultimately helping Peter and our heroes in these key moments after they fixed the inhibitor chip, I really loved because it is so devastating to see Doc A.C fall in Spider-Man 2 and to see the AI take over and to see him lose control, even though, again, we can recognize that he was doing something and pushing and pushing maybe in a way. that he shouldn't have been, but ultimately it wasn't completely his choice or his fault to

descend the way that he did. So I liked that. And, you know, Defoe's Goblin is like iconic, right? So getting to see him at the center of this menace was really, really fun. I also, for Electro, he got a lot of zingers in and a lot of great lines. And he also has a really key line in terms of saying that he thought Spider-Man would be black in terms of Miles and promising Miles' eventual introduction into the live action. Of course, we have Spider-verse. Promise is a strong word, right? Well, we'll get there.

Hence that. Yeah, when? When Sony, you're late. I think Jamie Fox has said that he wants Miles to like fight. he wants to be in the Miles intro movie. And I mean, there is a theory that this electro is a variant electro that is not Andrew Garfield's electro. Do you know what I mean?

Because he looks so different. Interesting. I don't know that they would do that. I think they just did that because they liked the character design differently. So they gave him like fireman clothing. But like I, it's possible that he was pulled from a different universe. Interesting. Yeah.

So, yeah. Can do anything with the multiverse. You know, we know frighteningly little about the multiverse as Dr. Strange would tell us. I would have loved to have seen if Miles had shown up in this movie, I think that would have pulled things over the top. That would have been amazing.

But that was another, you know, I don't want to make excuses for why they didn't. I think they should have, I don't know if it should have been Schemeek more, if it should have been someone, you know, if Schemek feels too old, if it should have been someone else, if that would feel too confusing

with the, you know, the animated world that they're creating. I don't know, but I'm more than ready for a live action I thought I really did think we might we might see Miles in a stinger I really did I can't wait or like in the in the like in the mist where we see Craven

like when when they all start coming through but then again but Miles is in this universe like we know that Miles exists in the prime we know his uncle exists but he but what is what does Aaron Davis say he says my nephew lives here

yeah but like he is acknowledging that that's an acknowledgement of Miles's existence Miles exists, but is Miles been spider? Radioactive spider? You know, yeah. Spider bit.

If not, then he maybe will be soon. Soon. Soon, Tony. Soon. We're going to talk about that and what we might see in future movies more in just a moment,

but before we do, Joe, Daredevil. Daredevil chatter for a second here. Charlie! We got it. Charlie Cox's Matt Murdoch is in the MCU. Thrilling. I was delighted. I screamed. I would have loved to see him even more in the movie. I was sad to only

get that one sequence, but also delighted. And of course, the Hawkeye overlap timing implications of this are pretty vast because we have Vincent Sinoffrio's Kingpin in Hawkeye on the same week that we got Charlie Cox's, Matt Murdoch in Spider-Man. The Netflix Daredevil characters are in the MCU. This is happening. They're coming. How it exactly manifests moving forward. Who knows? But I I would expect it to be pretty central, at least to what's happening on Disney Plus and probably in the films as well. I'm excited.

There's another Hawkeye connection here, too, beyond just Daredevil that we should mention, which is like the timing overlap is very deliberately established. We see Rogers the musical billboards in the city. So this is happening at the same time as Hawkeye. That comment about the new and improved Statue of Liberty in Hawkeye directly connects to the Statue of Liberty with Capshield that we see here, Peter swinging at the end,

you know, this movie like mostly, far from home is set in summer of 2024 after the blip, right, eight months after the blip. Then this movie picks up immediately there. But because of the Halloween decoration sequence, we can kind of deduce that it's mostly taking place in like November of 2024 into then December and Christmas because when Peter's swinging over Rockefeller Center, Christmas tree lit, Rockefeller Center. we know this is going to be one of the main settings in the Hawkeye finale, which is mere days away.

So specifically, what do you think the payoff will be in the Hawkeye finale of this timing overlap? And more broadly, how hyped are you that Charlie Cox's Matt Murdoch is in the MCU? Delighted. Again, this is, I mean, and also there's the meta, like John Favreau, foggy from the Daredevil film in the scene trying to like stumble his way through some like, Legalee is pretty delightful. I think that I'm thrilled. I love Charlie Cox's Matt Murdoch. I'm so delighted that he's here.

I'm so delighted that Dinafrius Kingpin is here. Again, that's Feigey cherry-picking because, like, as we've discussed elsewhere, like, Feige doesn't, like, didn't have control the Netflix shows, and he does have control of all of Marvel content, filmed content now. and so he's sort of cherry picking what he liked from those shows and bringing them over. So, like, for me, Donofrio's Kingpin and Charlie Cox's Matt Murdoch are cream of the crop, and other people might disagree. But I'm glad that Feige's like, yep, this is, I don't think he's just going chronologically.

I think this is like the thematically the priority. And then, yeah, I would love to see him more. But again, that might be like a complicated like Marvel owns him sort of borrow out kind of thing. It's all very complicated. but I'm excited to see him in the Disney Plus shows. I think we're going to see him in Sheeulk. I think we might see him an echo. I think we're going to see a lot of him going forward,

and I'm so delighted. In a metacontractual way, this is kind of interesting because when Sony was trying to launch the Sinister Six movie, they were trying to do it with Drew Goddard, right? And Drew Goddard at the time was also making Daredevil for Netflix. And so Ike Pohlmutter, who was running Marvel Entertainment at the time, basically told Amy Pascal at Sony,

you can't have Drew Gardard. He's doing Daredevil for us. And it was this whole awful, messy, ugly standoff that basically led to Sony having to make the Marvel deal around Spider-Man because Sinister Six was their big idea for let's, you know, liven up the franchise. And then they got stymied on it and they didn't know what to do. And then they finally had to play ball with Marvel. So it's funny to see Daredevil and Sinister Six like all in the soup again.

Everything old is new again. But I don't. I don't, I mean, I don't think we're going to see, I mean, possibly we'll see Peter Parker swing by the Christmas tree. But I really doubt we're going to see Peter Parker in the Hawkeye finale. I actually even doubt we're going to see Matt Murdoch in the Hawkeye finale. Yeah. But it is nice to know this is all happening at the same time. Yeah, it really is fun.

Did you see that? So we talked about this in Hawkeye, how they sort of put something in front of the date. Yes. In a Hawkeye episode. And in this, when they get to AMA's great. Boy, was I looking at that tombstone. So funny. They just like, it was so overt.

The flowers they plugged in front of the dates. It was. But in this movie does feel like one where it actually is possible to place it in time. Right? Yeah. The math that you just spool out is correct. Yeah. So I mean, interesting.

What's interesting is really how that helps us play Hawkeye then. Yeah. It's baffling. It's baffling. We've talked about that. Okay. Stingers. the mid credits is that bit of Venom left behind.

We've talked about Venom a bit. Anything else do you want to add here? Did you expect to see Tom Hardy's Venom and Eddie in this more after the Letther be Carnage Stinger? No. I think I was, well, I guess I had read the leaks. So no, I did not expect him to be in the movie. Right. Sorry.

No, no, no, no. You don't have to. I was just sort of like, why didn't I think that? I was like, oh, yeah, that's right, because I read the whole plot of the movie. However, I do feel good that I, when you ask me what I thought the postcards were being, I would said one for them, one for Sony, one for Marvel, right? And so I did think it was going to be morbious, but that it's Venom. Makes sense. My understanding is that people lost their minds when Venom shows up in the Stinger. I don't know. I mean, I think they're just leaving all doors open, right?

Right. So all sticky symbia doors open. What do you think this means? We're getting into the portion here where, yes, we're talking about the stinger, but we're also asking questions looking ahead. Do you think that the fact that this little bit of symbiote, lingered behind, is setting up another symbiote venom Spider-Man story for future films? I was wondering, I acknowledge that this is probably not what's going to happen. And a little, a few too many connected pieces for this to really be the reason why. But I was thinking about Thor Love and Thunder because my guy Gore the God Butcher is going to be in that movie.

Can't fucking wait. I love the Gore. Jason Aaron run so much. I was like, well, could there be any chance that this bit of symbiote will connect to that because Gore wields the all black, the necro sword, the symbiote weapon. Could it connect in any way. But I don't know. Are they really going to open Love and Thunder by connecting to? to a Sony-centric, no-way home stinger unlikely.

But maybe. Maybe. I mean, I was wondering, the future of the Marvel Sony spider crossover is unclear. Yeah, this is. Everyone. But this, so to the, yes, because can we have a Venom Spider-Man black suit symbiote story if the Tom Hardy Venom movies are being made? Can that all happen at the same time in different movies?

In different universes? You know, it's confusing. We do know that the Spider Woman, Jessica Drew, movie is coming, and we're pretty sure that that's a Marvel Sony Copro. It's not been made official official, but Olivia Wilde talked about working with Kevin Feige, and she's directing that Spider-Woman movie. So I don't know.

Could a symbiote suit have something to do with that movie? I don't know, because it feels like they would want to pitch to something that was coming soon-ish. do you know? So I don't know. I honestly, I don't have a great answer here. Interesting. I'll be very curious to hear what our listeners think because I am.

But again, I guess this is a cheap answer, but I will just say it just feels like them leaving all doors open to possibilities. Agreed. Agreed. There's goop in all universes is what they're trying to tell us. That sure is. No sure is. Post credits. We got a full Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness trailer. I was shocked.

I was absolutely floored by this. In hindsight, maybe shouldn't have been surprised because the Ramey of it all, you know, Rami's directing the movie. No Way Home is so so indebted to the Rabyverse and the Ramey movies. Still, I was shocked. I just was not expecting it. I was Florida. It was delighted. So much to parse, you know, it's hard to do a full trailer breakdown as we like to without being able to go like frame by frame on YouTube or something.

Eventually we'll, we'll get this. But just off the initial viewing of the trailer, what stood out? We got to see so many different glimms. here. Mordo Wanda, America Chavez, possibly Ashumagora. There's a lot, a lot, a lot of what if energy here.

If people have not watched What If, specifically the Strange Supreme episode, which was the fourth episode, and then that character's ensuing appearances across the rest of what if, that feels like it's going to be pretty central to what happens. It was, you know, Van and Charles

talked about this. Was that evil-looking, strange, variant that we saw on the trailer, actually that same character, Strange Supreme from What If? Is it another variant who has taken some sort of turn? Who knows? Can't wait to find out. But I think the What If connection is interesting for a couple reasons, what it might indicate about how Strange's character arc will play out across that movie and more broadly, Strange's really central role in phase four because of the multiversal aspects of what's unfolding. Like, will the watcher come in, given the watcher strange pairing in What If? But also I was

thinking about what if because Stranges guidance to Peter in Noeigh home about not being able to save everyone really made me think of his arc in what if given his refusal to accept that Christine has died and will die and will keep dying. He was not capable and again the Christine is not the same as the Green Goblin but he was not able to do and accept the very thing that he tells Peter in Noe A Home

which was, you were there with the quote for me here, in the grand calculus of the multiverse, their sacrifice means infinitely more than their lives. I'm sorry, kid, if they die, they die. Now, very cold, very, very cold, but makes you think of what happens when a version of this character can't do the thing that this character said here.

So this is going to be a doozy of a movie. I mean, we don't know how much Strain Supreme is going to be in this next movie. You know what I mean? Because there's been rumors that maybe Hillyatwell's, this is not a leak. a rumor that maybe Peggy Carter, like Captain Carter's going to, you know, maybe there might be a few what if characters, but maybe in a sort of like flashy, uh-oh, everything's sort of breaking apart,

variants are coming through kind of way, or strange Supreme could be central. I do want to shout out, and that might not be strange Supreme at all. All of those things are options. I do want to shout you out, though, because I feel like you've been so certain that Strange Supreme would be part things going forward. And I was like, you're dreaming now. But I think that I saw that in the trailer, I was like, oh, Malas is so happy right now. There's her boyfriend, Strange Supreme is here. The thing I will say, and again, I'm not going to, I'm not going to spoil anything that I do or don't know about the movie. But what the trailer indicates to me is that there's been like a pretty major structural shift from my understanding what the plot of the movie was before. Maybe when,

and we've heard a lot about major reshoot so I don't know which is not a bad thing because Marvel is famous for fixing things in a reshoot or whatever or changing things in a reshoot so it doesn't make me uncertain about the movie I just think it's interesting. If that is the case, that could be the product

of what you were saying earlier to or connected at least to release schedule changes right and if this movie is following things that it wasn't originally intended to follow then what needs to be adjusted to you know account for that and where we are in the not only strangers dark, but the multiverse of it all.

It is called in the multiverse of madness after all. Yeah, I have a lot. I mean, we don't even have time to go into it all, but I have a lot of multiverse questions as they relate to like sort of how it's been deployed across all of these films and TV shows. And, you know, when all of a sudden dad, we'll figure that out. I think my main takeaway from the trailer is how good, uh, Chodalajivor Mordo looked.

The new look is incredible. That's my main point here. There was a lot of exciting stuff in the trailer, but it was really fun to see Mordo. It was really fun to see America Chavez, and it was obviously thrilling to see how much Wanda there was in the trailer. This is going to be a doozy. Okay.

We've talked a lot about Dr. Strange. We've talked a lot about Daredevil. Quickly. We're going to put a bow on some of the, what's the future of the Spider-Man characters questions we've been asking throughout the pod? This is our not-so-sinister six. Our six biggest questions about the future after No Way Home, and these are specific to Spider-Man, Peter Parker, Miles, other spider beings and those characters and what might happen there.

plenty of questions about Dr. Strange and Ned and the sling ring and Matt Murdoch and everything else. Spider-Man specific. Here's the first one. We're going to keep it rapid fire, put a bow on it. Feel free to throw out formal predictions, Joanna, if you should so desire. Will Tom Holland return as Spider-Man? This is question number one.

I used to think no, but I actually think yes. Me too. I think he's figuring out how much money he can get out of them to do so. And I would say if his other movies were doing better, I would say I would maybe be leaning towards a no. Because he said certain things on not wanting to be Spider-Man anymore. but like his other projects haven't done well. And I think, you know, I don't blame him for wanting to make movies that people want to see. So if it's Spider-Man, it's Spider-Man.

So yeah, that's what I think. There's a ton to parse here, a ton. I agree with you that broadly the end of the movie sets itself up. So people don't remember Peter and they could go in any number of ways. But think of like Aunt May saying in The Amazing Spider-Man's secrets have a cost. they're not free not now not ever right and what will the cost be of resolving this secret of who peter parker is whether it's foggy or amy pascal or holland or anybody else there are so many comments to parse already i think what you noted about holland how he's talked about the role like

that gq interview from you know a few a little while ago if i'm playing spider man after i'm 30 i've done something wrong. And now, you know, saying to people, like, first of all, he's talked about how he'd really like to see other characters come into the fold. You know, he said, quote, I would love to see a future of Spider-Man that's more diverse. Maybe you have a Spider-Gwen or a Spider-Woman. We've had three Spider-Mans in a row. We've all been the same. It'd be nice to see something different. I think we agree with that, certainly. He's, I think there are plenty of storytelling versions where all of this could be true at once, where Tom Holland's, Peter Parker

could remain in the movies, and we can get Miles in live action, and we can get, as you mentioned, Jessica Drew, and we can get Spider-Gwen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Feigey said this to Brooks Barnes and the New York Times,

just this past week around the release of the film. Amy and I and Disney and Sony are talking about, yes, we're actively beginning to develop where the story heads next, which I only say outright, because I don't want fans to go through any separation trauma like what happened after far from home. That will not be occurring this time. Now, that quote is on the heels of the kind of fascinating Amy Pascal comments saying overtly to Fandango in November.

This is not the last movie that we are going to make with Marvel and then kind of walking it back and hedging a little bit and actually saying to variety on the red carpet at the No Way home premiere. Don't get me in trouble again. But if I have my way, we will, meaning making more Tom Holland movies. There's a lot to figure out with Sony and Disney here, but there is so much on the line and on offer here, both in terms of money for the studios. And movies and stories that people are excited about that I would just be shocked if they did not find a way to keep doing this as long as Tom Holland wants to. Yeah, exactly. They just need to, Dave and I were workshopping this phrase. I think we came up with back the money lower.

up to Tom Holland's flat. You know what I mean? Like how much money? They've done it before, right? Like they had to lock down Robert Downey Jr. at one point. So, you know, they have the money if they choose to spend it for sure. Yeah. And then like Tom can come to the negotiation tables with these box office receipts and be like,

okay, cool. I made you a cool bill or more or whatever, like give the people what they want, which is more me. But the question, I want to, I know you're running the table on this, but I want to, that brings me to a question that I want to jump the line with, which is like, do I even want a Tom Holland Peter Parker movie without Zendaya or Jacob? I think, you know, I don't. I need, there's plenty of juicy promise in this movie for like this whole like, tell me when you find me, you know, like, or I'll figure it out or her weird look, sort of when he leaves, you know, like, I'd be all. for MJ figuring it out again on her own or whatever the case may be.

But I don't want Tom Holland, Peter Parker. She'd be the first to say. She could figure it out again. I don't want Tom Holland, Peter Parker in his like Spangley new blue suit, Bachelor in the City taking his GED. That's not that's not the story I want. I've seen that story. And like I need that Spider Fam around him, which is Sunday and Jacob.

So they better back up the money, Lori, to Jacob and Zendaya's houses as well. I'm with you. I mean, I think there's a lot of, obviously, they're just a vast character set. And even just, you know, in our mailbag questions this week, there are a lot of like, oh, will we see Felicia now, for example? Will this Peter meet his Gwen, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Do, you know, we hear there's no Oz Corp, but that doesn't mean there aren't the Oz-borns, like how could other characters come to play?

But I'm with you. these relationships just feel inextricable from this character and what these stories have been. I would be so, so sad. I always try to keep it up in mind with this stuff, but I would be so, so, so sad to not see Zendaya and Jacob, MJ, and Ned. I love those characters. I love them. They're just delights. I'm honestly just as interested in what their future in the MCU or Sonyverse is.

So I really hope that they're part. Sony wants to make an MJ, Ned, go to MIT TV show. I would watch it. How'd you feel about Flash getting into MIT? That's the real big question. That's not actually one of our six questions. I think his parents made a donation body building. Peter didn't think to call MIT, which I found charming because he doesn't like to take advantage of his ability and his celebrity. But, you know, Tony did say to him, I got some pull at MIT and we can we can we can we can rest assured that that flash's crew took advantage of any

pull they had i do love that like he's he won his dream school is is tony's school i think that's very charming if jacob badalon does come back to these movies strange academy let's do it here's my request for him that they let him shave his head because the nedwig in this movie was not top tears as far as i'm concerned so let let jacob rock his chrome dome i love it My wish for him is that he just continued to build as many Lego sets as he desires, because I love the recurring Lego through line. As a Lego enthusiast myself, I can't tell you how many Lego sets I've built during this work from home, remote era of our lives.

And I just absolutely love. Seeing the Legos on the table and Electro's like, are there's your Legos killed me. So funny, but like the fact that Peter brought like, one sentimental possession really with him to his sad apartment and his Palpatine. I mean, well, you know, can't get rid of Palpe, Joe. We know it. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Okay. Somehow. Somehow Lego Palpatine returned. Maybe that's a clone of the original Lego Palpati from Homecoming. Who can say how many sets in we are, you know? Oh, boy. Okay.

Question number three. We talked about this earlier, but let's get it, let's get the prediction and the hopes and dreams. Question number three. When will we see Miles Morales in live action? Do you think that this will happen in tandem with the ensuing Spider-Verse films, or are they going to wait until after the Spider-Verse animated series concludes to introduce Miles in live action? Well, I hope the Spider-Verse animated movie is going forever. Me too.

I know that I said that I don't want another Tom Holland Peter Parker movie without MJ and Ned. But someone somewhere, and I forget where, floated the idea of Peter as mentor. Miles in Spider-Man 3. This would be great. I'm into it. Me too. As soon as possible is how I feel about getting fucking fan favorite Miles Morales into the live-action movies. It's time.

I hope it happens in the next movie. I really hope we don't have to wait any longer. I also could not possibly be more excited for the next Spider-Verse movie, which looks fucking incredible. Amazing. Amazing. Question number four. Andrew and Toby.

What? Yes. More. Yes. Do we want to see? And maybe the question is really, how? You know, we got this amazing gift. Are you ready to say goodbye now?

I don't know how interested Toby is in doing this anymore. But if, and Andrew, I mean, but Andrew said a lot of things in the lead up to this. And he was like, he was just trash shocking his time as Spider-Man, but also just lying through his teeth about being in Spider-Man. I hope that Andrew was delighted by how happy everyone is with his performance here. I would love to see Andrew get another turn as the lead. I mean, maybe. So in a separate series of movies that live independently from the MCU or as part of the ongoing MCU-S-Soney experience.

Maybe Andrew gets to mentor Miles for Alice. Maybe that's, maybe that's what happens. and Electro is there for all of that. I mean, I think the bare minimum, multiverse of madness, I would like to see at least a glimpse of them. But like what's wild to me about this whole, and again, I'm stealing a point from my pal Dave Gonzalez on this, he was like, did they not play their strongest hand on a multiverse

by putting three Spider-Peeps, three Spider-Man in a movie together? Like, how do you top this in multiverse storytelling? How do you top the moment of seeing Andrew, Toby, and Peter swinging through the air at the same time together? That would be really, really, really hard to top. I mean, that is the pinnacle in some ways. I guess my answer would be we had no expectation that seeing Loki and Sylvie and, you know, classic Loki and Alighamelaide or Loki and Kid Loki would be as fulfilling as it was. And, you know, I adored that show. couldn't have loved it more.

So I think that there are a lot of different variations of multiversal variant storytelling. And also like we get to look forward to seeing Jonathan Majors as a bazillion different variants of Kang. Like how thrilling is that? So yes, the three Spidey's, the three Peters together, it's going to be tough to top. That's like Pantheon stuff.

But I'm choosing to look at it more as this like helps to solidify the template for what is possible and less like will eternally be measuring everything against this but you never know it's possible question number five hmm which other spider people spider beings are you most excited to see limit yourself if you can to your top three i'm only going to hit you with two one is um silk and to be clear we're this is in addition to we've already we've already said miles yeah yeah so silk Silk is on my list too. Top, top character for me.

And then I think I've said this elsewhere before. I'm going to try to not bungle this name. Paveter, Pavakar, who's Indian Spider-Man. I love him. And I love his design. And I think he would be a really, really cool edition. It was a way to take the story global, which would be kind of cool in the way that Eternal's tried to and stuff like that.

Yeah, that's an awesome one. Those are my top two. That's a great one. For Silk, do you think? Because Cindy is in the MCU films. Would we get that, would you want to see that Cindy? Or a Cindy from another universe brought in and developed a new, like a new introduction for Silk?

I think a new, new intro. Okay. This is so hard. Obviously, Miles is number one on my list overall. I think, you know, I'd really like to see, on the one hand, It's like Spider-Gwen in the animated universe is just so incredible and perfect that it's like, that's enough, but also I want more. So I would love to see Spider-Gwen in live action.

How about some May Day Parker? Oh. I mean, there are a lot of possibilities with Spidey offspring. You know, you could go any number of ways we could go with Spider-Girl. We could go with Spider-Ling. I think it would be fun at some point with all of the young Avengers stuff happening to introduce a progeny

at some point. I'm open on who, which alternate universe version we get. Oh my God, I don't know. I mean, should we do Spider-wolf while we're at it, Joe? What do you think? We could, we could.

You know, we had a few people in the mailbag questions mentioned the end. Exiles story arc as like an interesting possibility for how we could maybe see these characters from this film deployed in the future. But that's also a rich text for other comics characters who could come in, like maybe some sort of spider being who is connected in some way to exiles and this like interdimensional travel. That could be really cool and interesting. I don't know. Just put you know what? Put Spider-Hamming in everything and I'll be fine. Live action spider ham. I'm also very excited about Jessica.

and Spider-Man. Is Jessica Drew, like, is that still in the, this is heavily rumored and assumed camp, or is it confirmed that the Olivia Wild movie will be a Jessica Drew movie? We know it's Spider-Woman. I'm pretty sure Jessica Drew is confirmed. What remains unconfirmed is how much this is a Marvel Sony co-pro.

Okay. I think that's true, yeah. Our final question here, we did not actually get the Sinister Six here in name. And in full formation, though, of course, there are many different variations of the Sinister Six across the comics. Are we going to get, at long last, it's been Sony's desire for so long, a Sinister Six movie in Sony's Spider-Man universe. We know Craven is coming. Have you read some of the treatments for what their Sinister Six movie was going to be?

Yeah. They seem like terrible ideas to me. I don't really want the Sinister Six is how I feel about it. Do you not want what seemed like it was being set up with the Amazing Spider-Man to teases, you know, walking through the special projects, cells with the rhinosuit and the vulture wings and Doc Docs, tentacles and all that? Or more broadly, or you're not interested in what a new version of this could be? Because I do think it feels like overall with the Sony Disney mashup projects, but also just with like how fun the Venom movies have been that Sony could do

something now that's better than what we would have gotten a few years ago. And like, we know Craven is coming, right? We're getting a Craven movie. We see Michael Keaton. We see Tooms in the Morbius trailer, which I have a lot of questions about. I'm fascinated to see how that is all explained and how that works exactly. Maybe I feel like we will get this. I'm wondering when and how. My answer right now is, no, I don't want this. I'm happy to revisit. visit this after we see Morbius. Okay, fair. But like, Benham still feels like a fluke to me in terms of like Sony's ability to like

give us a movie that works. Okay. We'll see. Totally fair. We'll see. Okay. Time to reach into the Easter egg basket. In many ways, this entire movie is, and I say this is a compliment, stitched together

Easter egg by Easter egg. It's almost impossible to run through all the Easter eggs here. We would just be reciting the plot again of the entire movie. So we're going to limit ourselves to a favorite each. tons of choices do you have one Easter egg that you enjoyed the most either because of an emotional connection or what it promises about the films moving forward yeah i i didn't put i wanted to surprise you with it so it's not on our list it's definitely not an emotional connection but i just want to point out in their ransacking sacking of the uh of the undercroft uh right um down nabby

MJ no MJ finds like just for men and a goatee guard That was great Yeah That's my number one That was really good

How does strange Because first of all I didn't think Ben's uh Benedict's covermatch's wig Looked incredible in this movie But the uh I love the wig commentary from you Always

I'm always watching For those hairlines And how they're laid But I mean To compliment them Aunt May's wig is so good that for a long time I was like, Morrison Tomey just has incredibly long hair.

And then I was like, oh, no, that's a wig, you dummy. Anyway, that's an incredible wig. Anyway, point B, just for men and the goatee guard. I love it. Incredible. Incredible stuff from Benedict Cumberbatches, Dr. Steven Strange. Mal, what's your, what's your great pick? This is so hard.

I mean, I already shouted out my dude dummy. And the Legos, obviously, I loved all that. the the Ditko graffiti nice to see i love that you're like me where you're like i'm not i mean i'm actually just give you one answer on my way to one answer i'll give you other answers we're going to pick three spider spider spider people and i'm always like well or oh my god i think you know the super villain ned thing we already talked about that's in the running certainly i obviously love getting hearing norman sam something of a scientist myself was a great moment for meme culture. That was really fun.

Jomey, we left the theater and Jomey was like, they've seen the memes. And he's right. They've seen the memes. So that was really fun. The pointing meme, the fact that they like had to do the pointing meme and it didn't like, and I didn't hate it. That's an incredible. It's a high bar to clear. I'm still going to go with though. Ultimately, my actual pick is the characters that we've limped through the cracks in the multiverse as strange was working to contain the spell.

Because that's one where I'm like, okay, I could only see so many things at first. I can't wait to be able to like go. frame by frame and freeze this and parse and see on subsequent viewings how many of these characters we can spot and what that might tease for future installments definitely saw rhinos scorpion and craven that those were the ones that our screening group was confident we saw but there were like dozens and dozens and dozens of characters there so who else was there i can't wait to find out more that's my pick um something that i forgot to say when we were talking about tom hollins future in the mc u is to clarify what's left on his contract really quickly,

which is he only has one MCU appearance left. So it's not a full film. It's like an appearance in another film on like cameo, if you want to call it that or, you know, like the level that you said this isn't likely, but so if he showed up in the Hawkeye finale, let's say, which I don't think we think is going to happen. But if he did, that would be it.

That would be a wrap. I don't know if TV appearance is the same as film appearance contractually. I think most people expect that he was going to show. up in Multiverse of Madness, especially when that was supposed to come before this movie. The question is, is he still in Multiverse of Madness now that it comes after? By the way, I love to seeing the cloak of levitation on Ned, especially after we got to see the cloak on Peter in What If? Delightful. I love the cloak.

This is how you know it was a Sony movie. Ned calls it a cape, but like... Well, he's got a lot to learn. He's got to head to the... Canonically, it's very important. If you've ever interviewed the costume designer, you have to call that a cloak. They'd never call it a cape. See, I view that more as like Ned has a lot to train and learn and less like Spider-Man Homecoming completely destroyed the MCU timeline by saying eight years later after the Battle of New York. That is not when that movie takes place. Anyway, anyway, it's time for one of our favorite traditions. Secret scroll. Watch. Here's my prediction. We're going to have the same pick for this. We did not put it in the

outline. We're surprising each other. I feel sure we will have the same pick. And I think it's like, our most likely scroll yet. Like the other ones were kind of jokes to me, but this one I kind of feel like might be true. Say it on the count of three. Watch it not be the same. But if it is, I'm going to be so excited.

One, two, three. Stewie. Yes. Siri from damage control because right. Damage control is coming back into the story. This feels notable in some way. He knows that Fury has been off planet for like a while. Yes.

This just felt, yes. This isn't it. And I don't feel like you cast Ariya Moyad. Maybe you do. But I don't think you cast him for like, and he was great. He had like 10 minutes of screen time back. I'm so excited right now. And he was incredible that we picked the same one.

I love this. I hope it's true. This is my. This is the payoff of Secret Scroll Watch 2021. But yeah, I'm really hoping that he's a scroll. I loved him in this movie. I want to see him more. Stewie from Succession.

Come back. to us. Okay, mailbag. Let's pause for him and figure out which ones we want to. Here was my real anxiety. You're like on the count of three and I was like, how is she going to say it? Is she going to say Stewie from Succession? Is she going to say Agent Cleary? Is she going to say the actor name? I was only ever going to say Stewie. When Mysterio revealed my identity, my entire life got screwed up. I was wondering if maybe you could make it so that he never did. All right, it's mailback time. We got so many amazing questions. We've touched on some of it already today. We're going to answer a few questions here. Who knows? Maybe in the new year,

if everyone's still buzzing, swinging through their no-way home discussions will return to a mailbag in the future. Who can stay? We're here, as always, for the mailbag with Jomi Adoneron, Lord of the memes. Jomey, what do we got? Oh, we got a lot of good stuff. You know, some people would say, you know, I'm a really good podcast question getter. So, you know. I'd say that. I'm here for it. First questions, we got like a double pack. Right? The first one's from Kelly.

What point in their timelines are the villains going back to? Do they have a chance to make better choices? And how does that affect the lives of their spodies? And Caitlin also asked, did Spider-Man 1, Doom Spider-Man 2 and 3 to be forgotten the way he was since everyone had to forget Peter Parker? We got a lot of questions like.

this, like the implication in the other universes for the other Peters and those characters of what the thought of the spell is going to be. Joe, what do you make of this? I think for Caitlin's question, I think this only affects this Peter Parker would be my guess about that. That was my read too. Everyone's going to forget this Peter Parker. In this universe. Yeah. For what point in their timelines of villains going back to do they have a chance to make better choices and how that affect the lives of their Spydies? I think, and it could be wrong, But I think we have to look to the end game time travel rules for this. I could be wrong about this.

But like if, let's say, Norman Osborne comes back and he's no longer green goblinized and let's say he does other stuff, it's still not, for some reason, it's still not going to change Toby's Peter because your past is always, I mean, the end game time travel rule still don't make sense to me. Interesting. I was wondering, and this gets complex too, I think the really short answer to all of these questions and the other versions of questions that are similar is we have a lot to learn about the rules of this inside of the MCU. And they have a lot of explaining to do in subsequent stories about how all this works because I'll give you an example. One of my thoughts and we had a lot of other people tweeting at us in the mailback questions with a similar read on it is like, well, this would be different sending them back. It would have a ripple effect. Our Andrew, R. Toby could not end up at the point where they then came into this story. Now, the bootstrap, like, if you want to carve out a few hours and talk about Netflix's dark and time travel and paradoxes, I'm here for at any time. There is this question, right, of did it always happen this way and so it must happen this way? but inside of the universe of the MCU,

we know that new timelines can shoot off when something happens that wasn't supposed to happen or something has changed. However, the thing that, the reason I said, well, they have a lot of explaining to do is because,

so would this spark a new, like a variant timeline inside of those universes? A note I made for myself is, does the TVA just prune all these people as soon as big a matter? to that. I'm glad you're, I'm glad you're asking that

because that's what I was going to say. So would they be basically candidates for pruning, except is that even happening? Because of course, there's no sacred timeline anymore because of what happened with Sylvie and New Remains. What is the TVA doing?

We do see the TVA is there, right? When Loki goes and realizes that Mobius and they don't know who he is anymore and he sees the King statue, but they're still looking and saying, well, are we supposed to just let all these go, which implies that they are managing timelines outside of this one like chaotic unfurling, right?

So that's a really long way of saying, I don't know, but it seems like, it seems like they might be variants who start new timelines and whether the TVA now in this new post-Loki finale version allows that to continue is the question. Maybe that's a bad read. I don't know. No, I think the question is,

we don't know what the new TVA is up to, right? like we just don't know. So for us to speak on what they're doing right now. This is interesting because like to the is the multiverse too confusing and doesn't matter question? Like we know we're going to get a season two of Loki and we'll get those answers then. But we're going to have so many multiverse stories between between the end of Loki season one and Loki season two. So don't we have to understand this at some point? Do we?

Do they? I mean, exactly. They're just going to yada yada. You know, and also like we can't we can't. Ultimately the multiverse is a tool. Here's my thing on this. Broadly. This is not specific to this movie or even the MCU. This is a cross-fantasy story telling. I'm okay with almost any set of rules, but you have to establish what they are at some point. You have to establish the rules of the universe and then live by them. So I'm just curious to know when we will. And it's fine. Like this is new. So we'll learn more and more story after story. But it's interesting. Even like you go back and you hear them talk about the multiverse and Dr. Strange and they're talking about these different dimensions, right? We have dimensions. like the ashtal dimension and the mirror dimension, that's part of the multiverse.

We have all of these different worlds and universes, right? That's part of the multiverse. We have the timeline that has cracked open, so it's not just a sacred timeline. That's part of the multiverse. All of this stuff is part of the multiverse. Great. But how does it work?

Like, Dr. Strange didn't open the multiverse with his spell. The multiverse exists. That's acknowledged in the film. They pull characters out of it. And then there's a threat at the end that more could come through. But the characters that they're pulling out are from different timelines, even though they're from the same experience.

Again, let me... Not different timelines, different moments on their timeline, I should say. I feel like sometimes when we get multi-hours into a podcast, someone's going to forget what I said at the top. So let me say again, as many hours later. I loved this movie. Yeah. I feel very emotionally connected to this movie.

This shit makes no sense. And like this shit, I thought made no sense at endgame. Like, when people were debating the time travel rules in endgame, I'm like, this shit makes no sense. But it doesn't matter to me if Tony's... Stark gets to have a conversation with his dad if the time travel doesn't make sense. To me, it's only when characters behave inconsistently that I get super stressed out. If in the world of comic book storytelling or fantasy storytelling, you want to yada yada time travel

rules or multiverse rules because you've made it too complicated for yourself or put some flowers in front of Aunt May's tombstone because you don't know what the fuck you're doing with your timeline, I'm going to be able to roll with it because emotionally it works for me. Logistically, it makes no sense for a cured Doc Ock to go back into the timeline and for that not to have some impact on youth pastor Toby McGuire's life. You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't think, like, like Mal said, I don't think we'll get answers until season two of Loki. But ultimately, I think the multiverse is a tool, right? Like in this movie, and I assume in multiverse of madness, it's just a tool to pull, plucks,

stuff out of that we already have knowledge of that we don't have to like they don't have to do too much thinking. I don't agree with that. I think that that that's when that to Van's point, like that will be where a lot of the things that Van has been pointing out become a real, real problem moving forward. The infinity stones are McGuffins. Now, yes, they're, they're central to how the plot of the story plays out, but they are plot devices and tools. The multiverse is, is the world in which the characters exist now. And we have to understand that. It doesn't have to happen right away,

but we have to understand that. I hope you get what you want. Now, comic book stories, the rules change all the time. I'm ready to swing with it. I've already got the back pain. I will swing with it every update along the way. But I think they have to at least try to explain some of the stuff at some point.

I'm fine with it now. I'm just like I'm ready to learn a little bit more. I hope we get that soon. it'll be fun to talk about if nothing else that would be nice hopefully they could give us a little something in multiverse of madness to tie this over it's not far away that movie soon

it's gonna be May right it's gonna be May before we know it I know it's gonna be right there okay what's next next question comes from Mel Mel's like okay I think I have the spell sorted everyone forgets him nothing else changes. However, do pictures remain? Or are they memories that disappear?

Great question. We don't actually know the answer to this so we can just interpret and guess and speculate. What do you both think? I think it's going to be like a, for me, I think it's, I think Jemmy has a different answer, but for me it's going to be like, hmm, your mind kind of glosses over it.

Do you know what I mean? Like, like, if Tony Stark was alive, which he's not, rest and peace. He would remember that he pulled Spider-Man into the Civil War fight, but not that he pulled Peter Parker. Do you know what he mean? Right. Spider-Man exists for sure.

People know Spider-Man. Like, happy- But I'm just saying when he remembers it, he just doesn't remember Peter. He's going to remember, oh, I went and got this kid who's Spider-Man. But not, I went to his apartment and hit on his aunt, and he was wearing a pizza t-shirt. I agree with that, but what happens when MJ is scrolling through her camera roll? I think those photos are gone. You think that the footprint of Peter's life has been erased?

I guess it would have to be, or how else would people not, she's just going to be looking through her text and that sweet sad boy who cried when he paid for the coffee. That guy. I think poor Martin Starr's display case that he made at the high school, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful artwork from Martin Starr's character is gone. Wow. Okay. Like,

snapped out of existence. Yeah. I think, I think that's a good, yeah. I think that's a good take. I think mine, almost.

I think mine's a little different in the sense that like, you know, he, he still exists as a human being, but like, it's just like one of those memories where like, I can't, you can't remember who all was there or whatever.

Just like a little, like you said, like they gloss over, you know, like so, and this is like a thing, an interesting, tool for the future if they want to bring them back for like an Avengers movie they can be like

oh let's bring back Spider-Man we remember Spider-Man but they don't know it's Peter that doesn't make that that's also more like are the Avengers fighting alongside someone they don't know they I mean they know Spider-Man they remember Spider-Man they won't remember that Spider-Man is Peter Parker I think that very quickly in the next if Tom Hollins Peter Parker returns I think very quickly people will start to remember who he is I think that probably has has to happen. We will only find out of Tom Holland signs up for more movies, but like, what kind of ID docs documentation does Peter Parker have? Does he still have a social security number? Does he have, you know, all that sort of stuff. How, you know, Jomi points out how

is he able to get a lease if he doesn't. I mean, that apartment seems off the books to me, that shitty apartment, but, um, wait, sorry, really quickly. Can I just shout out one thing I forgot to mention on the, on the vein of shitty apartments and Peter, the, the, uh, the standards that Peter has allowed himself to live by. I just want to shout out his super wrinkly suit that he wears when he goes to track down the MIT lady on the, like, this is a suit and a dress shirt that has been jammed in a backpack.

It's like, it's perfect. No one even mentions it. It's just sort of like, yes. Sometime a teenager just puts on a wrinkly suit. I love it. He doesn't have the nanotech for his dress wear, I guess. Tony Stark didn't. think that ahead. I guess not.

All right. What else we got, Joe? All right. Our last question comes from Brandon Rust. Would you cast a spell to have everyone forget something leaked or revealed in the trailers leading up to the movie? And what would it be? Andrew and Toby? Matt Murdoch?

Here's my pick. Showing MJ Fall in the trailer. We all knew what was going to happen when we saw that. I'm with Brandon. MJ Fall. Yeah. That's a good pick. that's a good pick to cut. That would have been

I think also there are so much like what or whom is punching lizard and has been digitally removed from this shot. It was a kick. That was my favorite part of that shop was that it was a kick,

not a punch. That would have been a funny thing to not have there. Though I personally, I don't mind this because I think it's exciting that it sparked all of this speculation. I don't know.

I don't like it. I think it was a really interesting strategy because I think Tom Holland said at one point that they were going to try to not even like talk about the villains coming through. Like, and I think then

Alvin Molina just like, was like, hey, I'm in this movie. And then they were like, well, new strategy. But I think they were going to try to keep all of that a secret. And I think the half secret actually worked in their favorites and the and the Andrew and Toby rumors work in their favor because it's like producer Arjuna says that Tom said that the original marketing plan was to make it look like it was Spidey versus

strange and keep all that other stuff a secret. Just like how Robert Rodriguez recently said in an interview that everything in the trailer for Boba Fed is from the first half of the first episode, which maybe makes you Mal feel more optimistic about the Boba show because you're like, what is this trailer? And it's like, it's the first half of the first episode. That's what it is. I'm ready for nothing but surprises.

So yeah, so people are like, I don't know. I feel like people get too uptight about spoilers again, as I've said before. But I do think that whole like, okay, go see this opening weekend. You got to see it right away before I get spoiled for you, this thing that everyone already pretty much knows. But you got to go see it for yourself. Don't get spoiled. And it's like, I don't know.

It's, it worked for Sony in the end. I think I would have paid it in godly sum of money to have the rumors of Andrew and Toby wiped for my brain before seeing this for the first time. Like, could you imagine having no idea? And then he opens the, he opens the portal. And, oh, man. Oh, I would have lost my mind.

I would have lost my mind. You know, it was lost your mind anyway, right? It was still exciting. Yeah, it was still exciting in the movie, you know. But if you had like no idea, like absolutely know. It would have been incredible. It would have been. I think the nature of, and this is one of the things that's so fun about watching all

these stories together and talking about them together. There's so much theorizing and speculating. As soon as we heard the Green Goblin laugh and saw the pumpkin bomb and saw Doc Ack in the first trailer, we would have said those are villains from the Toby movies. What does that mean? Is there a chance Toby's going to be in this movie? I think no matter what people would have started speculating, right? I know 100%.

But like, you know, I'm online. I know, Joe, you saw the leaks, you know, like you read the stuff. I, you know, Spence it on my line, you see pictures, you see things like, oh, man. Oh, yeah, they're first people DM me. Hey, they're definitely in the movie. So I was like, oh, for show. You know what I mean? But if I had gone in, like, no, you know, headroom, just like, let's see what happens.

You know, this is a Spider-Man movie. If Sony had been able to market this movie to make it look like Spidey versus Strange, would they have made the amount of money they made this? Exactly. I think it's actually smart to market it with some degree of candor about what's going to happen in the movie. You don't want to give it all the way, but they didn't. They didn't actually. To circle back to the very beginning, they did it.

I will just say like, I think when people say, oh, my God, you spoiled it, you've ruined the movie for me. That's the thing that I just like, again, I don't want to spoil anyone who doesn't want to know ever. I don't ever want to do that. I really don't think it's going to ruin the movie for you. I think you're going to get so excited to see Andrew and Toby no matter what, you know what I mean. And I know that's not what you're saying. No, that's me speaking to someone else. I think to Miles' point, like, we just make movies differently.

So like the thing is to get people into the theaters, you know, like it made, what, over $250 million in the U.S. alone opening weekend. So like it did its job. But imagine if we had just got, oh, it's strange versus Spidey, and then we walked out to all of that. our minds would have been, like, just like, like, you'd walk off the theater like, oh, my God, like, what, what did, what if I just witnessed? What did I just see?

You know, there's different levels. But, you know, it's the way things are now. I guess I just don't know. Maybe it happened that way. I don't, I guess I just don't know how to like, I don't know how to watch movies. Like, like, when we walked out of Infinity War and I remember people being like, oh, my God, all these people are dead. And I'm like, no, obviously they're not.

Like, what are you talking about? No, very clearly they're not. What are you talking about? That's weird because we knew endgame was coming like the next year. Exactly. But like, what is it like to live like that? Where you're like, oh my God, they killed Tom Holland in Infinity War. I'm like, of course they didn't.

I don't know. All right. On that note, MIT admissions is calling, so it's time to wrap today's episode. Thank you. Thank you so much. Really thank you to our friendly neighborhood producer, Lonnie Rinaldo, for swinging in to produce this overstuffed, super-sized episode. Thank you to our favorite webheads. Steve Allman, Arjuna Ramgapal, and TD St. Matthew Daniel for their additional production work on this episode.

And thank you to Jomea Denneron. He's something of a meme scientist himself for his work on the social for this episode. Remember to follow the ringerverse on Spotify wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the ring of verse across our social feeds. Head back into the ringerverse on Wednesday for the Midnight Boys Hawkeye Finale Instagram reaction and Friday for the House of our working title, Hawkeye Finale Deep Duck. Until then, careful what you wish. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel

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